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Leading philosophers and scientists consider what conclusions about
color can be drawn when the latest analytic tools are applied to
the most sophisticated color science. Philosophers and scientists
have long speculated about the nature of color. Atomists such as
Democritus thought color to be "conventional," not real; Galileo
and other key figures of the Scientific Revolution thought that it
was an erroneous projection of our own sensations onto external
objects. More recently, philosophers have enriched the debate about
color by aligning the most advanced color science with the most
sophisticated methods of analytical philosophy. In this volume,
leading scientists and philosophers examine new problems with new
analytic tools, considering such topics as the psychophysical
measurement of color and its implications, the nature of color
experience in both normal color-perceivers and the color blind, and
questions that arise from what we now know about the neural
processing of color information, color consciousness, and color
language. Taken together, these papers point toward a complete
restructuring of current orthodoxy concerning color experience and
how it relates to objective reality. Kuehni, Jameson, Mausfeld, and
Niederee discuss how the traditional framework of a
three-dimensional color space and basic color terms is far too
simple to capture the complexities of color experience. Clark and
MacLeod discuss the difficulties of a materialist account of color
experience. Churchland, Cohen, Matthen, and Westphal offer
competing accounts of color ontology. Finally, Broackes and Byrne
and Hilbert discuss the phenomenology of color blindness.
Contributors Justin Broackes, Alex Byrne, Paul M. Churchland,
Austen Clark, Jonathan Cohen, David R. Hilbert, Kimberly A.
Jameson, Rolf Kuehni, Don I.A. MacLeod, Mohan Matthen, Rainer
Mausfeld, Richard Niederee, Jonathan Westphal
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Philosophy of Biology (Hardcover, New)
Dov M. Gabbay, Paul Thagard, John Woods; Volume editing by Mohan Matthen, Christopher Stephens
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R5,601
Discovery Miles 56 010
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Philosophy of Biology is a rapidly expanding field. It is concerned
with explanatory concepts in evolution, genetics, and ecology. This
collection of 25 essays by leading researchers provides an overview
of the state of the field. These essays are wholly new; none of
them could have been written even ten years ago. They demonstrate
how philosophical analysis has been able to contribute to sometimes
contested areas of scientific theory making.
-Written by internationally acknowledged leaders in the field
- Entries make original contributions as well as summarizing state
of the art discoveries in the field
- Easy to read and understand
Seeing, Doing, and Knowing is an original and comprehensive
philosophical treatment of sense perception as it is currently
investigated by cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the
task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the
biological domain.
Sensory systems are automatic sorting machines; they engage in a
process of classification. Human vision sorts and orders external
objects in terms of a specialized, proprietary scheme of categories
-- colors, shapes, speeds and directions of movement, etc. This
"Sensory Classification Thesis" implies that sensation is not a
naturally caused image from which an organism must infer the state
of the world beyond; it is more like an internal communication, a
signal concerning the state of the world issued by a sensory
system, in accordance with internal conventions, for the use of an
organism's other systems. This is why sensory states are both
easily understood and persuasive.
Sensory classification schemes are purpose-built to serve the
knowledge-gathering and pragmatic needs of particular types of
organisms. They are specialized: a bee or a bird does not see
exactly what a human does. The Sensory Classification Thesis helps
clarify this specialization in perceptual content and supports a
new form of realism about the deliverances of sensation:
"Pluralistic Realism" is based on the idea that sensory systems
coevolve with an organism's other systems; they are not simply
molded to the external world.
The last part of the book deals with reference in vision.
Cognitive scientists now believe that vision guides the limbs by
means of a subsystem that links up with the objects of physical
manipulation in ways thatbypass sensory categories. In a novel
extension of this theory, Matthen argues that "motion-guiding
vision" is integrated with sensory classification in conscious
vision. This accounts for the quasi-demonstrative form of visual
states: "This particular object is red," and so on. He uses this
idea to cast new light on the nature of perceptual objects,
pictorial representation, and the visual representation of space.
Seeing, Doing, and Knowing is an original and comprehensive
philosophical treatment of sense perception as it is currently
investigated by cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the
task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the
biological domain. Sensory systems are automatic sorting machines;
they engage in a process of classification. Human vision sorts and
orders external objects in terms of a specialized, proprietary
scheme of categories - colours, shapes, speeds and directions of
movement, etc. This 'Sensory Classification Thesis' implies that
sensation is not a naturally caused image from which an organism
must infer the state of the world beyond; it is more like an
internal communication, a signal concerning the state of the world
issued by a sensory system, in accordance with internal
conventions, for the use of an organism's other systems. This is
why sensory states are both easily understood and persuasive.
Sensory classification schemes are purpose-built to serve the
knowledge-gathering and pragmatic needs of particular types of
organisms. They are specialized: a bee or a bird does not see
exactly what a human does. The Sensory Classification Thesis helps
clarify this specialization in perceptual content and supports a
new form of realism about the deliverances of sensation. This
'Pluralistic Realism' is based on the idea that sensory systems
coevolve with an organism's other systems; they are not simply
moulded to the external world. The last part of the book deals with
reference in vision. Cognitive scientists now believe that vision
guides the limbs by means of a subsystem that links up with the
objects of physical manipulation in ways that bypass sensory
categories. In a novel extension of this theory, Matthen argues
that 'motion-guiding vision' is integrated with sensory
classification in conscious vision. This accounts for the
quasi-demonstrative form of visual states: 'This particular object
is red', and so on. He uses this idea to cast new light on the
nature of perceptual objects, pictorial representation, and the
visual representation of space.
This volume is about the many ways we perceive. In nineteen new
essays, philosophers and cognitive scientists explore the nature of
the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world,
and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract
perceptual content from receptoral information and what kinds of
objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a
single event. Questions pertaining to how many senses we have, what
makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why
distinguishing senses may be useful feature prominently.
Contributors examine the extent to which the senses act in concert,
rather than as discrete modalities, and whether this influence is
epistemically pernicious, neutral, or beneficial. Many of the
essays engage with the idea that it is unduly restrictive to think
of perception as a collation of contents provided by individual
sense modalities. Rather, contributors contend that to understand
perception properly we need to build into our accounts the idea
that the senses work together. In doing so, they aim to develop
better paradigms for understanding the senses and thereby to move
toward a better understanding of perception.
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