Is Purple a Red and Blue Chessboard? Brentano on Colour Mixtures
| Résumé |
Can we maintain that purple seems composed of red and blue without
giving up the impenetrability of the red and blue parts that
compose it? Brentano thinks we can. Purple, according to him, is a
chessboard of red and blue tiles which, although individually too
small to be perceived, are together indistinctly perceived within
the purple. After a presentation of Brentano’s solution, we raise
two objections to it. First, Brentano’s solution commits him to
unperceivable intentional objects (the chessboard’s tiles). Second,
his chessboard account fails in the end to explain the phenomenal
spatial continuity of compound colours. We finally sketch an
alternative account of compound colours, which, while holding fast
to their phenomenal compoundedness and to the impenetrability of
colours, avoids introducing inaccessible intentional objects and
compromising on the continuity of the purple. According to our
proposal, instead of being indistinctly perceived spatial parts of
the purple, red and blue are distinctly perceived nonspatial parts
of it. |
| Mots-clés |
|
| Citation | Massin, O. (2017). Is Purple a Red and Blue Chessboard? Brentano on Colour Mixtures. The Monist, 100(1), 37-63. |
| Type | Article de périodique (Anglais) |
| Date de publication | 2017 |
| Nom du périodique | The Monist |
| Volume | 100 |
| Numéro | 1 |
| Pages | 37-63 |
| URL | https://academic.oup.com/monist/article-abstract/100/1/37... |