What do you consider to be the philosophers' party trick here? Pointing out that there is a difference between seeing a colour and naming a colour? Doesn't seem to be particularly tricky, more like obvious, but perhaps I'm missing something subtle in Shakespeare that you are seeing. About a hundred years after that play was written, an arguably more philosophically interesting question about what the cogenitally blind may or may not be able to do on regaining site was asked of Locke by Molyneux, concerning whether they could immediately recognise spheres by sight given that their knowledge of what a sphere is was garnered from touch.

If it were obvious it would not be dramatically interesting (the episode is meant to show how, unlike all around him, the courtier is supersmart) and actors and directors etc would easily grasp the significance, which they don't. Bear in mind it's a play not a seminar. The party trick aspect is this: when the man says 'black' we are thinking of whether he has answered correctly – we are looking at the gown, and when he says 'as black as jet' we are thinking about his comparison. This is classic misdirection, because what's interesting is how he knows how to use 'black' in the first place. The episode is meant to show how, unlike all around him, the courtier is supersmart.

I'd have to reread the play, but is it really that the courtier is supersmart or just not as gullible as the rest? Are you suggesting that Shakespeare is making a point that it is philosophically interesting how we get to agree on the use of colour terms? I think the kind of philosophical apparatus which makes that a problem - and it is basically the same apparatus that makes metaphysical solipsism seem coherent - doesn't really get into philosophical debate until after Descartes and so long after Shakespeare had shuffled off this mortal coil.

Well, let's tell the whole story here, King Henry VI, Part II, Act II, scene i, starting at line #795.

Simpcox, the alleged formerly blind man, comes on stage borne on a chair and is met by the nobles. He (Simpcox) claims St. Alban cured his blindness. He now sees but still can't walk. (He fell out of a plum tree.) He does too well on the vision test which the Duke of Gloucester administers, and is next tested on his lameness by the Duke. A beadle is summoned to whip Simpcox until he jumps over a stool. It takes no more than a stroke of the whip to bring Simpcox to his feet, and he runs away. Simpcox and his wife are ordered to be whipped for fraud. His wife pleads that they did it out of need.

In a more complete telling, does this scene still seem like a philosophical party trick? How does this scene between the King, Earl, Duke, Queen Margaret, and these two peasants fit into the play? (I haven't read the play, so can't say myself. But I would guess a philosopher's party trick wasn't just tossed in at that point.)

"He does too well on the vision test" doesn't really capture what happens. It suggests he was caught out because he identified colours correctly. But the test was a trick. Gloucester pretends to disbelieve that Simpcox has recovered his sight, thus inducing him to name colours. It's his ability to name colours that shows he was never blind (or not until five minutes ago). Gloucester's cleverness is to know that naming colours is a language-learning process and distinct from the seeing of colours.

"is the courtier supersmart or just not as gullible as the rest?" Whichever you like but what makes it interesting on the stage is that the blind guy is tricked in a way not even the audience perceive until it is explained by the courtier (see reply to Bitter Crank). I don't think Shakespeare's interest was philosophical, I think he made use of a philosophical party-trick (don't pay too much attention to the label) to make a dramatic point which is the smartness of the courtier. FYI, the purpose of showing his smartness relative to the rest is to increase the horror of him being brought low and killed by them.

Also FYI, when I came across this in the play it struck me as identical to something I'd come across in university philosophy but I couldn't recall what. That's why I ask if it seems familiar to anyone else. Maybe something from one of Socrates' cross-exams?

As for the philosophical issue, I agree that what it touches on – how colour-words name for example (obviously not simply by ostensive definition) – seems more modern (e.g. Wittgenstein). That's what makes it interesting. I don't think Shakespeare came up with it, I think someone more philosophical gave it to him and he just made use of it.

Since Shakespeare was no philosopher he must have got it from somewhere. — Pronsias del Mar

That's an ad hominem if I ever saw one. Shakespeare was very philosophical. To be or not to be?

You could say, he probably got it from somewhere, because he borrowed a lot of ideas from other places...

Specifically on the colour point, Gloucester exposes Simpcox by saying that in supposing he could name colours as he claims to be able to do, we would have to suppose also that it would make sense for someone to be able to name people they have never been introduced to. It's analogical reasoning, and you do see that used by Plato's Socrates to expose flaws in others positions. Is that what you are getting at?

Lots of people are philosophical but not philosophers. And I’m not on the attack. And whether Shak was a philosopher doesn’t matter. I’m only asking if anyone recognises the philosophical trope in Henry VI from something else.

Lots of people are philosophical but not philosophers. And I’m not on the attack. And whether Shak was a philosopher doesn’t matter. I’m only asking if anyone recognises the philosophical trope in Henry VI from something else. (sorry again, should have posted as a reply)

Maybe so: where does Socrates do that?

On second thought it’s not simply the use of analogical reasoning, it’s the wedge driven between the ability to perceive things and the ability to name them - qualia in particular. Wish I could be more specific but I just sense a deeper issue in play.

I understand what you meant :wink:
I'm just quibbling with a couple of assumptions in that sentence--what makes someone a philosopher if not being philosophical? Even if you conclude not all philosophical thinkers are philosophers, why can't philosophical thinkers come up with original ideas? In other words, on what basis do you assume it's not his original idea?

It reminded me of recent cognition studies involving people who were born blind and then come to see. The question was: would they be able to recognize shapes they could only feel prior to obtaining sight. I recollect that they could not do this immediately, it took them days to adjust to what they were seeing.

It dates back to Molyneux's problem which John Locke mentions and agrees with in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689.

Not sure how Shakespeare came up with the question, Henry VI P2 estimated at 1591, Molyneux born in 1656.

I don’t assume it’s not. I just think it’s not.

Yes it seems similar (see MetaphysicsNow above) but more to do with naming than perceiving.

I don't think anything to do with qualia would be lurking in the back of Shakespeare's mind when he wrote this scene, or any of the philosophically inclined people who might have moved in the same circle as he did. Of course, that does not mean you cannot draw something interesting out of the exchange, I just don't think anything like that was Shakespeare's intention. As I mentioned above, the philosophical context in which questions about qualia arise (ignoring the fact that that specific terminology doesn't crop up until the 20th century) doesn't really set down roots until after Shakespeare is several decades dead.
There are some sceptical arguments in Sextus Empiricus concerning perception of colour, of course, but even there I think it would take a post-Cartesian perspective to see them as showing that a wedge could open up between our capacity to name colours and our capacity to see colours. Those kinds of debate only really get going once empiricism enters the scene with Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

But that's what's interesting (if it is): that a later debate is prefigured in a little exchange in Shakespeare which I think he got secondhand from somewhere. Augustine anticipates Descartes, the mediaevals anticipate Russell etc. There's no reason this little trope, which seems interesting through a post-Locke lens, should not in fact prefigure that debate.

Sure, Shakespeare was not thinking of qualia. But was it accidental that the exchange was about the naming of colours, which later philosophers have found a challenging aspect of meaning-learning?

Seems to me that we just have Shakespeare having the smart-arse Gloucester using a fairly humdrum fact (that you have to be taught the meaning of colour words just like any other words) in order to undo a pretty shallow scam aimed at fooling a weak and credulous king. Even back in Shakespeare's day educated people would have been well aware that language is learnt. Why did Shakespeare choose vision in this case? Well the miracle recounted in the Gospels of Jesus bestowing sight on a beggar is probably the source I'd say. Of course, you can take that scene in Shakespeare and spin out of it an interesting discussion about the distinction and connections between naming and sensing colours, and you could probably trace the issues all the way back to the ancient Greeks, but as exegesis of Shakespeare, it doesn't strike me as convincing. Not saying that Shakespeare had no interest in the metaphysics and epistemology of perception - consider Macbeth's dagger for instance, just not in that scene.

Well that's the reductive account and you may be right (though it does imply that Shakespeare was not a good judge of what's interesting). The question, if you like, is whether those interesting discussions are simply 'spun out of' a humdrum scene or whether the scene contains any of that interest, registering an Elizabethan concern with issues that certainly concerned later thinkers.

I'm not thinking of Shakespeare's personal interest: as I have said, I don't think he had a philosophical axe to grind. I think he was just making use of something to hand, for dramatic gain. Shakespeare is beside the point. The point is what Elizabethans were thinking.

OK, well in that case, what would be interesting would be to see if that greatest of Elizabethan philosophers, Francis Bacon, had anything to say on the issue. I'm not really aquainted with his stuff, but if you want to find out what the cutting edge of philosophical thought was at the time, Bacon is probably the place to start. Perhaps he discusses colour vision and language?
Isn't there some crazy theory that Bacon actually wrote at least some of Shakespeare's works, incidently?

Yes there is but having read some Bacon it's clearly nonsense. One of them writes weightlessly, the other leadenly, and at the risk of upsetting NKBJ only one of them is a philosopher.

I'm not across all of Bacon's thought either, so maybe what I'm thinking of is in there. Nice if someone out there could say. My suspicion is that it is somehow scholastic. I'm interested in you saying the discussion mighth go back to the Greeks. Can you expand?

(the episode is meant to show how, unlike all around him, the courtier is supersmart) — Pronsias del Mar

What is your point? That Shakespeare proved that a character was "supersmart"? So what? What is this scene's significance in the play?

I think the point is that Shakespeare may have been inspired in this scene by some kind of philosophical dispute current at the time concerning perception and language, and the search is for written sources to back this up. I think that idea is a stretch - as does @MetaphysicsNow as far as I can tell. We could be wrong - what we need is someone steeped in Scholastic and Renaissance thought, which I certainly am not.

The point is clear in the thread. Not the scene’s significance in the play but the significance if any of the philosophy used in the scene. The question was whether anyone recognised it from anything else and the answer so far is not, and that I may be alone in finding the exchange philosophically interesting. That’s ok.

Very nearly. I don’t think Shakespeare was inspired by or even interested in a current philosophical dispute. He had a dramatic purpose which was to show one guy particularly bright, which he does by having him expose a fraud. A pleb says he’s just recovered his sight. No-one present (including the audience) has any reason to think this is not true. Our guy pretends to disbelieve that he’s recovered his sight and invites him to identify colours, but it’s a blind (forgive the pun). While our attention (and that of all characters on stage) is on the correctness or not of the identification, the real interest is the fact that he can name colours. Since naming colours requires a learning process (the clever guy explains to everyone), the pleb cannot have just recovered his sight. Dramatic purpose achieved. My impression is that this is philosophically cute and probably not of Shakespeare’s own devising. I wondered whether anyone could identify it as a pre-existing trope of argument. My prof would know. Dead, sadly.

Well, the exposure of the fraud begins with Simpcox accepting a premise along the lines that if he has just gained sight then he ought to be able to prove it by naming the colours he sees. So there might be a kind of paradox in play, since we also have the premise lying behind Gloucester's reasoning: if someone can use the colour words accurately, that person has not just gained his sight.
There may have been some kind of philosophers parlour game at the time to show up a paradox about learning colour words which ran along the following lines. In order to learn the meaning of the word "black" say, we already have to be able to identify black things, but the meaning of the word "black" lies precisely in its identifying a specific colour, so if we can already identify that specific colour, we already know the meaning of the word "black" and so don't have to learn its meaning. On the other hand, if we cannot identify black things at all, we will never be able to identify what the word "black" is being used to pick out in the world, and so we will never be able to learn its meaning. Either way, we cannot learn the meaning of colour words. That would be a kind of variation on the paradox of learning that (as far as I am aware) get's its first airing in Plato's Meno.

Well, it could be the case that Shakespeare utilized this scene to explicate a philosophical problem, granted. In a paper, one would take up the larger question of whether this was a line of thought being bounced around in Shakespeare's day, and whether Shakespeare was interested in the topic. Does he show such interest elsewhere, for instance, and what sources might he have used.

Granted, that Gloucester perceives the glaring inconsistency in Simpcox's performance (identifying colors and pieces of clothing from sight, rather than touch, as would be the case if he had really been blind). One could further note that this scene would have perhaps fit better in Chaucer, at whose time this sort of chicanery was more common. So, the scene itself is a bit anachronistic. Not that there weren't fake miracles in Shakespeare time (fake news and fake miracles are still with us).

Are you, perhaps, looking for a paper topic? (fresh topics in Shakespeare are very hard to come by, after all these years). One would need to dispose of the question as to whether this scene might have served any other function in the play. (It could serve more than one function).

I haven't read this play, or anything else by Shakespeare in a long time (50 years, at least) and I probably won't circle back to read much more--time is getting short at my age, and libraries are full of interesting books.

Press on with diligence.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Yes a “philosophers’ parlour game” is the kind of thing I think it might be. And yes the philosophical interest (if any) is that whereas we think the meaning of ‘black’ is blackness, in which case seeing black should be sufficient to be able to name it, it turns out that naming colours – or having the use of language at all – requires teaching, rule-learning etc, i.e. is a social event.

The scene has a Chaucerian flavour, you’re right, but the specific trope of argument? Don’t know, haven’t read him.

No, not looking for a paper topic, just interested