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To: js1138; Right Wing Professor; betty boop; cornelis; marron
Thank you so much for your great illustration of the case in point!

Is green a figment of your individual imagination - or a universal?

I say it is a universal (except of course to the color blind men as RWP asserts cannot see that particular universal) - and thus, even with preschoolers, I could instruct them to color the grass green on handouts without having to first teach them to read the wrapper on the crayon.

261 posted on 03/18/2005 8:26:14 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: Right Wing Professor; js1138; MacDorcha; betty boop; cornelis; marron; OhioAttorney
Another quick point about the universal of green and the color blind man....

The color green exists even when the man cannot see it. That is what makes it a universal. It exists even if no man could see it.

Before there was man, there was "greenness" "threeness" "pi" and so forth.

This is the same point of a tree falling in the forest. Did it make a sound if noone heard it?

OhioAttorney: Whether or not it's possible to give an objective, covering-all-cases definition of a range of experiential qualia -- or even of one such quale -- doesn't really address the question whether such qualia are universals. If that specific shade of green can recur identically in more than one context, it's a universal in the sense in which ontologists use the word. If not -- that is, if two occurrences of what seem to be the exact same color are really two different but 'exactly similar' qualia -- then that specific shade is not a universal. (Most modern nominalists would invoke trope theory or something equivalent at that point.)

I would dispute that "green" is a qualia. Qualia are "the properties of sensory experiences which are epistemically unknowable in the absence of direct experience of them and therefore, are also incommunicable." Examples include likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and evil.

I can however communicate a precise shade of green by pointing to it. The colors are actually numbered for graphic artists/printers for consistency - so I could speak or write a number to communicate a precise shade of green.

I do however strongly agree with you on the existence of qualia and its importance to philosophy, mathematics and science.

273 posted on 03/18/2005 8:39:32 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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