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We percieve the world as coloured: but there are no colours in the world.
That we percieve the world as coloured is considered trivial, so in this essay I will concetrate mainly on the latter claim, “there are no colours in the world”. There are two philosophical positions which are compatible with this claim. The first one is an error thoery known as eliminativism and the second is subjectivism. There are two reasons that people give for claiming that there are no colours in the world. The first is that science has not shown that there are such things in the world - this reason is compatible with both of the above views; the second is that colours are essentially an optical illusion, caused by a systematic error in the visual processing system - this reason is put forward mainly by eliminativists. I will now turn to an analysis of these reasons to see if they are suffiicient to draw the conclusion that “there are no colours in the world”.
Because the first of these reasons supports both theories we will start there, but first I would like to clear up some terminology in order that we not confuse the concepts we are talking about. Firstly, this essay does not deal with the dualist theory of mind; in some sense the subjectivist we are talking about believes that mind is part of the world, and they are realist in the sense that they think there is an external world. And secondly, because of the above, some people might feel that subjectivism contradicts itself, because if it is the case that the mind exists in the world and the subjecitivst believes that colours are in the mind, then he believes that colours exist in the world. but the subjectivist is trying to say something more subtle, the subjectivist is trying to say that i...
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..., it does show that the eliminativist has still to find a plausible theory for this which is testable. if it can offer a solution to these problems then I think that they have a strong case for claiming that colours do not exist in the world, but for the reason given above I find this philsophical position implausible and so not yet convincing.
In conclusion. I think that the subjectivist is too quick in suggesting that colours do not exist in the world: from any amount of negative outcomes, we still cannot claim that there are no colours in the world, the most we can say is that we do not know. The eliminativist theory on the other hand, although it has the advantage that, if it were true, we could certainly conclude that colours do not exist in the world, seems implausible because it does not meet what Logue (2013, p5 and p16 ) calls the ecumenism desidaratum.
In the video named Cress Theory of Color Confrontation, the class is introduced to a professor named Dr. Frances Cress Welsing. She tells everyone during her presentation, that white supremacy exists and explains there are nine areas of people activity. There are areas that have white supremacy. But, some of those areas lack proof and evidence and they need to have it to back their claims. Those types of claims need have concrete evidence that white supremacy exists in this world, and Dr. Welsing has succeeded and failed to give it. The areas of people activity that have or lack evidence of racism are labor, law, and politics.
In this paper, I will argue that it is more likely that the qualia of colour could be explained by physicalism rather than by property dualism. Qualia are subjective experiences, such as our senses (pg. 3). Physicalism views every property as physical, and can be explained by science (pg. 29). Property dualism refers to the philosophical view that minds are made out of one substance, but contain physical properties, and a non-physical mind (qualia) that are not related to each other (pg. 29).
The history of slavery has shaped colorism to what it is today. For example, in the article Art Exhibition Exposes Racism by Bernadette Steward there was something known as the “Paper Bag” test which was part of the start to the African American discrimination, “if your skin color was the color of the brown paper bag or lighter you were given access to certain privileges and conversely if your skin was darker than the paper bag you were denied those same privileges” (Steward 1). This test came about in the late twentieth century after slaves were “supposedly free”. This problem goes back to the early 1700’s when “a slave master from the Virgin Islands came at the invitation of some southern slave owners to teach the how to better control their slaves” (Steward 1). The slave master only cared about the stock they were gaining and told the slave owners that killing the slaves was no good for their stock and told the slave owners to turn one group against the other. In other words, make a group believe that they are superior over the other group. The slave master ended up taking African women and produced an offspring that looked incomparably different from the Africans. Because of this, there was a lighter offspring and a change of their features such as straighter hair,
The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident visual cues.
W. E. B. Du Bois traveling widely in Europe, was delighted by the absence of color consciousness and impressed by their mellow civilization. Still, he knew that his life's work was at home, a...
Richard Taylor explained why the body and the mind are one, and why they are not two separate substances. In the article “The Mind as a Function of the Body”, Taylor divides his article in a number of sections and explains clearly why dualism, or the theory that the mind and the body are separate is not conceivable. In one of these sections it is explained in detail the origin of why some philosophers and people believe in dualist metaphysics. As stated by Taylor “when we form an idea of a body or a physical object, what is most likely to come to mind is not some person or animal but something much simpler, such as a stone or a marble”(133). The human has the tendency to believe a physical object as simple, and not containing anything complex. A problem with believing this is that unlike a stone or a marble a human (or an animal) has a brain and the body is composed of living cells (excluding dead skin cells, hair, and nails which are dead cells). The f...
Some researchers hypothesize that each color triggers certain hormones eliciting different responses. Biologically, we (with the exception of those who are colorblind) perceive color the same. However, it
Color is a product of many different things. We physically see color by the light hitting the retina and being absorbed by the rods and cones. Colors are distinguished by sorting them into categories. These could include tint, shade, tone, chroma, value, or hue. It could also be determined by whether a color is primary, secondary, intermediate, or complementary. The illusion of different colors can be created by the colors around a color or placing bits of color very close together as in a television. Afterimages create the opposite of colors. All color is a product of light. Without light, we would only be able to see in black and white (The World Book Encyclopedia p 818, 819, 822, 823).
Humans in general, take many things for granted: life, money, security, but what about color? Usually nobody ever stops to think, “what if there was no color?” Color is seen by almost everyone so no one necessarily has to wonder what it would be like if color wasn’t there. However, philosophy professor James Landesman has provided a theory in which people learn color may really not exist. Although this seems like a shocking and even ludicrous proposal, his essay Why Nothing Has Color: Color Skepticism brings up many points that can lead anyone to doubt the existence of something so trivial.
It has allowed them to create a lineage of who we are today. Works Cited:.. 1) Chaplin, G. Jablonski, N. “The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration.” Journal of Human Evolution 39 (2000) 57-106. 2) Jablonski N. “The Evolution of Human Skin and Skin Color” Annual Reviews Anthropology 33 (2004) 585-623. 3) Kirchweger G.
Colour does play a role in setting the atmosphere but only in one or two
During Bob Berman’s lecture, we discussed how perception is everything. Perception is how we see the world through our eyes. Colors cross each other to make certain colors, and our universe’s prime colors are red, green, and blue. The sky is blue because of the red, green, blue primary colors and when scattered naturally how they appear, it “robs” from incoming sunlight. The blue light got “robbed” from the sunlight making the sun look yellow, and having too much red and green. From outer space, astronauts have stated the sun is actually white as snow. The sun is actually a white star. To understand these color clashes even further, Bob Berman brought a green and red flashlight and pointed them at each other on a white wall. The colors then
Charlie rents a car and immediately notices its color. “As he got closer, the first thing that Charlie noticed about the car was that it was red, a color he hated” (King 167). The Indian race is symbolized by red skin, as African Americans are known for their black skin. A whole diverse and culture-rich race is reduced to a simple color, red. It is clear that Charlie despises being reduced to a color. And it is not surprise that he
In this interesting topic of the psychology of colors, the most crucial pattern is the meaning of each color and his impact on the individual as it is represented as the following:
Lynch, David K., and Livingston, William, Color and Light in Nature Cambridge University Press 1995