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Locke and the Meaning of Colour Words*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
While thinking philosophically we see problems in places where there are none. It is for philosophy to show that there are no problems.
Those of us who are not colour blind have a happy command of colour concepts. We say of trees that they are green in spring, that they are the same colour as grass and a different colour from the sky. If we shine a torch with a red bulb upon a white surface, we say that the surface looks pink although it is white. And if we suffer a bout of jaundice we (allegedly) claim that white things look yellowish to us, although they are not yellow, nor do they (publicly) look yellow. We employ this tripartite distinction unworriedly and unthinkingly. But when, in doing philosophy, we are called upon to elucidate colour concepts it becomes evident that these elementary concepts present intricate problems to the philosophical understanding. It is extraordinarily difficult to obtain a proper surview of colour grammar, and the temptations of philosophical illusion are legion. We go wrong before the first step is even taken, and hence do not notice our errors, for they are implicit in every move we make. We multiply impossibilities seriatim, getting better, like the White Queen, with practice. We then either slide into scepticism, or alternatively exclude it on empirical grounds - appealing, as is so popular in American philosophical circles, to the wonders of science, in particular physics and neurophysiology, to keep the malin genie from the door.
- Type
- Papers
- Information
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 9: Impressions of Empiricism , March 1975 , pp. 23 - 46
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1975
Footnotes
*
I am grateful to many colleagues with whom I discussed earlier drafts of this paper, especially Professors R. Arrington, J. Bennett and J. Kim from the U.S.A. Mr. D. Isaacson, Dr. A.J.P. Kenny and Dr. J. Raz showed similar tolerance and helpfulness at Oxford. I am particularly indebted to Dr. G.P. Baker for his advice, criticisms and comments.
References
page 23 note 1 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar p. 47.Google Scholar
page 25 note 1 Locke, op. cit., bk II chp. XXXII section 15.
page 31 note 1 The passage should be collated with Investigations, sections 53, 73; Zettel, sections 546–8, 552; and Blue and Brown Books, p. 89.Google Scholar For discussions of the issue see Hintikka, J., ‘Wittgenstein on Private Language: Some Sources of Misunderstanding’ Mind, lxxviii (1969), pp. 423–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kenny, A. J. P., Wittgenstein, (Allen Lane, 1973) pp. 190 ffGoogle Scholar; Hacker, P. M. S., Insight and Illusion: Wittgenstein on Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Experience (Oxford, 1972) pp. 234 ff.Google Scholar
page 31 note 2 This is not to say that the blind cannot have a partial grasp of colour concepts. They may apprehend aspects of their logical form, i.e. their combinatorial possibilities, their kinship to e.g. heat predicates, their aesthetic significance, etc. (Cf. Geach, P. T., Mental Acts (London, 1957) pp. 35–6).Google Scholar But possession of a concept is a capacity, and the blind lack an essential element involved in possession of colour concepts, namely the ability to apply them non-evidentially to experience.
page 32 note 1 This Wittgensteinian line of thought has been recently discussed in the philosophical literature; see e.g. Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘The Intentionality of Sensation’Google Scholar, in Butler, R. (ed.), Analytical Philosophy, 2nd series pp. 172 ff.Google Scholar; Hamlyn, D. W., ‘Seeing Things as They Are’, Inaugural Lecture, Birkbeck College (London, 1964).Google Scholar
page 33 note 1 G. E. M. Anscombe, loc. cit.
page 33 note 2 Grice, H. P., ‘The Causal Theory of Perception’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. (1961).Google Scholar Grice's discussion is not, of course, confined to colours, but the above remarks are.
page 35 note 1 Wittgenstein, ‘Notes for Lectures on Private Experience and Sense Data’ Philosophical Review (1968) p. 306.Google Scholar
page 40 note 1 This form of connection between the relevant kinds of statement is itself open to question. Wittgenstein adopted such an analysis in the Blue Book, but silently dropped it in the Investigations for good, though not obviously conclusive/reasons. More recently the form of the analysis provides the core of P. F. Strawson's illuminating defence of the causal theory of perception, Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (Methuen, 1974) ch. 4.Google Scholar
page 43 note 1 Philosophical Investigations, section 377.
page 44 note 1 Op. cit., section 254.
page 44 note 2 It is noteworthy, incidentally, that indiscriminability, unlike identity, is not transitive – a further chink in the armour of our adversary that might be explored.