Research Workshop: "How (Not) to Debunk Color Realism"
Dan Korman (UCSB)
Friday May 21, 2021 (12:10pm - 2:00pm) via Zoom.
Abstract:
You see a cherry and you experience it as red. A textbook explanation for why you have this sort of experience is going to cite such things as the cherry's chemical surface properties and the distinctive mixture wavelengths of light it is disposed to reflect. What does not show up in this explanation is the redness of the cherry. Many allege that the availability of color-free explanations of color experience somehow calls into question our beliefs about the colors of objects around us. I will explore how such explanations are supposed to undermine color beliefs, and in particular whether evolutionary considerations have any special role to play.
Bio:
I am a philosophy professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Much of my research has been devoted to the defense of a conservative metaphysics of material objects, according to which our natural, intuitive judgments about which objects there are and aren't are more or less correct. Other topics of interest include the philosophy of perception, abstract artifacts, Locke on substratum, the nature and status of intuition, debunking arguments, and anything having anything to do with Naming and Necessity.