ENGLISH

The Red and the Real: An Essay on Color Ontology

By Jonathan Cohen

Book information

Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Year
2009
ISBN
0199556164, 9780199556168
LCC
B105.C455 C64 2009
Open Library ID
OL24790815M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1472178 bytes)
Edition
2
Pages
272\279
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-04-18 11:31:18

Description

The Red and the Real offers a new approach to longstanding philosophical puzzles about what colors are and how they fit into the natural world. Jonathan Cohen argues for a role-functionalist treatment of color--a view according to which colors are identical to certain functional roles involving perceptual effects on subjects. Cohen first argues (on broadly empirical grounds) for the more general relationalist view that colors are constituted in terms of relations between objects, perceivers, and viewing conditions. He responds to semantic, ontological, and phenomenological objections against this thesis, and argues that relationalism offers the best hope of respecting both empirical results and ordinary belief about color. He then defends the more specific role functionalist-account by contending that the latter is the most plausible form of color relationalism.

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