If the direct realist thinks the world is exactly as it phenomenologically appears, then their argument is still so embarrassingly ridiculous as to force us to consider our own misunderstanding as the more plausible explanation. — Isaac
Color Primitivist Realism is the view that there are in nature colors, as ordinarily understood, i.e., colors are simple intrinsic, non-relational, non-reducible, qualitative properties. They are qualitative features of the sort that stand in the characteristic relations of similarity and difference that mark the colors; they are not micro-structural properties or reflectances, or anything of the sort. There is no radical illusion, error or mistake in color perception (only commonplace illusions): we perceive objects to have the colors that they really have. Such a view has been presented by Hacker 1987 and by J. Campbell 1994, 2005, and has become increasingly popular: McGinn 1996; Watkins 2005; Gert 2006, 2008. This view is sometimes called “The Simple View of Color” and sometimes “The Naive Realist view of Color”. Primitivist Color realism contains a conceptual (and semantic) thesis about our ordinary understanding of color, and a metaphysical thesis, namely, that physical bodies actually have colors of this sort.
One entity represents a massive thought complex. — Metaphysician Undercover
But if colour is a property of experience, then the statement "an object cannot be two colours at once" is incoherent. — Isaac
Colour is not a property of objects so there cannot be physical laws about how many such properties it can have at once. — Isaac
The best you can say is that if colour were a property of objects, then it could not be two colours at once. But here you're creating a counterfactual world in which colours are the properties of objects and claiming you know what physical laws would exist in such a world. Which is an unsupported claim - we only know the physical laws of our own world, the one in which you claim colour is a property of experience, not objects. — Isaac
And what is this thing? Is it physical (if so in what form?). If it's not physical then in some other realm? — Isaac
Dualism here? — Isaac
I can't see how any amount of thinking is going to pin down the nature of this 'experience of red' since it has no laws governing it. — Isaac
If they're really arguing that we're never wrong, however the world seems, that's how it is, then they should consider the earth flat, the sun in its orbit, dragons exist, and the weather caused by an angry God as these are all ways the world has appeared to us to be. — Isaac
They certainly thought so of at least some appearances, hence Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities. — Michael
And see color primitivist realism for the view that objects have an objective colour appearance: — Michael
the only way to determine what primitivist color a body has is by the way it appears, this raises the question of which is the body’s real color. Normal perceivers, for example, divide into different groups on whether a body’s color is, say, unique blue, or rather, a slightly reddish-blue, an even more reddish blue, or, alternatively, a greenish blue. Cohen and Hardin argue that there is no non-arbitrary way to pick out one group of perceivers as identifying the “real” color. At most, one group is correct, but we would not know which
It just means color as we experience it isn't a property of the object. — Marchesk
Colour is not a property of objects so there cannot be physical laws about how many such properties it can have at once. — Isaac
Other than none. Which is kind of the point. — Marchesk
The counterfactual world you're talking about is the world of our experience. It looks like colors are properties of objects and light sources. The world of our experience came before science was developed. — Marchesk
Chalmers proposed a law binding consciousness with informationally rich systems. So property dualism for him. It's just one possibility. Some have tried to work on making a panpsychist theory built up form minimally conscious subatomic particles. — Marchesk
There are some contemporary philosophers who do argue for color realism, and they try to make it compatible with science. I'm not convinced those arguments work. — Marchesk
If their arguments were incoherent, then [color realism] would have been easily dismissed. — Marchesk
So it appears even the critics are agreed that the colour primitivists are still assuming colour is a property which we detect and produces the way it appears, not that colour actually is 'the experience of red' in an object. — Isaac
'm not finding, in the sources you've provided, the idea that any direct realist considers objects to actually have (rather than have a property which causes) the 'experience of red'. Do you have any less ambiguous sources, or perhaps you could explain them more clearly? — Isaac
No laws or no physical laws? Why do laws have to be physical? — Marchesk
The way it appears would mean the color in our experience. — Marchesk
They mean the world is as it looks to us under proper lighting conditions, at least in the visible light range. — Marchesk
Yes. The idea that seems to be bring presented is that red is some property of an object which produces the response we call 'seeing red'. — Isaac
can find no support for this. Both Locke and the colour primitivist agree that we can be mistaken. So they do not think the world is as it looks to us under proper lighting conditions, at least in the visible light range. Otherwise we couldn't be wrong and both admit that we can be wrong. — Isaac
the idea is that red is a property as we see it, not something that causes us to have a response — Marchesk
the ideas produced in us by secondary qualities don’t resemble them at all. There is nothing like our ideas ·of secondary qualities· existing in the bodies themselves. All they are in the bodies is a power to produce those sensations in us. — Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book II: Ideas
Under normal conditions, when there's not an optical illusion, and taking into account whatever details about color vision need to be accounted for. — Marchesk
...and he was cited as an example of these direct realists. IF you have a different source, perhaps you could cite it for me? — Isaac
I've been reading Color Realism and Color Science and Color Properties and Color Ascriptions: A Relationalist Manifesto. The first one is a good overview of colour realism and its discontents. — Jamal
Indeed, but you're using the vagueries of colour sensation (which Locke already decided was a secondary quality) to show that objects do not resemble appearances. Locke already covered that by using secondary qualities. His claim about primary qualities was things like solidity, extension, shape, and mobility. So, using Locke, it seems insufficient to show the direct realist os wrong using differences in colour perception as they (Locke being an example) already differentiate two types of property and colour is not primary. What am I missing here? — Isaac
So it appears even the critics are agreed that the colour primitivists are still assuming colour is a property which we detect and produces the way it appears, not that colour actually is 'the experience of red' in an object.
I'm not finding, in the sources you've provided, the idea that any direct realist considers objects to actually have (rather than have a property which causes) the 'experience of red'. Do you have any less ambiguous sources, or perhaps you could explain them more clearly? — Isaac
For our current purposes, there are two crucial components to this package. The first is the idea that we should distinguish between two notions of color: color as a property of physical bodies, and color as it is in sensation (or, as it is sometimes described, “color-as-we-experience-it”).
The circularity problem reflects the way the dispositionalist thesis is usually formulated:
X is red = X has the disposition to look red to normal perceivers, in standard conditions.
If we understand the phrase “to look red”, on the right hand side, to mean “to look to be red”, then it would seem we have troubles. As Levin puts it:
If an object is red iff it’s disposed to look red (under appropriate conditions), then an object must be disposed to look red iff it’s disposed to look to be disposed to look red … and so on, ad infinitum. (Levin 2000: 163)
You can read a summary about color primitivism and other theories of colors here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#RivaTheoColo — Marchesk
Hacker believes that an investigation into the ways in which we ordinarily talk about perception will lead to an understanding of the grammar of our language ans thus the way we see the world around us — From David Stern's review of Hacker's
people believe(d) that the world resembles how it appears to us. — Michael
we should distinguish between two notions of color: color as a property of physical bodies, and color as it is in sensation (or, as it is sometimes described, “color-as-we-experience-it”).
If a 'red apple' is a hidden state in a particular configuration — Isaac
That far I understand. Where I'm coming unstuck is on what anyone means by the world "resembling" how it appears. — Isaac
Direct realists don't claim that a red apple is a hidden state. Direct realists claim that a red apple is a directly visible thing. — Michael
Imagine a set of twins. The twin on the left resembles the twin on the right. Now imagine that the twin on the left is an apple-as-experienced and the twin on the right is an unexperienced-apple. — Michael
The process of 'seeing' is one of inferring what hidden states are. — Isaac
Again, if you want anything more direct than 'inference' then you eliminate the possibility of being wrong — Isaac
Right. But to tell the twins resemble each other I look at their properties they both have red hair, the both have high cheek bones, etc). What are we looking for in the "apple-as-experienced" and the "unexperienced-apple" to tell if they're similar? — Isaac
They claim that the external cause is directly presented in experience, and so it isn't hidden. — Michael
And that's why the arguments from illusion and hallucination are evidence against direct realism, as is the fact that different people see different colours. — Michael
The twin on the right resembles the twin on the left even if you never meet him. — Michael
Then how are we ever wrong? The direct realists you've cited for me all say we can be wrong.
But all the direct realists you've cited include the possibility of us being wrong, so all those situations just count as situations in which we were wrong. — Isaac
That doesn't answer the question about what properties we're supposed to be matching. The twin on the right has a different spatio-temporal position to the one on the left. So they don't resemble each other after all? — Isaac
The account of colours to be discussed in this essay endorses naive realism about colours. The realist aspect of this endorsement is that the view under consideration assigns colours the status of features that are actually instantiated independently of our particular experiences of them and therefore are open to genuine recognition. And the naive aspect consists in its acceptance that colours possess also the qualitative (as well as any additional) features which they are presented as having. Both aspects together ensure that colours really are as they are subjectively given to us – and thus that the first ambition is satisfied.
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The view at issue combines this naive realist stance with a reductionist approach to colours which identifies them with third-personally accessible – and typically, though not necessarily, physical – properties. This means, among other things, that the subjective presentation of colours in fact amounts to a presentation – or representation, if one prefers – of the properties identified with colours. For instance, it is these properties which are given to us as being similar or different in certain respects, or as instantiated independently of our perception of them.
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It suffices to note that they all accept that colours are properties, which are really as they are subjectively given to us...
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This idea presupposes that there is a robust correlation between the presentational first-personal aspects of colour experiences, on the one hand, and the relevant third-personal aspects of whichever properties are identified with colours and taken to be represented by those experiences, on the other. That is, how colours are subjectively presented as being should be correlated to how they are from the third-personal perspective.
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