Colour relationalism and the real deliverances of introspection

Roberts, Pendaran, Andow, James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5760-0475 and Schmidtke, Kelly (2014) Colour relationalism and the real deliverances of introspection. Erkenntnis, 79 (5). pp. 1173-1189. ISSN 0165-0106

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Abstract

Colour relationalism holds that the colours are constituted by relations to subjects. Anti-relationalists have claimed that this view stands in stark contrast to our phenomenally-informed, pre-theoretic intuitions. Is this claim right? Cohen and Nichols’ recent empirical study suggests not, as about half of their participants seemed to be relationalists about colour. Despite Cohen and Nichols’ study, we think that the anti-relationalist’s claim is correct. We explain why there are good reasons to suspect that Cohen and Nichols’ experimental design skewed their results in favour of relationalism. We then run an improved study and find that most of our participants seem to be anti-relationalists. We find some other interesting things too. Our results suggest that the majority of ordinary people find it no less intuitive that colours are objective than that shapes are objective. We also find some evidence that when those with little philosophical training are asked about the colours of objects, their intuitions about colour and shape cases are similar, but when asked about people’s colour ascriptions, their intuitions about colour and shape cases differ.

Item Type: Article
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Philosophy
Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > UEA Experimental Philosophy Group
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 18 Jan 2018 12:30
Last Modified: 21 Jul 2023 09:47
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65998
DOI: 10.1007/s10670-014-9600-6

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