As we move from wakefulness into sleep onset and through the different stages of sleep, there are concerted changes in brain activity, the way we process external stimuli from the environment, and in the contents and structure of conscious experience. At the same time, the exact relationship between these changes …
We all dream every night, and most of us feel reasonably certain that we know what it is like to dream. But how well do we really know the phenomenology of dreaming? Can we really be certain that in describing our dreams, we are not merely projecting implicit, pretheoretical assumptions …
We spend roughly one third of our lives asleep, and research tells us that a considerable portion of this time is spent dreaming. Yet, most of us rarely remember our dreams, and even when we do, we would be hard-pressed to describe more than a single dream per night. This …
It is a terrifying thing to finish a book and then think of all the points that should’ve been made, all the topics that should have had an airing. I comfort myself with the thought that Outside Color turned out to be quite a slim volume, and I will be …
“If there are states of sensing bluely, they obviously do not present themselves as such—otherwise the very existence of a controversy about their existence would be inexplicable.” Sellars (1981, 67) It’s time to get down to the nitty gritty. In the first of these posts I suggested that we look …
“If he [Descartes] had examined that other, deeper opening upon things given us by the secondary qualities, especially color, then….[h]e would have been obliged to find out how the indecisive murmur of colors can present us with things, forests, storms—in short the world. …. But for him it goes without …
…. the whole philosophy of perception from Democritus’s time downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer space and in a person’s mind. (James 1904:481) I chose this quotation from William James’s …
