What’s weird, is that without a premise about what “green” and “blue” stand for semantically, the skeptic can just repeat that paragraph back to you, but switch all the occurrences of “grue” and “green”, since “grue” and “green” are logically symmetrical.
It seems to me that the only sensible primitives are photons, which have particular energies. A perception system that has two sets of mappings from energies to names and a clock is necessarily less simple than a perception system that has one mapping from energies to names.
The theory holds that the world consists of ultimate logical “facts” (or “atoms”) that cannot be broken down any further.
(from wikipedia) For “green” to be atomic, that suggests it cannot be broken down. Are you suggesting that “green” cannot be broken down to statements about energies of photons?
No, I just mean that (or goodman just means that) if we assume the meanings of grue and bleen, then we have to define green in terms of grue and bleen and a time interval.
But where can I find grue and bleen? If knowledge of them were deleted from my memory, would I reform those concepts?
If you deleted my knowledge of color, but left me my eyes, I could still distinguish between photons of 2.75 eV and photons of 2.3 eV. That’s a difference you can find outside you and that persists.
But where can I find grue and bleen? If knowledge of them were deleted from my memory, would I reform those concepts?
If you were a confused philosopher then yes, you probably would! It’s definitely part of thought-space that I expect people to rush to fill once they are spending their time thinking of pointless stuff. Hopefully if it was you you would proceed straight to dissolving the question!
What’s weird, is that without a premise about what “green” and “blue” stand for semantically, the skeptic can just repeat that paragraph back to you, but switch all the occurrences of “grue” and “green”, since “grue” and “green” are logically symmetrical.
They can claim that the grue hypothesis is simpler than the green hypothesis?
If we take “green” and “bleen” as primitives, then it is the definition of “green” which requires the time interval, not grue.
But if we go down to the level of photons, “green” and “blue” don’t require a time interval in their definitions, yet “grue” and “bleen” do.
What do you mean by “primitives”?
It seems to me that the only sensible primitives are photons, which have particular energies. A perception system that has two sets of mappings from energies to names and a clock is necessarily less simple than a perception system that has one mapping from energies to names.
logical primitives, look up logical atomism, take it with a grain of salt.
(from wikipedia) For “green” to be atomic, that suggests it cannot be broken down. Are you suggesting that “green” cannot be broken down to statements about energies of photons?
No, I just mean that (or goodman just means that) if we assume the meanings of grue and bleen, then we have to define green in terms of grue and bleen and a time interval.
But where can I find grue and bleen? If knowledge of them were deleted from my memory, would I reform those concepts?
If you deleted my knowledge of color, but left me my eyes, I could still distinguish between photons of 2.75 eV and photons of 2.3 eV. That’s a difference you can find outside you and that persists.
right, thats the point, to solve the problem, you have to move into semantics.
If you were a confused philosopher then yes, you probably would! It’s definitely part of thought-space that I expect people to rush to fill once they are spending their time thinking of pointless stuff. Hopefully if it was you you would proceed straight to dissolving the question!
You mean grue and bleen?
But… why would we be allowed to do that?