From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: 18 May 2015 17:57
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Can a sweater be red and green all over? No stripes
allowed.
In a message dated 5/18/2015 8:29:38 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> writes: "Well, is the sky a
body ? I would rather think that it
is the field of vision in which we sometimes perceive blue, sometimes grey
etc. and then construe it as some sort of object. I think that we are seeing
another example of allegedly analytic argument that turns out to be
prescriptive - we should not EXPECT to see etc. In any case it is at least
possible to imagine colours without objects."
Well, I don't think so. Waterdrops or droplets if you must are one
category, whatever colour they 'have' is another.
*This does not really explain it. We say that the skue is blue, not that
waterdrops or droplets are. Yet the sky is not a body.
What about the earlier question about the sun - the sun appears yellow only
when perceived through the Earth's atmosphere, seen from space it would appear
white. So which object is yellowness a property of here, exactly ?
Again, what about Rafael's paintings of angels and Venus - we see colors
there, which existing substance is 'exemplified' by them ?
O.K.
On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 5:43 PM, Redacted sender
Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx<mailto:Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> for DMARC
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
In a message dated 5/18/2015 8:29:38 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> writes: "Well, is the sky a
body ? I would rather think that it
is the field of vision in which we sometimes perceive blue, sometimes grey
etc. and then construe it as some sort of object. I think that we are seeing
another example of allegedly analytic argument that turns out to be
prescriptive - we should not EXPECT to see etc. In any case it is at least
possible to imagine colours without objects."
Well, I don't think so. Waterdrops or droplets if you must are one
category, whatever colour they 'have' is another.
So it's more of a Kantotelian thing, and since Kantotle was influenced by
Plathegel, we must just as well start with the source of it all: Plato's
Timaeus and his trichotomy: hue-saturation-brightness
It is a fact that the Universals and Evolution model in cross-language
colour naming systems (as per Berlin & Kay 1969) predicted that Classical
Greek chroma terms should have referred to "hue" regions of the colour space,
and such a reading can be made Plato’sTimaeus (67c68d). On top of that, like
Goethe centuries later Plato was well aware (as apparently Witters thought
no 'theory' for this made sense) of the distinction between hue, saturation
and brightness.
As for Kantotle, consider the logical form of
i. The cat is orange.
"x" has the properties of being a cat, and of being orange.
"Orange" and "cat" belong, though, to different categories. This is the
region of eschatology, where we consider cross-categorial barriers.
One can offer evidence for the EXISTENCE OF A UNIVERSAL ("orangeness") by
predicating it of a particular ("Tom the cat"):
A: Tom is orange.
B: (a) Orange cats do not exist.
(b) Orangeness does not exist.
A: (a) Yes, they do.
(b) Yes, it does: Tom is orange
In second-order predicate calculus:
(F)GF
by way of contrast, a descriptive statement does not guarantee the
existence of their subjects, but rather stand in a "special relation" to a
statement of existence.
This special relation, a presupposition, as the following conversation can
be shown to be not linguistically in order:
A: Tom is orange.
B: There is no such cat as Tom.
A: Yes, there is. Tom is orange.
Producing a sentence in which something ('orange') is predicated of a
substantial subject ('Tom the cat') is NOT enough to guarantee the existence of
that subject.
The situation would be quite different if 'in the next room' were
substituted into A's response.
A: Tom is orange.
B: There is no such cat as Tom.
A: Yes, there is. Tom is in the next room.
And that's because A's choice of predicate ("in the next room") does MORE
than just offer a description of Tom the cat. The choice of the predicate
points to a way of verifying Tom's existence.
Considerations like these may be what Husserl had in mind when sticking to
the fact that there cannot be a colour without a substance to 'exemplify'
it. It's a conceptual, 'a priori' claim: anaytic to most, synthetic to
Husserl and (we think) Witters (but he would not say it, but show it at most).
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit
www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html<http://www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html>
