To judge the truth or falsehood of this statement requires
the construction of a series of contexts in which it is possible to understand
the words and the ideas expressed by their composition to have meaning about
which argument may proceed.
On the face of it, and interpreted with a minimum of
real-world knowledge, without which no context can be sufficiently
reconstructed, the statement affirms that there is something in (the state of)
Kentucky which predominantly reflects electromagnetic radiation in the
wavelength range ~450-495nm. This much can easily be shown to be true, but the
truth of the full statement is contingent on the grass in that state also
having that property, and this is rather more problematic. It is reasonable to
assume that the reference is to Poa pratensis, but even this specific grass is
not in fact blue. The seedpod passes through a blue stage as it matures, but,
unlike flowers, grasses are characterized by the enduring hue of the stalk, not
by a moment in the life of a small part of themselves.
The line is the title of a song and it is necessary that it
be true in some sense, or the song would be meaningless, worthless. Let us
postulate that the song is not in fact worthless, that there is truth in this
statement, and try to uncover the type of truth that lies within it.
Truth is entirely context-dependent, because meaning is
entirely context-dependent. Much of the difficulty in determining what is true
comes from insufficiently rigorous definition of the context in which the
statement to be assessed is made*. Here we begin to see that the truth of the
implicit and explicit statements in the above sentence must be considered each
in a context of its own. The word ‘blue’, in the absence of any context other
than what it conveys in isolation to a normal speaker of English, suggests a
colour. In this context it would be clearly false to say that the genus Poa is
blue. The grass of Kentucky is, however, nominally associated with the colour
blue, and in the context of socio-cultural symbolism it may clearly be held to
be true that the grass in Kentucky is blue. This is important, because if it
were not so the line would be weakened to the point of meaninglessness. But it
also shows that acceptance of the statement as true depends on our placing it
in a context quite different, scarcely even intersecting, from the original
context in which placed the term blue.
The Kentucky reference suggests that it is a country song,
and is therefore, about some guy getting drunk because his girl has left him.
Suddenly we are making considerable progress, because this leads us to the idea
that the other thing in Kentucky which is, in the context of human emotion as
expressed in fireside slang, blue, is the singer himself. This can be
established beyond doubt by listening to the song, and it will be found to be
true. It also gives the line a dramatic interest which the mere affirmation of
the existence of blue doors, cars, trousers or lawnmowers in that beautiful
part of the world could not possibly have. But note that there is no overlap
whatsoever between the contexts in which it is necessary to understand the use
of the term ‘blue’ in order to attribute the quality of truth to the original
statement.
I conclude, therefore, that the proposition is demonstrably
true, and that the non-intersecting contexts in which the parts of the
proposition must be interpreted are contained within it, at least when it is
read by the kind of person for whom it was intended. So not only truth, but
successful communication.
*"You don’t love me anymore, you’re seeing that blonde at
number 27." "My darling, I cannot answer this accusation, you are insufficiently
rigorous in defining the epistemological context of your remarks."
We have been at our little country hideaway for a long weekend. It's been a very wet winter and spring and when it rains a lot in the mountains the water table rises, the lakes fill to the brim and where one becomes another the jumps between them are now looking like this. The bike and I have seen a lot of tracks and a lot of water this weekend, and it's been very pleasant.
