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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.
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