Unsolved Question of Philosophy

An understandable conclusion.

However, for those who have philosophical minds, it seems plenty serious.

Surely, you're not contemplating that you have a philosophical mind, are you?

I'll presume that I should probably release those essays that I wrote back in 2006 about "Morality", "Artistic vs. Natural Interpretation of Colour", "Just Desserts; When and When Not" and "The Conscience."

In other words: Indeed, I am.

Come now, we've all written essays. It's laughable that you actually believe it holds any significance.

You begin by explaining that some languages don't have a separate word for blue and green.
However, you seemed to have forgotten something: there are also languages that do have separate words for green and blue.
Welp, there goes your premise.

You also failed to even address what colours actually are: physiological interpretations of light.
That was a major step missed, in fact, one of the corner stones to making any logical inquiry; making it clear you don't have very much experience with empirical philosophy.

There isn't much to do with rational philosophy, so I ask you a basic question.
Who is the man famous for using the exact premise of his predecessor to come to the exact opposite conclusion?



It's true! Philosophy has no real world use, except one: pointing out the pseudo-intellectuals who have never actually studied it.

Whilst your point about how the question that I frained in my first post fails to address the languages that have separate terms for those colours, I feel that your statement about philosophy in general is quite biased. Philosophy can force the human mind into thinking about simple subjects in a complex manner; thus (possibly) changing how they view things as a whole.

I, mind thee, did not write those essays for a "philosophy course." I wrote them as situations involving their respective subjects arose.

While it might seem like useless information to thou, there is a reason why we have so many philosophers.

On a side note: Beause I've lived in the United States my entire life (as have my parents) and have no ancestors from England (though I am a quarter Irish; not the reason I write the way I do, though, as I write and speak differently than my parents), it pains me to see people of my generation (late '80s-early '90s) going around using unforstandy nonsense such as:

*Illicut drugs
*Incorrect spelling
*Rebellion

as a method of "being cool."

Philosophy could really open up the minds of the dumbcups, and get them to be more civilised.

I take personal offense to that. :(



...Ok. That's actually just plain ignorant.

What do you think drives science? What do you think asks the questions that science attempts to answer? What do you think allows us to even have a slight comprehension of the counter intuitive reality of quantum physics?

How do you think we come up with laws? How do you think we discern the necessity of secularity in government? How do you think we deduce conclusions if not through inductive reasoning and through logic? How do you think we come to KNOW anything?

Philosophy. And that's just the tip of the iceberg with what philosophy not only DOES do, but can do.

Philosophy is the foundation of...everything. No real world use? Are you kidding me?

Lundi, it was more or less a joke.

Also, I see you got your rep back up. I'm glad, you always made sensible arguments.

I apologize. I've been seeing a lot of this "fuck philosophy" rhetoric on all my usual places (facebook, youtube) and it's starting to get to me.

It's interesting how people use the word rhetoric with negative connotation, where it's actually a sub branch of philosophy (refined by Plato and Aristotle) along with a sub branch of English. Just an interesting titbit of information.

It's popular opinion today that philosophy is useless, simply because a philosophy degree can't get you a job.

Really unless you write a book or become a professor, or an advisor to some high class politician...you're kind of screwed. In other words, you either make it big as a philosopher, or nobody really cares about you.

So is the thread answered now that you guys steered off the topic and into the usefulness of philosophy?

Suppose never is a bit harsh depending on how you define the field of Philosophy. Most Philosophical arguments or questions that a "non philosophical person" such as my self see doesn't really put philosophers in a bright light.

Since this is maybe my first post on fakku, people can dismiss this as "hmph, yea right, n00b!" but I have a degree in physics, so I think my two penny peices may be worth it.

Everyone talking about blue is ~450nm and green is ~550nm are pretty much on the right lines I think, but since I didn't read every post I can't say that nobody else was.

Thing about this is that once you say "blue is 450nm" then suddenly 451 and every(infinite) number of wavelngths inbetween are also different colours. If you define green and blue as different shades of one colour then you have to then consider blue a shade of red and -indeed- radiowave colour and gammaray colour.

Also, in reference to the original "MOST languages in the world DO NOT have a separate word for "blue" and "green"", you can be guaranteed that the most spoken languages in the world, I'd say about 5-6 billion people at least, do distinguish between blue and green.

Yeah right noob.

Just kidding, you are right that if it raises up from 450 to 451 that infinite amount wavelengths between those two numbers are different since Colors have almost infinite wavelengths to them. My science teacher once said that brown has over 500 shades, so that is how I can agree to what you just wrote.

That would be me, and also the reason I use the word roughly.

I find it interesting that most people who have degrees in physics tend to be a little philosophical about their interpretations of the science at hand. Not a bad thing, I actually like it. That's how we get things like the Copenhagen Interpretation after all.

You bring up a good point about there being a "blue" nm number, and a "green" number, but that everything in between is odd.

I don't think it delineates the overall point of there being a distinction between the two, but I'd still like to address it regardless.

With 450 nm being blue and 550 nm being green, we can come up with a point of comparison. For instance, the mean number of 450 and 550 is 500. At 500, blue and green become indistinguishable(though I don't think anything refracts light in that wavelength, but for the sake of argument let's say something does). Prior to 500 we would say the color is majoritively blue-ish. After 500 we'd say the color is majoritively green-ish. So...what would we call a color refracted at the wavelength of 500 nm?

I'm starting to like this question :)



I don't think it's so much interesting as absolutely necessary that we stay out of 100% fact, otherwise how would be critical of ourselves if our results are right!?



It's not so much about having 450nm for blue and 550nm for green, it's more like 420-490nm are the shades we call blue, then there're a few inbetween and we have what we call green at 500-570nm.

Anything can emit that light! A pure white light shining on an object oscillating at 600THz should.

Not to sound like an arse, but surely that's just turquoise?

No. Anything between 500 and 520 nm would be classified as cyan light.

But...turquoise is cyan.

It's a tad bit greener than normal cyan light. 500 would be perfect cyan, methinks.