Impossible colours

Wittgenstein and the naturalist's challenge

Andrew Lugg

pp. 107-121

in: Marcos Silva (ed), How colours matter to philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

With the rise of naturalistic philosophy, conceptual analysis has faded into the background, and Ludwig Wittgenstein's account of reddish green and transparent white as grammatically excluded has been written off or ignored. While his view of such impossible colours is, as he himself saw, open to question, so too is the naturalist's alternative.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig