Response–Intentionalism About Color: A Sketch
Response–Intentionalism About Color: A Sketch

Summary/Abstract: Building on Crane’s intentionalism, the paper proposes a variant of response–dependentist view of colors. To be of a color C is to have a disposition to cause in normal observers a response, namely, intentional phenomenal C–experience. The view is dubbed “response–intentionalism”. It follows from the following considerations, with the red of a tomato surface taken as an example of color C. Full phenomenal red is being visaged (intentionally experienced) as being on the surface of the tomato. Science tells us that full phenomenal red is not on the surface of the tomato. Equally, full phenomenal red is not a property of subjective state but its intentional object. Response–intentionalism follows by considerations of charity, i.e. minimizing and rationalizing the error of the cognizer, and of inference to the best explanation: being red in scientific sense is being such as to cause the response (intentionally) visaging phenomenal red in normal observers under normal circumstances.

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