CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Lázár, Linda Zsuzsa |
|---|---|
| Title | The Reality of Colours and the Knowledge Argument |
| Summary | In this thesis I link together two issues, the knowledge argument against physicalism and the debate between colour realist and subjectivists. I show that the knowledge argument can be defended against the physicalist objection that draws on direct realist intentionalism, which identifies the phenomenal character of experience with physical properties of the perceived object. This requires colour realism. In 1991 Boghossian and Velleman proposed a general argument against all kinds of physicalist-realist theories of colour. I argue, however, that their argument does not cover direct realist intentionalism about colour. Against this theory in particular, I propose an argument involving cases of phenomenal variation, similar to the argument that Cohen (2009) proposed for his relational theory of colour. I defend the argument against some objections and show that the direct realist intentionalism is highly implausible, given that it must draw a distinction between veridical colour perceptions and misperceptions which is arbitrary and cannot be explained with the resources of a physicalist-causal theory of colour representation. |
| Supervisor | Miščević, Nenad |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/lazar_linda.pdf |
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