Putting color back where it belongs.
I disagree with Ross about the location of colors: They are in the brain, not in the external world. It is difficult to deny that there are colors in our conscious visual experience, and if we take the causal theory of perception seriously, we cannot identify these colors with the beginning of the causal chain in perception (external objects in the distal stimulus field), but we must search for them at the end of the causal chain (in the brain). Several lines of compelling evidence from cognitive neuroscience (e.g., synesthesia, dreaming, and achromatopsia) demonstrate unambiguously that color is in the brain. Furthermore, it seems that Ross has failed to consider one substantial version of subjectivism in his article. This monistic approach to color and consciousness appears to be the least implausible alternative when we try to understand what colors are and where they reside.
Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, FIN-20014 Turku, Finland. revonsuo@utu.fi
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Revonsuo
D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition; D003118:Color Perception; D003243:Consciousness; D004325:Dreams; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D013028:Space Perception