Landesman surveys the possibilities for what color is (color skepticism, color nihilism [or extreme skepticism], and color realism), and finds himself torn between good Humean habits for realism and compelling arguments for nihilism. He concludes chapter two with a kind of delicate suspension between these two
Perhaps his balancing act is unnecessary. A half millenium ago, the phrase "the sun rises" would have been a straightforward, literal description of an experienced event. It finally dawned on us, and today it is a metaphor, among educated people, for the rotation of the earth bringing the sun into view. There is a meaningful sense in which these descriptions contradict each other, but a deeper sense in which they are simply the same phenomenon described from different perspectives -- and neither is false. In Aristotelian logic they are infact subcontraries, not contradictories, so there is no problem with them both being true.
Moreover, the sun rising (likelemons looking yellow) is in a category of appearances that I'm inclined to call durable appearance (as contrasted with mere appearance) in the sense that the literal explanation of their fine structure or underlying causes does not diminish at all the robustness of them appearing the way they do. Call this non-reductive explanation. Mere appearances, like hallucinations, typically vanish when you see through them; durable appearances go right on looking the way they do from the perspective of a normal procedure, creating no real contradiction.
Matt
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11 comments:
I don't think his balancing act is unecessary because that's what humans deal with daily. Realizing a wider perspective and dealing with your personal perspective.
I agree that the two subcontraries are both true.
I don't think they're subcontraries, simply two compatible truths (or candidates for truth), akin to "All S are P" and "All S are Q" (or, more to your point, "All lemons are yellow" and "All lemons have fine structure Q").
The structure of subcontraries, in standard form, is "Some S are P" (I) and "Some S are not P" (O). While they can at times both be true, propositions I and O cannot both be false, since any object in S must either be P or not P.
All we can say about lemons in terms of the subcontrary relation is that, perhaps, (1) "some lemons are yellow" (A) and "some lemons are not yellow," (B); and (2) it is not the case that A and B are both false, that is, "no lemons are yellow" and "all lemons are yellow."
As far as the subcontraries I am refering to - in class, the two perspectives of the sun rising. [just to clarify]
I think personal perspectives lend themselves to subjectivity and lose their credence when trying to talk about objective things. Matching up the subjective and the objective, when trying to find a medium (such as whether or not the sun "rises" or lemons are yellow) should rely largely, if not entirely, on what objective understandings can be formulated about the entity.
In this respect, saying that lemons are yellow because they look that way, and yet believing there is no such thing as color is, in my opinion, arbitrary and inutile. My understanding of color or the motions of the sun are better informed when not relying on my previously uneducated subjective theories about them. In a way, to keep on saying the sun rises merely because that's my visual subjective impression lends more to Hume's constant conjunction, and an affection for naive things best left reserved for metaphor or the past.
But perhaps that just works best with my personality, which prefers an objective-as-possible description of the physical reality, and while loving metaphors, finds it difficult to believe the sun indeed rises.
I agree with what you're saying to a degree, derek, but can't help to think that unless you have experienced first hand, leaving this planet and some how observe how the planets and sun move, then there is a possibility, whether how small, that the planets do not revolve around the sun. Now don't get me wrong, I do not believe that the earth doesn't revolve around the sun, but I do believe there is a possibility that it doesn't.
what about:
all lemons are yellow to someone
no lemons are yellow to someone
some lemons are yellow to someone
some lemons are not yellow to someone
how is this wrong?
There's always a possibility for being wrong; falliblism is the key to inquiry.
And your examples aren't wrong, they just make no claims about lemons, only people.
Or at least people's perceptions of lemons.
well i think because people only know their own perceptions, a different perception of lemons can be imagined but never known
That is, at least if we mean by knowledge only that which we experience directly ourselves. I suspect, however, that this will not do as an account of what it is to know.
Good post.
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