Snow Is White And Not White. (those who know, know)

This is an arguement that came from a very :unamused: ‘‘simple’’ :unamused: question.
Do you agree or disagree.
For reference see: Why do people believe? Thread

Snow Is White And Not White…

White is a social concept based on the individual’s perception, based on a biological response to a physical reality.

It can be argued that true “whiteness” only exists in the first case, and probably in the second. Any definition of “whiteness” that exists in the final two is dependent entirely upon the first two.

Snow is only white when a person looks at it.

(For the moment let’s ignore things like urine or exhaust that occludes the nature of snow)

Snow is white and
snow is not white and
snow is both white and not white and
snow is neither white nor not white.

derose.net/steve/guides/snowwords/

-Imp

Snow White is white and not white…

I agree with this entirely. However it was brought up that one could see an object as white and as not white at the same time…

No one has yet posted a definition of ‘snow’ or of ‘white.’

Many amateur philosophical arguments are arguments about only the meanings of concepts and definitions. The argument’s participants never realize this, so round and round they go without ever reaching resolution.

Let’s not fall into this trap. To avoid it and to clarify matters, I’ll give you the definitions that I’ll use for ‘snow’ and ‘white’ in this thread:

In this thread, the word ‘snow’ will be taken to mean “frozen precipitation in the form of hexagonal ice crystals that fall in soft flakes and the main ingredient used in the building of a snowman.”

Even more specifically, when I use the term “snow” in this thread, I’ll use it to refer to the particular “snow” which is pictured in this snowman:

‘White,’ for me will mean “the color of objects that reflect nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; the complement or antagonist of black, the other extreme of the neutral gray series.”

If someone is using a different definition for either of these words, then please list your definition so I’ll know what you’re talking about. Thanks.

And oh BTW: A particular ‘snow’ at a particular time cannot be both ‘white’ and ‘not white,’ period. That should be obvious to us all with very little reflection.

I realize that this is probably intended as a joke, but it is a very good example of the fallacy of equivocation.

Isn’t this the basic law of non-contradiction? Something can’t be something and something that is mutually exclusive to that? If something is purely white then it CANNOT be purely blue, by definition.

Impenitent, I read your link and agree with it. As the link points out, different words can be used to describe the same phenomenon. No one disputes that.

This is not the argument here, however. The claim that TM is making is that a thing can be both x and ~x at the same time in the same respect. He’s arguing (contradictorily) against the law of noncontradiction.

We can use ANY definition we agree upon for ‘snow’ and for ‘white,’ yet the phrase “Snow is both ‘white’ and ‘not white’ at the same time in the same respect” will never be true. An entity cannot possess both a trait and the trait’s contradiction at the same time in the same respect. It’s just not possible.

For example, Jesus was never at any point both fully Man and fully god at the same time IF those two terms are contraries (and as generally used, they are contraries). Jesus may have had some godly traits and some human traits, but he didn’t fully possess all the characteristics of both Man and god since some characteristics possessed by Man and god are contradictory.

If I say “I am both mortal and immortal at the same time!” what on earth might I mean by that?

Is it possible for anyone both to know everything that it is possible to know and yet at the same time to not know some things that are possible to know?

No, it’s not.

If we throw out the law of noncontradiction then how is reasonable argument possible?

God Bless You, my child!

Someone finally gets it.

I don’t mean to be a stickler, but this is what Kierkegaard defended as the paradox of Christianity. Jesus was not some demigod but was all God and all man, thus the irrationality of the situation. The reconciliation is not to comprimise the argument but to make a ‘leap of faith’ beyond rationality, accepting that reason (in this case) does not lead to truth.

:stuck_out_tongue:

And nice post, I have the feeling we have the same thoughts on the issue.

Not much argument here if one believes in Kant’s Law of Contradiction which I clearly stated in the past “Why do people believe” thread…

That’s a good summation of Kierkegaard’s thought on this subject. You, Kierkegaard, and I would agree on one point: What K describes here is NOT rationality. The biggest difference is that while K would say his position is beyond rationality; I see it as less than rationality.

I’ll also quibble slightly with the notion that rational thought does not lead to truth. While it’s true that it doesn’t lead to absolute truth, it’s less defensible to say that it doesn’t lead to the most accurate version of reality that we’ve so far come up with.

OTOH, to say that faith leads to any kind of truth or reliably true picture or reality is a very difficult proposition to defend.

White is the colour produced by mixing the complete visible spectrum of electro-magnetic radiation. It may look different to you than it does to me.

What does the fact that ‘white’ may look different to me than it does to you have to do with anything?

You just gave a definition for ‘white.’ Now, according to your OWN definition, can a thing both be ‘white’ and ‘not white’ at the same time and in the same respect?

Of course not!

Either a thing WILL BE the color of the color that is produced by mixing the complete visible spectrum of electro-magnetic radiation or it WILL NOT BE. There is no other option.

This isn’t exactly rocket science we’re talking about here. It is a concept that is self-evident to most people. It’s supposed to be something that is considered for about for two seconds before you agree that it is self-evident.

It’s not something about which is said, “What you call ‘white’ I might not call ‘white.’” This comment misses the point entirely. It doesn’t matter what anyone sees as ‘white’ or how anyone defines ‘white.’ What matters is that whatever ‘white’ looks like to anyone and however it is defined, a thing (anything) cannot be both ‘white’ and ‘not white’ at the same time in the same respect.

If we agree upon the definition of the term ‘white’ then one of us has to be mistaken if we see an object that one of us believes is ‘white’ and the other believes is ‘not white.’

The object CANNOT be both ‘white’ and ‘not white’ at the same time in the same respect, period.

reasonable argument is not possible.

-Imp

I do think that it could be possible to talk about snow as being white and not white at the same time. As we’ve defined it, indeed, as we understand snow, its nature is to be white. When snow is created it exists in a state of whiteness and unless acted upon by some alien force (like dog urine) it will remain white.

Now, if some alien force acts on snow, all it can do is obscure its white-nature as opposed to removing it entirely. Indeed, it is because of the snow’s fundamental whiteness that it is able to take on the shade of yellow that matches the urine – where snow not white, the urine would look different after it interacted with the snow like paints mixing on a palate.

It is a question of what snow existentially is and ontologically can become. However, snow’s state of existence neither denies what it ontologically is nor inhibits what it can existentially become. To say that “snow is white” means that snow’s original, ontological nature, is whiteness; while saying that snow is “not white” means that snow can become not white through interaction with outside forces. In this case, the snow takes on the nature of the outside forces in an unchanged fashion because of its whiteness. So, snow’s whiteness can be “buried” but it can never be lost.

“Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator” powered by dog urine?

-Imp

Well, depends on the amount of snow. A lot of it, like a snowball, will seem white, while a single snowflake will seem translucent.