1 Color and the Inverted Spectrum

If you trained someone to emit a particular sound at the sight of something red, another at the sight of something yellow, and so on for other colors, still he would not yet be describing objects by their colors. Though he might be a help to us in giving a description. A description is a representation of a distribution in a space (in that of time, for instance). 1. Intentionalism and Transparency When we open our eyes, one of the most striking features of the occurrent scene before us is the apparent multitude of colored surfaces, transparent volumes, and radiant light sources. 1 Grass, emeralds, and certain lava lamps, for example, all appear green to us. If something visually appears green to us, and it is in fact green, then our visual experience is veridical, at least in part. 2 If, on the other hand, something visually appears green to us but is not in fact green, then our visual experience is, at least in part, illusory. Specifically, if some object o visually appears green to a normal subject, then that color experience is veridical only if its total content includes the proposition that o is green and that proposition is true. 3 Such experiences are in this sense green-representing. 4 The world appears colored to us because our visual experience represents it as colored. One way of typing visual experience, then, is in terms of synonymy or sameness of representational content. Moreover, our experiences of emeralds, grass, and the like have a subjective character that is immediately present to consciousness—there is a particular way it is like to undergo such experiences. They are green-feeling in the sense that such experiences enjoy a distinctive phenomenology. We shall refer to the distinctive way it is like to undergo an experience as its phenomenal character. In so doing, we do not mean to commit myself, at least not initially, as to the nature of phenomenal properties. We shall not assume, for instance, that the phenomenal features of color experience are, or are constituted by, qualia, i.e., intrinsic, non-representational features of experience that are immediately present to consciousness. Talk of phenomenal properties is meant only to capture the intuitive, pre-theoretic sense that our visual experience has a subjective character. Another way of typing visual experience, then, is in terms of phenomenal similarity. In describing two ways to type visual experience—in terms of synonymy …