Upcoming Mandik Talk

Attention NYC-area cognitive philosophy types. Come see me jibber-jabber live and in person about vision science, illusions, Wilfrid Sellars, and bananas. I'm giving a talk, "The Myth of Color Sensations" at 2pm on Tuesday, July 1st at the CUNY Grad Center. For further spatiotemporal particulars, see this flier about the excellent talk series that David Rosenthal hosts: http://tinyurl.com/cstalks. My talk is based on my paper, "The Myth of Color Sensations, Or: How Not to See a Yellow Banana."

ABSTRACT: I argue against a class of philosophical views of color perception, especially insofar as such views posit the existence of color sensations. I argue against the need to posit such nonconceptual mental intermediaries between the stimulus and the eventual conceptualized perceptual judgment. Central to my arguments are considerations of certain color illusions. Such illusions are best explained by reference to high-level, conceptualized knowledge concerning e.g. object identity, likely lighting conditions, and material composition of the distal stimulus. Such explanations obviate the need to appeal to nonconceputal mental links in the causal chains eventuating in conceptualized color discriminations.