The phenomenon of color constancy has often been appealed to in philosophical discussions of the ... more The phenomenon of color constancy has often been appealed to in philosophical discussions of the nature and perception of colors. In these discussions, two ways of interpreting the role of illumination and illuminants in color vision are prominent. Color realists and objectivists argue that colors are illumination-independent properties because they are perceived and recognized despite changes in illumination. Color relationalists and subjectivists, on the other hand, deny that colors remain constant across changes in illumination and conclude that colors are relative and illumination-dependent properties. I offer an alternative to these opposing views and argue that colors are illumination-dependent but also objective and intrinsic properties of surfaces. The result is an entirely original approach to the role of illumination and illuminants in color perception.
As most philosophers recognize, the body’s central role in touch differs from the role it plays i... more As most philosophers recognize, the body’s central role in touch differs from the role it plays in the other sense modalities. Any account of touch must then explain the pivotal nature of the body’s involvement in touch. Unlike most accounts of touch, this paper argues that the body’s centrality in touch is not phenomenological or experiential: the body is not felt in any special way in tactile experiences. Building on Aristotle’s account in De Anima, I argue that the body is central in touch because it is the medium of tactile perception. Touch depends on the body as vision and audition depend on air or any medium that can transmit light or sound waves. I show that it is precisely because the body must be transparent in order to transmit tangible properties that it cannot be perceived or experienced in tactile perception. Although this account conflicts with the widespread view that tactile perception is mediated by bodily sensations, I maintain that it explains how the structure and constitution of the human body contribute directly to what we feel in tactile experiences and that it provides a better understanding of the relation between the sense of touch and our bodily feelings.
Along with pitch and loudness, timbre is commonly described as an audible property of sounds. Thi... more Along with pitch and loudness, timbre is commonly described as an audible property of sounds. This paper puts forward an alternative view - that timbres are properties of auditory media. This approach has many advantages. First, it accounts for the frequent attribution of timbres to objects that do not have characteristic sounds. Second, it explains why timbres are attributed not only to ordinary objects, like musical instruments, but also to surrounding spaces and architectural structures. And finally, it provides an original solution to the timbre-constancy problem.
Along with hallucinations and illusions, afterimages have shaped the philosophical debate about t... more Along with hallucinations and illusions, afterimages have shaped the philosophical debate about the nature of perception. Often referred to as optical or visual illusions, experiences of afterimages have been abundantly exploited by philosophers to argue against naïve realism. This paper offers an alternative account to this traditional view by providing a tentative account of the colors of the afterimages from an objectivist perspective. Contrary to the widespread approach to afterimages, this paper explores the possibility that the colors of afterimages are not ontologically different from "ordinary" colors and that experiences of afterimages fail to provide a motivation for rejecting naïve realism.
Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raise... more Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raised by color variations by drawing a distinction between real and apparent colors. This paper considers such a strategy to be fundamentally erroneous. The high degree of variability of colors ...
The idea that looking at a photograph is akin to face-to-face perception and that photographs pro... more The idea that looking at a photograph is akin to face-to-face perception and that photographs provide genuine perceptual access to the objects they depict was notoriously defended by Kendall Walton in ‘Transparent Pictures’. Walton’s main thesis is that photographs are transparent in the sense that we can see objects through them. The main goal of this paper is to support Walton’s view by providing a full account of photographic transparency. I will argue that the transparency that characterises photography is not metaphorical but in fact exhibits all the essential properties of transparent materials. To understand how a photograph can be transparent, one must understand the special type of causal connection between a photograph and what it shows. Building on Heider’s work, I will argue that photography is a visual medium, like air, water, glass or mirrors, capable of transmitting the visual properties of distant objects to the perceiver.
A widespread view among philosophers and scientists is that recorded sounds and assisted hearing ... more A widespread view among philosophers and scientists is that recorded sounds and assisted hearing differ fundamentally from natural sounds and direct hearing. It is commonly claimed, for example, that the sounds we hear over the phone are not sounds emitted by the voice of our interlocutor, but the sounds reproduced by the phone’s loudspeaker. According to this view, hearing distant sounds through communication and audio equipment is at best indirect and at worst illusory. In what follows, I shall reject these claims and argue in favor of a transparent view of auditory media, including radio, telephone, phonograph, etc. According to this approach, the great gift of Scott de Martinville and Edison is not to have invented devices able to reproduce vanished sounds but rather to have created technological instruments literally able to store and transmit them to future and distant listeners.
Although philosophers have often insisted that specular perception is illusory or erroneous in na... more Although philosophers have often insisted that specular perception is illusory or erroneous in nature, few have stressed the reliability and indispensability of mirrors as optical instruments. The main goal of this paper is to explain how mirrors can contribute to knowledge and at the same time be a source of systematic errors and misleading appearances. To resolve this apparent paradox, I argue that mirrors do not generate perceptual illusions or misperceptions by defending a view of mirrors as transparent and invisible visual media. I then consider the reasons for which mirrors are said to be misleading. Contrary to the illusory account, I defend a nonperceptual approach to the errors attributable to mirrors which analyses the kind of errors generated by the use of mirrors in terms of false judgments. I further show that a nonperceptual view of errors extends to all the cases in which a sensorimotor adaptation is required, such as perception through magnifying or inversing lenses.
Tappolet, C. (Ed.), Teroni, F. (Ed.), Konzelmann Ziv, A. (Ed.). Shadows of the Soul. New York: Routledge., 2018
The notion of stench appears to have two faces. On one side, it seems to belong to the world that... more The notion of stench appears to have two faces. On one side, it seems to belong to the world that surrounds us. This is the case, for example, when we say that the smell of sewers is unbearable or that curdled milk stinks. On the other side, variations in people’s preferences for certain smells suggest that the attribution of stench to certain objects or substances is not objective as they first appear. Stench and Olfactory Disgust, by Vivian Mizrahi, explains the bifacial nature of stench by arguing in favor of the idea that stench has to be understood in emotional rather than in strictly perceptual terms. Mizrahi’s strategy consists in showing that stench is the object of olfactory disgust. This puts her in a position to maintain that no smell is intrinsically unpleasant. The defense of these claims leads Mizrahi to lay out a view of olfactory disgust and to explain the singular nature of the relation between smell and stench. In the process, she examines the notion of hedonic value for smells and offers a non-polar opposition view of olfactory pleasantness. According to this view, olfactory disgust does not have an opposite emotion. A smell can be pleasant for a variety of reasons: it may whet our appetite or trigger different other positive emotions, but none of these positive olfactory emotions is strictly the opposite of olfactory disgust.
According to an ordinary view, we distinguish, classify, and appreciate food and beverages accord... more According to an ordinary view, we distinguish, classify, and appreciate food and beverages according to their taste. However, scientists seem to disagree with this naive view. They maintain that we don't really perceive the lemony taste of a cake or the delicate smoky taste of a single-malt whiskey, because what we ascribe to taste is in reality mostly perceived by smell. As opposed to this scientific consensus regarding taste, I will defend a naive view of taste and deny that olfaction is involved in what we naively call taste. Like the uninformed layman, I will maintain that when I eat a strawberry, what I really perceive is its taste, not its smell or flavor.
Most philosophers consider olfactory experiences to be very poor in comparison to other sense mod... more Most philosophers consider olfactory experiences to be very poor in comparison to other sense modalities. And because olfactory experiences seem to lack the spatial content necessary to object perception, philosophers tend to maintain that smell is purely sensational or abstract. I argue in this paper that the apparent poverty and spatial indeterminateness of odor experiences does not reflect the “subjective” or “abstract” nature of smell, but only that smell is not directed to particular things. According to the view defended in this paper, odors are properties of stuffs. This view, motivated by several arguments grounded in the phenomenology of olfactory experience, explains in particular why odors appear to be located both in the air around our nose and in the objects from which they emanate. It also explains the power of smell in the task of discriminating chemical compounds
Mac Cumhaill, C. & Crowther, T. (eds), Perceptual Ephemera, Oxford University Press, 2018
In this paper, I argue that perceptual media like air or water are imperceptible, in the sense th... more In this paper, I argue that perceptual media like air or water are imperceptible, in the sense that they are not directly discriminated by our senses. I show that, despite their lack of phenomenological features, perceptual media crucially affect what we see by selecting what is perceptually available to the perceiver. In the second part of the paper, I argue that mirror is a visual medium like air, water and glass. According to this account, mirrors are transparent and invisible and cannot therefore have a distinctive look or appearance. In the last part of the paper, I extend the general account of perceptual media to the sense organs themselves by showing that perceptual media not only include external entities causally involved in the perceptual process but also comprise the perceptual system itself.
Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raise... more Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raised by color variations by drawing a distinction between real and apparent colors. This paper considers such a strategy to be fundamentally erroneous. The high degree of variability of colors constitutes a crucial feature of colors and color perception; it cannot be avoided without leaving aside the real nature of color. The objectivist theory of color defended in this paper holds that objects have locally many different objective colors. Most color variations are then real and result from the extreme richness of color properties.
In this paper I argue that all transparent objects are colorless. This thesis is important for at... more In this paper I argue that all transparent objects are colorless. This thesis is important for at least three reasons. First, if transparent objects are colorless, there is no need to distinguish between colors which characterize three-dimensional bodies, like transparent colors, and colors which lie on the surface of objects. Second, traditional objections against color physicalism relying on transparent colors are rendered moot. Finally, an improved understanding of the relations between colors, light and transparency is provided.
Skusevich and P. Matikas (eds), Color Perception: Physiology, Processes and Analysis, chap. 6, Nova Science Publishers, 2009
Most philosophical or scientific theories suppose that colour composition judgments refer to the ... more Most philosophical or scientific theories suppose that colour composition judgments refer to the way colours appear to us. The dominant view is therefore phenomenalist in the sense that colour composition is phenomenally given to perceivers. This paper argues that there is no evidence for a phenomenalist view of colour composition and that a conventionalist approach should be favoured.
The annual Philosophy of Science Conference, the Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, April 10-15 ... more The annual Philosophy of Science Conference, the Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, April 10-15 2016.
The phenomenon of color constancy has often been appealed to in philosophical discussions of the ... more The phenomenon of color constancy has often been appealed to in philosophical discussions of the nature and perception of colors. In these discussions, two ways of interpreting the role of illumination and illuminants in color vision are prominent. Color realists and objectivists argue that colors are illumination-independent properties because they are perceived and recognized despite changes in illumination. Color relationalists and subjectivists, on the other hand, deny that colors remain constant across changes in illumination and conclude that colors are relative and illumination-dependent properties. I offer an alternative to these opposing views and argue that colors are illumination-dependent but also objective and intrinsic properties of surfaces. The result is an entirely original approach to the role of illumination and illuminants in color perception.
As most philosophers recognize, the body’s central role in touch differs from the role it plays i... more As most philosophers recognize, the body’s central role in touch differs from the role it plays in the other sense modalities. Any account of touch must then explain the pivotal nature of the body’s involvement in touch. Unlike most accounts of touch, this paper argues that the body’s centrality in touch is not phenomenological or experiential: the body is not felt in any special way in tactile experiences. Building on Aristotle’s account in De Anima, I argue that the body is central in touch because it is the medium of tactile perception. Touch depends on the body as vision and audition depend on air or any medium that can transmit light or sound waves. I show that it is precisely because the body must be transparent in order to transmit tangible properties that it cannot be perceived or experienced in tactile perception. Although this account conflicts with the widespread view that tactile perception is mediated by bodily sensations, I maintain that it explains how the structure and constitution of the human body contribute directly to what we feel in tactile experiences and that it provides a better understanding of the relation between the sense of touch and our bodily feelings.
Along with pitch and loudness, timbre is commonly described as an audible property of sounds. Thi... more Along with pitch and loudness, timbre is commonly described as an audible property of sounds. This paper puts forward an alternative view - that timbres are properties of auditory media. This approach has many advantages. First, it accounts for the frequent attribution of timbres to objects that do not have characteristic sounds. Second, it explains why timbres are attributed not only to ordinary objects, like musical instruments, but also to surrounding spaces and architectural structures. And finally, it provides an original solution to the timbre-constancy problem.
Along with hallucinations and illusions, afterimages have shaped the philosophical debate about t... more Along with hallucinations and illusions, afterimages have shaped the philosophical debate about the nature of perception. Often referred to as optical or visual illusions, experiences of afterimages have been abundantly exploited by philosophers to argue against naïve realism. This paper offers an alternative account to this traditional view by providing a tentative account of the colors of the afterimages from an objectivist perspective. Contrary to the widespread approach to afterimages, this paper explores the possibility that the colors of afterimages are not ontologically different from "ordinary" colors and that experiences of afterimages fail to provide a motivation for rejecting naïve realism.
Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raise... more Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raised by color variations by drawing a distinction between real and apparent colors. This paper considers such a strategy to be fundamentally erroneous. The high degree of variability of colors ...
The idea that looking at a photograph is akin to face-to-face perception and that photographs pro... more The idea that looking at a photograph is akin to face-to-face perception and that photographs provide genuine perceptual access to the objects they depict was notoriously defended by Kendall Walton in ‘Transparent Pictures’. Walton’s main thesis is that photographs are transparent in the sense that we can see objects through them. The main goal of this paper is to support Walton’s view by providing a full account of photographic transparency. I will argue that the transparency that characterises photography is not metaphorical but in fact exhibits all the essential properties of transparent materials. To understand how a photograph can be transparent, one must understand the special type of causal connection between a photograph and what it shows. Building on Heider’s work, I will argue that photography is a visual medium, like air, water, glass or mirrors, capable of transmitting the visual properties of distant objects to the perceiver.
A widespread view among philosophers and scientists is that recorded sounds and assisted hearing ... more A widespread view among philosophers and scientists is that recorded sounds and assisted hearing differ fundamentally from natural sounds and direct hearing. It is commonly claimed, for example, that the sounds we hear over the phone are not sounds emitted by the voice of our interlocutor, but the sounds reproduced by the phone’s loudspeaker. According to this view, hearing distant sounds through communication and audio equipment is at best indirect and at worst illusory. In what follows, I shall reject these claims and argue in favor of a transparent view of auditory media, including radio, telephone, phonograph, etc. According to this approach, the great gift of Scott de Martinville and Edison is not to have invented devices able to reproduce vanished sounds but rather to have created technological instruments literally able to store and transmit them to future and distant listeners.
Although philosophers have often insisted that specular perception is illusory or erroneous in na... more Although philosophers have often insisted that specular perception is illusory or erroneous in nature, few have stressed the reliability and indispensability of mirrors as optical instruments. The main goal of this paper is to explain how mirrors can contribute to knowledge and at the same time be a source of systematic errors and misleading appearances. To resolve this apparent paradox, I argue that mirrors do not generate perceptual illusions or misperceptions by defending a view of mirrors as transparent and invisible visual media. I then consider the reasons for which mirrors are said to be misleading. Contrary to the illusory account, I defend a nonperceptual approach to the errors attributable to mirrors which analyses the kind of errors generated by the use of mirrors in terms of false judgments. I further show that a nonperceptual view of errors extends to all the cases in which a sensorimotor adaptation is required, such as perception through magnifying or inversing lenses.
Tappolet, C. (Ed.), Teroni, F. (Ed.), Konzelmann Ziv, A. (Ed.). Shadows of the Soul. New York: Routledge., 2018
The notion of stench appears to have two faces. On one side, it seems to belong to the world that... more The notion of stench appears to have two faces. On one side, it seems to belong to the world that surrounds us. This is the case, for example, when we say that the smell of sewers is unbearable or that curdled milk stinks. On the other side, variations in people’s preferences for certain smells suggest that the attribution of stench to certain objects or substances is not objective as they first appear. Stench and Olfactory Disgust, by Vivian Mizrahi, explains the bifacial nature of stench by arguing in favor of the idea that stench has to be understood in emotional rather than in strictly perceptual terms. Mizrahi’s strategy consists in showing that stench is the object of olfactory disgust. This puts her in a position to maintain that no smell is intrinsically unpleasant. The defense of these claims leads Mizrahi to lay out a view of olfactory disgust and to explain the singular nature of the relation between smell and stench. In the process, she examines the notion of hedonic value for smells and offers a non-polar opposition view of olfactory pleasantness. According to this view, olfactory disgust does not have an opposite emotion. A smell can be pleasant for a variety of reasons: it may whet our appetite or trigger different other positive emotions, but none of these positive olfactory emotions is strictly the opposite of olfactory disgust.
According to an ordinary view, we distinguish, classify, and appreciate food and beverages accord... more According to an ordinary view, we distinguish, classify, and appreciate food and beverages according to their taste. However, scientists seem to disagree with this naive view. They maintain that we don't really perceive the lemony taste of a cake or the delicate smoky taste of a single-malt whiskey, because what we ascribe to taste is in reality mostly perceived by smell. As opposed to this scientific consensus regarding taste, I will defend a naive view of taste and deny that olfaction is involved in what we naively call taste. Like the uninformed layman, I will maintain that when I eat a strawberry, what I really perceive is its taste, not its smell or flavor.
Most philosophers consider olfactory experiences to be very poor in comparison to other sense mod... more Most philosophers consider olfactory experiences to be very poor in comparison to other sense modalities. And because olfactory experiences seem to lack the spatial content necessary to object perception, philosophers tend to maintain that smell is purely sensational or abstract. I argue in this paper that the apparent poverty and spatial indeterminateness of odor experiences does not reflect the “subjective” or “abstract” nature of smell, but only that smell is not directed to particular things. According to the view defended in this paper, odors are properties of stuffs. This view, motivated by several arguments grounded in the phenomenology of olfactory experience, explains in particular why odors appear to be located both in the air around our nose and in the objects from which they emanate. It also explains the power of smell in the task of discriminating chemical compounds
Mac Cumhaill, C. & Crowther, T. (eds), Perceptual Ephemera, Oxford University Press, 2018
In this paper, I argue that perceptual media like air or water are imperceptible, in the sense th... more In this paper, I argue that perceptual media like air or water are imperceptible, in the sense that they are not directly discriminated by our senses. I show that, despite their lack of phenomenological features, perceptual media crucially affect what we see by selecting what is perceptually available to the perceiver. In the second part of the paper, I argue that mirror is a visual medium like air, water and glass. According to this account, mirrors are transparent and invisible and cannot therefore have a distinctive look or appearance. In the last part of the paper, I extend the general account of perceptual media to the sense organs themselves by showing that perceptual media not only include external entities causally involved in the perceptual process but also comprise the perceptual system itself.
Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raise... more Most objectivist and dispositionalist theories of color have tried to resolve the challenge raised by color variations by drawing a distinction between real and apparent colors. This paper considers such a strategy to be fundamentally erroneous. The high degree of variability of colors constitutes a crucial feature of colors and color perception; it cannot be avoided without leaving aside the real nature of color. The objectivist theory of color defended in this paper holds that objects have locally many different objective colors. Most color variations are then real and result from the extreme richness of color properties.
In this paper I argue that all transparent objects are colorless. This thesis is important for at... more In this paper I argue that all transparent objects are colorless. This thesis is important for at least three reasons. First, if transparent objects are colorless, there is no need to distinguish between colors which characterize three-dimensional bodies, like transparent colors, and colors which lie on the surface of objects. Second, traditional objections against color physicalism relying on transparent colors are rendered moot. Finally, an improved understanding of the relations between colors, light and transparency is provided.
Skusevich and P. Matikas (eds), Color Perception: Physiology, Processes and Analysis, chap. 6, Nova Science Publishers, 2009
Most philosophical or scientific theories suppose that colour composition judgments refer to the ... more Most philosophical or scientific theories suppose that colour composition judgments refer to the way colours appear to us. The dominant view is therefore phenomenalist in the sense that colour composition is phenomenally given to perceivers. This paper argues that there is no evidence for a phenomenalist view of colour composition and that a conventionalist approach should be favoured.
The annual Philosophy of Science Conference, the Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, April 10-15 ... more The annual Philosophy of Science Conference, the Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, April 10-15 2016.
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Papers by Vivian Mizrahi
I offer an alternative to these opposing views and argue that colors are illumination-dependent but also objective and intrinsic properties of surfaces. The result is an entirely original approach to the role of illumination and illuminants in color perception.
In the second part of the paper, I argue that mirror is a visual medium like air, water and glass. According to this account, mirrors are transparent and invisible and cannot therefore have a distinctive look or appearance. In the last part of the paper, I extend the general account of perceptual media to the sense organs themselves by showing that perceptual media not only include external entities causally involved in the perceptual process but also comprise the perceptual system itself.
Thesis by Vivian Mizrahi
Conference Presentations by Vivian Mizrahi
I offer an alternative to these opposing views and argue that colors are illumination-dependent but also objective and intrinsic properties of surfaces. The result is an entirely original approach to the role of illumination and illuminants in color perception.
In the second part of the paper, I argue that mirror is a visual medium like air, water and glass. According to this account, mirrors are transparent and invisible and cannot therefore have a distinctive look or appearance. In the last part of the paper, I extend the general account of perceptual media to the sense organs themselves by showing that perceptual media not only include external entities causally involved in the perceptual process but also comprise the perceptual system itself.