“grass is green” and “sky is blue” are always funny examples to me, since whenever I hear them I go check, and they’re usually not true. Right now from my window, I can see brown grass and a white/gray sky.
So they’re especially good examples, as people will actually use them as paradigms of indisputably true empirical propositions, and even those seem almost always to be a mismatch between the map and the territory.
I wish I could upvote this twice, just for pointing out an obvious error that I’ve never previously twigged on. I shall try to keep it close to the front of memory the next time I feel really certain about something.
As an experiment, a couple raised their child without telling them what colour the sky was. When they eventually asked, the child… thought about it. Eventually… “white”. (I’d assumed it was a clear sky. Just realised it’s a pointless story if it was cloudy.)
“grass is green” and “sky is blue” are always funny examples to me, since whenever I hear them I go check, and they’re usually not true. Right now from my window, I can see brown grass and a white/gray sky.
So they’re especially good examples, as people will actually use them as paradigms of indisputably true empirical propositions, and even those seem almost always to be a mismatch between the map and the territory.
I wish I could upvote this twice, just for pointing out an obvious error that I’ve never previously twigged on. I shall try to keep it close to the front of memory the next time I feel really certain about something.
As an experiment, a couple raised their child without telling them what colour the sky was. When they eventually asked, the child… thought about it. Eventually… “white”. (I’d assumed it was a clear sky. Just realised it’s a pointless story if it was cloudy.)
Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? - starts with colours in Homer.