Now it is very remarkable that when in a philosophical conversation we
say: “The name of a colour comes in a particular
way”, we don't trouble to think of the many different
cases and ways in which such a name comes. ‒ ‒
And our chief argument is really that naming the colour is different
from just pronouncing a word on some different occasion while looking
at a colour.
Thus one might say: “Suppose we counted some
objects lying on our table, a blue one, a red one, a white one, and a
black one, – – looking at each in turn we say:
‘One, two, three,
113.
four’.
Isn't it easy to see that something different happens in this
case when we pronounce the words than what would happen if we had to
tell someone the colours of the objects?
And couldn't we, with the same right as before, have said,
‘Nothing happens when we say the numerals than just saying
them while looking at the object’?” ‒ ‒
Now two answers can be given to this: First, undoubtedly,
at least in the great majority of cases, counting the objects will be
accompanied by different experiences from naming their colours.
And it is easy to describe roughly what the difference will
be.
In counting we know a certain gesture, as it were, beating the number
out with one's finger or by nodding one's head.
There is on the other hand an experience which one might call
“concentrating one's attention on the
colour”, getting the full impression of it.
And these are the sort of things one recalls when one says,
“It is easy to see that something different happens when
we count the objects and when we name their colours.”
But it is in no way necessary that certain peculiar experiences more or
less characteristic for counting take place while we are counting,
nor that the peculiar phenomenon of gazing at the colour takes place
when we look at the object and name its colour.
It is true that the processes of counting four objects and of naming
their colours will, in most cases at any rate, be different taken as a
whole, and
this is what strikes us; but that doesn't
mean at all that we know that something different happens every time
in these two cases when we pronounce a numeral on the one hand and a
name of a colour on the other.