Colour

by Jonathan Westphal

Published 24 September 1987
This work subjects some of the statements in Wittgenstein's "Remarks on Colour" (What do we mean when we talk about colour? Why can't there be brown light or anything transparent white?) to a detailed examination that draws on philosophy, phenomenology, psychology and physics. The author rejects Wittgenstein's grammatical explanation of colours, as well as the physicalists' reduction of colours to light emissions of specific wavelengths. He argues that in the phenomenon of colour lie clues to the question of the relation between the physical and mental sides of human nature.