Exactness, inexactness, and the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability.

Abstract  I defend, to a certain extent, the traditional view that perceptual indiscriminability is non-transitive. The argument proceeds by considering important recent work by Benj Hellie: Hellie argues that colour perception represents ‘inexactly’, and that this results in violations of the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Synthese Vol. 164; no. 2; pp. 289 - 313
Autor principal: Charles Pelling
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Sep2008
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract  I defend, to a certain extent, the traditional view that perceptual indiscriminability is non-transitive. The argument proceeds by considering important recent work by Benj Hellie: Hellie argues that colour perception represents ‘inexactly’, and that this results in violations of the transitivity of colour indiscriminability. I show that Hellie’s argument remains inconclusive, since he does not demonstrate conclusively that colour perception really does represent inexactly. My own argument for the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability uses inexactness instead as one horn of a dilemma: the key idea is that there is a class of perceptual experiences which might plausibly be supposed either to represent inexactly or to represent exactly—but which demonstrate the non-transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability either way.