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The Red and the Real

An Essay on Color Ontology

Jonathan Cohen author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:25th Jun '09

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The Red and the Real cover

The Red and the Real offers a new approach to longstanding philosophical puzzles about what colors are and how they fit into the natural world. Jonathan Cohen argues for a role-functionalist treatment of color - a view according to which colors are identical to certain functional roles involving perceptual effects on subjects. Cohen first argues (on broadly empirical grounds) for the more general relationalist view that colors are constituted in terms of relations between objects, perceivers, and viewing conditions. He responds to semantic, ontological, and phenomenological objections against this thesis, and argues that relationalism offers the best hope of respecting both empirical results and ordinary belief about color. He then defends the more specific role functionalist-account by contending that the latter is the most plausible form of color relationalism.

In his admirable and engaging book, Jonathan Cohen defends relationalism about color. Roughly, relationalism is the traditional view that colors are constituted in terms of relations between objects and subjects... Cohen's book provides the most complete and sophisticated case to date that the considerable benefits of relationalism outweigh its costs. In addition, it contains important and thorough discussions of nearly every rival theory of color. Cohen presents his ideas admirably. This is the most important book on color in some time. * Adam Pautz, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

ISBN: 9780199556168

Dimensions: 241mm x 162mm x 20mm

Weight: 641g

280 pages