more from Bertrand Russell

Single Idea 5372

[catalogued under 11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 1. Perceptual Realism / c. Representative realism]

Full Idea

It is quite gratuitous to suppose that physical objects have colours.

Clarification

'Gratuitous' means there is no good reason for it

Gist of Idea

There is no reason to think that objects have colours

Source

Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 3)

Book Reference

Russell,Bertrand: 'The Problems of Philosophy' [OUP 1995], p.18


A Reaction

This has always seemed to me self-evident, from the day I started to study philosophy. I cannot make sense of serious attempts to defend direct (naïve) realism. Colour is a brilliant trick of natural selection for extracting environmental information.