Seeing dark things: the philosophy of shadows

Abstract

Shadows appear to be counterexamples to the causal theory of perception. After all, an absence of light cannot reflect light into our eyes. Roy Sorensen sets out to resolve this anomaly and to show how the causal theory solves a broad range of visual puzzles about dark things.

Contents

Introduction -- The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.