Primitive Colors: A Case Study in Neo-pragmatist Metaphysics and Philosophy of Perception

Primitive Colors: A Case Study in Neo-pragmatist Metaphysics and Philosophy of Perception

by Joshua Gert
Primitive Colors: A Case Study in Neo-pragmatist Metaphysics and Philosophy of Perception

Primitive Colors: A Case Study in Neo-pragmatist Metaphysics and Philosophy of Perception

by Joshua Gert

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Overview

Joshua Gert presents an original account of color properties, and of our perception of them. He employs a general philosophical strategy - neo-pragmatism - which challenges an assumption made by virtually all other theories of color. Neo-pragmatism rejects the standard representationalist strategy for solving "placement problems" in philosophy, which relies on the existence of a substantive notion of reference and truth. Instead, it makes use of deflationary accounts of such semantic notions. Applied to the domain of color, the result is a view according to which colors are primitive properties of objects, irreducible to physical or dispositional properties. In this way they are more like numbers, and less like natural kinds such as water or gold. Objective colors are also - contrary to current dogma - insufficiently determinate in their nature to allow them to be associated with precise points in standard color spaces. A given color can present different veridical appearances in different viewing circumstances, and to different normal viewers. It is these appearances, which are to be understood in an adverbial way, that can be located in standard color spaces. In explaining the distinction between objective color and color appearance, a central analogy to which Gert appeals is that between the perceptible three-dimensional shape of an object, and the various ways in which that shape appears from various perspectives. Primitive Colors also offers an account of color constancy, a moderated version of representationalism about visual experience, and a criticism of the thesis of the transparency of experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780191089008
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Publication date: 06/30/2017
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 240
File size: 663 KB

About the Author

Joshua Gert is the Francis S. Haserot Professor of Philosophy at The College of William and Mary. In addition to his work on color, he is also the author of Brute Rationality: Normativity and Human Action (2004) and Normative Bedrock: Response-Dependence, Rationality and Reasons (2012), both of which develop a particular account of rational action and normative practical reasons.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. An Unmysterious Color Primitivism
2. Color Primitivism and Neo-pragmatism
3. A Realistic Color Realism
4. A Realistic Color Realism
5. A Realistic Color Realism
6. Rival Views: Endowing Objects with Many Colors
7. Friendlier Rivals: Making Color Experience More Complex
8. Representationalism and the Transparency of Experience
Summary and Conclusion
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