Abstract
Colour is a puzzling phenomenon. Perhaps nothing could be more obvious than colour; but one thing that Modern Philosophy has taught us is that, concerning colour, things are not what they appear. We all naively think that things exist in the world with their objective colours. Grass in green; the sky is blue; coal is black. But in reality, colour is merely the way that things with certain objective properties—notably the ability to reflect, emit, or absorb electromagnetic radiation of particular frequencies—appear to sensory apparatuses of certain species-specific (and even individual-specific) kinds.
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- 1.
For a general discussion of colour, see Maund (2012).
- 2.
For a good review, see Hyde (2011).
- 3.
See Priest (1995), Part 3.
- 4.
See, e.g., Priest (1987), Part 1.
- 5.
One place to start is Beall and Glanzberg (2011).
- 6.
For a much fuller discussion of all aspects of a dialetheic solution to the sorites paradoxes, see Priest (2010).
- 7.
See Priest (1995), Part 3.
- 8.
For a survey of these, see Priest (2002).
- 9.
Let B! be B ∧¬ B. Then A 0 and A 0 ⊃ A 1 entail A 0! ∨ A 1. This, plus A 1 ⊃ A 2 entail A 0! ∨ A 1! ∨ A 2, and so on, till A 0! ∨… ∨ A n−1! ∨ A n , whence ¬A n delivers the last contradictory disjunct.
- 10.
Discussions of the issue from a dialetheic perspective can be found in Priest (2010, 2018) and Weber (2011). I note, however, that in a certain sense, the theory in question rules out higher order vagueness. What about a borderline region between those things which are green and not green, Gx ∧¬Gx, and those things that are not, (Gx ∧¬Gx) ∧¬(Gx ∧¬Gx)? But the first conjunct entails the second, so the conjunction is logically equivalent to Gx ∧¬Gx itself. To be in a borderline state of a borderline state is already to be in that borderline state.
- 11.
For a fuller discussion of this matter, see Priest (2006), 3, 4.
- 12.
See Gregory and Gombrich (1973), esp. p. 36.
- 13.
See Crane and Piantinada (1983).
- 14.
- 15.
There is a story about Wittgenstein, which may, for all I know, be entirely apocryphal. Wittgenstein asked a friend why people had thought that the sun goes round the earth. His friend replied that it was presumably because it appeared that way; to which Wittgenstein replied by asking how it would look if the earth went round the sun.
- 16.
See Priest (2006), 3.3, 3.4.
- 17.
Priest (2006), p. 62.
- 18.
Priest (2006), p. 63, fn. 17. Italics original.
- 19.
Using the phrase ‘appears that’ raises the question ‘appears to whom?’. In what follows I assume that it is to an observer with normal colour vision viewing the sorites sequence under normal conditions of light, etc.
- 20.
Thus, for example, the background of a coloured patch can affect the colour it appears to be. See Hardin (1988), plate 2 (after p. 88).
- 21.
Here, it is important that the observer is actually looking at the situation in question. If it is not the case that, e.g., something appears to the observer because they are dead, it clearly does not follow that it appears to them to be the case that anything.
- 22.
A possible-world semantics for Θ might, however, raise doubts about positive introspection. According to these, ΘA is true at world w iff for all w′ such that wRw′, A is true at w′; where wRw′ iff w′realises all the things that appear to be the case at w. Now, the validity of positive introspection, left to right, is determined by the transitivity of R. But, one might well suppose, R is not transitive, simply because indiscernibility is not transitive. Interestingly, no similar problems seems to arise for negative introspection (left to right). In a world semantics, this is delivered by the symmetry of R, which raises no similar worries.
- 23.
A version of this paper was given at the 2nd International Colloquium on Colours and Numbers: How Colours Matter for Philosophy, Federal University of Ceará, March, 2015, and in a subsequent workshop. I am grateful to members of the audiences for their comments, and especially to Martine Nida-Rümelin.
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Priest, G. (2017). Things Are Not What They Seem. In: Silva, M. (eds) How Colours Matter to Philosophy. Synthese Library, vol 388. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67398-1_13
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