🚀 go-pugleaf

Charlie.Creegan@launchpad.unc.edu (Charlie Creegan) writes:

>>Red is a concept formed by children
>>before they are six months old, and it gives a name to certain class 
>>of colours. When a child says: "it is red", it just says, "it has a similar
>>look than all the previous things I have observed, which I call red".
>>The statement "It is red" therefore just compares different observations.
>>Not much of theory there.
>>
>>			Christoph Schiller

>"gives a name to a certain class of colors"?  That is a thoroughly
>theory-laden assertion.  

No. It is an observation of child psychology, that children do this in the first
months of their life. But that children who do not speak, or just learn to
speak, use other names than red, prehaps "djfghgf", to express the concept, is
not a contradiction. They still have the concept, just the name is different.
It is an observation of child psychology that the concept of colour is formed by
the child itself, not by taking over any "theory" from adults. (Btw, which 
"theory" would that be ?)

>    My 2-year-old uses "green" as a term of
>approbation (at least, that's the closest I can figure it).  He does not
>have the technique of using color words to refer to what we adult language
>users think of as colors.  So it is not "looks" he is comparing.  But he *is*
>using linguistic utterances to express his comparison of observations. 
>Only when he gains some sophistication will adults be able to straighten
>out his conceptual scheme by explaining some theoretical considerations
>about color-terms and what kind of observations are relevant to them.
>    He may not yet have an explicit theory (or even an explicit concept) but
>in order to interact with him you have to have theories and concepts, and
>you have to be able to transmit them to him.  His (socially correct)
>observations *will* be theory-laden.

Your son probably is using the *word* "green" for something else than for what
adults call green colour. What he will learn through social interactions,
is to use the standard word instead of his own word. But the concept remains
the same. Transmitting a name does not mean transmitting a theory.


			Christoph Schiller


P.S. Another possibility :  is your child colour-blind ?