The Language of Color: Can You See "Reddish-Green"?

"But even if there were people for whom it was natural to use the expression 'reddish green' or 'yellowish-blue' in a consistent manner and who perhaps also exhibit abilities that we lack, we would still not be forced to recognize that they see colours which we do not see. There is after all no commonly accepted criterion for what is a colour, unless it is one of our colours." (I.14)

In his Remarks on Colour, Ludwig Wittgenstein alerts the reader to the complications that arise from uncertainty: "We must always be prepared to learn something new" (I.15). In the confines of Wittgenstein's world of color, this would mean learning "reddish-green" and "yellowish-blue," or at least accepting that others have adopted the terms into their descriptive vocabulary. The author argues that human beings almost always lack this sort of preparation, especially when the situation calls for evidence rooted in first-hand sensory experience. In fact, humans prepare not to engage in new learning that refutes old learning and experience in any way.

Suppose a close friend points to a two-dimensional shape that you have always known to be a circle and calls it a rectangle. Who would even remotely listen to that friend's reasoning as to why the shape is a rectangle and not a circle? The shapes are unmistakable and clearly defined. I would suspect most to shut down in the discussion, reverting to a simple, "No, you are wrong."

Of course, our language provides a definition for the shape "rectangle" that you could reference to refute your friend's claim; you could point out, for instance, that the shape in question lacks four sides and four right angles, and thus cannot be a rectangle. However, what facts can you call upon if he examines the color of the shape and decides it is a "reddish-green"? You have never before heard of something being colored reddish-green. You think the figure is red and believe that others would certainly agree, but, once again, have no way of explaining why it is red. It just is. It is the same color as a fire engine, an apple, a stop sign.

As Wittgenstein writes, "our ability to explain the meanings of [color] words goes no further" than the naming of objects that hold that color (I.68). Your friend maintains that there is something different about this red: It has some green in it. Is this redundancy as far as he could explain reddish-green? I guess so, unless he uses the term, as Wittgenstein proposes, in a "consistent manner," in which case he could spout off a dozen things the object shares its color with: a brick, a strawberry, or maybe the same apple you had previously labeled red.

And herein lies the problem; color is interpretable, subjective. I have had countless arguments that have begun in this way, "What color is this shirt? I think it's blue." Of course, my antagonist always believes it to be a shade of purple. Who wins? A third party is usually brought in to settle the dispute, but if they side with the antagonist does that necessarily make me wrong? Thousands taking a look at the shirt and simply stating "purple" does not take away its blueness from me. Wittgenstein asks us to imagine a world where every person but a few select exceptions are red-green color-blind. Could I change my mind, knowing full well the color-blind could be leading the color-conscious?

For Wittgenstein, it comes down to criteria, some sort of rule or standard that is used to judge, decide, differentiate, compare. A teacher will assign a student a grade for a paper based on how the student's performance matches up to the teacher's criterions.

Earlier, when I had to explain why the shape was rectangular, all I really did was demonstrate how its properties corresponded with the natural criterions of a rectangle. I guess that to decide if anything is anything, all we have to do is locate these measures of being, ask ourselves: "What makes anything, anything?"

We have already done this with color and decided, much like Wittgenstein, that there is "no commonly accepted criterion" for it. What makes red, red? Nothing. Well, not exactly. For me, personally, red is a color I learned as a child, taught through the use of the word by others around me; and now red is the color of anything that is inline with that teaching. I imagine that this is the experience for every human on this Earth. The criteria is internalized then personalized; a color is not a color if it is not our color.

If I can look at every object on this planet and call its color something other than reddish-green, then I do not have to recognize that a reddish-green object exists. Wittgenstein touches on the importance of the way people in our life use color words before we have acquired enough of them, before our color language has hardened to the possibilities of new description:

"Imagine a tribe of colour-blind people, and there could easily be one. They would not have the same colour concepts as we do. For even assuming they speak, e.g. English, and thus have all the English colour words, they would still use them differently than we do and would learn their use differently." (I.13)

Isolation is the key concept here, denoted by the fact that it is a tribe of people, a community, just like ours that assigns blood the color red and grass the color green. These assignments would, of course, be different in the tribe. Maybe the color of blood would be their orange. This designation would perpetuate, would be transferred from generation to generation. Blood would always be orange in this tribe. Suppose I meet a person whose parents are crazy and have just then allowed him to leave his house for the first time in his life. They have shaped his language indefinitely, allowing him no other outlets to amass his color vocabulary from. He too calls blood orange. Even stranger, his parents have taught him to differentiate between red and reddish-green. It would be just as difficult for him to accept my calling blood red as it would be for me to accept his calling blood orange. We would both hold criteria for these colors that would not allow the acceptance. Along the same lines, it would be just as difficult for me to accept his calling blood orange as it would be for me to recognize his calling anything reddish-green.

In the first instance, I have criteria for the color orange that directly conflicts with it being used to describe blood; in the second instance, I have no criteria whatsoever, except that what he sees as reddish-green, I probably see as plain red. Every person this man would ever meet would dispute his use of the term reddish-green, but he could never unlearn it, nor would he want to. He may be the color-conscious, and us just the color-blind.

Could reddish-green ever become one of "our colors"? I would answer, yes; all it would take is for you to establish some sort of standard for it, something to point to when you are asked to describe it. Sesame Street could begin teaching reddish-green alongside yellow and blue every morning and, in a few generations, it might be common to hear something along the lines of, "I'll take the reddish-green hat." Obviously, not everyone would acknowledge the color. Opinions, sets of criteria would clash, in an epic battle between red, green and the mix of the two, in a war of interpretation. But we cannot decide whether my t-shirt is blue or purple, so would it even really matter?

Work Cited

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on Colour. University of California Press, 1978.