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Colour Vision
Colour fascinates all of us, and scientists and philosophers have sought to understand the true nature of colour vision for many years. In recent times, investigations into colour vision have been one of the main success stories of cognitive science, for each discipline within the field - neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence, and philosophy - has contributed significantly to our understanding of colour. Evan Thompson's book is a major contribution to this interdisciplinary project. Colour Vision provides an accessible review of the current scientific and philosophical discussions of colour vision. Thompson steers a course between the subjective and objective positions on colour, arguing for a relational account. This account develops a novel ecological' approach to colour vision in cognitive science and the philosophy of perception. It is vital reading for all cognitive scientists and philosophers whose interests touch upon this central area.
- GenresSciencePhilosophy
372 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 1994
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About the author
Evan Thompson
26 books126 followersEvan Thompson is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He works on the nature of the mind, the self, and human experience. His work combines cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophical traditions. He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2015); Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007); and Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995). He is the co-author, with Francisco J. Varela and Eleanor Rosch, of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991, revised edition 2016). Evan is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Evan received his A.B. from Amherst College in 1983 in Asian Studies and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1990. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto from 2005 to 2013, and held a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind at York University from 2002 to 2005. In 2014, he was the Numata Invited Visiting Professor at the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also held invited visiting appointments at the Faculty of Philosophy, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, the Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In 2012 he co-directed, with Christian Coseru and Jay Garfield, the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Investigating Consciousness: Buddhist and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, and he will again be co-director, with Coseru and Garfield, of the 2018 NEH Summer Institute on Self-Knowledge in Eastern and Western Philosophies.
Evan is currently serving as the Co-Chair of the Steering Council of the Mind and Life Institute and is a member of the Dialogue and Education Working Circle of the Kalein Centre in Nelson, British Columbia.
Evan received his A.B. from Amherst College in 1983 in Asian Studies and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1990. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto from 2005 to 2013, and held a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind at York University from 2002 to 2005. In 2014, he was the Numata Invited Visiting Professor at the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also held invited visiting appointments at the Faculty of Philosophy, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, the Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In 2012 he co-directed, with Christian Coseru and Jay Garfield, the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Investigating Consciousness: Buddhist and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, and he will again be co-director, with Coseru and Garfield, of the 2018 NEH Summer Institute on Self-Knowledge in Eastern and Western Philosophies.
Evan is currently serving as the Co-Chair of the Steering Council of the Mind and Life Institute and is a member of the Dialogue and Education Working Circle of the Kalein Centre in Nelson, British Columbia.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 2, 2009
Thompson proposes an "ecological" relationalist view of color, according to which
"Being colored a particular determinate color or shade is equivalent to having a particular spectral reflectance, illuminance, or emittance, that looks that color to a particular perceiver in specific viewing conditions" (245).
The first two thirds of the book consist of a series of very informative criticisms of objectivist (Armstrong, Hilbert) and subjectivist (Hardin) accounts of color that also serve as a gripping introduction to broad swaths of color science. I'm moved by Thompson's criticisms, to the extent that I'm now on board the relationalist account of color properties (though I'm not sure what to make of Thompson's "ecological" brand of relationalism).
The final chapter contains a fascinating discussion of a little-discussed part of Jackson's knowledge argument, centering on the possibility of perceiving a novel color. Thompson does a good, Dennettian job of thinking the thought experiment through, all the way to trying to imagine what kind of relation a color space containing a novel color would stand to our current, 3-D color space.
"Being colored a particular determinate color or shade is equivalent to having a particular spectral reflectance, illuminance, or emittance, that looks that color to a particular perceiver in specific viewing conditions" (245).
The first two thirds of the book consist of a series of very informative criticisms of objectivist (Armstrong, Hilbert) and subjectivist (Hardin) accounts of color that also serve as a gripping introduction to broad swaths of color science. I'm moved by Thompson's criticisms, to the extent that I'm now on board the relationalist account of color properties (though I'm not sure what to make of Thompson's "ecological" brand of relationalism).
The final chapter contains a fascinating discussion of a little-discussed part of Jackson's knowledge argument, centering on the possibility of perceiving a novel color. Thompson does a good, Dennettian job of thinking the thought experiment through, all the way to trying to imagine what kind of relation a color space containing a novel color would stand to our current, 3-D color space.
Displaying 1 of 1 review