This seminar aims to study the debates about colours that took place in the last decades in analytic philosophy and continue until today. These discussions focus on the metaphysical question of the reality of colours, asking whether colours such as we experience them exist mind-independently, or whether they are mere appearances produced by the causal impact of some other, sub-perceptual physical entities on our eyes. Incidentally, they ask the epistemological question of the truthfulness of our ordinary perception and wonder about the compatibility between our naïve worldview and that of the natural sciences. The seminar will study the standard positions on the reality of colours, from naïve realism to eliminativism, via all important intermediary nuances, and also explore the epistemological consequences of the different options. The sessions will be organized around classical papers on the topic, which will be read in advance and critically evaluated during the different sessions.
- Course owner: Hamid Taieb