Yes it’s trodden ground since Shakespeare: I can’t think previous phil didn’t touch on it but will search elsewhere. Thanks for replying.

I was crowdsourcing. Ah well.

'I talk to the trees…'

I’ll do that. Thanks for yr interest.

Can we get back to the point? @MetaphysicsNow was onto something.

No-one has thought it was all Shakespeare for decades. That Marlowe collaborated is possibly relevant here inasmuch as he was university educated and therefore, presumably, philosophically literate.

Your speculation seems pretty good. All we need is some suggestion from someone that such a trope, whether as parlour game or not, was indeed in circulation.

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

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.

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.

Further to 'understanding X' in previous post: what does 'exist' mean? If by definition God is outside nature, what kind of existence are we talking about?

X=God or gods exist
‘X is true’=theism
‘X is false’= atheism
‘X is either true or false but I don’t know which’=agnosticism
There are more positions.
‘X is either true or false but it is unknowable which’=scepticism?
‘X doesn’t make sense’=verificationism?
‘X may not make sense’=?
‘X may or may not be true and may or may not make sense, all seem equally likely and I feel better not thinking about it’= Pyrrhonism
‘‘X is true’ and ‘X is false’ are pragmatically indistinguishable’=Epicureanism?
These positions do not all mutually exclude. It is possible to be agnostic or sceptic and nonetheless hold a belief that X is true or that X is false. It is possible to believe X and, modestly, that the belief may be incoherent. It is possible to behave as if X is true and either believe it isn’t or not believe it is (not have a belief
The first hurdle is understanding X. What is god? ‘Uncreated creator’ is kinda coherent: maybe science can help with that. ‘Higher and caring intelligence that can affect the natural order’? I struggle.

Jerry’s ‘I do not believe that no gods exist and I do not believe that some god exists’ at the start of this thread is closest to Pyrrhonism.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

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

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.

Maybe so: where does Socrates do that?

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)

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.

"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.

"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.

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.