This takes up from a thread called ‘Phil in Shakespeare’. It concerns a little philosophical trope in Henry VI Part 1 which I think originates somewhere else. The question is, does it, and where?

The purpose of the scene is to show one courtier the smartest guy on the block.

So: the king and some courtiers meet some plebs rejoicing because one of them, blind from birth, has just recovered his sight. No-one, including the audience, has any reason to think this is not true. The clever guy pretends to disbelieve that the blind guy can really see and invites him to identify colours, which he does, but it’s a trick. While our attention and that of all characters on stage is on whether he names the colours correctly, the real interest is that he can name them at all. As the clever guy triumphantly explains, since naming colours requires a learning process the pleb cannot have just recovered his sight. He wasn’t blind. Fraud exposed, dramatic purpose achieved.

My impression is that this is philosophically cute and not Shakespeare’s invention. It feels ‘patched in’ from some university discussion. It reminds me of later debates about meaning: if the meaning of ‘black’ were blackness, seeing blackness would be enough for one to be able to use ‘black’ correctly, but the correct use of ‘black’ – or any word – has to be socially learned. I wonder whether anyone – if they agree it is philosophically interesting – recognizes it as a trope of Renaissance or Scholastic discussion of language or meaning?