Enhanced but Indeterminate? How Attention Colors our World

Abstract

AbstractAttention makes things look brighter and more colorful. In light of these effects, representationalist philosophers propose that attentive experiences represent more determinate color properties than inattentive experiences. Although this claim is appealing, we argue that it does not hold for one of our best conceptualizations of content determinacy, according to which an experience has more determinate contents if it represents a narrower range of values within the relevant dimension. We argue that our current empirical evidence fails to show that attention has this kind of effect on color perception. We then offer an alternative, representationalist-friendly account of the attentional effects, as changes in vividness.