File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 626


Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 13:27:03 -0400
From: Stirling Newberry <allegro-AT-thecia.net>
Subject: Re: PLC: Farbenlehre



>   Wittgenstein favors the view that perception -- not just in-
>terpretation -- is conventionally determined, therefore easily
>suscep- tible to modification.  He argues that if, say, light
>blue and dark blue were known by dissimilar names -- in the
>example, the names are "Oxford" and "Cambridge" -- people would
>say they saw no similarity between them (1958, 135).  The
>generalization is too broad.  Names can create a bias for or
>against the named object or color, which is why <daffodil
>yellow> sounds more appealing than <pus yellow>.  But pairs of
>color names as different in sound and spelling as <Oxford> and
><Cambridge> exist.  Viewers shown the pairs of colors, or
>familiar with them, recognize a visual similarity.  Dark brown
>and chestnut, cerulean and turquoise, ver- milion and crimson,
>ocher and mustard, are examples.

But the creation of a separate word indicates a cultural or linguistic
determination that a person in the culture *ought* to be able to recognise
the difference between the two colors. Perception can then be influence by
name not because some transference from the likeness between two colours in
terms of language to how they appear to perception - but instead perception
will be altered by having to exersize the correct degree of discrimination
to be able to identify a difference which the language says *ought* to be
there.


Stirling Newberry
business: openmarket.com
personal: allegro-AT-thecia.net
War and Romance: http://www.thecia.net/users/allegro/public_html




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