Reply to Gilbert

Abstract

In 'Westphal and Wittgenstein on White'1 Paul Gilbert makes an important criticism of my view in 'White',2 though it was one which I had anticipated in that paper. The criticism is this. How does the knowledge of the nature of colours, to which I appealed, help with the question why some things (white ones) can't look one way or another (transparent)? All that I showed, to Gilbert's way of thinking, was why something can't be simultaneously white and transparent. According to Gilbert, 'The high degree of reflectiveness of white surfaces cannot explain why white surfaces look opaque.' As I have just said, I anticipated this criticism, and it is a disappointment to me that Gilbert has made it, not just because I believe that the best explanation why something looks a certain way, in one sense of looks, is because it is that way, but because the no-wavelength strategy of 'White' was designed to explain the looks of the colour. I wrote, 'We need a conception of whiteness which will connect the colour with the unique or asymmetrical property . . . which is our explanandum . . . The conception must not allow the physical property and the phenomenal property to part company, or we will lose the prospect of finding here a necessity . . (p. 3I6). And I did find a necessity exactly where I expected to. I also wrote that the phenomenal rightness of the conception was evidenced by the fact that white turns to glare under increased illumination, and then to dazzle, which lie higher on the brightness scale, so that there is a continuity in a phenomenal series herea very important point; by the fact that painters use white for highlights; by the fact that white but not black can be dazzling, certain painterly effects apart; and by the fact that white can be regarded as a low achromatic brilliance. There are plenty of other similar facts which could be used to make the same point. But I am afraid that it is also my view that things can look white and transparent at the same time, though for the most part, they don't, for the reason I gave. I believe this because I believe (Principle P) that under the right conditions anything can look like virtually anything. Made up or under suitably arranged conditions I can look like Mary Queen of Scots or anybody else. And a white sheet of paper reflected in a window makes that part of the window look white and transparent. Wittgenstein writes3 that 'A smooth white surface can reflect things. But what, then, if we made a mistake and that which appeared to be reflected in such a surface were really behind it and seen through it? Would the surface then be white and transparent?' So according to Wittgenstein a surface can look white and transparent, while something still needs explaining-why it isn't. Wittgenstein isn't only directing his puzzle about white to the way it looks. The question at L.I9 seems to be straightforward enough: 'Why is it that something can be transparent green but not transparent white?'