That seems a bit hand-wavy to me. Firstly, that was precisely the title. You are talking about the meaning of the title. Secondly, I did understand the title, and I am not speaking of the word 'red'. I am speaking of the semantic category referred to by the word 'red' in English. Thirdly, it is clear from the article that not all semantic color categories match cleanly and bijectively across languages. Fourthly, the assertion that 'red' does match bijectively across "almost every language" is not made in the article, and no explanation of any reason for any such claim is given. Fifthly, there is no information in the article that affirms the why of any semantic matching (or mismatching) occurs across languages: a theory of biologically-based thresholds in retinal perception is mentioned, but as a hypothesis, not as useful science. The article merely discusses the history of the similarity (and dissimilarity) observed in a series of studies.
My point was that there was a difference between your quotation of the article's title, and the article's actual title. You put quote-marks around 'red'; the article itself did not. This is a use-mention distinction: when writers—but journalists especially—talk about (i.e. mention) words, they put them in quotation marks. When writers use them to refer to their referents, they don't.
This is important because news articles themselves get translated to other languages. Consider what the title of the article would be if the article were translated to another language. If they were attempting to mention the English word 'red', you'd still see the quoted English word 'red' in the translated title! Whereas, if they were attempting to refer to the semantic category, the title would just say, translated the destination language, "why [local red-equivalent color word] is [local red-equivalent color word] in every language."
My point was to clarify that you were making a very different argument by asserting that the article never clarified "why 'red' is 'red'..." than you'd make by asserting that the article never clarified "why red is red...".
> Fourthly, the assertion that 'red' does match bijectively across "almost every language"
Again, be careful: that's not the claim the article is making, but it is the claim you appear to be making by putting 'red' in quotes like that :) You have to be explicit when speaking of semiotics!
> Fifthly, there is no information in the article that affirms the why of any semantic matching (or mismatching) occurs across languages
Well, that's just moving the goalposts; nobody was claiming that the article backed up its claims. It's just one of an innumerable number of these science-journalism blurbs about the weird color-category finding. For another one, see: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/21121...
Okay, I had missed that. You're right, I did put quotes around 'red' (like that) and I can now see why that was a communications failure on my part. In truth, I had initially echoed the title with the single quotes around the 'red', and then gone back and put the whole phrase in double quotes while failing to remove the single quotes.
However, the article clarifies neither why "'red' is 'red' in almost every language," nor "Why Red Means Read in Almost Every Language," as you seem to agree while mysteriously somehow also disagreeing with me. It is true that the article does not claim that red (category) matches bijectively across "almost every language," but that is my entire point. It is the title that introduces the notion that "Red" will somehow feature prominently in the content of the article, which it does not. We could argue about whether or not bijectivity is implied by the title, but that would be irrelevant.
Regarding whether this is moving the goalposts, I rather disagree. It is the title that makes the claim that the why of anything at all will be addressed by the article. If it is moving the goalposts to point out that the article not only does not establish "Why Red Means Red" also lacks significant information about the "why" of anything, then it is surely moving the goalposts in the direction of the kicker.
You wrote to affirm that the true meaning of the article's title referred in a sufficient way to the actual topic of the article, contra my apparent complaint. I see that there was a misunderstanding involved, but that aside — right, the title was not referring to the word 'red' — I disagree and actually I don't see how you can sustain any such argument.
