Abstract
Phil. I entirely agree with you, as to the ill tendency of the affected doubts of some philosophers, and fantastical conceits of others. I am even so far gone of late in this way of thinking, that I have quitted several of the sublime notions I had got in their schools for vulgar opinions. And I give it you on my word, since this revolt from metaphysical notions to the plain dictates of nature and common sense, I find my understanding strangely enlightened, so that I can now easily comprehend a great many things which before were all mystery and riddle.
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Notes
Pollyanna is the main character of Eleanor Porter’s (1986).
I have more to say on this point in Chapter 8, §2.
Some do, or at least come close. See, for example, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958), G.E. Moore (1962), John McDowell (1985), P.M.S. Hacker (1987), and Keith Campbell (1993).
For a criticism of the act-object conception of perception, see Smart (1962).
I thank John Heil both for the expression ‘ontologically serious’ as well as for convincing me of the importance of the attitude it expresses.
If you want to see a metaphysician being epistemically serious, you can do no better than Shoemaker: “if we have knowledge of things of a certain kind, and know them in a certain way, and if it is a consequence of some assertion or theory about the nature of those things that they cannot be known, or cannot be known in the ways in which we do in fact know them, then that assertion or theory must be mistaken” (p. 1). Pollyanna recites this passage every night before going to bed.
I borrowed the phrase from Kelly Jolley (conversation).
You might object that here I am begging the question against ET. Perhaps I am. It just seems obvious to me and Pollyanna, however, that ET is false. We can’t help it. In any case, the best defense against ET is a good offense: a positive account of colors compatible with what science tells us about the world. The goal of this book is to offer that account. Consequently, I say little directly against ET in what follows, though I say a bit in Chapter 8.
Things might change, of course. Perhaps in the future folks will defer to scientists concerning their use of ‘red’,‘blue’, and so forth. But in that case, supposedly, the meanings of these terms will have changed. My purpose here is to tell you about color properties, e.g., redness and blueness. It is not to predict what ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so forth might designate in the future. Indeed, for anyone to think that they can predict with any confidence how our terms might get employed in the future strikes Pollyanna as simply Churchlandish.
For some of what I would say, see Jolley and Watkins (1998).
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Berkeley, G. (2002). Pollyanna Realism and the Simple Theory. In: Rediscovering Colors. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 88. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0562-3_1
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