Secondary Qualities and the Epistemology of Perception

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Workshop of the DFG Emmy-Noether Project ‘A Sensible World’ 
Secondary Qualities and the Epistemology of Perception
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10-11 April 2025

The workshop aims to discuss the relationship between theories of secondary qualities and the epistemology of perception, both historically (with the help of figures from the phenomenological tradition and early analytic philosophy) and theoretically. It is based on the idea that different accounts of secondary qualities are proper to create different epistemological problems concerning perception. In particular, eliminativists about colors, sounds, etc., have to explain to what extent our perception of physical reality is still veridical, while naive realists have to explain how our naive beliefs can be compatible with the conclusions of the natural sciences, especially physics, whose worldview includes nothing like colors, sounds, etc. as given to us in ordinary experience.


Programme

Thursday, 10 April 2025
14:15-15:45 Fiona Macpherson (University of Glasgow)
A Problem for Determining the Structural Features of Experience: A Pessimistic Meta-induction 16:00-17:30 Harald Wiltsche (Linköping University)
Roses are Red and Physics is Great. On How to be a Color Realist

Friday, 11 April 2025
10:15-11:45 Giulia Martina (TU Dortmund)
Dawes Hicks on Colours and Appearance
14:15-15:45 Hamid Taieb (HU Berlin)
Two Phenomenological Views on Truths about Colours
16:00-17:30 Søren Overgaard (University of Copenhagen)
Colour Primitivism and the Causal Argument

Venue: Room 2249a, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin, Germany 
Attendance: For registration, please write to [email protected] 
Organiser: Hamid Taieb ([email protected])
For more information: www.a-sensible-world.net   
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