According to a familiar modern view, color and other so-called secondary qualities reside only in consciousness, not in the external physical world. Many have argued that this “Galilean” view is the source of the mind-body problem in its current form. This paper critically examines a radical alternative to the Galilean view, which has recently been defended or sympathetically discussed by several philosophers, a view I call “anti-modernism.” Anti-modernism holds, roughly, that the modern Galilean scientific image is incomplete – in particular, it leaves out certain irreducible qualitative properties, such as colors – and that we can solve (or dissolve) the hard problem of consciousness by accepting these properties as objective features of the external physical world. I argue, first, that anti-modernism cannot fulfill its promise. Even if the outer world is resplendent with primitive colors, color experience remains a mystery. Second, I argue that the theoretical costs of accepting irreducible colors in the world are enormous. Even if irreducible colors in the world could dispel the mysteries surrounding consciousness, the theoretical benefit would not be worth the cost. If the problems of consciousness and color require that we posit irreducible properties somewhere, it would be far more plausible to accept irreducible phenomenal properties on the side of the subject, and to reject irreducible colors on the side of the object.

根据熟悉的现代观点，颜色和其他所谓的次要品质只存在于意识中，而不存在于外部物理世界中。许多人认为，这种“伽利略”观点是当前形式的身心问题的根源。本文批判性地研究了伽利略观点的一个激进替代方案，该观点最近得到了几位哲学家的辩护或同情讨论，我称之为“反现代主义”。反现代主义粗略地认为，现代伽利略的科学形象是不完整的——特别是，它遗漏了某些不可简化的定性属性，例如颜色——我们可以通过接受这些属性来解决（或解决）意识的难题外部物理世界的客观特征。首先，我认为反现代主义无法兑现其承诺。经验仍然是个谜。其次，我认为在世界上接受不可还原的颜色的理论成本是巨大的。就算世界上不可化约的色彩能够解开围绕着意识的谜团，但理论上的收益是不值得的。如果意识和颜色的问题要求我们在某处设定不可约的属性，那么在主体方面接受不可约的现象属性，而在客体方面拒绝不可约的颜色，会更加合理。