[lit-ideas] Re: Hume's Missing Shade of Blue
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:21:04 -0700
JL writes
Now, Karl Troegge is regaled with a T-shirt of a shade he has no impression
of --. Is he imaginative enough to 'fill' in the missing link? Hume say[s],
he 'can't'. (Or, in Walter Ok. -- I intend to write a post on Russian
philosophy, today --'s preferred spelling, "he kant").
This is a bit confused. Karl Troegge could see the missing shade of blue
perfectly well; in fact, in Hume's example, the man who notices that
this shade is 'missing' and forms the idea of it in his imagination when
viewing a panel of 'all the different shades of that colour, except that
single one, [is] placed before him, descending gradually from the
deepest to the lightest...' and '[perceives] a blank, where that shade
is wanting...,' could have seen that shade of blue itself, earlier.
Hume's example only works—if it does—because of the contingent fact that
this particular subject has never seen the shade in question before. The
shade itself isn't somehow metaphysically invisible.
So, if the color of this shade is no different from other shades of
blue, in that it could be directly perceived through the senses, Mr.
Troegge need not use his imagination to see it—only his eyes.
Robert Paul,
noted Hume scholar
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