Can there be a new colour?
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Can there be a new colour?
Could we discover a colour that no-one has ever seen before? If not, then is "There can be no new colour" a contingent statement or a necessary statement?
Whatever the answer, what do we learn from this about the logic of the concept of colour? One of the key features of consciousness is our private experience of seeing colours, hearing sounds, etcetera. Yet the logic of this aspect of consciousness is poorly understood.
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Furthermore, there does not appear to be a "logic" to the colour spectrum such that one can know a priori, for instance, that green follows yellow. It is not a progression from white to black, after all, but from red to violet
So if someone declares that they can see a new colour, say they claim to see two colours in that interval in the spectrum where we only see green, then there claim does not appear to me to be conceptually or logically impossible. (Of course their claim can be checked by seeing whether they can, repeatedly, correctly identify objects that they affirm to have the new colour.)
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The color of magic...
Better than those bastards at Google;
http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023