Color & Consciousness: BBS Call for Commentators
Stevan Harnad
harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk
Mon Nov 23 14:59:16 EST 1998
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article
(see also 4 important announcements about new
BBS policies at the end of this message)
COLOR, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND THE ISOMORPHISM CONSTRAINT
by Stephen E. Palmer
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please send EMAIL to:
bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk
or write to:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
ECS: New Zepler Building
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and
commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates.
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
_____________________________________________________________
COLOR, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND THE ISOMORPHISM CONSTRAINT
Stephen E. Palmer
Psychology Department
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1650
palmer at cogsci.berkeley.edu
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~plab
ABSTRACT: The relations among consciousness, brain, behavior,
and scientific explanation are explored within the domain of
color perception. Current scientific knowledge about color
similarity, color composition, dimensional structure, unique
colors, and color categories is used to assess Locke's "inverted
spectrum argument" about the undetectability of color
transformations. A symmetry analysis of color space shows that
the literal interpretation of this argument -- reversing the
experience of a rainbow -- would not work. Three other
color-to-color transformations might, however, depending on the
relevance of certain color categories. The approach is then
generalized to examine behavioral detection of arbitrary
differences in color experiences, leading to the formulation of
a principled distinction, called the isomorphism constraint,
between what can and cannot be determined about the nature of
color experience by objective behavioral means. Finally, the
prospects for achieving a biologically based explanation of
color experience below the level of isomorphism are considered
in light of the limitations of behavioral methods.
Within-subject designs using biological interventions hold the
greatest promise for scientific progress on consciousness, but
objective knowledge of another person's experience appears
impossible. The implications of these arguments for
functionalism are discussed.
In this article I discuss the relations among mind, brain,
behavior, and science in the particular domain of color
perception. My reasons for approaching these difficult issues
from the perspective of color experience are two-fold. First,
there is long philosophical tradition of debating the nature of
internal experiences of color, dating from John Locke's (1690)
discussion of the so-called "inverted spectrum argument". This
intuitively compelling argument constitutes an important
historical backdrop for much of the article. Second, color is
perhaps the most tractable, best understood aspect of mental
life from a scientific standpoint. It demonstrates better than
any other topic how a mental phenomenon can be more fully
understood by integrating knowledge from many different
disciplines (Kay & McDaniel, 1978; Thompson, 1995; Palmer, in
press). In this article I turn once more to color for new
insights into how conscious experience can be studied and
understood scientifically.
I begin with a brief description of the inverted spectrum
problem as posed in classical philosophical terms. I then
discuss how empirical constraints on the answer can be brought
to bear in terms of the structure of human color experience as
it is currently understood scientifically. This discussion
ultimately leads to a principled distinction, called the
isomorphism constraint, between what can and what cannot be
determined about the nature of experience by objective
behavioral means. Finally, I consider the prospects for
achieving a biologically based explanation of color experience,
ending with some speculations about limitations on what science
can achieve with respect to understanding color experience and
other forms of consciousness.
____________________________________________________________
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web or by anonymous ftp from the US or UK BBS Archive.
Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.
The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.palmer.html
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.palmer
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.palmer
To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
To show the available files, type:
ls
Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.palmer
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit
____________________________________________________________
FOUR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS
------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) There have been some extremely important developments in the
area of Web archiving of scientific papers very recently.
Please see:
Science:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/science.html
Nature:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature2.html
American Scientist:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/amlet.html
Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://www.chronicle.com/free/v45/i04/04a02901.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) All authors in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences are
strongly encouraged to archive all their papers (on their
Home-Servers as well as) on CogPrints:
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/
It is exceedingly simple to do so and will make all of our papers
available to all of us everywhere at no cost to anyone.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) BBS has a new policy of accepting submissions electronically.
Authors can specify whether they would like their submissions
archived publicly during refereeing in the BBS under-refereeing
Archive, or in a referees-only, non-public archive.
Upon acceptance, preprints of final drafts are moved to the
public BBS Archive:
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/index.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
(4) BBS has expanded its annual page quota and is now appearing
bimonthly, so the service of Open Peer Commentary can now be be
offered to more target articles. The BBS refereeing procedure is
also going to be considerably faster with the new electronic
submission and processing procedures. Authors are invited to submit
papers to:
Email: bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Web: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk
http://bbs.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/
Paper/Disk: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Department of Electronics and Computer Science
New Zepler Building
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
Nominations of books for BBS Multiple book review are also invited.
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