home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!news.Brown.EDU!news.Brown.EDU!news
- From: PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie)
- Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
- Subject: Colors, Schemes, Theories
- Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 11:37:29 EST
- Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island USA
- Lines: 33
- Message-ID: <1ius3kINNltg@cat.cis.Brown.EDU>
- References: <1993Jan12.160605.27799@sarah.albany.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
- News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta
-
- Christopher Green:
-
- > (Note that many cultures do not have the same color scheme as us.)
-
- I would like to know what this means.
-
- Does it mean that some languages give names to different colors
- from the ones we distinguish with names? That seems an
- unremarkable fact.
-
- Does it mean that people in some cultures make significantly
- different similarity judgments between colors from the ones
- we make? I would like to know the evidence for this.
-
- C.L. Hardin reports the opposite. He reports that experimental
- data show that (1) infants have a "hue space" that is neatly
- divided into four similarity classes centered upon the four
- unique hues; (2) the Dani people of New Guinea, who have no
- words for abstract chromatic hues, recognize which ones are
- the unique hues anyway. (Reference and quotations available
- upon request.)
-
- What is a color scheme?
-
- Almost as an aside at this point, let me add that I do not quite
- see the relevance of the theory-laden/pure observation distinction
- to the question of scientific realism. Suppose, that is, stipulate,
- that all observations are theory-laden. How would this show that
- there is no such thing as a true (in the sense of, correctly
- describing the world) theory? How would it show that theoretic
- terms have no referents?
-
- Jamie
-