intersubjectivity

Quoting Isaac

Private does not simply mean 'not publicly known' to me.

But you grant that people can have experiences that aren't publicly know. :up:

Quoting Isaac

No, sensations are biological, 'Pain' is a concept created by a socially communicating group collecting some of those sensations and naming them.

Yep.

Quoting Luke

I had in mind something along the lines of Wittgenstein:

We might do well to read these in context; especially the missing part of §257:

“What would it be like if human beings did not manifest their pains (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word ‘toothache’.” a Well, let’s assume that the child is a genius and invents a name for the sensation by himself! But then, of course, he couldn’t make himself understood when he used the word. So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone? But what does it mean to say that he has ‘named his pain’? How has he managed this naming of pain? And whatever he did, what was its purpose? When one says “He gave a name to his sensation”, one forgets that much must be prepared in the language for mere naming to make sense. And if we speak of someone’s giving a name to a pain, the grammar of the word “pain” is what has been prepared here; it indicates the post where the new word is stationed.

And we might add:

248. The sentence “Sensations are private” is comparable to “One plays patience by oneself”.

Quoting Luke

You're trying to make this about language again, here, instead of the privacy of subjective experience.

You are trying to make it about the privacy of subjective experience again, instead of the way we use language.

Quoting Banno

You are trying to make it about the privacy of subjective experience again, instead of the way we use language.

Uhh, yeah? We've been discussing subjectivity. If the topic of discussion was intended to be the private language argument, then you should have made that clearer in your OP:

Quoting Banno

If there is a private subjective world, then by definition you cannot see into mine, nor I into yours. and it would not be possible to confirm any commonality.

How can subjectivity be shared?

Also, you've barely participated in the discussion for the last 20 pages, so why should we change the discussion to suit you?

Quoting Luke

If the topic of discussion was intended to be the private language argument, then you should have made that clearer in your OP:

Well, I thought I did, in the very bit you quote, which is a presentation of the private language argument.

I haven't much participated because there has been so little progress, but instead just a churning of the same arguments.
Quoting Banno

I'm thinking that we've reached the end of what is doable here.

...but I'll keep one eye on proceedings, just in case.

Quoting Banno

Well, I thought I did, in the very bit you quote

I see no mention of language use in that quote; only a very specific mention of subjectivity.

Reply to Luke Hm. That you did not recognise this as invoking the private language argument may be a large part of the problem.

Perhaps I should try to set out the objection I have to "intersubjectivity", step by step...

Advocates of the privacy of subjective stuff hold that there is something that is in essence not shareable; they say things like "you cannot feel my pain"

The term "intersubjective" suggests that somehow these private sensations can be recognises in someone else, such that we can speak of "shared" experiences.

Hence we have the prima facie contradiction of shared, yet private, phenomena.

The dissolution of this apparent contradiction comes about by recognising that what was taken to be private subjective stuff is instead an outcome of our shared language - Quoting Isaac

'Pain' is a concept created by a socially communicating group collecting some of those sensations and naming them.

Quoting Banno

The dissolution of this apparent contradiction comes about by recognising that what was taken to be private subjective stuff is instead an outcome of our shared language -

The notion that we're in all telepathic isn't likely to gain traction any time soon, but you may be right and we're just all deluded. :up:

Reply to frank This just shows that you have not followed the conversation.

Quoting Banno

This just shows that you have not followed the conversation.

I really have. Your assertion is just ridiculous.

Reply to frank Which assertion?

Quoting Banno

that what was taken to be private subjective stuff is instead an outcome of our shared language -

This.

Reply to frank OK: now, why is it ridiculous?

Quoting Banno

OK: now, why is it ridiculous?

If you've never been sky diving, no amount of communication will convey the experience. If you have, we can easily understand one another.

Sure, language influences us, but it's power is dependent on our similarities: biologically, psychologically, and culturally.

We have the same experiences because we're both human. We each have private pains because you don't have access to my nociceptors. You can only guess how I feel.

Quoting Banno

The term "intersubjective" suggests that somehow these private sensations can be recognises in someone else, such that we can speak of "shared" experiences.

How do we recognise private sensations or how are our experiences shared? By seeing other people's behaviours, not their sensations. We can only assume that other people have the same sensations when they behave the same way. We cannot verify the sensations. This is the point of Wittgenstein's beetle and the private language argument: our sensation terms refer to our behaviours/expressions (e.g. of pain), not to our private sensations.

"If we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and name’, the object [i.e. the private sensation] drops out of consideration as irrelevant."

However, the private sensation is only irrelevant to the use of language (i.e. to the language game); it is not irrelevant to us. Our private sensations are very important to each of us, subjectively. Wittgenstein is not making the case that we do not have private sensations, only that we cannot talk about them. We can refer to them or point to them, using the name "sensation", but the we cannot talk about or describe the sensation "object" that drops out of consideration as irrelevant to the language game. Moreover, private sensations are not language, and the impossibility of a private language need not imply the impossibility of a private sensation.

Wittgenstein:281. “But doesn’t what you say amount to this: that there is no pain, for example, without pain-behaviour?” — It amounts to this: that only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious. [my bolding]

Quoting Banno

The dissolution of this apparent contradiction comes about by recognising that what was taken to be private subjective stuff is instead an outcome of our shared language

How is "private subjective stuff" an outcome of our language?

Reply to frank ...?

Reply to Luke ...you seem here to be agreeing with me. What is it in your post that you think I would find problematic, if anything?

Reply to Banno I assumed you would disagree with this: "Wittgenstein is not making the case that we do not have private sensations, only that we cannot talk about them". That is, I assumed your position to be that the private language argument implies the impossibility of private sensations. Otherwise, why were you complaining that we should be discussing the private language argument instead of the privacy of subjective experiences?

Also, I'm still curious: How is "private subjective stuff" an outcome of our language?

Reply to Luke Ah. Wittgenstein is not making the case that we do not have sensations. We might agree to that. Note the absence of "private".

But you would talk of private sensations:

246. In what sense are my sensations private? Well, only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it. In one way this is false, and in another nonsense. If we are using the word “know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know if I’m in pain. Yes, but all the same, not with the certainty with which I know it myself! It can’t be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I’m in pain. What is it supposed to mean a except perhaps that I am in pain?

Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.

This much is true: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.

In one way talk of private sensations is false, and in another nonsense.

You would perhaps talk of private subjective stuff; and speak either falsehood or nonsense.

So that we cannot do so is an outcome of language. Language has no place for private subjective stuff. It cannot gain any traction, and hence has no meaning.

Reply to Marchesk The absurdity of the argument, it's non-entity even as a cogent argument, that pain is socially constructed, linguistically mediated and public, that there can be no private experiences of pain, is shown when the question of animals feeling pain is considered.

Reply to Janus That's a misunderstanding of what is being said.

Quoting Banno

You would perhaps talk of private subjective stuff; and speak either falsehood or nonsense.

"If you've never had a child, you can't know what it's like."

Private stuff has been talked about. No falsehood. No nonsense.

Quoting Banno

This much is true: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.


In one way talk of private sensations is false, and in another nonsense.

This is itself a nonsense conclusion: if it makes sense to doubt whether others are in pain, then that means that we do not know with certainty that they are in pain. Of course it doesn't make sense to doubt whether I am in pain, because if I am in pain I know it with certainty, just as I know with certainty what I am looking at out the window as I type this; what I see out the window is private to me as I am alone right now, which means that unless I choose to tell, no one could have any idea what I am looking at.

Of course, to anticipate an objection I am not equating the kind of thing pain is with the kind of thing what I see outside my window is, since the latter, (that tree, bird, landscape or whatever) being extra-somatic could be known to others if they were here, whereas the former (that pain) being intra-somatic can never be experienced by another.

Reply to frank If we followed what you are suggesting, then there is something that is private to parents alone; they can discuss it. But that's not the point of the argument. Rather, is there something that is private to Frank alone? And yet, it can be the topic of discussion?

Quoting Banno

That's a misunderstanding of what is being said.

A useless comment without explanation.

Reply to Janus The explanation is now 34 pages long.

Quoting Banno

If we followed what you are suggesting, then there is something that is private to parents alone; they can discuss it. But that's not the point of the argument. Rather, is there something that is private to Frank alone? And yet, it can be the topic of discussion?

Why not?

Reply to Banno I've read pretty much the entire thread and have seen no cogent explanation. Can you point to a post with an explanation that you think would explain this to me in such a way as to show that my comment is a misunderstanding?

Reply to Janus Quoting Banno

33 pages and you claim you still haven't seen an argument? Disingenuous.

Reply to frank ...so... the bit about being able to talk about private stuff... you know, the stuff that cannot be talked about...?

Quoting Banno

so... the bit about being able to talk about private stuff... you know, the stuff that cannot be talked about...?

It's the same as sky diving or having children, except it's unique.

I'm the first guy to go through a wormhole. The reporter asks what it's like. I say I can't explain it. You'll just have to go through it yourself.

A unique, private experience has been talked about.

Reply to Banno I've seen purported arguments, nothing cogent or convincing. The way you are defending this seems to be like the way the religious defend their faiths; all assertion and deflection, but no substance.

Quoting Banno

But you would talk of private sensations:

246. In what sense are my sensations private? Well, only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it. In one way this is false, and in another nonsense. If we are using the word “know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know if I’m in pain. Yes, but all the same, not with the certainty with which I know it myself! It can’t be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I’m in pain. What is it supposed to mean a except perhaps that I am in pain?

Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.

This much is true: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.


In one way talk of private sensations is false, and in another nonsense.

You would perhaps talk of private subjective stuff; and speak either falsehood or nonsense.

What do you take all of this to mean?

I think it could be argued that, on the one hand, Wittgenstein says it is nonsensical to make knowledge claims about one's own sensations or the sensations of others. On the other hand, he also says that it makes sense to doubt (and, hence, to make knowledge claims about) the sensations of others.

However, I agree with Wittgenstein that it does not make sense to doubt or to know one's own sensations. But you should try telling that to @Isaac.

Quoting Luke

most people simply have pain without needing to make any predictions. But this highlights our differences in talking about the issue. You're talking about our brains making predictions, which happens unconsciously, whereas I'm talking about our conscious experiences of having pain sensations.

Only you're not. That's the point. Despite seemingly wide opinion to the contrary, I don't think neuroscience or cognitive psychology has the answer here, it's a useful adjunct only. The reason I've written so extensively about it is because empirical claims about neurological processes keep being imputed in the counter-arguments, as they are here.

If you were talking only about your conscious experience of pain, that which is in your mind as being an experience (regardless of it's origins, or historical accuracy) you would have absolutely no ground at all to say that such an experience was unique, or intrinsically private. How on earth would you know? There might be a set of only a dozen such experiences identical in all humans which we consciously experience one of on each occasion. If you are solely talking about your personal experience, uninvestigated, and unsubstantiated, then on what grounds would you even suspect it to be unique, private...? Perhaps we're only capable of twelve different experiences, perhaps whatever causes experiences spits out the identical ones in every person....

No. Your argument about privacy relies on an assumption about the causes of experience, an assumption that those causes are so multifarious that their rendering must be unique, that those causes obtain inside you and so are not accessible to others, hence private. Otherwise, how can you say I don't know what it's like for you to stub your toe? Maybe just by thinking about it, I know exactly what it's like, maybe, I replicate the exact experience, just by imagining it, maybe I detect the 'aura of pain-generating particles' which surround you and cause your experience and so know exactly what experience you're having... You refute such models by invoking a model of how physiological functions result in mental features. You necessarily bring in physiology. Your model is, however, wrong.

Quoting Luke

You want me to cite the studies proposing the disagreements that you're referring to? I don't know these studies. I had in mind something along the lines of Wittgenstein:

244. ...How does a human being learn the meaning of names of sensations? For example, of the word “pain”. Here is one possibility: words are connected with the primitive, natural, expressions of sensation and used in their place. A child has hurt himself and he cries; then adults talk to him and teach him exclamations and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behaviour.

257. “What would it be like if human beings did not manifest their pains (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word ‘toothache’.”


Presumably, the reason for these expressions of pain are (consciously experienced) pain sensations.

Why 'presume'? I've cited a dozen papers now in our various discussion on the topic. I've done my best to explain the current theories of active inference, yet without any contrary citation at all you just 'presume' that what I've said and what all the collected neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists I've cited have said, is wrong and that there are such things as 'pain sensations' which cause expressions of pain. So I don't think it's unreasonable of me, given your insistence, to ask fo the studies on which you base this recalcitrance.

Quoting Luke

People's heights are not private. You can see and measure how tall someone is. You cannot see or measure someone's pain sensations which are private.

You can ask.

Quoting Luke

You're trying to make this about language again, here, instead of the privacy of subjective experience. It's a given that we use the same words to refer to the same sets of behaviours.

We don't 'refer' using words. To say "John is in pain" is not 'referring' to a set of behaviours. It's getting help for John.

Quoting Luke

But more to the point you don't have access to that particular set of signals either. — Isaac


What particular set of signals?

Whichever signals you're interpreting as your being 'in pain'.

Quoting Luke

fMRI scans, conversation, behavioural observations... — Isaac


These can only measure pain behaviours, not pain sensations.

FMRI scans can measure pain sensations. But the other two can't. That's not the point. The point here is disputing your claim that it's not about how we use 'sameness'. You and I might have 'the same' phone based on a agreed set of properties (make and model) we ignore that yours has a scratch on one side. Likewise 'sameness' in experience can be, perfectly reasonably, determined by the properties {neural regions involved, behaviours produced, words used to describe it...etc}. We might reasonably ignore, in our use of the word 'same' the property of {exact spatial location of neurons involved, precise range of mental events associated...} just like we ignored the scratch on one side in determining that you and I have 'the same' phone.

The point of Wittgenstein's Eiffel Tower example is to reveal that we not only choose to do this sometimes, but that we must do this all the time, in order to speak of 'sameness' at all.

Quoting Luke

If these aren't enough for you to know we have the same experiences, then it is a question of 'sameness'. — Isaac


They're not enough, because there is no way to verify the sensations themselves.

Exactly. So

1) the exact range of sensations are like the exact scratches on your phone, or the dimensions to the nanometre, we don't use those properties to talk of 'sameness' when it comes to phones. Why should we use them to talk of 'sameness' when it comes to experiences?

2) you're amply demonstrating here exactly what I've argued at the opening of this post. Your conclusion that experience is radically unique and private is hooked into a model of it being caused by these unique and private 'pain sensations'. that is a) a psychological model and b) wrong.

Quoting Luke

We can compare and look at each other's phones, though. That's the difference.

We cannot look at them to the nanometre though. We cannot inspect their exact atomic structure. We cannot draw up an account of their histories atom-by-atom. Yet these failings do not prevent us from declaring them 'the same' phone. We pick the level of accuracy we want to use.

Quoting Luke

It would be clearer if you could define what 'private' does mean, instead of what it does not mean.

In this context - accessible only to the person concerned. Hence, accessible to no-one would not count as private. Like Private land. It has to be legally accessible by the person concerned and not by others. Land legally accessible by no-one at all is not private land, it's just unclaimed. Likewise private experience would be experience you can access but others can't. Experience which no-one can access is not 'private' it's just unknowable.

Quoting frank

Indirect realism"s weakness is about the trustworthiness of representations. How do you confirm that they're accurate?

Pragmatism.

Quoting frank

But you grant that people can have experiences that aren't publicly know

Yes, of course. If you lived and died a hermit you would have experiences that weren't publicly known. That's not the same as saying they're not publicly knowable.

Quoting Janus

That's a misunderstanding of what is being said. — Banno


A useless comment without explanation.

Whereas...

Quoting Janus

I've read pretty much the entire thread and have seen no cogent explanation.

...is not?

Quoting frank

We have the same experiences because we're both human. We each have private pains because you don't have access to my nociceptors.

As with Luke, if you invoke physiology to support privacy you need to have an accurate model of the way on which physiology causes experience. If you don't, then you'll have to abandon physiology as support. Your model is wrong. Neither do 'you' have unfiltered access to your nociceptors, no more so than a neuroscientist does.

Quoting frank

The reporter asks what it's like. I say I can't explain it. You'll just have to go through it yourself.

A unique, private experience has been talked about.

It evidently hasn't - "I can't explain it."

Quoting Mww

One can understand. Hmmmm. Does that mean one has to calculate? Or might he....you know....introspect?

Quoting Mww

and by your own admission, this science is itself speculative, so all that’s happened is we’ve substituted an older speculative system for a newer one, which is nonetheless speculative for it.

Yes, indeed. A common objection it seems. I remain unconvinced by this idea that since the science is only 'modelling' models it's somehow open season and anything goes. Models can be more or less coherent with each other, more or less useful, more or less parsimonious.

We've replaced the older speculative system for the newer one, not on a whim, but because it works better.

Quoting Mww

for all intents and purposes, why not just say we simply reason to the prevention of cause?

You could, but 'reason' has typically been reserved for conscious processing, and much of the modelling that brain regions have been shown to do is subconscious. It 'acts like' reason. In fact one really good study compared people subconsciously updating their expectations in the face of contrary sensory data, with a mathematician doing the calculations using Bayesian probability. The results were compared and found to be statistically correlated. I don't think that means that the occipital brain regions being studied actually carried out Bayesian analysis though. It's just that the algorithm programmed into the neural structure of those regions is similar enough to the one the mathematician carries out that the results of each are correlated.

Quoting Mww

humans can reason to prevention, then proceed to ignore it.

I don't believe they can. 'Reason' is usually a post hoc construction to rationalise a decision that has been made anyway further back in the subconscious. The fact that some particular thought method leads to one conclusion and another leads to another tells us almost nothing at all about how we actually arrived at the choice.

Quoting Mww

One thing I noticed: the paper recognizes the human cognitive system as representational; there are eleven instances of that conception therein. Always a good first step, methinks.

Nice to know there's cross-over even on hotly contested topics.

Quoting Isaac

But you grant that people can have experiences that aren't publicly known — frank


Yes, of course.

Cool. One problem solved.

Quoting Isaac

A unique, private experience has been talked about. — frank


It evidently hasn't - "I can't explain it."

It's the object of "can't explain.".

Quoting Isaac

why not just say we simply reason to the prevention of cause?
— Mww

You could, but 'reason' has typically been reserved for conscious processing, and much of the modelling that brain regions have been shown to do is subconscious. It 'acts like' reason.

Does this not contradict itself? If reason is reserved for conscious processing, which is granted, and if much of the modeling is unconscious, how can such modeling be said to be acting like reason?

What is the special attention you give to “reason” and “acts like” meant to indicate? What would you use to substitute for those, for which no special attention is necessary?
—————-

Quoting Isaac

this science is itself speculative (....), substituted an older speculative system for a newer one (...),
— Mww

Yes, indeed. A common objection it seems. I remain unconvinced by this idea that since the science is only 'modelling' models it's somehow open season and anything goes. Models can be more or less coherent with each other, more or less useful, more or less parsimonious.

Absolutely; permitting open season and anything goes permits all sorts of irrationalities. And models can be coherent with each other, but only within their respective domains and iff the conditions for them are given from the domain in which the model resides. If may indeed be the case that brain mechanics adhere to physical law, and follow mathematical algorithms, but that modeling is utterly irrelevant to a separate system that models itself absent all those terms in its purpose, even while operating in conjunction with it.

Quoting Isaac

We've replaced the older speculative system for the newer one, not on a whim, but because it works better.

Who’s we? The teeny-tiny fraction of intellectually specialized humanity that even considers the new system a better explanatory device? So, technically, you’ve replaced nothing, but only attacked a common opponent.....ignorance.....from a different direction, and with a much smaller hence potentially less effective force, using experimental weapons.

And works better than what? Whatever system model that can’t present itself to being measured? So quality is determined by measure? I’m wondering if you see that any experiment intending to demonstrate a result via any kind of measurement, is entirely predicated on the very speculative system the new speculative system is attempting to replace.
—————-

Quoting Isaac

humans can reason to prevention, then proceed to ignore it.
— Mww

I don't believe they can.

I suspect there to be many senior firefighters, soldiers, and these days, nurses’ aides,
boldly scoffing at that. A few of ‘em.....the more senior.....rolling on the ground, even. The most insulted, the most senior, would look at you with that, “what....you wouldn’t do your damn job???” expression, and immediately proceed to ignore, if not regret, your very existence.

Quoting Isaac

'Reason' is usually a post hoc construction to rationalise a decision that has been made anyway further back in the subconscious.

That’s actually a pretty decent rendering, except the “further back in the subconscious” part, insofar as no decision of reason is ever made in the subconscious domain. Some preliminary conditions for reason are subconscious, but these are not decisions.

Quoting Mww

Who’s we?

The Illuminati.

Reply to Olivier5

Guess we’ll never know. Sworn to secrecy and all.

Reply to Banno
So we have two kinds of privacy. One means unshareable even in principle. The other just means unshared, but potentially shareable to some degree.

The absence of Wittgensteinian privacy doesn't undermine the idea of subjectivity or intersubjectivity, and I think we've all agreed that the second kind is unproblematic.

So we're all on the same page.

Quoting Isaac

If you were talking only about your conscious experience of pain, that which is in your mind as being an experience (regardless of it's origins, or historical accuracy) you would have absolutely no ground at all to say that such an experience was unique, or intrinsically private. How on earth would you know?

That's my question to you: how do you know that it isn't?

Quoting Isaac

There might be a set of only a dozen such experiences identical in all humans which we consciously experience one of on each occasion. If you are solely talking about your personal experience, uninvestigated, and unsubstantiated, then on what grounds would you even suspect it to be unique, private...?

It's private because I've never known or experienced anyone else's sensations except my own. I've known and experienced lots of other people's behaviour, though.

Quoting Isaac

Your argument about privacy relies on an assumption about the causes of experience, an assumption that those causes are so multifarious that their rendering must be unique, that those causes obtain inside you and so are not accessible to others, hence private.

My argument for privacy is that you cannot have other people's experiences/sensations; you can only have your own. Therefore, there is no way to compare your sensations with other people's sensations in order to verify whether or not they are alike.

Quoting Isaac

Presumably, the reason for these expressions of pain are (consciously experienced) pain sensations.
— Luke

Why 'presume'?

In accordance with my argument that you cannot access other people's sensations in order to compare and verify whether they are alike.

Quoting Isaac

I've cited a dozen papers now in our various discussion on the topic. I've done my best to explain the current theories of active inference, yet without any contrary citation at all you just 'presume' that what I've said and what all the collected neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists I've cited have said, is wrong

Sorry, I must have missed them. You haven't cited any of them in your posts addressed to me.

Quoting Isaac

and that there are such things as 'pain sensations' which cause expressions of pain.

Maybe "cause" is not the right word. But it's irrelevant. There are the inner sensations and the outer expressions, and you can never see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like.

Quoting Isaac

People's heights are not private. You can see and measure how tall someone is. You cannot see or measure someone's pain sensations which are private.
— Luke

You can ask.

All you will get is a (verbal) behaviour. You still won't be able to see or access their sensations. You saying "it looks red to me" doesn't help if we have inverted qualia.

Quoting Isaac

But more to the point you don't have access to that particular set of signals either.
— Isaac

What particular set of signals?
— Luke

Whichever signals you're interpreting as your being 'in pain'.

How can I not have access to my own feelings of pain? But if, instead, you mean my brain signals instead of my feelings of pain, then why did you say earlier that neither of us can have access to those?

Quoting Isaac

FMRI scans can measure pain sensations.

Sensations or behaviours? How does it measure the sensations?

Quoting Isaac

The point here is disputing your claim that it's not about how we use 'sameness'.

That wasn't my claim; that's a claim you've attributed to me. I have conceded that we could all have the same experiences. That wasn't my point. As I said: "We could all have the same experiences, but do we? Probably, but who knows? How can we know?"

Quoting Isaac

The point of Wittgenstein's Eiffel Tower example is

I'm not familiar with that example. Do you have a reference?

Quoting Isaac

1) the exact range of sensations are like the exact scratches on your phone, or the dimensions to the nanometre, we don't use those properties to talk of 'sameness' when it comes to phones. Why should we use them to talk of 'sameness' when it comes to experiences?

Accuracy is irrelevant to my argument. It's the fact that we cannot access other people's sensations in order to compare them. You can access their "neural regions involved, behaviours produced, words used to describe it...etc", but whether these are associated with the same sensations seems like little more than an assumption. How can you prove it?

Quoting Isaac

Your conclusion that experience is radically unique and private is hooked into a model of it being caused by these unique and private 'pain sensations'. that is a) a psychological model and b) wrong.

Pain sensations are necessarily psychological. This is what I don't understand about your neuroscientific explanations. You can only know of your pain sensations by being conscious of them, yet you talk about unconscious brain activity instead and claim that what is presented to consciousness provides us with an inferior knowledge of pain compared to our neuroscientific models. But you wouldn't even know pain sensations without consciousness. Therefore, you're not actually talking about pain sensations at all.

Quoting Isaac

Hence, accessible to no-one would not count as private.

You still haven't explained how pain sensations are hidden or indirect or inaccessible to us both. I have direct access to my pains when I feel them. Where do you think pain sensations are really hidden?

Quoting Mww

Guess we’ll never know. Sworn to secrecy and all.

They could tell us but then they'd have to turn us into mindless zombies like themselves.

Reply to Luke Quoting Luke

You can access their "neural regions involved, behaviours produced, words used to describe it...etc", but whether these are associated with the same sensations seems like little more than an assumption. How can you prove it?

By changing variables around to see if the affect the sensations and the reports. There will be some physical differences which result in different sensations. For example: When I step on a lego I am in pain, whereas if the lego isn't there I'm not. The physical difference in this case is the lego. You can deduce that that is the case by having my walk on a lego then not walk on a lego. In once case I'll be in pain, and in the other I won't be.

If we change a physical aspect and the experience doesn't change, then we can conclude that that physical aspect is not responsible for changing the experience. For instance: We can know that toe size does not affect your perception of color. Or else we'd expect that when your toes are swollen that you would report that your perceptions of color changed (similar to putting on color inverting glasses for example). That doesn't happen, so we can conclude that toe size doesn't affect your perception of color.

Incidentally, this is what neurologists do. They mess with your brain and see how your reports of your experience change (due to your experience changing). Based on this we can narrow down the important physical factors for any sensation. Such that we can tell, decisively, that if we cloned Luke and gave his clone slightly bigger toes, the Luke clone will still be having the exact same experience of color as the original Luke.

Similarly, by narrowing down the variables sufficiently we can get to a point where we can tell exactly what Luke is feeling at time X by measuring all the relevant variables.

All of this of course assumes that, identical bodies produce identical experiences.

Quoting Luke

It's the fact that we cannot access other people's sensations in order to compare them.

Sure but we can access their reports. And assuming that they aren't lying that should be good enough no? If they're not lying a change in reports should indicate a change in sensations.

Quoting khaled

All of this of course assumes that, identical bodies produce identical experiences.

So it's no more than an assumption, right? Why can it not be anything stronger than an assumption?

Also, does this imply that near-identical bodies produce (only) near-identical experiences? Perhaps this is what @Isaac is getting at with his talk about 'sameness'.

Quoting Isaac

No, sensations are biological, 'Pain' is a concept created by a socially communicating group collecting some of those sensations and naming them.

Semantics. What difference does it make if we lump all the sensations which hurt into one general category? The matter at hand is the subjective nature of the sensations.

Reply to frank Well, if that's all there is to it, what do you think of Quoting Marchesk

Semantics. What difference does it make if we lump all the sensations which hurt into one general category? The matter at hand is the subjective nature of the sensations.

??

Reply to Luke Quoting Luke

Also, does this imply that near-identical bodies produce (only) near-identical experiences? Perhaps this is what Isaac is getting at with his talk about 'sameness'.

I think so.

Quoting Luke

All of this of course assumes that, identical bodies produce identical experiences.
— khaled

So it's no more than an assumption, right?

You don't share this assumption? You think that you can have the exact same physical state at two different times and have different experiences? I find that the way less likely hypothesis. Cheddar cheese tastes similar every time I eat it. And if cheddar cheese suddenly tastes like chocolate ice cream the first thing I suspect is that there is something physically different from the last time I ate cheddar cheese. It seems that when the physical conditions are the same or similar that the experience is the same or similar.

Otherwise what can account for a difference in experience? Do you often find yourself in the exact same physical situations but with different sensations?

But yes. It is no more than an assumption. But then so are all the alternatives. Point is it is the assumption that seems to match our experience the most. When the same things happen (stepping on a lego), we feel the same way (ouch).

Quoting Luke

Why can it not be anything stronger than an assumption?

I'm interested in an example of something "stronger than an assumption" for you.

Quoting frank

It evidently hasn't - "I can't explain it." — Isaac


It's the object of "can't explain.".

Seems a self-immunised definition of 'talk about' to go with. The very sentence "One cannot talk about it" would be self contradictory by that approach. In fact there would be nothing we cannot talk about, rendering the distinction useless. Personally I prefer to avoid definitions which render entire forms of speech useless by dissolving the distinction they're aiming to talk about. Our talk of 'that which we can talk about and that which we cannot' is about some distinction or other, so 'talk about' in this context needs to be defined in such a way as to make such talk functional, so we ought reject the idea that appearing only as an undefined pronoun is sufficient to qualify as having 'talked about it'.

Quoting Mww

If reason is reserved for conscious processing, which is granted, and if much of the modeling is unconscious, how can such modeling be said to be acting like reason?

Only that when I say 'like' the properties I'm describing as similar do not include the property of 'taking place in conscious processing'. That would be one of the properties by which the two differ.

Quoting Mww

that modeling is utterly irrelevant to a separate system that models itself absent all those terms in its purpose, even while operating in conjunction with it.

It's the 'conjunction with it' bit that matters though. If a model of brain function identifies a region as associated with some function, and the association is suitably strong in all cases thus far, then when we look at that component in our alternative model running 'in conjunction with it' we should find it correlates. If it doesn't then either there's something wrong with one of the models or they are no longer 'in conjunction'.

Quoting Mww

Who’s we? The teeny-tiny fraction of intellectually specialized humanity that even considers the new system a better explanatory device?

Yes. The usual manner in which science advances. It hasn't prevented any other common understanding. There's no 'folk-electronics' which runs a whole alternative set of computers. Why should there be a 'folk-psychology' which describes mental events outside of the scientific understanding?

Quoting Mww

So, technically, you’ve replaced nothing, but only attacked a common opponent.....ignorance.....from a different direction, and with a much smaller hence potentially less effective force, using experimental weapons.

Yes, I agree, but I don't see a better approach.

Quoting Mww

I suspect there to be many senior firefighters, soldiers, and these days, nurses’ aides, boldly scoffing at that. A few of ‘em.....the more senior.....rolling on the ground, even. The most insulted, the most senior, would look at you with that, “what....you wouldn’t do your damn job???” expression, and immediately proceed to ignore, if not regret, your very existence.

Fortunate then that the quality of our models does not have to pass the 'would be scoffed at by firefighters' test. I wonder how much of Kant would be scoffed at by firefighters. I think you and I both would have to to throw out our pet theories were that the test.

Quoting Mww

Some preliminary conditions for reason are subconscious, but these are not decisions.

Yes, fair enough. A better word is needed to describe the selection of an outcome by subconscious algorithm, to reserve 'decision' for it's more common use. 'Outcome' perhaps?

Quoting Luke

That's my question to you: how do you know that it isn't?

Same way as we 'know' anything - we assume it, act as if it were the case, and see if we're surprised by the results of doing so. Acting as if we all had radically different private experiences yields the surprising lack of physical explanation for that difference.

Quoting Luke

It's private because I've never known or experienced anyone else's sensations except my own.

You might have done. You've not given an account of the origin or nature of 'sensations' under your model by which they're detached from physical causes, so how can you say that you've only experienced your own? Perhaps there's not such thing as 'your own' sensations at all, by your definition. Once detached from any physical measurement whatsoever, absolutely anything could be the case, we might as well be discussing the offside rules in Quidditch.

Quoting Luke

My argument for privacy is that you cannot have other people's experiences/sensations; you can only have your own.

That's not an argument, it's a statement.

Quoting Luke

There are the inner sensations and the outer expressions, and you can never see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like.

Again, that is the matter under discussion, so it doesn't help to pull it in as evidence for a conclusion therein.

Quoting Luke

All you will get is a (verbal) behaviour. You still won't be able to see or access their sensations.

In what way is the verbal behaviour not a form of access to their sensations? Is a ruler not a form of access to a thing's height?

Quoting Luke

How can I not have access to my own feelings of pain?

I thought I explained that. There's this equivocation over what constitutes 'your feelings of pain'. On the one hand they're some immutable private thing embedded in your body (and so inaccessible to others), but on the other they're whatever you currently think they are, which seems easily communicated.

People generally use the term 'my feelings, or my memories, or my opinion...' to refer to some fixed object as if it were stored in their brain somewhere. That model is wrong. Those things are created in real time, not retrieved from some mental filing cabinet. If you don't have that model, such that when you refer to 'my pain' you mean 'whatever feeling, or memory of a feeling I happen to be creating at this very moment', then my description of your lack of access to it does not apply to you. The consequence, however, of that model is that it's a chimera, which you can never talk about because it changes in the very act of doing so.

Quoting Luke

I have conceded that we could all have the same experiences. That wasn't my point. As I said: "We could all have the same experiences, but do we? Probably, but who knows? How can we know?"

I don't really need to add anything to what Reply to khaled has already written on this.

Quoting Luke

The point of Wittgenstein's Eiffel Tower example is — Isaac


I'm not familiar with that example. Do you have a reference?

No, sorry. I can't think where I got that from - I was convinced it was one of the examples from PI, but cannot now find it. What I had in mind was his discussion on 'exactness' in PI88. He actually uses the example of a pocket watch vs laboratory time, I thought the example was measuring the height of the Eiffel tower. The point is still the same though. Nothing is 'exact' to some default degree, it is implicit what level of exactness we mean.

Quoting Luke

Accuracy is irrelevant to my argument. It's the fact that we cannot access other people's sensations in order to compare them.

Yes, I see that now, to an extent. But behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations - the behaviour they cause, the language used, the neural activity associated... These are not only real properties of your experience, but they're the only properties we have to measure. If the only properties we can measure seem to indicate a strong similarity (and exactness qua Wittgenstein), then that is as good a ground as we're ever going to get for treating them as 'the same'.

Just like we look to make and model to determine if you and I have 'the same' phone. We look to behavioural consequence, associated neural activity etc to see that you and I have 'the same' experience.

Quoting Luke

You can only know of your pain sensations by being conscious of them

See here you equivocate. Previously you assume direct access to your 'pain' by denying my model of inference. Now you're again describing your pain sensations as if they were some fact of the matter that you become aware of. Which is it to be?

Quoting Luke

I have direct access to my pains when I feel them.

And again here. If you're going to talk about your 'pain' as being just exactly that which you feel at some given time, and not that which is inferred from some other physiological trigger, then there is no 'access' at all. You make it up at the time, you're not 'accessing' anything. The only sense in which 'access' is coherent is a model where 'pain sensations' are a physiological thing which you 'seek out' by introspection.

Quoting Marchesk

Semantics. What difference does it make if we lump all the sensations which hurt...

That is to have already lumped them.

Quoting Isaac

That is to have already lumped them.

So there aren't unpleasant sensations until we create words for them? That makes no evolutionary sense.

Quoting khaled

If they're not lying ...

There is no reason to assume that people always say the truth. I my experience, they often say a fair share of the truth but rarely everything there is to say.

Reply to Olivier5 But when you have hundreds and thousands of subjects it’s difficult to believe they’re all lying to troll you. And besides, no one has a reason to call a red apple green.

Quoting khaled

But when you have hundreds and thousands of subjects it’s difficult to believe they’re all lying to troll you. And besides, no one has a reason to call a red apple green.

It's not to troll, it's to protect themselves.

Quoting Isaac

The very sentence "One cannot talk about it" would be self contradictory by that approach.

It could be contradictory. Depends on the context.

Point was, we frequently refer to the part of experience we can't communicate with words, music, novels, and so forth.

And this kind of privacy isn't necessary for subjective experience. You've already approved the unshared, but potentially shareable kind of privacy, so you have approved subjectivity. Good on you.

Quoting Banno

Well, if that's all there is to it, what do you think of

Semantics. What difference does it make if we lump all the sensations which hurt into one general category? The matter at hand is the subjective nature of the sensations.

I think Marchesk has already allowed that some parts of subjective experience are shareable in principle.

Whether some aspects are nonlinguistic, so unshareable in words, is an issue we may not be able to resolve. Whether there are aspects that can't be shared in any other way is along the same lines.

But so we don't get lost in the weeds: some aspects of subjectivity are shareable, so we've all confirmed it.

Quoting Isaac

If a model of brain function identifies a region as associated with some function, and the association is suitably strong in all cases thus far, then when we look at that component in our alternative model running 'in conjunction with it' we should find it correlates.

Yes, that’s standard modus operandi for theoretical science. At the same time, it is the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy in theoretical philosophy, which you’re probably more familiar with as the “correlation does not imply causation” principle. In this case, it seems your argument is the stronger, insofar as the brain is ultimately responsible for everything human, including philosophy, from which follows as a matter of course that if a certain brain region repeatedly illuminates from a corresponding human function, the former is deemed sufficiently responsible for the latter, in a general sense.

On the other hand, there is no actual occasion to “look at that component in our alternate model”, because it isn’t there. I think you must.....err, subconsciously....realize this important fact, by switching from “function” in the one model, to “component” in the other. The old speculative model does not distinguish regions of the brain as relating to specific components of reason. Conversely, it is impossible for science to distinguish the functions of reason with respect to components of the brain. That is to say, imagination is not to be found in the region containing this component, understanding in that region, moral constitution thataway, aesthetics over yonder. Cognition....aisle three right; opinion....level ten left.

Quoting Isaac

If it doesn't (correlate) then either there's something wrong with one of the models or they are no longer 'in conjunction'.

I think we’re both of the mind that they do correlate, and that’s there nothing intrinsically wrong with either model, even if you consider mine chimerical/superficial and I consider yours useless. Dunno....can two things be correlated but incompatible? Oil and water? GR and QM?

But to be fair in acknowledging my lack of scientific exposure....does the exact same region of my brain respond to my understanding of race riots, as it does to my understanding of internal combustion engines? I would suppose not, which sustains my claim that speculative methodological theories are domain-specific, and one does not mix at all with the other.
—————

Quoting Isaac

I wonder how much of Kant would be scoffed at by firefighters.

I’m guessing most of it. He admits “....the present work is not intended for popular use...”. In one respect our models are on the same ground, insofar as they both relate to a certain human condition. Yours concerns the physical mechanics that make the condition real, mine concerns the metaphysical methods which make the condition possible. Nevertheless, Everydayman will the more readily accept that he thinks by means and ends of reason, than he will accept mathematical algorithms and natural law as necessary for how he thinks.
—————

Quoting Isaac

On the one hand they're some immutable private thing embedded in your body (and so inaccessible to others), but on the other they're whatever you currently think they are, which seems easily communicated.

The old system easily explains this apparent entrapment in a contradiction for an unwary thinker, in that feelings are not things and they are not thoughts. We don’t think pain or pleasure, we think things by which one or the other of those, and the various schemata subsumed under them, is represented. Here is where Witt’s #246 plays, insofar as it is false for you to claim knowledge of my pain, or sensations in general, and it is nonsense for me to claim knowledge of my pain or sensations in general. The former is false because all you can know is what I report to you, the latter is nonsense because sensation is not thought and thinking is the only possible means for knowledge, “....as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?)....”. One does not think the pain he is in, one does not report anything whatsoever to himself; either there is an empirical condition as sufficient causality representing the feeling of pain/pleasure, necessarily sensed and subsequently thought by one but only possibly reported as such post hoc to another....or there is not.

I understand we can do this for days on end. We don’t have to, so without something new and different to talk about.....

Quoting Mww

Here is where Witt’s #246 plays, insofar as it is false for you to claim knowledge of my pain, or sensations in general, and it is nonsense for me to claim knowledge of my pain or sensations in general.

That is true, when you think about it. But is that how you feel about it? Isn't knowledge ultimately a feeling of conviction that you don't need to fight, but to refine, until it becomes as good as possible under preconceived criteria, a set of virtues conveyed without need for justification. Isn't all life an impulse. It is as useless to fight your faith in objective knowledge, as it is futile to fight one's sensible doubt in it. I am fully justified in doubting whether you feel or are as real as I am. But how do I know that I am actually real, if not through the impulsive realization that I am, through the trust in the conviction that fact and perception are joined. Can I rationally justify that perceiving you is equivalent to the sense of proof I get from perceiving myself? No. But do I ever rationally justify that I perceive any two things the same way? No. Not even perceiving myself in my different aspects. Are they all real, or are some more real then others? I relate perceptual realizations instinctively. I am bound to, compelled to. I have faith in the property of relatability, between myself and between appearances in general. But I am also equally emotionally compelled to doubt them, because my reason fights my conviction, and I have conviction in my reason. I am also instinctively compelled to discover how you emulate your reaction of my emotion, by observing the apparent image of your neurological construction as it is presented to me. And then, I am similarly emotionally compelled to be appreciative of the apparent closeness between our responses and to respect the meaning of this closeness, as I feel it, whatever it might be.

I object to the rational justification of treating the immediate observation (as I feel myself to exist) and perceptual inference (as I project qualities onto the appearances of other organisms or objects, which demonstrate superficial similarity to the enactment of my presence in the world), if that is any consolation. But I find that I do not object the irrational conviction in that equivalence. I am not debating the value of inductive reasoning, belief in self, will to attain fulfillment, will to attain involvement, etc. All that matters is that I rationally doubt anything irrational. But I should irrationally believe my convictions until a stronger, more convincing instinct makes itself available from experience. I wanted to bring that point into the debate here, and see where it takes us. For example, which irrational convictions can be turned into reasonable statements?

I.e. - I questioned in one post in this thread whether existence outside of myself can be a reasonable statement. I didn't question that it can be a sensible statement, but the two senses of existence, perceptual and my own, do not equate. Then, one starts to ask, when do sensible statements become reasonable statements, and through what means, so forth.

Reply to Mww Not too bad an account of §246.

I notice that you talk of pains and pleasures as being represented. I spoke earlier of the dissimilarity between "I have a pain in my hand" and "I have an iPhone in my hand". The temptation is to think that because the grammar is the same, the pain is a thing in the way the iPhone is. As a matter of exegesis, the next few pages of PI show Witti to be rejecting this. He talks of how the length of a rod seems obvious, but not the length of a sphere; the notion of length ceases to have application, because we cannot imagine the opposite, the "width" of a sphere. He points out how a dog might simulate being in pain, but that the situations in which this occurs shows the dog isn't. He talks of feeling another's pain.

Then he asks of our use of "the language which describes my inner experience" (§256), and "how we "simply associate names with sensations..." But note the use of the em-dash at the end of this comment. Because he next moves into what is considered the heart of the private language argument, §259 &c.

And the upshot of that is that it is improper to talk of representing our own pains and pleasures. "I have a pain in my hand" is not like "I have an iPhone in my hand"; it is more like "Ouch!"

If one were to treat of a private, subjective world, it seems one may not be able to name items therein.

After the criticism in the SEP article and the discussion in this article with @khaled, I'll concede to a sort of retrospective naming of supposedly private sensations - chess is a two-player game that can be played by one person. But I will continue to reject any primacy that might be given to supposedly private sensations, such that they form the basis for inter-subjectivity. Such an account is arse-about; we start with what is public, not with what might be private.

Quoting Banno

The temptation is to think that because the grammar is the same, the pain is a thing in the way the iPhone is.

In what way is the iPhone a thing, exactly?

Quoting simeonz

Here is where Witt’s #246 plays (......)
— Mww

That is true, when you think about it. But is that how you feel about it?

Simply put....there are no feelings intrinsic to a purely empirical statement, in the same way I do not have a feeling about the water I may or may not put to some use. #246 is an empirical statement, for, on the one hand it has to do with the perceptions of someone else and the knowledge possible from them, and on the other, it has to do with the sensations that belong to me alone, from which follows the possibility of my own knowledge. In such case, I don’t feel the former is impossible and the latter nonsense, but rather, I can only justify the truth of it to myself. In language, this manifests as me merely saying I agree with the statement. You hinted at it yourself: truth is in what you think, then to ask of a feeling about the same thing, implies the truth is not in that.

Quoting simeonz

Isn't knowledge ultimately a feeling of conviction that you don't need to fight, but to refine, until it becomes as good as possible under preconceived criteria, a set of virtues conveyed without need for justification.

Post-modern convention says that may be the case. I agree, speaking from my well-worn armchair, that knowledge, and here we’re talking empirical knowledge, the kind with which #246 concerns itself, is a relative conviction, but not a feeling of being convinced. That condition reduces to mere persuasion, and we not persuaded to knowledge, but convinced upon arriving at it. But with respect to what you’re asking here, I would deny that empirical knowledge follows from virtue, which makes conveyance sans justification moot. A set of virtues conveyed without need of justification, is called interest. At the same time, I would affirm that knowledge is by definition already as good as possible iff knowledge is taken to mean certainty under the preconceived criteria from which it arises. But not necessarily so, insofar as there may be no preconceived criteria, re: experience, in the event of new knowledge.
————-

Quoting simeonz

I should irrationally believe my convictions until a stronger, more convincing instinct makes itself available from experience.

Your comment is commendable, anthropology aside that is, but epistemically I’d take issue with....

.....one doesn’t irrationally believe a conviction, but rather, a persuasion, which reduces to merely holding with an opinion;
.....instinct doesn’t make itself available from experience, but from lack of it, manifest in sheer accident or pure reflex, or congruent circumstances wherein reason is otherwise supervened.

But again, I’m not so good with this post-modern stuff, so.......

Quoting Isaac

It's private because I've never known or experienced anyone else's sensations except my own.
— Luke

You might have done. You've not given an account of the origin or nature of 'sensations' under your model

It's not a model. I'm telling you what I haven't experienced. As far as I know, it is logically impossible to experience such a thing, because I cannot have anybody else's experiences.

Quoting Isaac

Perhaps there's not such thing as 'your own' sensations at all, by your definition.

Perhaps there's no such thing as 'your own' brain at all, by your definition.

Quoting Isaac

There are the inner sensations and the outer expressions, and you can never see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like.
— Luke

Again, that is the matter under discussion, so it doesn't help to pull it in as evidence for a conclusion therein.

Then please explain how you can see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like.

Quoting Isaac

In what way is the verbal behaviour not a form of access to their sensations? Is a ruler not a form of access to a thing's height?

Because that's the distinction between behaviours and sensations. You can perceive someone else's behaviours, but you cannot perceive someone else's sensations. Therefore, you cannot perceive someone else's sensations by perceiving their (verbal) behaviours.

Since you can perceive both a ruler and a thing's height, these are not analagous to sensations and behaviours.

Quoting Isaac

I thought I explained that. There's this equivocation over what constitutes 'your feelings of pain'. On the one hand they're some immutable private thing embedded in your body (and so inaccessible to others), but on the other they're whatever you currently think they are, which seems easily communicated.

If I tell you how I feel, all you will perceive are my behaviours, not my sensations. If you could perceive my sensations, then I wouldn't need to tell you how I feel.

Quoting Isaac

People generally use the term 'my feelings, or my memories, or my opinion...' to refer to some fixed object as if it were stored in their brain somewhere. That model is wrong. Those things are created in real time, not retrieved from some mental filing cabinet. If you don't have that model, such that when you refer to 'my pain' you mean 'whatever feeling, or memory of a feeling I happen to be creating at this very moment', then my description of your lack of access to it does not apply to you. The consequence, however, of that model is that it's a chimera, which you can never talk about because it changes in the very act of doing so.

But I can still talk about having pains. "Whatever feeling, [s]or memory of a feeling[/s] I happen to be [s]creating[/s] having at this very moment" isn't a model.

Quoting Isaac

But behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations - the behaviour they cause, the language used, the neural activity associated... These are not only real properties of your experience, but they're the only properties we have to measure.

How do you know that "behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations"? That behaviours (or "behavioural consequence") are "the only properties we have to measure" is precisely my point. You can only measure behaviours; you cannot measure sensations. That makes sensations private and not publicly knowable.

Quoting Isaac

Just like we look to make and model to determine if you and I have 'the same' phone. We look to behavioural consequence, associated neural activity etc to see that you and I have 'the same' experience.

Again, this is not analagous. We can verify the makes and models of our phones as easily as we can verify the phones themselves: simply by looking at them. All the information required to verify whether our phones are the same make and model can be measured and/or perceived (in principle). The same cannot be said for our (i.e. other people's) sensations, however. You can only make inferences about other people's sensations by looking at the "behavioural consequence"; the sensations themselves cannot be measured or perceived.

Quoting Isaac

You can only know of your pain sensations by being conscious of them
— Luke

See here you equivocate. Previously you assume direct access to your 'pain' by denying my model of inference. Now you're again describing your pain sensations as if they were some fact of the matter that you become aware of. Which is it to be?

I don't have pains unless I am consciously aware of them, or unless they hurt. I don't see how I've equivocated on this.

Quoting Isaac

And again here. If you're going to talk about your 'pain' as being just exactly that which you feel at some given time, and not that which is inferred from some other physiological trigger, then there is no 'access' at all. You make it up at the time, you're not 'accessing' anything. The only sense in which 'access' is coherent is a model where 'pain sensations' are a physiological thing which you 'seek out' by introspection.

I don't think it's me doing this introspection; although it might be my brain. The problem here, again, is that you speak of my brain functions as if I were consciously performing them. That is, you conflate my conscious mental thinking with my brain's unconscious physical activity and refer to them both as "me" (or "you"). If I'm not consciously introspecting and 'seeking out' pain signals, then I'm not the one doing it. Just as, if I'm not conscious of my physiological "pain" signals, then I'm not having any pain sensations; I'm not in pain.

Quoting Mww

Simply put....there are no feelings intrinsic to a purely empirical statement, in the same way I do not have a feeling about the water I may or may not put to some use.

But we never deal with the statements in the abstract, but with their evaluations in some terms, even if syntactic terms. We deal with analysis, conjectures, assertions, objections. Sensation itself does not prompt reaction. Reason itself does not prompt conclusions. We infer and react. Being compelled by reason is feeling of trust in reason. Reason, as we abstractly define it, is not emotional, but being under rational influence is itself, I think, an emotion. Having faith in reason, for me, is an emotion. A preconception. Empiricism, is emotional preconception. But not every emotional preconception is empirical.

Quoting Mww

#246 is an empirical statement, for, on the one hand it has to do with the perceptions of someone else and the knowledge possible from them, and on the other, it has to do with the sensations that belong to me alone, from which follows the possibility of my own knowledge.

But is knowledge direct result from sensations, or is it reaction to sensations. A conviction that emotionally stems, possibly through reason, from those sensations.

Quoting Mww

You hinted at it yourself: truth is in what you think, then to ask of a feeling about the same thing, implies the truth is not in that.

I think..., that thinking is ultimately a drive, by which I mean, a kind of emotion, not some undisputed fact. It isn't any more or any less reality automatically, but the properties of conviction by reason are particular in some sense, as every emotion has particular qualities, whose relevance is instinctively conveyed to the subject. When I argue with you, I am not being impartial. But I don't mean, merely because of my conviction in my assertions, but more so through my sense of justification by reason and experience. I believe in my methodology. But my methodology (of being reasonable, critical, objective, argumentative, etc.) is not rooted in immutable reality without right of objection. Reason has particular qualities that make it a commendable feeling to have, because I feel it to be. But, ironically, reason is also critically interested in all feelings, because they are its only subject in application. And, somewhat ironically, thinking doubts feeling, for a good reason. Thinking doubts thinking, for a good reason.

Quoting Mww

Post-modern convention says that may be the case. I agree, speaking from my well-worn armchair, that knowledge, and here we’re talking empirical knowledge, the kind with which #246 concerns itself, is a relative conviction, but not a feeling of being convinced. That condition reduces to mere persuasion, and we not persuaded to knowledge, but convinced upon arriving at it. But with respect to what you’re asking here, I would deny that empirical knowledge follows from virtue, which makes conveyance sans justification moot. A set of virtues conveyed without need of justification, is called interest. At the same time, I would affirm that knowledge is by definition already as good as possible iff knowledge is taken to mean certainty under the preconceived criteria from which it arises. But not necessarily so, insofar as there may be no preconceived criteria, re: experience, in the event of new knowledge.

But sensibility and reason are a variety of persuasion. Are you not persuaded to trust them? I think that it would be mistake to assume that people should treat all of their persuasions the same. And it will be mistake to oppose different kinds of persuasions to each other. We trust our senses, we trust our reason, and we trust even our instinct in general. We don't use our senses, reason, and general instinct in the same way. We relate them to each other, and they complement each other. The end product, however, is still a persuasion. The question is, not whether we should follow our innate convictions, and not even which innate convictions we should follow, but how do innate convictions relate to each other best, in our experience, and how we best relate them between us, in discourse.

Quoting Mww

Your comment is commendable, anthropology aside that is, but epistemically I’d take issue with....

.....one doesn’t irrationally believe a conviction, but rather, a persuasion, which reduces to merely holding with an opinion;
.....instinct doesn’t make itself available from experience, but from lack of it, manifest in sheer accident or pure reflex, or congruent circumstances wherein reason is otherwise supervened.

My point is... an opinion is never merely held. It is held by someone having personal investment in it. Reason is a personal investment. Sensory experience is a personal investment. Being a spoiled child, being in need of ice cream, is still a personal investment. We can relate between the virtues of our personal investments, because they are compelled to relate naturally (not necessarily unambiguously). We can relate between each other our personal investments, as best as we can. There is nothing more to do. We arrive at more investments as we experience life. That is what I meant by instinct. Something that is triggered automatically by involvement, not so much the biological term of being innate at birth.

P.S.: I wouldn't know how to comment on the post-modern quality of my statements.

Quoting Banno

And the upshot of that is that it is improper to talk of representing our own pains and pleasures. "I have a pain in my hand" is not like "I have an iPhone in my hand"; it is more like "Ouch!"

Language games? A phone cannot be in your hand, it can only be held by your hand. The cause of pain can be in your hand (arthritis) but can also be held by your hand. Whether contained in or held by, these are both sensations, hence necessarily will be representations to downstream cognitive faculties, because they arise from physical conditions. As sensations, either can illicit a feeling of pain or pleasure, but do not represent pain or pleasure.

Quoting Banno

Then he asks of our use of "the language which describes my inner experience" (§256),

#256 begins with.....
“.....Now, what about the language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can understand? How do I use words to stand for my sensations?—As we ordinarily do? Then are my words for sensations tied up with my natural expressions of sensation?.....

First, notice Witt goes from experience to sensation. One should be aware of this time-specific differential; a whole bunch of stuff is happening internally between sensation and experience.
Second, I use words to stand for my sensations just like I always do, And words are always tied up with my natural expression......otherwise they wouldn’t be words......but that does not imply the necessity for expression itself.

I can manufacture a word for the expression of a sensation, then never express it. “Ouch”, of course, is a both a word and a general expression of a kind of sensation, but empty of determinable information by a listener. Time becomes important here, for, in the strictest sense, sensations are not named. They are, technically mere phenomena, until understanding thinks a conception belonging to it. That tickle between your shoulder blades....is it a bug or a hair? If a bug...mosquito or ant? That blind taste test....is it Coke or Pepsi?

Continuiing with #256:

“.....In that case my language is not a 'private' one. Someone else might understand it as well as I...”

My car is privately owned. If I give you a ride in it, is it any less privately owned? Accordingly, if I speak to you in a private language, the fact of your hearing does not affect its privacy. Plus, Witt has already stipulated a language “...only I can understand...”, so it is given that there is not someone else that might understand. Hence, even expressed, my language remains a private language. Useless for being understood, highly likely, but still private.

Witt is guilty of a categorical error, insofar as the “private” implication for the internal construction of the language by one subject, is very far from the “not-private” receptivity of the expression of it by another subject.
————-

Quoting Banno

If one were to treat of a private, subjective world, it seems one may not be able to name items therein.

Usually, yes, words are perceptions, but that does not account for the fact that every single word ever, is itself a private word at the time of its inception, hence not a perception in itself at all, and only henceforth understood by like-minded beings for what it was originally meant to represent, which is exactly the terminus of what Hume meant by “constant conjunction”. You say a word to me and what it means, and if I never heard that word before, I immediately grant whatever you’ve told me. I don’t bother asking you where you got that word from. From now on, I’ll use that word, under the same conditions, out of mere habit.

The items of a subjective world are representations alone, of which words are a species. There are no words in Nature; they are each and every one a construction of a rational being capable of relating a conception to a expression for it. The objects named by words are not private to a subjective world, but that by which each individual human knows them, most certainly is. And language is nothing but an intelligible assemblage of words, so.....there ya go.

Quoting Banno

But I will continue to reject any primacy that might be given to supposedly private sensations, such that they form the basis for inter-subjectivity. Such an account is arse-about; we start with what is public, not with what might be private.

Sensation is defined as an affect on sensibility; sensibility is defined as the capacity for receptivity of impressions. Sensation then reduces to the affect of impressions. Even if all humans are capable of receptivity of impressions, it is not given from that, that the affect is perfectly matched to the impression. To whit: even if it is the case that a multiplicity of humans perceive the moon, it is not given that the moon makes the same impression on each human that perceives it. To claim such a thing as a non-private sensation, is a categorical error, from which follows the reconciliation of the error necessitates that all sensations, as such, are private affectations of general impressions. Therefore, rejection of the primacy of private sensations, is unreasonable, and the ground of inter-subjectivity, is mediately given. (Not a typo, not immediately given. If you’re still with me, that is)
————

Quoting Banno

Such an account is arse-about; we start with what is public, not with what might be private.

Trust me....I dig where you’re coming from. These days, in this small world, there are very few new experiences, hardly anything not common to just about everybody else. It is easy to say we start with what is public because it sure seems that way. And nine times out of ten, it is that way. But not always, which makes explicit it is possible to start with what is not public, and account for that must be made. That accountability results in the conclusion that no matter what is started with, the private part has all the power. The public part just is, the private part says what it is.

quod erat demonstrandum

Or, in Grey-Haired Ponytail parlance..... the story (in) twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is.....

Quoting simeonz

Sensation itself does not prompt reaction. Reason itself does not prompt conclusions. We infer and react.

“....For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience?...”
(CPR, B1)

We can say sensation does in fact prompt reaction, and reason does in fact prompt conclusions. At least, theoretically. And, of a sort.
————

Quoting simeonz

But sensibility and reason are a variety of persuasion. Are you not persuaded to trust them?

Such queries suggest a metaphysical reductionism gone too far. We exist in a epistemological contingency, and rationalize under the auspices of the principle of complementarity, in that every thought has its negation, but despite all that, there is no profit in pretending we have no certainties. So, no, I’m not so much persuaded to trust as I am convinced I have no choice but to trust, and make the best of the circumstances.

Quoting simeonz

I think that it would be mistake to assume that people should treat all of their persuasions the same.

I disagree, in principle, in that because they are all persuasions they should be treated as such. It is thus still allowed to attribute different values to each persuasion. It is that one of which we are persuaded, that is not necessarily treated the same as another.

Quoting simeonz

We trust our senses, we trust our reason, and we trust even our instinct in general. We don't use our senses, reason, and general instinct in the same way. We relate them to each other, and they complement each other. The end product, however, is still a persuasion.

In the strictest sense, this is true enough. In keeping with what I said above, this is still a reduction too far. It is anathema to pure reason to maintain that mathematical or logical laws are persuasions, at the expensive of knowledge, even while recognizing the tentative nature of it. In conjunction with a specific definition of persuasion, such that varieties in subjective conditions are distinguishable, to limit reason to persuasion is to limit humans to lower-classed intelligences. A rat runs from snakes from instinct alone, but cannot ever reason to the conviction of possible destruction if he doesn’t. We have to account for, not only why we humans can, but also why we do.
———-

Quoting simeonz

an opinion is never merely held. It is held by someone having personal investment in it. Reason is a personal investment. Sensory experience is a personal investment.

OK, so all that means is that there are different kinds or qualities attributable to personal investment. This is mere aesthetics, included necessarily in the human condition. We still need to relate the activity of personal investment to the plethora of states of affairs. Just as in any investment, it needs be determined how to arrive at it and thereby quantify its value, which is not itself mere aesthetics, but.....technically speaking....purposivity. Goal-orientation. And the ultimate goal for humans, is truth.

I appreciate your arguments. They’re well-formed and interesting. Don’t take anything I say as some serious effort to refute them, which really can’t be done anyway, just.....point/counterpoint, nothing more.

Quoting Banno

And the upshot of that is that it is improper to talk of representing our own pains and pleasures.

The common view is that pain and pleasure are representations of nervous input. We don't know how awareness and representation work. This view goes back to Descartes with the plucked strings.

There's a contradiction at the base of this view, though, so it's probably a good idea to take it with a grain of salt.

Reply to Mww I was unable to follow what you claimed regarding privacy. YOu seem to be thinking of privacy in terms of ownership - cars - which is far off track.

Quoting Mww

The objects named by words are not private to a subjective world, but that by which each individual human knows them, most certainly is.

"...that by which each human knows them..."? You continue in the belief that there is a meaning for each word, to be found in one's private subconscious.

Your account of seeing the moon commences with there being a moon to see. My objection is not that each person does not have a sensation of the moon; it is that this sensation is private. In so far as it is of the moon, it is public. In so far as it is private, it is not a sensation of anything. This is the point made so well by @Isaac. The Kantian analysis is outdated.

...but the judge wasn't going to look at the pictures.

Quoting frank

The common view is that pain and pleasure are representations of nervous input.

Check that. pain and pleasure are nervous input.

Quoting Banno

Check that. pain and pleasure are nervous input.

Are you familiar with multiple realizability?

Reply to frank Another half-question. Yes?

Reply to Banno
Multiple realizability blocks the path to reductionism. Pain has to be emergent.

Reply to frank Don't explain why. All good.

Reply to Banno
The SEP are explains it better than I could.

Here.

Reply to frank I'm asking you to show what this has to do with my Quoting Banno

pain and pleasure are nervous input.

Reply to Banno
Oh. Well you could disconnect the afferent nerves from the brain. You'd have that sensory data, but no pain.

Reply to frank There would be no nervous input within the brain?

Quoting Banno

YOu seem to be thinking of privacy in terms of ownership

Yep. Ownership of the car, possession of the sensation. Same principle.

Quoting Banno

You continue in the belief that there is a meaning for each word, to be found in one's private subconscious.

Not believe. Logically speculate.
Not in subconscious. In understanding.
Not meaning of each word. Meaning of each representation, expressible by a word.

Quoting Banno

My objection is not that each person does not have a sensation of the moon; it is that this sensation is private.

Each person. Ownership/possession. ‘Nuff said.

Quoting Banno

In so far as it is of the moon, it is public.

Moon-object-public; sensation of the moon-representation-not public.

Quoting Banno

In so far as it is private, it is not a sensation of anything.

It is a sensation of a yet undetermined something.

Quoting Banno

The Kantian analysis is outdated.

Yet the paradigm shift in human thought that it was, has not itself been shifted.

Quoting Banno

but the judge wasn't going to look at the pictures.

Little bit of that kinda judge in all of us, ne c’est pas?

Quoting Banno

There would be no nervous input within the brain?

Ironically the brain isn't innervated, so no, you can't feel your brain.

Not even half a question.

Quoting Mww

Yep. Ownership of the car, possession of the sensation. Same principle.

Ah, so is it a deed or title that establishes ownership of your sensations?

Quoting frank

Not even half a question.

Certainly not a conversation.

Quoting frank

The common view is that pain and pleasure are representations of nervous input. We don't know how awareness and representation work. This view goes back to Descartes with the plucked strings.

There's a contradiction at the base of this view, though, so it's probably a good idea to take it with a grain of salt.

What would be this contradiction?

Quoting Marchesk

So there aren't unpleasant sensations until we create words for them? That makes no evolutionary sense.

Why not? What's evolution got to do with the judgement of sensations? Evolution requires that appropriate behaviours are produced in response to environmental circumstances. It has no preference at all for how.

Quoting Mww

Conversely, it is impossible for science to distinguish the functions of reason with respect to components of the brain. That is to say, imagination is not to be found in the region containing this component, understanding in that region, moral constitution thataway, aesthetics over yonder. Cognition....aisle three right; opinion....level ten left.

True to a point, but not entirely. I mean simple lesion studies can isolate broad parts of the brain associated with those things. Remove a section of the brain and find people incapable of such activity and you have your culprit. With the more general functions you list, it's much more difficult, but it can be done to a degree. The main point was that there's a temporal aspect in both models - A follows B - it's somewhere both agree of terms (what it means for something to follow something else). That means that without getting into the other areas of dispute, when one model says "I feel the switch and then I recognise the light turned on" It can justifiably be countered with the other by saying " We both agree what A follows B means, right? Well your A does not follow your B".

Quoting Mww

does the exact same region of my brain respond to my understanding of race riots, as it does to my understanding of internal combustion engines?

In all likelihood, you literally have a neuron (or neural cluster) which will respond to 'race riots' and only to race riots, likewise with 'internal combustion engines'. Is the same region involved in the whole production of response?...It depends on what you mean by 'the same'. As per my discussion with Luke - 'the same' is not an exact measure, never can be. so yeah, it is roughly the same regions that deal with the same types of thing. They become very specialised.

Quoting Mww

Everydayman will the more readily accept that he thinks by means and ends of reason, than he will accept mathematical algorithms and natural law as necessary for how he thinks.

So I'm finding...

Quoting Mww

One does not think the pain he is in, one does not report anything whatsoever to himself

Exactly. There is no 'your pain' for me to know in that sense - unless we use the term technically (which I reserve the necessary right to do). A doctor must try to eliminate their patient's pain, and they must do so by treating 'their pain' as if it were the sum of the activity of their nociceptor system and the various brain regions responding to it. One does not want to open a packet of painkillers to find nothing but a note saying "What is pain anyway, man", one wants to find chemical which interferes with prostaglandin release, or prevents activity at synaptic clefts within the nervous system by binding opioids there.

Quoting Banno

And the upshot of that is that it is improper to talk of representing our own pains and pleasures. "I have a pain in my hand" is not like "I have an iPhone in my hand"; it is more like "Ouch!"

True. It seems to me this is at the heart of the problem here. As above, I think there is a language game in which pain is a thing, it's a technical game between doctors, or research scientists where pain is necessarily treated as the sum of certain activity in a particular region of the central nervous system. One might, in this game, say "I have a pain in my body" and mean exactly the same thing as "I have an iPhone in my hand". The problem we find here is that some want to take that technical definition to show that 'pain' is inherently private (happens inside a closed physiological system), and then apply it outside of it's proper game, to say that the experience must therefore be private. We keep crossing over games and seeing words used outside of the context in which they mean anything.

Quoting Luke

It's not a model. I'm telling you what I haven't experienced. As far as I know, it is logically impossible to experience such a thing, because I cannot have anybody else's experiences.

That's just a repeat of the same assertion. Why is it logically impossible for you to have another's experiences?

Quoting Luke

Perhaps there's not such thing as 'your own' sensations at all, by your definition. — Isaac


Perhaps there's no such thing as 'your own' brain at all, by your definition.

Well no, my definition of 'your brain' is quite simple. It's the one in your head. You want to deny that the experiences you have are the ones in your head, you want to detach experiences from any physical origin, so you've no similar anchor.

Quoting Luke

Then please explain how you can see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like.

I have been doing so for the last 36 pages.

Quoting Luke

You can perceive someone else's behaviours, but you cannot perceive someone else's sensations.

Then where are these 'sensations' such that I cannot see them by any means. How do you detect them, but I can't? What is the mechanism by which they interact with the physical world, but only for you? Is there a keypass you're given at birth or something?

Quoting Luke

If I tell you how I feel, all you will perceive are my behaviours, not my sensations. If you could perceive my sensations, then I wouldn't need to tell you how I feel.

I bet you if I looked at an fMRI scan of your brain I could tell you how you feel 75% of the time, and the technology is still in its infancy. Will it ever reach 100%? No, I don't believe that's possible because of the inherent complexity in a systems with as many nodes as a brain. But likewise no thermometer will ever read the temperature that accurately either, it doesn't prevent us from talking about the temperature of the room.

Quoting Luke

How do you know that "behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations"?

So you're now positing that sensations have no consequence? Earlier you posited they have no cause. Have I really just wasted 37 pages of discussion with you about a phenomena which you believe has neither cause nor consequence? We might as well have been talking about the teapot orbiting Mars.

Quoting Luke

Again, this is not analagous. We can verify the makes and models of our phones as easily as we can verify the phones themselves: simply by looking at them.

Yes, and we can verify the associated behaviours, speech and neural activity of sensations just by looking at them. Those with the same behaviours, speech, neural activity etc... are 'the same' sensations, in exactly the same manner in which two phones of the same make and model are 'the same' phone. Make and model are properties of phone (though not the only properties). Associated behaviours, speech and neural activity are properties of sensations (though not the only properties).

Quoting Luke

I don't have pains unless I am consciously aware of them, or unless they hurt. I don't see how I've equivocated on this.

There is no 'them' to be ware of. It's just not how your brain works. There's no 'pain' sitting somewhere in your brain fro your conscious to rummage around and find. You don't become aware of pain, you infer pain. It is a model created from the the various physiological and environmental inputs that neural cluster receives. You learn this model. That learning (typically) takes place in a social environment.

Quoting Luke

If I'm not consciously introspecting and 'seeking out' pain signals, then I'm not the one doing it.

Which is itself a contradiction. What is the 'I' in the first part. There's something you referred to as 'I' there which is not consciously introspecting. Then you say that there is no 'I' apart from that which is consciously introspecting.

Quoting khaled

Also, does this imply that near-identical bodies produce (only) near-identical experiences? Perhaps this is what Isaac is getting at with his talk about 'sameness'. — Luke


I think so.

Yes. That's right.

Whether we adopt a purely physicalist model or a social language development model it doesn't matter. We either have some idea that things are caused (in which case the same set of causes will result in roughly the same thing. Or we adopt the idea that things are uncaused, in which case anything goes and there's no matter here to discuss.

Under the first model, the more reasonable presumption about experiences is that the same external causes acting on the same basic physiology in roughly the same social environment would yield roughly the same experience.

To assume otherwise is to either impute a completely hidden cause (one that has defied all our attempts to investigate it) for no reason at all, or to suggest that experiences are not caused by anything at all but rather reside in some alternate realm detached form ours (in which case how do we know about them?)

It all comes down, to me, to (correct example this time!) Wittgenstein's 'stand roughly there' in PI88. For me the model is neurological, so that's the one I'll use, but linguistically it's the same. We can see a cascade of neural activity preceding a person's report of some experience. That cascade is like the water pouting from a tap. There are splashes and micro-droplets all over the place in a (basically) chaotic, unpredictable distribution, but that does not in any way prevent us from describing the course of the water from the spout to the plughole.

Quoting Mww

Moon-object-public; sensation of the [s]moon[/s]-representation-not public.

Fixed it.

Quoting Banno

Ah, so is it a deed or title that establishes ownership of your sensations?

Wow. None but the most daring intellectual acuity could excavate that from what I wrote.

Quoting Isaac

Moon-object-public; sensation of the [s]moon[/s]-representation-not public.
— Mww

Fixed it.

Neither sensation of the-representation-not public, nor, sensation of the representation-not public, is a fix.

Sensation of the....is empty; sensation of the representation.....is backwards.

Quoting Isaac

Moon-object-public; sensation of -representation-not public. — Mww


Fixed it.

I'm going to have to declare victory here. :party:


Quoting Olivier5

What would be this contradiction?

That we rely on so-called representations to learn about evidence of ID (indirect realism) when the theory itself implies that doing this is unwarranted.

Quoting frank

Moon-object-public; sensation of -representation-not public. — Mww
Fixed it.
— Isaac
I'm going to have to declare victory here. :party:

Victory....over what?

Quoting Mww

Victory....over what?

The forces of evil?

Quoting Mww

sensation of the representation.....is backwards.

Backwards? How so?

Quoting Isaac

With the more general functions you list, it's much more difficult, but it can be done to a degree.

To a degree, yes, limited by technology and natural law. Metaphysics is limited only by logic, so as long as the logic holds, what metaphysics does, can be complete. On the other hand, Whatever degree science attains necessarily conforms to states-of affairs, while metaphysics can only conform to possible states of affairs. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
—————

Quoting Isaac

One does not think the pain he is in, one does not report anything whatsoever to himself
— Mww

Exactly. There is no 'your pain' for me to know in that sense - unless we use the term technically (which I reserve the necessary right to do).

Cool. You use the term technically, I’ll use it conceptually. We’ll end up in the same place.
————-

Quoting Isaac

Everydayman will the more readily accept that he thinks by means and ends of reason, than he will accept mathematical algorithms and natural law as necessary for how he thinks.
— Mww

So I'm finding...

But not admitting to being included? What are you when you close your reference manuals and take off your lab coat? I admit that sometimes I flash on which network path might be energized for whatever I’m doing at the time, but when it comes down to reading the expiration date on that primo, over-priced Italian mozzarella......Campania, not Florence, I’ll have you know......nary a single neurotransmitter nor any differential equation, enters my attention.
—————

Quoting Isaac

I think there is a language game in which pain is a thing, it's a technical game between doctors, or research scientists where pain is necessarily treated as the sum of certain activity in a particular region of the central nervous system. One might, in this game, say "I have a pain in my body" and mean exactly the same thing as "I have an iPhone in my hand".

This implies doctors or research scientists play the technical language game in treating pain as a thing. No proper metaphysician, while agreeing with the antecedent (the sum of certain activity), would make the mistake implied by the consequent (the one means the same as the other).

Quoting Isaac

The problem we find here is that some want to take that technical definition to show that 'pain' is inherently private (happens inside a closed physiological system),

If doctors treat pain as a thing, in that it is the sum of certain activity in (...) the central nervous system, and the central nervous system is a closed physiological system, and a closed physiological systems implies containment in a single environment......then how is it a problem that some (presumably not doctors), want to call pain inherently private, while rejecting the notion that pain is a thing?

I’m not sure you’re actually claiming doctors treat pain as a thing. I rather think doctors want me to treat pain as a thing, when one asks me to grade it on a scale of one-to-ten. I reallyreallyreally detest such language games as these, and by association, the attempted philosophy that is manufactured in conjunction with them.

Just between you and me, I would never trust a doctor that asks me to scale my pain from 1-10, over a doctor that asks me to describe what my pain feels like and where it feels like it is located.

Quoting Isaac

sensation of the representation.....is backwards.
— Mww

Backwards? How so?

Sensation of the representation implies representation comes before the sensation, which is backwards.

Sensation is a physical event; representation of it is a subconscious event which necessarily follows from the physical event, and is called phenomenon. From your point of view, perhaps, that which happens along nerves between the incident and registration in the brain. Subconscious physical information transfer for you, metaphysical subconscious ground of empirical knowledge for me.

Reply to MwwQuoting Mww

Yep. Ownership of the car, possession of the sensation. Same principle.

Weird. It's what you said. You can I presume show documentation for ownership of your car. Can you show documentation for ownership of your sensations? If, as you say, the ownership follows the same principle.

Hey, It's your theory. I'm just following up on the consequences.

Quoting frank

That we rely on so-called representations to learn about evidence of ID (indirect realism) when the theory itself implies that doing this is unwarranted.

The theory does not say that our trust in our observations is unwarranted, only that it has to be assumed. We have to trust our senses, at least until proven otherwise.

Quoting Olivier5

The theory does not say that our trust in our observations is unwarranted, only that it has to be assumed

Right. Bare assumptions are unwarranted. That's not to say you shouldn't have them. it just means you can't account for your confidence.

Quoting Olivier5

We have to trust our senses, at least until proven otherwise.

Isaac appeared to be starting from ID and concluding that we shouldn't trust introspection. That's why I brought it up.

Quoting frank

Right. Bare assumptions are unwarranted. That's not to say you shouldn't have them. it just means you can't account for your confidence.

Right, in the non-pejorative meaning of 'unwarranred' (without evidence).

Quoting frank

Isaac appeared to be starting from ID and concluding that we shouldn't trust introspection. That's why I brought it up.

Ahah. True that in an ID perspective, any attentive perception involves some introspection, in at least two ways: 1) passively, the mechanics of perception in an ID model involve a "mental picture" that one looks at; 2) actively, the ID observer must guard against possible errors or biases by checking things from different angles, and with different senses (a plastic replica of an apple may looks very much like an apple but if I hold it and smell it, not so much), so the ID observer actively directs her senses and to do that effectively she needs to "looks at herself looking", which involves active introspection.

Reply to Olivier5 I think so, yes. But since it says we never see the world unmediated, it just invites us to ask how close the world is to our models, or if we just think we're modelling something when the real situation is Berkeley style idealism.

There are various ways we could deal with the problem. I don't think one way is really any better than the others, but then I don't have any attachment to any particular ontology.

Quoting frank

. But since it says we never see the world unmediated, it just invites us to ask how close the world is to our models

It also invites us to examine the mediation itself and try to understand how it works, which is literally what Isaac is working on.

Reply to Olivier5 :up:

Reply to Banno What, you have documentation for everything you own?

Quoting Olivier5

It also invites us to examine the mediation itself and try to understand how it works, which is literally what Isaac is working on.

Problem is if mediation is a general problem for our understanding, then our understanding of the mediation is no less mediated, and hence no less problematic, than any other understanding.

Reply to Banno

So what....I played fast and loose with “same principle”. I still see no evidence that you grasped the intention of the paragraph, but rather, misdirected it where it was never meant to go.

Anyway....old news. Once missed, twice gone.

Quoting Isaac

That's just a repeat of the same assertion. Why is it logically impossible for you to have another's experiences?

Because I'd have to be that person in order to have their experiences. I can only have my own experiences.

Quoting Isaac

You want to deny that the experiences you have are the ones in your head, you want to detach experiences from any physical origin, so you've no similar anchor.

I've never said that.

Quoting Isaac

You can perceive someone else's behaviours, but you cannot perceive someone else's sensations.
— Luke

Then where are these 'sensations' such that I cannot see them by any means. How do you detect them, but I can't?

I can't perceive other people's sensations, either. I can only detect my own.

Quoting Isaac

How do you know that "behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations"?
— Luke

So you're now positing that sensations have no consequence?

I'm not positing anything. I asked you a question.

Quoting Isaac

Yes, and we can verify the associated behaviours, speech and neural activity of sensations just by looking at them.

But we cannot verify the sensations just by looking at them. That's the whole point.

We can either verify the phone by looking at the make and model or we can verify the make and model by looking at the phone, so it's not analogous.

Quoting Isaac

I bet you if I looked at an fMRI scan of your brain I could tell you how you feel 75% of the time, and the technology is still in its infancy. Will it ever reach 100%? No, I don't believe that's possible

If you can verify sensations "just by looking" at the associated behaviours, then why can you tell me how I feel only 75% of the time? Why will it never reach 100%? Can you only determine the make and model of someone else's phone 75% of the time? The difference is not a matter of technology. The difference is that you cannot perceive someone else's sensations.

Quoting Isaac

I don't have pains unless I am consciously aware of them, or unless they hurt. I don't see how I've equivocated on this.
— Luke

There is no 'them' to be ware of.

There are no pain sensations?

Quoting Isaac

There's no 'pain' sitting somewhere in your brain fro your conscious to rummage around and find.

That's the point I was making: I don't consciously look around in my brain for them.

Quoting Isaac

You don't become aware of pain, you infer pain.

Infer it from what? On the basis of what evidence or reasoning do I make this inference?

Quoting Isaac

It is a model created from the the various physiological and environmental inputs that neural cluster receives.

Pain sensations are an illusion?

Quoting Isaac

If I'm not consciously introspecting and 'seeking out' pain signals, then I'm not the one doing it.
— Luke

Which is itself a contradiction. What is the 'I' in the first part. There's something you referred to as 'I' there which is not consciously introspecting. Then you say that there is no 'I' apart from that which is consciously introspecting.

If it's not me (my conscious mind) doing the introspecting, then it's not me (my conscious mind) doing it. How is that contradictory?

Quoting Isaac

Under the first model, the more reasonable presumption about experiences is that the same external causes acting on the same basic physiology in roughly the same social environment would yield roughly the same experience.

Why say "presumption" if you can verify sensations "just by looking"?

Quoting Isaac

To assume otherwise is to either impute a completely hidden cause

All the causes and effects that you can measure are behavioural. How do you measure the sensations? How do you even know that the behaviours are associated with any sensations?

Quoting Isaac

Why not? What's evolution got to do with the judgement of sensations? Evolution requires that appropriate behaviours are produced in response to environmental circumstances. It has no preference at all for how.

How do you suppose behaviors are produced in response to environmental circumstances? The brain must be doing something with the manifold of raw sensation. Something like cognition.

Intersubjectivity is simply the convergence of, sharing, broadly speaking, mental content shaped by particular worldviews that paint the world as of a certain character or being of a particular nature.

I was initially puzzled by the fact that intersubjectivity is based on multiple "observers" and the agreement of their thoughts and that's precisely how objectivity is defined.

How then can intersubjectivity be something different from objectivity?

I have overlooked a simple truth: people may simply agree on an issue without subjecting the issue to rigorous examination. A consensus can be arrived at in the complete absence of analysis. Ergo, the need to isolate this particular variety of agreement between people as an entity in its own right - intersubjectivity as distinct from objectivity.

Quoting Janus

Problem is if mediation is a general problem for our understanding, then our understanding of the mediation is no less mediated, and hence no less problematic, than any other understanding.

In this context, mediation should not be seen as a problem but as a solution: perception would be impossible (or magical) without some sort of mediation. Mediation is precisely what makes perception possible.