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Colour as Simple: A Reply to Westphal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Eric M. Rubenstein
Affiliation:
Colgate University

Abstract

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Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1996

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References

1 Stout, G. F., ‘Universals Again’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplemental Volume 15 (1936), p. 14.Google Scholar

2 Pears, D., ‘Incompatibility of Colours’ in Flew, A. (ed.) Logic and Language (Second Series) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Press, 1973), p. 119.Google Scholar

3 Westphal, J., ‘The Complexity of Quality’, Philosophy 59 (1984), p. 458.Google Scholar

4 Westphal, p. 466.

5 Even being able to speak of differences and similarities across distinct colour-patches, as we shall see, does not invalidate the claim that those colours are simple.

6 Likewise in Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit example. We should not conclude the figure to have both a duck and a rabbit as its components. Rather, the alleged complexity turns on two different acts of seeing-as.

7 For more on this theme, see Prior, A., ‘Determinables, Determinates,and Determinants’ Mind, 58 (1949).Google Scholar

8 Prior, p. 6.

9 Westphal, p. 457.

10 I wish to thank Brad Cohen and Andrew Mills for helpful suggestions and comments.