When the World Is Spinning Round...?

We discussed some questions in philosophy today, and because Alex (our proctor) didn't really cover them properly but raced through them, they're still running through my head. Can anyone help me sort these out?

1. If everything in the universe suddenly doubled in size overnight, what would happen?

I haven't got a clue what would happen. Would we still be double in size, as size is a physical quantity, or would we be the same size as size would be affected by perception and we would still perceive the sizes of everything to be the same? Does size change with our perception of it or is it a property an object possesses that is definable by any means other than our senses?

2. If everyone in the universe saw pink as blue and blue as pink, would violets still be blue?

I think they would be pink, because pink and blue would be what we perceived to be pink and blue, and in this case we would perceive violets to be pink, so they would be pink according to the names we gave to the colours we perceived.

But John says that the violets would be blue because even though we would perceive them as pink, they would still be blue underneath, as blue was a property the violets possessed which would be constant no matter what.


This makes sense but I still think that the names we give colours are arbitrary, so I could be the first person to call orange red and it would be called red and it would be red simply because I had called it red first, even though it was actually orange. Similarly, the violets would be pink because, in this case, they were named pink even though they were still blue, but blue would be pink because of the names being switched around, and thus in this new world, the old blue would become the new pink and the violets would be pink.

Ok, my eyes are starting to glaze over, so I will not bother you with the third problem troubling me, which is even more complicated and complicates the second problem as well...

Good night.

Ruth