Abstract
In this chapter, I will consider a number of fundamental objections to color skepticism.1 An initial difficulty consists of an apparent inconsistency between the affirmation of color skepticism and the discussion that led up to it. In that discussion, various accounts of what colors are or could plausibly be identified with were reviewed and criticized. In addition, various remarks were made about the nature of color and the meaning of the words we use to talk about colors. It appeared as if that discussion presupposed that there are colored objects, the only question being to understand what that means. It looks, then, as if the assertion of color skepticism undermines the very presupposition of the arguments that were used to justify it.
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Notes
I considered several basic objections to color skepticism in chapter eight of Color and Consciousness, An Essay in Metaphysics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989). The material that follows in this chapter supplements and amplifies those arguments.
See P. F. Strawson, “Perception and its Objects,” in Jonathan Dancy (ed.), Perceptual Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) and Scepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1985 ).
Strawson, “Perception and its Objects,” p. 112.
Ibid., p. 110.
Ibid., p. 111.
Strawson, Scepticism and Naturalism,p. 53.
These are Hume’s words which he used to describe philosophy. However, in Hume’s time, philosophy included what we call science. See his An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), p. 112.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 29e.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Landesman, C. (1993). Objections to Color Skepticism. In: The Eye and the Mind. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 58. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3317-5_7
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