On Remarks on Colour of the Wittgenstein.

On Remarks on Colour of the Wittgenstein.

This book comprises material on colour which was written by Wittgenstein in the last eighteen months of his life. It is one of the few documents which shows him concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue. The principal theme is the features of different colours, of different kinds of colour and of luminosity—a theme which Wittgenstein treats in such a way as to destroy the traditional idea that colour is a simple and logically uniform kind of (...) thing. This edition consists of Wittgenstein's basic German text, together with an English translation. (shrink)

A study of the origins of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour detailing when and why it was written.

This book comprises material on colour which was written by Wittgenstein in the last eighteen months of his life. It is one of the few documents which shows him concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue. The principal theme is the features of different colours, of different kinds of colour and of luminosity—a theme which Wittgenstein treats in such a way as to destroy the traditional idea that colour is a simple and logically uniform kind of (...) thing. This edition consists of Wittgenstein's basic German text, together with an English translation. (shrink)

The task of giving some sort of interpretation of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour is an extraordinarily difficult one. The book is exceptionally fragmentary. Many of the remarks seem to raise questions that are then left completely unanswered, or to invite us to imagine various circumstances that are then left without any further comment. Although nearly all the remarks are related in one way or another to the problem of colour, the range of topics that Wittgenstein (...) touches on is extremely wide, and covers areas that are not normally mentioned in contemporary philosophical discussions of colour. For example, apart from the familiar ‘Why can't there be a transparent white?’ and ‘Why can't there be a reddish-green?’, he asks ‘Can a transparent piece of glass have the same colour as an opaque piece of paper?’, ‘Is white always the lightest colour?’, ‘Do I see blond hair in the black and white photograph of a blond youth?’, ‘Does it make sense to point to a colour in the iris of a Rembrandt eye and ask for the walls of my room to be painted the same colour?’, ‘Do the colour-blind have the same concept of colour-blindness as the normally sighted?’, ‘Can normal vision be described?’, and so on. (shrink)

The task of giving some sort of interpretation of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour is an extraordinarily difficult one. The book is exceptionally fragmentary. Many of the remarks seem to raise questions that are then left completely unanswered, or to invite us to imagine various circumstances that are then left without any further comment. Although nearly all the remarks are related in one way or another to the problem of colour, the range of topics that Wittgenstein (...) touches on is extremely wide, and covers areas that are not normally mentioned in contemporary philosophical discussions of colour. For example, apart from the familiar ‘Why can't there be a transparent white?’ and ‘Why can't there be a reddish-green?’, he asks ‘Can a transparent piece of glass have the same colour as an opaque piece of paper?’, ‘Is white always the lightest colour?’, ‘Do I see blond hair in the black and white photograph of a blond youth?’, ‘Does it make sense to point to a colour in the iris of a Rembrandt eye and ask for the walls of my room to be painted the same colour?’, ‘Do the colour-blind have the same concept of colour-blindness as the normally sighted?’, ‘Can normal vision be described?’, and so on. (shrink)

In the very early Notebooks 1914‐1916, Ludwig Wittgenstein's principal interests were in logic, but his remarks are scattered through with occasional observations or sequences of observations about epistemology, solipsism, life, and other metaphysical subjects. The Tractatus was published in 1921. Here, as in the Notebooks, Wittgenstein is convinced that there must be elementary propositions, propositions that cannot be analyzed, because they are not composed by applying truth functions to other propositions. The metaphysical structure of the Tractatus began to disintegrate, (...) however, when Wittgenstein realized, as he reported in “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, that he could not analyze propositions about colors as statements of degree. Wittgenstein had begun to replace the idea of a logical space with “logical grammar”, a conception that was in turn destined to be replaced by “language‐games”. He wrote, “The colour octahedron is grammar, since it says that you can speak of a reddish blue but not a reddish green, etc”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article explores Wittgenstein's little known remarks on colour from his notebooks of the early 1930s. It emphasizes the importance of the notion of logical multiplicity contained in these remarks. The notion of logical multiplicity indicates that Wittgenstein, as in the years of the Tractatus, is committed to a theory of logical space in which every colour is embedded. However, logical multiplicities in his remarks of the early 1930s do not depend on an apparatus (...) of simple objects, states of affairs, and elementary propositions. I suggest that, in this period, the logical multiplicity of colour space is a matter of how we see colours.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine les remarques trap peu connues de Wittgenstein sur les couleurs dans ses cahiers du début des années 1930. Je souligne l'importance qu'y prend la notion de multiplicité logique, qui est le signe que Wittgenstein souscrivait alors, tout autant que dans les années du Tractatus, à une théorie de l'espace logique propre à chaque couleur. Dans ces remarques du début des années 1930, les multiplicités logiques ne dépendent toutefois pas du dispositif conceptuel constitué par les objets simples, les états de choses et les propositions élémentaires. Mon propos est de montrer que, dans cétte periode, la multiplicité logique de l'espace chromatique est relative à la manière dont nous voyons les couleurs. (shrink)

This volume is the first collection of articles dedicated to Wittgenstein s thoughts on colour, focusing in particular on his so-called Remarks on Colour, a piece of writing that has received comparably little attention from Wittgenstein scholars. The articles discuss why Wittgenstein wrote so intensively about colour during the last years of his life andwhat significance these remarks have for understanding his philosophical work in general.".

_Ranging from Homer to Picasso, and from the Iranian Revolution to _The Wizard of Oz_, this spirited and radiant book awakens us anew to the role of color in our lives_ Our lives are saturated by color. We live in a world of vivid colors, and color marks our psychological and social existence. But for all color’s inescapability, we don’t know much about it. Now authors David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing offer a fresh and imaginative exploration of one of (...) the most intriguing and least understood aspects of everyday experience. Kastan and Farthing, a scholar and a painter, respectively, investigate color from numerous perspectives: literary, historical, cultural, anthropological, philosophical, art historical, political, and scientific. In ten lively and wide-ranging chapters, each devoted to a different color, they examine the various ways colors have shaped and continue to shape our social and moral imaginations. Each individual color becomes the focal point for a consideration of one of the extraordinary ways in which color appears and matters in our lives. Beautifully produced in full color, this book is a remarkably smart, entertaining, and fascinating guide to this elusive topic. (shrink)

In this paper I first discuss the colour-octahedron and the position of this model as an idealized system with respect to the remarks on colour-concepts in Remarks on Colour (RC). The next part examines the notion of aspect seeing in the light of the colour-octahedron and RC. From there a connection is made with On Certainty (OC). By linking the remarks on colour, seeing aspects and certainty, it may become clear that the (...) investigations of Wittgenstein concerning colour and certainty direct us towards a reflective dynamics and an anthropological interpretation of his ideas. (shrink)

The problem of colour exclusion is not fatal to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, nor was it the catalyst for his later philosophy. The remarks in the Tractatus about the impossibility of the simultaneous occurrence of two colours at a point in the visual field sit comfortably with the remarks in the rest of the book, the discussion of mathematical physics above all. Furthermore Wittgenstein’s second thoughts about the impossibility were a consequence, not the cause, of the subsequent (...) turn in his philosophy. (shrink)

These remarks, which span the last eighteen months of Wittgenstein’s life, extend several of his well known themes from his so-called "later" writings. One such theme, which occurs as a unifying leitmotiv in this work, is that philosophical puzzlement arises from a failure to realize the indefiniteness and complexity of our concepts. Herein it takes the form of the claim that we have not one but several concepts of color. In fact, we have as many concepts of color as (...) we have different methods for determining sameness of color. "The indefiniteness in the concept of color lies, above all, in the indefiniteness of the concept of the sameness of colors, i.e., of the methods of comparing colors". E.g., when I say of two objects that they have the same color I could mean, among other things, that they visually appear to be similar or that their surfaces are painted with similarly tinted paints. Another prominent theme, which runs throughout all of his writings, both early and late, is the employment of a linguistic or grammatical theory of necessity for the purpose of refuting claims to have synthetic a priori knowledge. Herein it is phenomenology which is put in its place, its claims turning out to be only an "analysis of concepts that can neither agree with nor contradict physics". The indefiniteness in our concept of color helps spawn the illusion of such exalted knowledge, because it enables us to use a single sentence, on some occasions, to express a norm or convention of language and, on others, to report experience. "Sentences are often used on the borderline between logic and the empirical, so that their meaning changes back and forth and they count now as expressions of norms, now as expressions of experience". Considerable space is devoted to showing that the sentence "A body cannot seem to be both white and transparent" is used in the former way. While Wittgenstein succeeds in saying many interesting and original things about color, his remarks do not give any further clarification to the underlying themes, such as the two above, which he deploys in this area.—R.M.G. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to unravel Aristotle’s reasoning with regard to the ontological status of colours; also, to get a better understanding of his views on the production of the whole spectrum of colours; and finally, to evaluate the explanatory power of his theory of colours. The texts I mainly draw my evidence from is Aristotle’s De sensu 3 and the relevant passages from the De anima as well as from other Aristotelian treatises; in addition, I use for (...) my interpretation remarks made by Alexander of Aphrodisias in his commentary on the De sensu, in his Quaestiones and in the dubious treatise Mantissa. (shrink)

In his book Naturalizing the Mind, Fred Dretske, among other things, gives what he thinks is a naturalist account of what he calls introspective knowledge.1 I shall not quarrel with his labels; I shall quarrel with what he tries to sell by using them. For him, introspective knowledge is “the mind’s direct knowledge of itself”,2 and he concentrates on knowledge of one’s own current mental occurrences, especially those which belong to the realm of sensory perception. An example he discusses is (...) the knowledge somebody has who looks at something and sees it as blue, and thereby knows that he is, as Dretske puts it, “representing” it as blue. I shall stick to this example. Harvey is looking at my shirt, and he thereby comes to know that he is representing it as blue. Dretske wants to answer the question: What is really happening when Harvey acquires this piece of introspective knowledge? Let me first give, in a very rough way, what I take to be Dretske’s basic idea. Introspective knowledge is not acquired by anything like looking inside oneself. One looks in the same direction as one does when one is acquiring “extraspective” knowledge. Harvey doesn’t first look at my shirt, saying “Uhuh, this shirt looks blue, but now I’d like to find out how I am representing it”, and then turns to look at something else in order to find out what the colour is he is representing the shirt to have. Harvey only looks at the shirt, when he acquires this item of introspective knowledge. In looking at that shirt, he acquires all the information he needs for acquiring the knowledge about himself that he is representing it as blue. The eyes’ job is done. The rest is exploiting that very information, not acquiring any new information. (shrink)

Drawing on remarks scattered through his writings, I argue that Leibniz has a highly distinctive and interesting theory of color. The central feature of the theory is the way in which it combines a nuanced subjectivism about color with a reductive approach of a sort usually associated with objectivist theories of color. After reconstructing Leibniz's theory and calling attention to some of its most notable attractions, I turn to the apparent incompatibility of its subjective and reductive components. I argue (...) that this apparent tension vanishes in light of his rejection of a widely accepted doctrine concerning the nature of bodies and their geometrical qualities. (shrink)

There is growing body of knowledge about how humans and animals perceive col- ours; we may safely say that both physiology and physics of colour perception are becoming less and less mysterious. Still it doesn't help to solve a philosophical puzzle: What do exactly mean expressions like “perceived red” or “perceived green”? What do perceived colours refer to in the world? There are three problem fields I am touching on in this paper: (i) semantics of colour names, (ii) (...) ontological status of colours, (iii) cognitive relevance of colours. I am trying to formulate onto- logical and epistemological assumptions for semantics of colour names. I am espe- cially focused on classical problem of objectivity of colours. While pursuing my task I am making some critical remarks about Wittgenstein's views on colours as formulated in “Tractatus” and modified in “Remarks on Colours”. I am using. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to give both a sustained interpretation of Wittgenstein’s obscure remarks on the experience of meaning of language, synthaesthesia and secondary use and to apply his insights to recent philosophical discussions about synthaesthesia. I argue that synthaesthesia and experience of meaning are conceptually related to aspect-seeing. The concept of aspect-seeing is not reducible to either seeing or imaging but involves a modified notion of experience. Likewise, synthaesthesia involves a modified notion of experience. In particular, (...) the concept of synthaesthesia involves a secondary use of ‘experience’ and hence is intrinsically dependent on the primary use of language. Recent discussions tend to overlook this distinction between the primary and secondary use of language. (shrink)

This book presents and discusses the varying and seminal role which colour plays in the development of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Having once said that “Colours spur us to philosophize”, the theme of colour was one to which Wittgenstein returned constantly throughout his career. Ranging from his Notebooks, 1914-1916 and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the posthumously published Remarks on Colours and On Certainty, this book explores how both his view of philosophical problems generally and his view on colours specifically (...) changed considerably over time. Paying particular attention to his so-called intermediary period, it takes a case-based approach to the presentation of colour in texts from this period, from Some Remarks on Logical Form and Philosophical Remarks to his Big Typescript. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to give both a sustained interpretation of Wittgenstein’s obscure remarks on the experience of meaning of language, synthaesthesia and secondary use and to apply his insights to recent philosophical discussions about synthaesthesia. I argue that synthaesthesia and experience of meaning are conceptually related to aspect-seeing. The concept of aspect-seeing is not reducible to either seeing or imaging but involves a modified notion of experience. Likewise, synthaesthesia involves a modified notion of experience. In particular, (...) the concept of synthaesthesia involves a secondary use of ‘experience’ and hence is intrinsically dependent on the primary use of language. Recent discussions tend to overlook this distinction between the primary and secondary use of language. (shrink)

The point of Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour concerns, not so much colours as such, as well as our ability to see [that implies both seeing ánd thinking] and our capacity to imagine something. This can be seen from the fact that Wittgenstein relates the notion of ‘seeing aspects’ on the one hand to the colour octahedron in PB, and on the other hand to the colour puzzles as discussed in ROC. This connection between Wittgenstein’s remarks (...) on colour, on seeing aspects and on certainty makes clear that these investigations of Wittgenstein direct us towards a reflective dynamics of his ideas. (shrink)

The problem of explaining color perception has fascinated painters, philosophers and scientists throughout the history. In many cases, the ideas and discoveries about color perception in one of these categories influenced the others, thus resulting in one of the most remarkable cross-fertilization of human thought. At the end of the nineteenth century, two models stood out as the most convincing ones: Young-Helmholtz’s trichromacy on one side, and Hering’s opponency on the other side. The former was mainly supported by painters and (...) scientists, although with some noticeable exceptions as, e.g., Otto Runge, while the majority of philosophers supported the latter. These two apparently incompatible models were proven to be two complementary parts of the hugely complex chain of events which leads to human color perception. Recently, a rigorous mathematical theory able to incorporate both trichromacy and opponency has been developed thanks to the use of the language and tools of quantum information. In this paper, we discuss the placement of this model within the philosophical theories about color. (shrink)

Even though there is an ineluctable abyss between Analytic and Continental Philosophy, it is not hard to argue that in his later works Ludwig Wittgenstein draws a closer philosophical attitude to the latter in terms of that the notions developed by him, such as language-games, family resemblances, meaning-in-use or rule-following, apart from his earlier nomological approach to language, leave room for various understandings and uncertainty in language. In the present work, my primary task is to concentrate on the close relationship (...) between the Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances and Gadamer’s idea of the fusion of horizons. But both philosophers, coincide in criticizing the authority of the Cartesian subject and private language and in allowing different understandings and uncertainty in language. Starting from this point of view, the linguistic turn, I will turn my remarks on the question how we learn color concepts since the structure of these concepts radically differs from the words that are able to subject to ostensive definitions. This last section will also offer a hermeneutical reading of Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances. (shrink)

This chapter, which describes the spatiality of conscious phenomena, such as colours and sounds, addresses James Gibson’s ecological approach to confirm and develop further the Husserlian phenomenological view of colours and sounds. The ecological approach to perception could be regarded as an attempt to undertake empirical research corresponding to the phenomenological insight of perception. In this context, in addition to the Husserlian concept of “adumbration” and the Gibsonian concept of “ecological optics,” the differentiation of various modes of colour appearances, (...) which David Katz explicated, is focused on, developed and applied further to the phenomena of sounds. On the basis of these discussions, the multi-dimensional character of colours and sounds are explicated, and traditional views on colours and sounds, which neglect this character, are criticized. The concept of multi-dimensionality discovers the remarkable diversity of the world of colours and sounds, which demonstrate the diversity and multiple dimensionality of the field of consciousness. (shrink)

In Remarks on Colour Wittgenstein discusses a number of puzzling propositions about brown, e.g. that it cannot be pure and that there cannot be a brown light. He does not actually answer the questions he asks, and the status of his projected ?logic of colour concepts? remains unclear. I offer a real definition of brown from which the puzzle propositions follow logically. It is based on two experiments from Helmholtz. Brown is shown to be logically complex in (...) the sense that the concept of brown can be ?unpacked? or resolved into simpler concepts. If my solutions to Wittgenstein's puzzles are the right ones, then science does bear upon the ?logic of colour concepts?, and the contrast between logic and science which Wittgenstein sets up is a false one. At best it will appear as the contrast between the demands of logic and the demands of a particular kind of scientific theory and a particular mode of scientific theorizing. The solutions to the puzzles about brown are distinguished from psychological explanations, and the paper ends by suggesting what it was in his own doctrine that prevented Wittgenstein from answering the questions he had set himself. (shrink)

It has been suggested that difficult-to-quantify differences in visual processing may prevent researchers from equating the color experience of different observers. However, spectral locations of unique hues are remarkably invariant with respect to everything other than gross differences in preretinal and photoreceptor absorptions. This suggests a stereotyping of neural color processing and leads us to posit that minor differences in observer neurophysiology may be irrelevant to color experience.

Intuitively, there is an intimate connection between being coloured and looking coloured. As Strawson memorably remarked, it is natural to assume that ‘colours are visibilia or they are nothing’. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship?A traditionally popular view of the relationship between being coloured and looking coloured starts from the common place that the character of our perceptual experience changes as the conditions in which an object is perceived vary. For instance, our experience changes when we view (...) an object under different illuminants, as when we move from artificial illumination indoors to natural daylight outside. It changes under one and the same illuminant, depending on whether the object is directly or indirectly illuminated. And it varies independently of this, as the background against which the object is perceived varies. Placing a lot of weight on the idea that objects look or appear different as the perceptual conditions vary, proponents of this approach suggest that we can understand what it is for something to be coloured in terms of what it is for something to look coloured in specific perceptual conditions. (shrink)

The paper argues, in a nutshell, that Wittgenstein’s reconsideration, after Ramsey’s review, of the Tractatus provides the rationale for the methodological reflections from the former’s manuscripts, which are less sceptical than Schlick’s, on the viability of a phenomenological philosophy. The argument proceeds like this. Section 1 exposes a charge against a Tractarian account of logical syntax: for Ramsey, early Wittgenstein holds unjustifiably that any proposition taken to exhibit logical impossibility, like the impossibility of a fleck of two colours, is analysable (...) into formal contradiction. Section 2 explores ways in which Ramsey’s charge is taken on board by Wittgenstein’s 1929 “Some Remarks on Logical Form”, while bringing forth the view that propositions like “This is of two colours” cannot be analysed into formal contradiction. Section 3 reconstructs a mirror image of early Wittgenstein’s approach to colour-exclusion, from Schlick’s claim that propositions like “This cannot be of two colours” exhibit logical necessity and amount to formal tautologies. Section 4 isolates two responses two Schlick’s approach to colour-exclusion, suggesting that it is not more viable than early Wittgenstein’s. Section 5 assesses the rationale of Wittgenstein’s reflections on phenomenology, as informed by his approaches to colour-exclusion from early onwards. (shrink)