|
Abstract:
The issues I discuss in this chapter concern whether your
conscious experiences of color are the same as mine when we both
look at the same environmental objects under the same physical
conditions, and how we could possibly know. Together, I will
refer to them as the "color question."
The reader may wonder why color should be the focus of this
discussion about conscious experiences. Different people have
different reasons for focusing on color. My own reasons are
twofold. First, we know an enormous amount about color
perception, and this background of scientific knowledge makes it
a good domain in which to ask such questions. Second, there is a
well known and persuasive argument due to John Locke (1690/1987)
in the philosophical literature-called the inverted spectrum
argument-that claims to show that we simply cannot know whether
your color experiences are the same as mine. It goes like
this.
Full text of article
|
