ABSTRACT
In the previous two chapters I argued for a relational and ecological approach to colour and perceptual content: colours are relational properties constituted by animal-environment pairs. Although one of the terms in this relation is the perceiving-acting subject, I have so far touched only briefly, at the end of the previous chapter, on the topic of the nature of perceptual experience and its relation to colour. It is this topic that forms the subject of this final chapter. Considering the nature of perceptual experience can rather quickly lead one into the notorious philosophical thicket known as the mind-body problem. My interest here, however, is not in defending a position on the mind-body relation, and so I do not intend to confront this problem directly. Instead, what I am interested in exploring is the very nature of perceptual experience itself and the extent to which a phenomenon of this nature is amenable to scientific investigation. The latter issue about science has figured largely in recent philosophy of mind, but, in my estimation, not in a way conducive to making any kind of deep philosophical progress. One cannot determine what limits there might or might not be to scientific explanations of perceptual experience without first
gaining some understanding in conceptual and phenomenological terms of what perceptual experience is.1 But those on both sides of the issue about science in recent philosophy of mind persist in misunderstanding the phenomenon of perception-or so I shall argue.
