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Logic and Colour

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Abstract

In this paper evidence will be provided that Wittgenstein’s intuition about the logic of colour relations is to be taken near-literally. Starting from the Aristotelian oppositions between propositions as represented in the logical square of oppositions on the one hand and oppositions between primary and secondary colors as represented in an octahedron on the other, it will be shown algebraically how definitions for the former carry over to the realm of colour categories and describe very precisely the relations obtaining between the known primary and secondary colours. Linguistic evidence for the reality of the resulting isomorphism will be provided. For example, the vertices that resist natural single-item lexicalization in logic (such as the O-corner, for which there is no natural lexicalization *nall (=not all)) are not naturally lexicalized in the realm of colour terms either. From the perspective of the architecture of cognition, the isomorphism suggests that the foundations of logical oppositions and negation may well be much more deeply rooted in the physiological structure of human cognition than is standardly assumed.

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  1. CRISSP HUBrussels, FormL KULeuven, Warmoesberg 26, 1000, Brussels, Belgium

    Dany Jaspers

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  1. Dany Jaspers
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Correspondence to Dany Jaspers.

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To Nancy and Sylvain Bromberger

This work was completed with the most appreciated assistance of Lorenz Demey, Koen Roelandt and Hans Smessaert. It has also benefited considerably from a joint talk with Richard Larson at the Georgetown Workshop on the Evolution of Human Cognition (March 18 2011), and from numerous fruitful discussions with Pieter Seuren, Larry Horn, Richard Larson, Guglielmo Cinque, Hans Smessaert, Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Guido vanden Wyngaerd, Johan Rooryck, Alessio Moretti and Fabien Chang. I also thank several participants of the Second World Conference on the Square of Oppositions, MIT LingLunch, The Proper Use of Quantifiers in Ordinary Language workshop (Ljubljana), the Syntax Circle (Meertens Institute Amsterdam).

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Jaspers, D. Logic and Colour. Log. Univers. 6, 227–248 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11787-012-0044-y

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