Wittgenstein and Color

Re "Remarks on Color" by Ludwig Wittgenstein
For verdaccio: http://www.youtube.com/user/verdaccio

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Ludwig
• Wittgenstein
• Remarks
• on
• Color
• logic
• language
• linguistics
• philosophy
• visualization
• imagination
• poetry
• creationism
• natural
• limitation
• transcendence
• theory
• Goethe

[openmindset]

This book is not about color!!! Not theories, concepts, psychology, physiology, or physics of color, transparencies, color blindness, ...W. is a philosopher and this book is about philosophy. Of the mind! Color perception is just one of the ways he uses to "try" to show philosophers their illusion that there must be a "thing" (concrete, ethereal, whatever), called mind, where visual images are staged, observed, memorized... "It is easy to understand what I say. Why I say it is not.". Indeed.

[Cimbolic]

@openmindset

I believe you are reading-in to this book.

The book consists of extracts from his journals. He did not publish.

He does state at one point in the book that he is looking for a "logic of color".

I do not recall the book saying anything about trying to "show philosphers their illusion that there must be a 'thing'", etc.

As I say, these are extracts from his journals. Hence, the style is like he is talking to himself.

[LiradeTerpsichore]

I feel like you are not looking at what I say. I give you several examples of transparent white and you keep answering with your previously fixed thoughts.

Several kind of glasses, are a good example of several transparent whites, or a proof that you are looking at a transparent white, when you look at ordinary glass.

[Cimbolic]

It is not a matter of fixed thought.

It is a matter of the visual imagination.

If you mean to say that transparent, "clear", glass is acutally tranparent "white", then I disagree because it is colorless not white.

[LiradeTerpsichore]

In Ice... all gradations, and in light.

Deneb is white - a star- if our earth was iluminated by Deneb, light would be transparent white.

As our sun is ... there's some yellow,gold glow in our sun light. As you know moon-light is whiter.

[Cimbolic]

This is very interesting.

[GoldenFinchFellow]

maybe the reason you see it as foggy or cloudy is cause all of the colors have their place within "white" so you can't choose what shades to focus on and which to block out so the imagined image looks like clouds moving through it of uncertainty. where as an other color gives a direct reference to only block out a certain level of color in the lets say purple range. so everything still looks really clear? so still for me it's no different but incredibly fun to think about :D thanks

[GoldenFinchFellow]

it might mean I just can't visualize transparent colors at all! only translucent? like turning up the transparent color more and more eventually you would still see everything in shades but the details are only shades of the transparent color and eventually at the limit of my eyes ability to detect differences in shade only black...

So if I put yellow shaded glasses on is that not transparent?

So now I have no clue :( you've blown my unworldly view.

[GoldenFinchFellow]

but you can imagine transparent black? when I think of transparent color I think of looking at a solid color and all definition is just shading of what ever color. So for me it's no different then other colors. but it seems like any color is taking away a shade of the full spectrum of light to show it's own self and so I don't see shading as white and have no clue how you see transparent black! keep in mind I have no reference of this book to know what you're talking about :)

[openmindset]

@Cimbolic Unfortunately, Txs for your response. I don't have access to the book to continue a more intelligent debate. But two things: 1) W. does say that It is easy to understand what he says, but not whyhe says it - an invitation for read-ins of his writings (the PI as a best example) 2) W. believed that logic is a creation of man, not a quality of reality to be pursued empirically. I am curious about the context of your quote on him "looking for" a "logic of color". It is very not him.

[Cimbolic]

Yes. But I can easily imagine a transparent blue.

White, however, doesn't work for me. The closest i get is a kind of "milky".