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Is Color-dispositionalism Nasty and Unecological?

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Abstract

This article is a brief presentation and defense of response-dispositionalist intentionalism against a family of objections. The view claims that for a surface to have an objective stable color is to have a disposition to cause in normal observers a response, namely, intentional phenomenal-color experience. The objections, raised recently by M. Johnston, B. Stroud, and by Byrne and Hilbert, claim that any dispositionalist view is unfair to the naive perceiver-thinker, saddles her with massive error and represents her as maladaptated to her environment. The paper reconstructs the main line of thought in favor of response-intentionalism and argues that it is in fact rather charitable and fair to naïve cognizers, and also avoids a cluster of related objections.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank participants in Konstanz color conference, the Dubrovnik Mental Phenomena course and my colleagues and friends in Rijeka and Maribor. Special thanks go to Professor Stroud for his support and kindness, and to Ralph Shumacher and Kathrin Gluer.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Nadar u.9, 1051, Budapest, Hungary

    Nenad Miscevic

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  1. Nenad Miscevic
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Correspondence to Nenad Miscevic.

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Miscevic, N. Is Color-dispositionalism Nasty and Unecological?. Erkenntnis 66, 203–231 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-006-9036-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-006-9036-8

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