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Looks as Powers
Author(s) -
Pettit Philip
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
philosophical issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.638
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1758-2237
pISSN - 1533-6077
DOI - 10.1111/1533-6077.00013
Subject(s) - citation , computer science , sociology , library science
Although they may differ on the reason why, many philosophers hold that it is a priori that an object is red if and only if it is such as to look red to normal observers in normal conditions—and that the other colours sustain corresponding a priori biconditionals. But the explication of being red by reference to looking red is not complemented by a great deal of attention to what it is for an object to look red, or to look any other colour. And this paper is addressed to that less thoroughly discussed topic. Looks are sometimes understood functionally, sometimes epistemically. An object will functionally look red to a subject so far as visual exposure elicits the belief that it is red, and does so independently of collateral beliefs such as the belief that it is a ripe tomato. An object will epistemically look red so far as visual exposure inclines the subject, independently of collateral beliefs, to believe it is red—this is a weak version of the functional con-dition—and the subject is aware of it as having that effect: aware of it as visually eliciting the belief that it is red. 1 I shall be concerned in this paper with epistemic colour looks, not just with their functional counterparts. I think of looks as being capable of guiding our use of colour terms in a more or less reflective way, as argued in the first section, and only epistemic looks could play the required part. But there are two quite different things that you might mean in saying, with an epistemic reference, that something looks red. You might mean that overall you are unsure whether it is red but that the evidence points in that direction: it looks red in the sense of being, as far as you can judge, red. 'It looks red, I think', as you might say of something seen in the distance. Or you might mean, without implying that you are uncertain what to think overall, that it has the visual cast of a red object: it looks red in the sense of being, for all perceptual purposes, red. 'Well, it certainly looks red', you might say of an object in clear view—say, something you've been told is