Target Article: Alex Byrne and David R. Hilbert "Color Realism and Color Science", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, forthcoming.
Abstract: 50 wds
Comment: 944 wds
References: 90 wds.
Total: 1084 wds
Comment Title: Physicalism Plus Intentionalism Equals Error Theory.
Daniel Stoljar
Senior Fellow
Philosophy Program, RSSS
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200
Australia
Tel: +61-2-6125-2076
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Email: Daniel.Stoljar@anu.edu.au
URL: http://philosophy.cass.anu.edu.au/profile/daniel-stoljar
Abstract:
Byrne and Hilbert combine physicalism about color with intentionalism about color experience. I argue that this combination leads to error theory about color experience, i.e. the doctrine that color experience is systematically illusory. But this conflicts with another aspect of Byrne and Hilbert's position, viz., the denial of error theory.
Commentary:
Part of what is appealing and distinctive about the position advanced by Byrne and Hilbert is the combination of a certain sort of physicalism about color with intentionalism about color experience. But there is an argument that this combination leads naturally to an error theory about color experience! If the argument is sound, we may conclude, contrary to the main thrust of Byrne and Hilbert’s paper, that there is an element of truth–I do not say it is the whole truth–in the Gallillean view that color is an illusion.
Suppose I am looking at a tomato in good light. In that case, as Byrne and Hilbert make clear, the world seems to me to be a certain way. And, as they also point out, I may go on to ask whether the world is in fact the way that my experience presents it as being. This question implicitly distinguishes two possible worlds, without prejudicing whether we may ultimately identify or differentiate them: the visual world, the world (or set of worlds–I will ignore this complication) that is presented to me in visual experience, and the actual world, the world as it really is. From this point of view, the error theory about color experience says that, in a certain systematic sense having to do with color, the visual world is different from the actual world. So when I say that intentionalism and physicalism combine to yield the error theory, I mean that, if these positions are both true, the visual and actual worlds are different in this sense.
But what is the argument for this conclusion? Well, to say that physicalism about color is true is to say that it is true at the actual world. This gives us our (truistic) first premise:
P1. If physicalism is true, physicalism is true at the actual world.
Of course, to say that physicalism is true at the actual world is not to say that it is true at the visual world. In view of the possibility that the two worlds diverge, it is a further question whether physicalism is true at the visual world. Moreover, lying behind this question is another: what theory of color is true at the visual world? If intentionalism is true, this last question is about which theory of color is best suited to to tell the truth, not about the nature of colored objects, but about the phenomenology of color experience.
There would seem to be three possibilities here, corresponding to the three (realist) theories of color distinguished by Byrne and Hilbert. (I classify the ecological view as a version of dispositionalism and so will not discuss it explicitly.) The first possibility is that physicalism is true at the visual world. But this is extremely implausible. To say that physicalism is true at the visual world is to say that the physical nature—assuming them to have a physical nature—of the colors is evident to one simply on the basis of experience, or at any rate that it could become evident given only experience and sufficient reflection and suggestion. But even physicalists—those who think physicalism is true in the actual world—don't think that the physical nature of colors is evident in this sense. So physicalism is not true at the visual world.
The second possibility is that dispositionalism is true at the visual world. But this too is implausible, and for related reasons. To say that dispositionalism is true at the visual world is to say that the dispositional nature—assuming them to have a dispositional nature—of the colors is evident to one simply on the basis of experience, or at any rate that it could become evident given only experience and sufficient reflection and suggestion. But even dispositionalists—those who think dispositionalism is true at the actual world—don’t think in general that the dispostional is evident in this sense. (Langsam 2000 is a counterexample to this generalization; but see Byrne 2001 for criticism.) So dispositionalism is not true at the visual world.
The third possibility is that primitivism is true at the visual world. This is in fact an extremely plausible thesis. Even physicalists about color often say things which suggest–in our terms–that primitivism is true at the visual world: "[it] is surely right that, for example, the sensible quality of redness looks to be an intrinsic (non-relational) property of certain surfaces. Phenomenally, the primary and secondary cannot be separated….[T]he secondary qualities appear as lacking in 'grain'…So much for the way it seems." (Armstrong, 1987, p. 36-7.).
If we suppose that primitivism is true at the visual world, we now have our second premise, which is intended to be true on the basis of phenomenology:
P2. If intentionalism is true, primitivism is true at the visual world.
If we assume in addition that the truth of primitivism at a world excludes the truth of physicalism at that world (and vice versa), it follows from P1 and P2 that the visual world does not coincide with the actual world. But that is simply to say that the error theory is true.
This argument refutes neither physicalism about color nor intentionalism about color experience; nor does it refute their conjunction. It is open to a physicalist and an intentionalist to say that color experience is misleading in various ways (e.g Thau 2000). But Byrne and Hilbert are intentionalists and physicalists who say that color experience is not misleading; indeed, for them color realism is true just in case color experience is not misleading. In sum, their color realism stands in conflict with their physicalism about color and their intentionalism about color experience.
References:
Armstrong. D. 1987. Smart and the Secondary Qualities. In Pettit, P., Sylvan, R, and Norman, R. (eds.) Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J.J.C.Smart. Oxford. Blackwell. Reprinted in Byrne and Hilbert 1997. (References to the Reprint.)
Byrne, A. 2001. Do Colors Look Like Dispositions. Philosophical Quarterly, 51.
Byrne, A. and Hilbert, D.R. 1997. (eds.) Readings on Color, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Color. Cambridge, Mass; MIT Press.
Langsam, H. 2000. Why Colors do look like Dispositions. Philosophical Quarterly, 50: 68-75.
Thau. M.A. 2001. Concsiousness and Cognition. New York. Oxford.