remarks on colour - margarete schattler

8/2/2019 Remarks on Colour - Margarete Schattler

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Philosophical Review

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour by G. E. M. Anscombe; Linda L. McAlister;Margarete SchattleReview by: Marcia YudkinThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 118-120Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2184375 .

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The Philosophical Review, XC, No.1 January 1981)BOOK REVIEWS

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, REMARKS ON COLOUR. Edited byG. E. M. ANSCOMBE. Translated by Linda L. McAlister and Mar-garete Schattle. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977.Pp.126. $8.95.At the very end of Philosophical Investigations,Wittgenstein puts forth

the idea of an investigation of mathematics comparable to his workon psychology; it would not be mathematical,and could more justly betermed an investigation into the "foundation of mathematics." Wehave had for some time a collection of Wittgenstein's notes on thatsubject, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, and now we have,courtesy of G. E. M. Anscombe, editor, and two competent translators,Wittgenstein's notes on a much more restricted topic, published asRemarkson Colour.

The continuity of this work with Wittgenstein's other investigationsis not startling. Here, too, he is working at the uncertain borderlinebetween the logical and the empirical, showing that peculiarities inthe use of color concepts cannot be whisked away easily as naturalfacts about the physical realm of color or as a logical mess that couldstand straightening out. Some of the difficulties arise because colorsare variously important to artists, to scientists, and in everyday life.But the subject is especially significant for philosophers, who have agreat investment in color's being such a clear and straightforwardphenomenon so close to the physiological universal that it can serveas a firm and trustworthy foundation for knowledge. "I seem to seeredness," for example, has seemed to many epistemologists just aboutas basic, as self-justifying and context-independent as one can get.Remarks on Colour, taken together with another posthumous work ofWittgenstein's, On Certainty,may show that security to be delusory.

Epistemologists readily concede that different cultures may divideup the color spectrum differently than we, but some of Wittgenstein'sexamples challenge the assumption that it is as if one has a unitarycolor spectrum in one's head and matches with it what one sees. Theprocess, if there is indeed such a process, would have at the least to bemediated by the knowledge of the sort of material one is looking at.For example, I see my flute as silver, not grey or, when light and shadowplay upon it, black and white. I might describe the skin of myfriend as white when I am discussing races, as ruddy when I am de-scribing her complexion, and if I could be shown a patch of her skin

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BOOK REVIEWSand persuaded that it was a patch of paint I might call it beige ordirty pink; which color do I really see it as? One's inclination, then, isto pick one material as the touchstone for all color, so that, for instance,the "real" color of something will be the color patch it would match ifit were made of paint. But this would be a decision we make on groundsnot inherent in the realm of color; why paint instead of plants andflowers, or gems?

Worse, Wittgenstein points out difficulties in making comparisonsbetween colors of paint and colors of, say, glass: "Can a transparentgreen glass have the same colour as a piece of opaque paper or not?If such a glass were depicted in a painting, the colours would not betransparent on the palette. If we wanted to say the colour of the glasswas also transparent in the painting, we would have to call the complexof colour patches which depict the glass its colour."(1-18) Again, oneis tempted to set up a convention, that the color of the glass is thecolor it would appear when one looks through it at something white.Yet if one attempts to stick to the color it appearsat any specific time,and match that to paint samples, one has also to decide whether tobracket one's knowledge that it is glass, and that glass behaves in suchand such a way when placed before an object that in normal light lookssuch and such a color. As Wittgenstein says with respect to another dis-turbing case: "Do I actually see the boy's hair blond in the photo-graph?-Do I see it grey? Do I only infer that whatever looks this wayin the picture, must in reality be blond? In one sense I see it blond, inanother I see it lighter or darker grey." (III-271)

Many of Wittgenstein's most intriguing remarks concern transpar-ency, a property that seems neither clearly logical nor clearly empirical.Why is there no transparent white? Why can a substance not be whiteand clear? Why do we call glass colorless when, through it, whitelight appears white? Or, related troubles: Why is there no "brown-hot"? Why is there no clear brown? Why no luminous gray? "Why isit that a dark yellow doesn't have to be perceived as 'blackish', even ifwe call it dark? The logic of the concept of colour is just much. morecomplicated than it might seem." (III-106)

Wittgenstein also has many interesting remarks about the conceptof "seeing," and the condition of color-blindness. He invents sometribes worth thinking about, one that is (in our terms) red-green color-blind; one that has the color reddish-green but not reddish-yellow; andone that has only color-shape concepts, with one word for "green leaf"and another for "green table," and who fail to understand the similaritywe see.

Remarks on Colour as a whole is more repetitive than other post-119


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BOOK REVIEWShumous works by Wittgenstein, and is likely to be most rewarding topeople who already have a particular interest in color concepts andwho will care about trying to unravel the many logical knots Wittgen-stein brings to light in a realm that has often been considered to bea straightforward, unproblematical system.

MARCIA YUDKINSmithCollege

ThePhilosophicalReview,XC, No. 1 January 1981)DISMANTLING THE MEMORY MA CHINE. By HOWARD ALEXANDERBURSEN. Dordrecht, Holland, D. Reidel Publishing Company,1979. Pp. xiii, 157. $19.50.

How is it that I am able to recall a melody I have heard before?A very compelling picture is that upon hearing the music, some sortof recording (called a "trace") is made in my brain. Recall is or involvesa playing back of this recording. This picture is so compelling thattheorists have been led to feel that such a mechanism is the only pos-sible explanation of memory. Bursen first argues that this is not theonly possible model. Suppose I hear an orchestral piece; at a later timeI hear the piece in my head, but I substitute trumpets for the violins.Then I put violins back in, "hearing" it as I originally heard it. In thesame way that I "supplied" trumpets, I now "supply" violins, changingit back to the way I remembert. Since I don't need a recording for therendition with trumpets (since I have never heard it with trumpets),I don't have to be making use of a recording in my head for the violinseither. And the same thing could be done for the rhythm, the tempo,the loudness, etc. But even if memory could be in this way creative,how do I know that the tune, e.g., was played by violins? Bursen doesn'tanswer this, but the point is that my ability to recall the tune doesn'tnecessitatesome sort of recording of the violin sound that I originallyheard. Indeed, he argues, there doesn't seem to be any aspect of theoriginal performance that would have to be recorded in order for meto be able, e.g., to hear it in my head as I first heard it.But even if a trace theory of memory needn'tbe correct, still it mightbe. So Bursen turns next to a difficulty (as opposed to an alternative)for trace theory. In order for trace theory to work as an account ofmemory, we need to supplement it with an account of how we get access

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remarks on colour - margarete schattler

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