Philosophical Review

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour by G. E. M. Anscombe; Linda L. McAlister; Margarete Schattle Review by: Marcia Yudkin The Philosophical Review, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 118-120 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2184375 . Accessed: 17/01/2012 11:09
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The Philosophical Review, XC, No.1 January 1981)

BOOK REVIEWS
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, REMARKS ON COLOUR. Edited by G. E. M. ANSCOMBE. Translated by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schattle. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977. Pp.126. $8.95. At the very end of Philosophical Investigations,Wittgenstein puts forth the idea of an investigation of mathematics comparable to his work on psychology; it would not be mathematical,and could more justly be termed an investigation into the "foundation of mathematics." We have had for some time a collection of Wittgenstein's notes on that subject, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, and now we have, courtesy of G. E. M. Anscombe, editor, and two competent translators, Wittgenstein's notes on a much more restricted topic, published as Remarkson Colour. The continuity of this work with Wittgenstein's other investigations is not startling. Here, too, he is working at the uncertain borderline between the logical and the empirical, showing that peculiarities in the use of color concepts cannot be whisked away easily as natural facts about the physical realm of color or as a logical mess that could stand straightening out. Some of the difficulties arise because colors are variously important to artists, to scientists, and in everyday life. But the subject is especially significant for philosophers, who have a great investment in color's being such a clear and straightforward phenomenon so close to the physiological universal that it can serve as a firm and trustworthy foundation for knowledge. "I seem to see redness," for example, has seemed to many epistemologists just about as one can get. as basic, as self-justifying and context-independent Remarks on Colour, taken together with another posthumous work of Wittgenstein's, On Certainty,may show that security to be delusory. Epistemologists readily concede that different cultures may divide up the color spectrum differently than we, but some of Wittgenstein's examples challenge the assumption that it is as if one has a unitary color spectrum in one's head and matches with it what one sees. The process, if there is indeed such a process, would have at the least to be mediated by the knowledge of the sort of material one is looking at. For example, I see my flute as silver, not grey or, when light and shadow play upon it, black and white. I might describe the skin of my friend as white when I am discussing races, as ruddy when I am describing her complexion, and if I could be shown a patch of her skin 118

BOOK REVIEWS and persuaded that it was a patch of paint I might call it beige or dirty pink; which color do I really see it as? One's inclination, then, is to pick one material as the touchstone for all color, so that, for instance, the "real" color of something will be the color patch it would match if it were made of paint. But this would be a decision we make on grounds not inherent in the realm of color; why paint instead of plants and flowers, or gems? Worse, Wittgenstein points out difficulties in making comparisons between colors of paint and colors of, say, glass: "Can a transparent green glass have the same colour as a piece of opaque paper or not? If such a glass were depicted in a painting, the colours would not be transparent on the palette. If we wanted to say the colour of the glass was also transparent in the painting, we would have to call the complex of colour patches which depict the glass its colour." (1-18) Again, one is tempted to set up a convention, that the color of the glass is the color it would appear when one looks through it at something white. Yet if one attempts to stick to the color it appears at any specific time, and match that to paint samples, one has also to decide whether to bracket one's knowledge that it is glass, and that glass behaves in such and such a way when placed before an object that in normal light looks such and such a color. As Wittgenstein says with respect to another disturbing case: "Do I actually see the boy's hair blond in the photograph?-Do I see it grey? Do I only infer that whatever looks this way in the picture, must in reality be blond? In one sense I see it blond, in another I see it lighter or darker grey." (III-271) Many of Wittgenstein's most intriguing remarks concern transparency, a property that seems neither clearly logical nor clearly empirical. Why is there no transparent white? Why can a substance not be white and clear? Why do we call glass colorless when, through it, white light appears white? Or, related troubles: Why is there no "brownhot"? Why is there no clear brown? Why no luminous gray? "Why is it that a dark yellow doesn't have to be perceived as 'blackish', even if we call it dark? The logic of the concept of colour is just much. more complicated than it might seem." (III-106) Wittgenstein also has many interesting remarks about the concept of "seeing," and the condition of color-blindness. He invents some tribes worth thinking about, one that is (in our terms) red-green colorblind; one that has the color reddish-green but not reddish-yellow; and one that has only color-shape concepts, with one word for "green leaf" and another for "green table," and who fail to understand the similarity we see. Remarks on Colour as a whole is more repetitive than other post119

BOOK REVIEWS humous works by Wittgenstein, and is likely to be most rewarding to people who already have a particular interest in color concepts and who will care about trying to unravel the many logical knots Wittgenstein brings to light in a realm that has often been considered to be a straightforward, unproblematical system.
MARCIA YUDKIN

SmithCollege

The Philosophical Review,XC, No. 1 January 1981) DISMANTLING THE MEMORY MA CHINE. By HOWARD ALEXANDER BURSEN. Dordrecht, Holland, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979. Pp. xiii, 157. $19.50. How is it that I am able to recall a melody I have heard before? A very compelling picture is that upon hearing the music, some sort of recording (called a "trace") is made in my brain. Recall is or involves a playing back of this recording. This picture is so compelling that theorists have been led to feel that such a mechanism is the only possible explanation of memory. Bursen first argues that this is not the only possible model. Suppose I hear an orchestral piece; at a later time I hear the piece in my head, but I substitute trumpets for the violins. Then I put violins back in, "hearing" it as I originally heard it. In the same way that I "supplied" trumpets, I now "supply" violins, changing it back to the way I remember Since I don't need a recording for the it. rendition with trumpets (since I have never heard it with trumpets), I don't have to be making use of a recording in my head for the violins either. And the same thing could be done for the rhythm, the tempo, the loudness, etc. But even if memory could be in this way creative, how do I know that the tune, e.g., was played by violins? Bursen doesn't answer this, but the point is that my ability to recall the tune doesn't necessitatesome sort of recording of the violin sound that I originally heard. Indeed, he argues, there doesn't seem to be any aspect of the original performance that would have to be recorded in order for me to be able, e.g., to hear it in my head as I first heard it. But even if a trace theory of memory needn'tbe correct, still it might be. So Bursen turns next to a difficulty (as opposed to an alternative) for trace theory. In order for trace theory to work as an account of memory, we need to supplement it with an account of how we get access

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