• Pronsias del Mar
    26
    This takes up from a thread called ‘Phil in Shakespeare’. It concerns a little philosophical trope in Henry VI Part 1 which I think originates somewhere else. The question is, does it, and where?

    The purpose of the scene is to show one courtier the smartest guy on the block.

    So: the king and some courtiers meet some plebs rejoicing because one of them, blind from birth, has just recovered his sight. No-one, including the audience, has any reason to think this is not true. The clever guy pretends to disbelieve that the blind guy can really see and invites him to identify colours, which he does, but it’s a trick. While our attention and that of all characters on stage is on whether he names the colours correctly, the real interest is that he can name them at all. As the clever guy triumphantly explains, since naming colours requires a learning process the pleb cannot have just recovered his sight. He wasn’t blind. Fraud exposed, dramatic purpose achieved.

    My impression is that this is philosophically cute and not Shakespeare’s invention. It feels ‘patched in’ from some university discussion. It reminds me of later debates about meaning: if the meaning of ‘black’ were blackness, seeing blackness would be enough for one to be able to use ‘black’ correctly, but the correct use of ‘black’ – or any word – has to be socially learned. I wonder whether anyone – if they agree it is philosophically interesting – recognizes it as a trope of Renaissance or Scholastic discussion of language or meaning?
  • Pronsias del Mar
    26
    'I talk to the trees…'
  • jkg20
    405
    Medieaval philosophy isn't as popular as it was a thousand years ago. Maybe you should try contacting by email a philosophy faculty member with an expertise in medieval philosophy. Here for instance?
  • Pronsias del Mar
    26
    I was crowdsourcing. Ah well.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    I had drafted an answer, but as I'm not a medievalist, I thought better of posting it. (There aren't many here, by the way, jkg's tip might be of more use.) But anyway, the one comment I did make was that the thought-experiment you're referring to is Frank Jackson's 'Mary's Room' - where 'Mary' is a scientist who knows all about colour perception, but has always lived in a completely monochromatic world, up until the time she is shown something red, at which point she really knows what 'red' is, for the first time.

    Whether that was inspired by the passage from Shakespeare, I don't know, but the resemblance is pretty clear. But, as to whether the medievals discussed color perception - I would be surprised if that were true. I seem to recall that Bishop Berkeley, in addition to his better-known idealist philosophy, also had a strong interest in optics. He criticized his predecessors on that score, but that included the work of Descartes whom is not really considered amongst the medievals.
  • Pronsias del Mar
    26
    Yes it’s trodden ground since Shakespeare: I can’t think previous phil didn’t touch on it but will search elsewhere. Thanks for replying.
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