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Full Idea
As long as colour terms pick out fundamental physical properties, I would be willing to countenance their use in the description of Reality in itself, ..even if they are based on a peculiar form of sensory awareness.
Gist of Idea
Although colour depends on us, we can describe the world that way if it picks out fundamentals
Source
Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 8)
Book Ref
-: 'Philosophers' Imprint' [-], p.26
A Reaction
This seems to explain why metaphysicians are so fond of using colour as their example of a property, when it seems rather subjective. There seem to be good reasons for rejecting Fine's view.
Related Ideas
Idea 5456 Redness is not a property as it is not mind-independent [Ellis]
Idea 9118 The colour bands of the spectrum arise from our biology; they do not exist in the physics [Sorensen]
Idea 4049 The way in which colour experiences are evoked is physically odd and unpredictable [Goldman]
| 15007 | If you make 'grounding' fundamental, you have to mention some non-fundamental notions [Sider on Fine,K] |
| 15047 | What is real can only be settled in terms of 'ground' [Fine,K] |
| 15046 | Reality is a primitive metaphysical concept, which cannot be understood in other terms [Fine,K] |
| 15048 | In metaphysics, reality is regarded as either 'factual', or as 'fundamental' [Fine,K] |
| 15006 | Something is grounded when it holds, and is explained, and necessitated by something else [Fine,K, by Sider] |
| 15050 | Reduction might be producing a sentence which gets closer to the logical form [Fine,K] |
| 15051 | Reduction might be semantic, where a reduced sentence is understood through its reduction [Fine,K] |
| 15052 | Reduction is modal, if the reductions necessarily entail the truth of the target sentence [Fine,K] |
| 15054 | 'Quietist' says abandon metaphysics because answers are unattainable (as in Kant's noumenon) [Fine,K] |
| 15053 | If metaphysics can't be settled, it hardly matters whether it makes sense [Fine,K] |
| 15055 | Grounding relations are best expressed as relations between sentences [Fine,K] |
| 15056 | The notion of reduction (unlike that of 'ground') implies the unreality of what is reduced [Fine,K] |
| 15057 | Ultimate explanations are in 'grounds', which account for other truths, which hold in virtue of the grounding [Fine,K] |
| 15058 | A proposition ingredient is 'essential' if changing it would change the truth-value [Fine,K] |
| 15059 | Grounding is an explanation of truth, and needs all the virtues of good explanations [Fine,K] |
| 15061 | Although colour depends on us, we can describe the world that way if it picks out fundamentals [Fine,K] |
| 15060 | Why should what is explanatorily basic be therefore more real? [Fine,K] |