Wittgenstein on Colour by Gierlinger Frederik A.; Riegelnik Štefan;

Author:Gierlinger, Frederik A.; Riegelnik, Štefan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2014-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

4 Remark on the Remarks

Of course there are many local, small-scale problems concerning colour which have the appearance of being genuine; some of those form the topics addressed by the Remarks on Colour. I leave off with a suggestion about a key topic of the Remarks.

It concerns Wittgenstein’s interest in a mathematics or logic of colour. I for one think that the sort of attitude just canvassed does have some further, more specialised applications. Compare the grammar of the colour-vocabulary with the Peano axioms for 1st order arithmetic: it is hopeless to settle the standard model, but adequate in practice for solving arithmetical problems. Granted, the grammar of colour is, on the one hand, much richer than a set of axioms for the natural numbers, and on the other I suspect not nearly so determinate, and more variable and subject to outside influences. Can there really not be ‘transparent white’? Wittgenstein, in the Remarks on Colour, was tortured by this, and for the very good reason that our language-game, the logic of colour concepts, seems here to falter, yet still it seems for all the world a well-formed question. I’m not sure why he thought there must be an answer to this, and why he seems persuaded that transparent white is impossible. One could challenge him with certain examples of white media that are not merely translucent but through which one can see images (mist, for example, or milk watered down). I am open to persuasion, but I don’t think there need be an answer – not if one is looking to answer a question couched in our ordinary concepts. Some questions that puzzle us most deeply turn out not to have answers; they turn out in the end like ‘What time is it on the North Pole?’.

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