BBS Call for Commentators: Byrne & Hilbert; Color Realism and Color Science

Dear Dr. Qwerty, Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article Color Realism and Color Science by Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Byrne/Referees/ 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. If you are interested in submitting a commentary on this paper, or would like to suggest someone else as a potential commentator on this paper, please read on. 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 reply by EMAIL within within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of BBS Associates (1978-2000) is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= IMPORTANT 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. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the online BBSPrints Archive, at the URL proceeding the abstract below. _______________________________________________________________________ Color Realism and Color Science Alex Byrne Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA 02139 David R. Hilbert Department of Philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago IL 60607 KEYWORDS: Color, color vision, comparative vision, ecological view, inverted spectrum, mental representation, perception, physicalism, qualia, realism, similarity ABSTRACT: The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects aren't colored, and that the colors are "subjective" or "in the mind." The article has two other purposes: first, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate. The first part explains the problem of color realism and makes some useful distinctions. These distinctions are then used to expose various confusions that often prevent people from seeing that the issues are genuine and difficult, and that the problem of color realism ought to be of interest to anyone working in the field of color science. The second part explains the various leading answers to the problem of color realism, and (briefly) argues that all views other than our own have serious difficulties or are unmotivated. The third part explains and motivates our own view, that colors are types of reflectances, and defends it against objections made in the recent literature that are often taken as fatal. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Byrne/Referees/ ====================================================================== IMPORTANT Please do not prepare a commentary yet. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. We will then let you know whether it was possible to include your name on the final formal list of invitees. ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password above: http://www.bbsonline.org/ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Ralph BBS ------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph DeMarco Editorial Coordinator Behavioral and Brain Sciences Journals Department Cambridge University Press 40 West 20th Street New York, NY 10011-4211 UNITED STATES bbs(a)bbsonline.org http://bbsonline.org Tel: +001 212 924 3900 ext.374 Fax: +001 212 645 5960 -------------------------------------------------------------------