C. L. Hardin

In defense of convergent realism

Many realists have maintained that the success of scientific theories can be explained only if they may be regarded as approximately true. Laurens Laudan has in turn contended that a necessary condition for a theorys being approximately true is that its central terms refer, and since many successful theories of the past have employed central terms which we now understand to be non-referential, realism cannot explain their success. The present paper argues that a realist can adopt a view of reference according to which a theory might plausibly be said to be approximately true even though its central terms do not refer, or alternatively, he may construe reference in such a way as to assign reference to a range of successful older theories which includes Laudans purported counterexamples.

Explaining Basic Color Categories

This article surveys several lines of evidence that suggest a strong connection among the mechanisms of color vision, perceptually elementary hues, and naming basic colors. But important questions remain about the linkage between the shared human attributes of color perception and the development and structure of crosscultural basic color categories.

The virtues of illusion

ConclusionThe moral is plain enough. For purposes of distinguishing an object from surroundings of similar lightness, one needs to have a receptive system that is sensitive to small wavelength differences. For signalreception and identification purposes, one needs to have a receptive system engendering a few basic categories that can ignore minor variations and lump stimuli together into a small number of salient, memorable equivalence classes. With elegant economy, our visual systems does both by drawing on the same neural resources. The system of qualitative classification that this involves need not match any analogous set of structures outside the organism in order to provide real advantages to the animal that uses it. The hues that we human beings see express our system of coding wavelength information rather than some set of properties of reflecting surfaces. But the form of the coding is not just a bit of non-functional adornment freeloading on the serious business of visual information processing. We must see it, rather, as supplying the means by which a rich amount of sensory information can be rapidly and efficiently represented by cognitive machinery of limited capacity [Miller, 1957]. With color, the medium is the message.

Phenomenal Colors and Sorites

Nontrans has been used as a stick with which to beat sense-datum theorists as well as to cast doubt on the possibility of giving a rational reconstruction of the semantics of everyday color terms. In both cases, what is called into question is the coherence of phenomenal color predicates, or, alternatively, the concept of a phenomenal color. For if we must distinguish the colors of x, y, and z by sight alone, and we require that the phenomenal color of an object be the color that the object seems to have, then if x is indistinguishable in color from y, x and y must be the same (shade of) phenomenal color. Similarly, if y is indistinguishable in color from z, y and z must be the same phenomenal color. By the transitivity of identity, we must conclude that x is the same phenomenal color as z, but since x and z are distinguishable in color, x cannot be the same phenomenal color as z. It is evident that the contradiction disappears if we abandon the conception of a phenomenal color, for it does not follow that just because x seems to be the same shadee of) color as y, and y seems to be the same color as z, that x must then seem to be the

Churchland's metamers

Paul Churchland proposed a conceptual framework for translating reflectance profiles into a space he takes to be the color qualia space. It allows him to determine color metamers of spectral surface reflectances without reference to the characteristics of visual systems, claiming that the reflectance classes that it specifies correspond to visually determined metamers. We advance several objections to his method, show that a significant number of reflectance profiles are not placed into the space in agreement with the qualia solid, and produce two sets of counterexamples to his claim for metamers. 1. Introduction2. Preliminary Explanations and Objections 2.1. Color spaces and solids2.2. Visual metamers2.3. Matching and appearance2.4. Effect of light on appearance of objects3. Churchlands ‘Canonical Approximation’ Hypothesis4. Does the CA Cylinder House SSRs in Agreement with the Perceptual Color Solid?5. Two Sets of Metameric Counterexamples 5.1. Three metameric grays5.2. Three metameric yellows6. Birds, Bees, and Anthropocentrism Redux Introduction Preliminary Explanations and Objections 2.1. Color spaces and solids2.2. Visual metamers2.3. Matching and appearance2.4. Effect of light on appearance of objects Color spaces and solids Visual metamers Matching and appearance Effect of light on appearance of objects Churchlands ‘Canonical Approximation’ Hypothesis Does the CA Cylinder House SSRs in Agreement with the Perceptual Color Solid? Two Sets of Metameric Counterexamples 5.1. Three metameric grays5.2. Three metameric yellows Three metameric grays Three metameric yellows Birds, Bees, and Anthropocentrism Redux

Color relations and the power of complexity

Color-order systems highlight certain features of color phenomenology while neglecting others. It is misleading to speak as if there were a single “psychological color space” that might be described by a rather simple formal structure. Criticisms of functionalism based on multiple realizations of a too-simple formal description of chromatic pheno-menal relations thus miss the mark. It is quite implausible that a functional system representing the full complexity of human color phenomenology should be realizable by radically different qualitative states.

Color experience and the human animal

It is one thing to understand what advantages an animal such as ourselves gains by being able to exploit spectral information in its environment, but quite another to understand how the animal benefits by having conscious color experiences. Since experiences are private, how could they confer a selective advantage? Could they do so by enabling voluntary action of a sort forever beyond the resources of the most ingeniously designed wavelength-processing robot? Or is there an ancient biological link between color experience and the emotions that colors evoke in us?

What is color

I want to begin by thanking each of you for attending. This session is very, very exciting to me, and I know that it willbe exciting and rewarding to you as well. We will begin by acknowledging Dr. All an Rodrigues and Dr. Danny Rich. We are the progenitors of this session. I believe that it is incumbent upon us to prepare ourselves, our companies or organizations for tomorrow by staying abreast of the state of-the-art, changes in technology, science, and trends, in our ever-changing world.

Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow.Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism

Colour has often been supposed to be a subjective property, a property to be analysed orretly in terms of the phenomenological aspects of human expereince. In contrast with subjectivism, an objectivist analysis of color takes color to be a property objects possess in themselves, independently of the character of human perceptual expereince. David Hilbert defends a form of objectivism that identifies color with a physical property of surfaces - their spectral reflectance. This analysis of color is shown to provide a more adequate account of the features of human color vision than its subjectivist rivals. The authors account of colro also recognises that the human perceptual system provides a limited and idiosyncratic picture of the world. These limitations are shown to be consistent with a realist account of colour and to provide the necessary tools for giving an analysis of common sense knowledge of color phenomena.