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What does it mean to say that something is white?
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Notes and References
J. S. Mill, A System of Logic (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1893) bk I, ch. 3, sect. 3, 4, 7, 9.
J. Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, J. S. Mill (ed.) (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1869) fn. pp. 260–1.
Cf. Anthony Manser, ‘Games and Family Resemblance’, Philosophy (1967) pp. 210–25, esp. pp. 220–5.
A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge, (London: Macmillan, 1956) ch. 1, sect. 2: ‘Except when a word is patently ambiguous, it is natural for us to assume that the different situations, or types of situation, to which it applies have a distinctive common feature. For otherwise why should we use the same word to refer to them?’ Cf. also R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford University Press, 1963) ch. 2, sect. 3: ‘Descriptive meaning … relies upon the concept of similarity… A descriptive meaning-rule is one which lays it down that we may apply an expression to objects which are similar to each other in certain respects.’
A. J. Ayer, ‘Basic Propositions’, Philosophical Analysis, Max Black (ed.) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1950) p. 69, on the other hand, writes: ‘Allowing, what is undoubtedly true, that I learned the use of the English word “green” by being shown certain objects which resembled each other in respect of being green, it is suggested that what I now assert when I say, for example, that the blotting paper in front of me is green is that it resembles these objects in the way that they resembled one another. But this suggestion is false; and to see that it is false we have only to reflect that from the statement that this piece of blotting paper is green it cannot be deduced that anything else exists at all. No doubt what justifies me in calling it green, as opposed, say, to blue, is the fact that it resembles one set of objects rather than another; but this does not mean that in calling it green I am saying that it resembles any other objects.’
L. Wittgenstein, Zettel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967) sect. 430.
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953) vol. II, xi, p. 208e.
L. Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958).
G. Berkeley, An Essay toward a New Theory of Vision (1709) in George Berkeley: Philosophical Works, intro. M. R. Ayers (London: Dent, 1975) sect. 67.
See I. Rock and L. Kaufman, ‘The Moon Illusion, II’, Science (1962) vol. 136, pp. 1023–31.
R. H. Thouless, British Journal of Psychology, XXI (1931) pp. 339–59, and XXII (1932) pp. 1–30.
R. M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957) ch. 8, sect. 1.
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© 1991 Godfrey Norman Agmondisham Vesey
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Vesey, G. (1991). Sensations of Colour. In: Inner and Outer. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21639-0_9
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