Name Strategy: Its Existence and Implications

7.2 Accuracy of Correspondence

A specific and neat illustration of the dilemma is posed by the question: Why
have two words ”Blue” and ”Green” when all they achieve is a less accurate
representation of the colours present? This is part of a question that can be
successively generalized to include other colours; also it is related to why have
memory chunking when this might cause a slight loss of accuracy, and further-
more as to why have stereotyping in general. A point to note is that usually
these classifications are unconscious, and that this allows them to occur at great
speed - thus aiding swift communication.

7.3 Quantity of Transferred Information when in Re-coded
Form

The answer to the dilemma is that it allows a large amount of information to be
communicated, even though there is a small cost in accuracy. It might be more
accurate to not have separate words for blue and green, and then to indulge in
lengthy comparisons every time a distinction between blue and green objects
is required; but if large amounts of information is to swiftly communicated it
is beneficial to have two separate words. For example, it is advantageous for
a language community to be able to say: ”Blue Gavagai are tasty, but Green
Gavagai are poisonous” rather than: ”Gavagai that are grue like the sky are
tasty, but Gavagia that are grue like the grass are poisonous.”. More formally,
for a specific case of colour perception §2.1, the first principle, which states
that the communicability of a referent is related to its memorability, illustrates
the mechanism by which larger quantities of information can be more quickly
communicated. A name strategy is chosen so that a large amount of information
about the colour of an ob ject can be easily remembered; and also be quickly and
memorably communicated, despite the fact that it incurs a loss in the accuracy
and truth of statements. Thus economy of expression accounts for the use of
one word instead of two. There is still the problem of why there are the eleven
switched colour perception centers. Why not have ten or fifteen switches colours,
or none at all? These are human universals as given by the second principle of
colour perception. A possible explanation is that the switched colours provide a
framework within which a huge number of colours can be described. No switches
would not give this framework. The reason that there are eleven of them might
be that this is the maximum number that the brain can implement.

7.4 Circuitous Correspondence

The foregoing presents a problem for the philosophy of language; because it
shows that words are only in indirect correspondence with the world. This
problem is approached by attempting to explain indirect correspondence by us-
ing standard techniques and seeing if these lead to a plausible explanation; the
attempt consist of requiring that indirect correspondence is really a circuitous
correspondence. By this is meant a pair {D, P }. D is a direct correspondence

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