Thankfully, Matisse was not a philosopher. He probably used the word screaming because he was identified with the Fauves, the "wild beasts" who used expressionist color, meaning fully saturated color to correspond to "feelings" more than the hues of nature.
At any rate, I don't think you are being fair when you accuse philosophers of not defining their terms. I think most of them do; in fact, their arguments depend on their particular definitions and those definitions often change among philosophers working on the same problems. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, April 2, 2010 12:14:42 PM Subject: Re: "What is happening during an 'a.e.'?" William makes the point: > green can imply the red not present. Are not words the same? > > Matisse > once did a painting with no red in it. A friend said, "There's no red!" > Matisse replied that Yes, but doesn't this painting scream for red?" So > even > the word not used can be called for by the ascriptions placed in other > words. > I like the point -- though I'd want to change it to: "green can SUGGEST the red not present", in the sense of "call to mind". Throughout philosophy we see alleged "screaming for" something not present . Theists have often claimed that the existence of the world screams for the concession that there must be a creator. Early (mistaken) philosophers of language claimed (or, often, tacitly assumed) that because a given word occasions very similar notion in millions of minds, it must be that the word has a mind-independent "meaning" that each auditor is taking on board from some extra-mental space. Those philosophers -- seemingly determined to make a point about referring or denoting or signifying, etc -- ignored the immense variety of notion that a given word can occasion. So they never appreciated that "the meaning for me" is entirely a function of the mind's prior associations. That explains why English terms "have no meaning" for the shepherd in the Andes. Differing accumulated associations are why though Matisse's painting might scream to HIM for red, I'm sure it wouldn't do so for all contemplators.
