intersubjectivity

Quoting Banno

How can subjectivity be shared?

Language and non-verbal communication in shared environments. As humans we have very similar biology. That helps. But subjectivity only partially ever shared. I can't fully know what it's like to be anyone else or what they're thinking. Consider how much more difficult it is for us to understand non-human animals.

Quoting Banno

But how could we possibly know that we "share common understandings"? 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?

There has to be some degree of consensus or communication would be impossible.

Seriously though, I think it's possible there could be both private and shareable aspects of subjectivity. We can use language to share some aspects, but other aspects cannot be shown or otherwise shared. (Looks like @Marchesk beat me to it.)

Reply to Banno Quoting Banno

Good question. I'm dubious that it can be maintained, or that it is helpful.

I think it can be maintained but it is unhelpful.

Quoting Banno

But how could we possibly know that we "share common understandings"? 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.

We don't need to. If we use the same words to describe the same things then who cares what we are actually experiencing.

Quoting Banno

How can subjectivity be shared?

By using the same words to describe the same situations often enough.

Quoting khaled

We don't need to. If we use the same words to describe the same things then who cares what we are actually experiencing.

I think we are on the same page - I'd express this as that the private experience is irrelevant; it's that the language has a use that gives the utterances meaning.

Intersubjectivity is a very useful concept, especially in philosophy of science, in that it bridges the gap between subjectivity and objectivity. It explains how we build some extent of objectivity NOT by deleting the observer (the subject) but on the contrary, by ADDING other observing subjects and comparing MANY subjective observations.

Quoting Marchesk

Language and non-verbal communication in shared environments.

So the model is one of private subjective worlds interacting via language and non-verbal communication?

Quoting Banno

How can subjectivity be shared?

We have the same general physiognomy and can share a language and culture. We each experience our own unique subjectivity, so that is not shared in any psychic sense, but we can talk about our experiences and share common phenomenological and conceptual backgrounds to greater or lesser extents.

I'll question this: Quoting Luke

I think it's possible there could be both private and shareable aspects of subjectivity. We can use language to share some aspects, but other aspects cannot be shown or otherwise shared.

It seems to suppose that the preexisting aspect is represented in words and matched up against another preexisting aspect in another subjective consciousness.

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being, as it where - the child learns the aspect in the process of learning to talk in a certain way. A child does not have a notion of "four" in its mind that it learns to match up with the word "four"; it learns what four is by moving beads, colouring squares and using the word.

My supposition, following Wittgenstein, is that what we call "concepts" are not things in the mind to which we attach words, but learned ways of manipulating the world, including using words.

Quoting Janus

We each experience our own unique subjectivity,

Do we? If you can't know my private subjective experience, you can't know that it is unique.

Quoting Olivier5

Intersubjectivity is a very useful concept, especially in philosophy of science,

Yeah, but it's a bad term. What happens in science is shared, sure - but why import the term "intersubjective" from the world of social constructionism? We might not like the baggage that comes with it.

Reply to Banno You want to use another word instead, like "shoobeedoobeedoo"?

Reply to Olivier5 Is there something that is gained by using "intersubjective" that is not found in "shared?

I think so - the model of a private subjective world interacting via language and non-verbal communication. I don't see any advantage in importing this - dubious - model into philosophy of science.

Reply to Banno You are a word fetishist. Instead of treating them like tools, you treat them as some sort of magic entity capable of corrupting your thoughts. Relax already. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Reply to Banno Quoting Banno

I'd express this as that the private experience is irrelevant; it's that the language has a use that gives the utterances meaning.

“The private experience” is what I call Qualia. Irrelevant? Outside of the purposes of writing sci-fi shows, yes.

Quoting Banno

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being

When the doctor asks me what the pain feels like, and I answer "sharp and stabbing", the pain doesn't become sharp and stabbing only after I say it aloud. It already felt that way before the doctor asked, and I was trying to provide my best description of how it felt.

Quoting TheMadFool

Well, what are the differences between objectivity and intersubjectivity?

I'd say that objectivity is the limit of any series of increasingly comprehensive intersubjectivities.

In other words, as you take into account more and more different perspectives, as your intersubjectivity gets more and more comprehensive, you get closer and closer to objectivity, and "at infinity", i.e. if you could ever perfectly account for absolutely every perspective, that would be objectivity.

Quoting Banno

It seems to suppose that the preexisting aspect is represented in words and matched up against another preexisting aspect in another subjective consciousness.

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being, as it where - the child learns the aspect in the process of learning to talk in a certain way. A child does not have a notion of "four" in its mind that it learns to match up with the word "four"; it learns what four is by moving beads, colouring squares and using the word.

My supposition, following Wittgenstein, is that what we call "concepts" are not things in the mind to which we attach words, but learned ways of manipulating the world, including using words.

If you only care about that which can be put into words, then of course you have no place for anything else. This is a rather facile conclusion though, already implied by the linguistic framing. But what is left outside the frame?

I recently read an article about taste and smell - the neglected senses that suddenly came into prominence during the pandemic. In most "civilized" cultures we have frustratingly limited ways of describing what something tastes or smells like. Once we have exhausted primary tastes - sweet, sour, bitter - and a few vague adjectives for odors, the best we can do is compare to a known example ("tastes like chicken"). Specialists and enthusiasts, such as sommeliers, develop their own vocabularies for describing tastes and smells that are specific to their interests. And it has been noted that there is a causal connection between an expanded vocabulary and an enhanced awareness. That is to say, having a word for something makes you more attentive to that thing. But this linguistic connection only goes so far. No one would deny that we can resolve more than the few smells and tastes that we can more-or-less awkwardly name; in fact, experiments that capitalize on detecting small differences show that our sense of smell is far more acute than we usually give it credit for.

"Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent" is a truism. But what about all those things that we can't or won't talk about?

The objective aspects of an entity are those that depend only upon that entity's behaviours and properties. Those aspects do not existentially depend upon the behaviour of humans. They don't go away if everyone stops believing in them. Objective aspects chiefly concern the entity in question and the processes it is embedded in.

Intersubjective applies to a different regime, specifically it connotes the fact of (or nature of) group apprehension of phenomena. They are what everyone believes in; be it through a norm or a claim standing up to scrutiny. Intersubjective aspects chiefly concern the apprehension of the entity in question.

You will notice that objectivity talks about entities and intersubjectivity talks about the apprehension of entities. While intersubjective procedures (like inquiry, experiment, argument) can reveal the objective aspects of entities, the mechanism of revealing remains objective rather than intersubjective. The particle didn't move because it was in an experiment conceptualised like X, it moved because of how the experiment was set up.

Quoting Banno

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being

Because the objective aspect generically is not dependent upon being shared. If the existence of the Earth depended upon being shared, you would expect intersubjectivity/sharing to be a factor in things like equations of motion and it just isn't. Like [math]\text{feelings}=ma[/math].

Reply to fdrake Quoting fdrake

While intersubjective procedures (like inquiry, experiment, argument) can reveal the objective aspects of entities, the mechanism of revealing remains objective rather than intersubjective.

At what point do we know that our inter subjective understanding has evolved to objectivity? When do we know we “got it”?

We thought we solved physics before...

Quoting khaled

At what point do we know that our inter subjective understanding has evolved to objectivity?

Understanding doesn't evolve into being whenever (a collective) believing something doesn't make it so.

Objectivity isn't marked by the adequacy of a representation, it's marked by the behavioural autonomy of what the representation targets. In other words, objectivity is marked by the fact that an entity's being does not depend essentially upon ours; like our norms or regularities of perspective.

That lack of dependence is easy to conflate with invariance of perspective; the former entails the latter. Intersubjectivity doesn't change the behaviour of atoms, but the behaviour of atoms is not constituted by their theories' intersubjective invariance. The confusion between the first and the second conflates the direction of fit, as in:

Quoting Banno

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being,

Makes the whole world be conjured into being by us inhabiting it together.

Quoting Banno

How can subjectivity be shared?

It can’t. Just as Montana doesn’t share its highway with Idaho, yet there is a highway common to each.

Reply to fdrake I understand. But you said that intersubjective procedures can reveal the objective aspects of entities. I'm asking when we can know that we have successfully done this. That we "got it".

I'm asking when we can know our representations match reality, as you claim that by using these intersubjective procedures we can figure it out.

Quoting khaled

I understand. But you said that intersubjective procedures can reveal the objective aspects of entities. I'm asking when we can know that we have successfully done this. That we "got it".

I'm asking when we can know our representations match reality, as you claim that by using these intersubjective procedures we can figure it out

I don't have a recipe for you. That looks to me to be a question regarding how knowledge works, rather than taking that knowledge works as an intersubjective/shared generation of concepts/theories/ideas about stuff which can be more or less adequate as a given.

If you're arguing in a socratic fashion towards the Kantian point that the objective cannot be separated intellectually from the intersubjectivity of representations, I'm not particularly interested in that discussion. I will tell you why though, I believe that equation/reduction undermines the behavioural autonomy of what representations target by construing their autonomy of production as our autonomy of representation (concept/sense/meaning generation) when dealing with them. It's a transcendental/pragmatic Stove's gem; the entities can't manifest as they are without their manifestation-in-language, therefore the entities can't manifest as they are without language. The only thing that makes this different from a conceptual idealism as Stove wrote is that "concept" is seen as mental furniture; instead we have the general subjectivity of language/discourse which does exactly the same thing, getting "in between" me and the oyster-in-itself when I try and eat the oyster, as it were. The separation between an agent and the world is no longer the problem of connection of mind and world, it's a problem of the connection of mind and world being always already there between mind and world. The transparent cage of the subject is no longer around one person's self, it's around the whole of human activity.

Stove's gem equally applies to the correlationist, the correlationist is just better at hiding it.

Quoting TheMadFool

Well, what are the differences between objectivity and intersubjectivity?

The difference between objectivity and subjectivity is that information about location relative to the body is absent in an objective view (ie. a view from nowhere vs. a view from somewhere).

Intersubjectivity would include information about location relative to several bodies at once and their relative location to each other.

The issue with subjectivity, though, is that it is often difficult to distinguish between talking about yourself and talking about objects independent of yourself.

"The apple is good." appears to be talking about the apple, but we know that apples are not objectivity good. It is the sensation of eating an apple that is good. What is objectively good is your feelings when eating an apple, but it might not be the same for me. I might think apples are disgusting.

So if we were to talk about apples and we come to a disagreement about the good and disgusting nature of apples, we would actually be talking past each other, not actually talking about apples, rather our own experience when eating them. In that sense there is no difference between objectivity and intersubjectivity because mental states are objective features of the world that we can talk about, just like apple states.

So the ultimate question is what is it that we are actually talking about and is information about location relative to the body useful in addressing the discussion currently in play.

Reply to fdrake I have... no idea what you just said. I wasn’t arguing towards whatever that kantian point was (I don’t even understand it) I was just asking when we can know our representations of the world actually match it.

Quoting fdrake

knowledge works as an intersubjective/shared generation of concepts/theories/ideas about stuff which can be more or less adequate.

“More or less adequate”? I thought you were claiming that eventually we’d get an “exact picture”

Quoting fdrake

intersubjective procedures (like inquiry, experiment, argument) can reveal the objective aspects of entities

Quoting Banno

How can subjectivity be shared?

People just assume that we all have the same kind of subjective experience. This assumption is essential to morality, and seems to hold up to some extent in aesthetics (we tend to love the same kinds of things).

When we find evidence that we're not all the same it's a little jarring.

Quoting khaled

“More or less adequate”? I thought you were claiming that eventually we’d get an “exact picture”

Wasn't intendeding to. If I measure something and it's 15cm long with a ruler, is it exactly 15cm long? That kinda thing. The ruler measurement is a representation of the thing's length, it neither fits exactly nor doesn't fit at all.

Quoting khaled

I was just asking when we can know our representations of the world actually match it.

Domain specific thing. If I have an expectation of where my cup is, I can reach for it. If I think my cup is 15cm tall, I can measure it.

If you want a non-domain specific answer; an answer to the question of what ensures the connection between thought and being or mind and world; I dunno, I don't think that's relevant to the topic at hand.

There is a need to distinguish between intersubjective and objective, in order to allow for the truly objective aspect of reality which is beyond the intersubjective, what we might call the independent world. As philosophers we seek to find ways of understanding the independent world rather than designating this as impossible. If epistemology deals with the intersubjective, then we need to allow for the two distinct aspects which are outside the realm of knowledge, the subject itself, and the object itself.

Quoting Banno

My supposition, following Wittgenstein, is that what we call "concepts" are not things in the mind to which we attach words, but learned ways of manipulating the world, including using words.

This exposes very well the need to assume two distinct aspects of reality beyond the realm of epistemology (the epistemological being the intersubjective). There is implied in your statement, three distinct aspects of reality. There is a subject (individual person) who manipulates the world, as well as an object ( the world which is being manipulated). What lies between, as the medium, is the learned ways, and this is what epistemology deals with, as the intersubjective.

We could look at the subject/predicate grammar of the sentence, "Banno manipulates the world", and see that the predicate needs to be broken down analytically, into the action which is proper to the subject, and the object which is a passive recipient of the action, but is nevertheless changed.. Therefore there is a need for metaphysics to consider the existence of those two distinct aspects of reality, the active and the passive, as distinct from understanding the nature of activities which already presumes the existence of both.,

Reply to fdrake Quoting fdrake

If you want a non-domain specific answer; an answer to the question of what ensures the connection between thought and being or mind and world

Yup.

Quoting fdrake

I dunno, I don't think that's relevant to the topic at hand.

Aight then.

I would say nothing ensures a connection. But theories with more predictive power are probably closer to the truth.

Quoting khaled

I would say nothing ensures a connection.

:up:

If the connection ensured that whatever happened in the object shows up in our conceptualisation of it, there wouldn't be error and irrelevancies. It seems right to say that the space of questions epistemology marks; what do we know? how do we know it?; and methodology marks; is this procedure adequate by that metric? does this fertiliser engender more yield for this crop than the other fertiliser; require that the connection is not ensured but can be studied. Prosaically, a concordance between thought and being is something being can be coaxed into in limited circumstances.

Quoting Banno

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being, as it where - the child learns the aspect in the process of learning to talk in a certain way. A child does not have a notion of "four" in its mind that it learns to match up with the word "four"; it learns what four is by moving beads, colouring squares and using the word.

But how would this behavior be possible unless human brains were capable of forming concepts? The problem with behaviorism is that it treated the brain as a black box, where the only relevant thing was matching behaviors to stimuli. But we know from computational models that the black box matters for producing the behavior. You don't get an output without some sort of mapping function. That's analogous to whatever roles the brain plays processing sensations internally, and producing whatever behavior makes sense for the individual organism.

Roles like perception, cognition, memory, imagination, motor control, speech production and what have you. Without that, you don't get the behavior.

Quoting Banno

We each experience our own unique subjectivity, — Janus


Do we? If you can't know my private subjective experience, you can't know that it is unique.

Reply to Banno I know your subjective experience is unique because it follows from the fact that no two entities are identical.

Quoting Luke

When the doctor asks me what the pain feels like, and I answer "sharp and stabbing", the pain doesn't become sharp and stabbing only after I say it aloud.

...because you already learned to use "sharp" and "stabbing"...

Quoting Olivier5

You are a word fetishist.

Sure am.

SO tell me, if the word choice is insignificant, why "intersubjective" rather than "objective" or even "shared"?

Quoting frank

When we find evidence that we're not all the same it's a little jarring.

Very true. I still remember my surprise as a small kid when a friend told me he didn't like oranges at all. I could not understand that. I could not even explain to him how obviously good oranges tasted...

Quoting Pfhorrest

In other words, as you take into account more and more different perspectives, as your intersubjectivity gets more and more comprehensive, you get closer and closer to objectivity, and "at infinity", i.e. if you could ever perfectly account for absolutely every perspective, that would be objectivity.

Physics by poll vote...

Quoting Banno

SO tell me, if the word choice is insignificant, why "intersubjective" rather than "objective" or even "shared"?

Because it describes very precisely what happens. It's therefore apt and correct. "Shared" is too vague and objectivity is different from intersubjectivity.

Your turn: what is it in that word that scares you so much?

Quoting SophistiCat

If you only care about that which can be put into words,

Oh, that't be dreadful. The unspoken stuff is of the highest import... If you are attributing that view to me, I have been misunderstood.

Thanks for the account of smell and taste; further examples of how developing a word game around an activity also increases the capacity to discriminate.

Reply to fdrake;Quoting Olivier5

Because it describes very precisely what happens.

et alia;

Perhaps an example: each of us observes, say, a Newton's Cradle. The supposition is that we each have our own private sensations, which we then translate into a description of the way the cradle moves, put into words and find that we agree on the words used... is that the idea?

Quoting fdrake

Why shouldn't the sharing bring the aspect into being,
— Banno

Makes the whole world be conjured into being by us inhabiting it together.

...that's close. Our talk about the word is conjured into being by use engaging in conversation... the limits of our language are the limits of our world.

Quoting Banno

SO tell me, if the word choice is insignificant, why "intersubjective" rather than "objective" or even "shared"?

"Objective" is obviously too strong, and "shared" is synonymous with "intersubjective"; so what's the problem?

Quoting Banno

What is it that is subjective in our observations of the cradle?

The fact that each observation of the object is an observation made by a subject.

Quoting Janus

and "shared" is synonymous

with... "objective" or "intersubjective"?

Quoting Banno

Perhaps an example: each of us observes, say, a Newton's Cradle. The supposition is that we each have our own private sensations, which we then translate into a description of the way the cradle moves, put into words and find that we agree on the words used... is that the idea?

What is it that is subjective in our observations of the cradle?

Reply to Banno It seems I thought it was obvious that I mean "shared" to be synomous with "intersubjective". Just in case that isn't right, I fixed it.

Reply to Janus

Cheers; What is it that is subjective in our observations of the cradle? What is it that is not shared in our observations of the cradle?

Reply to Banno Each unique perspective is not, cannot be, shared.

Quoting Janus

Each unique perspective is not, cannot be, shared.

Thanks for responding.

I don't understand. You can see the same Cradle I see; what is it that you see that I don't?

"perspective" - do you just mean that you see it from the left, and I from the right? But I can understand that, and make adjustments; we could even swap places, if it helped.

So what is it that is not shared?

Reply to Banno Yes, that's the general idea.

Reply to Olivier5 Then, again, what is it that is not shared?

Reply to Banno You don't know that the cradle appears exactly the same to both of us. And even if it does, no perceptual moment of it can ever be exactly the same as any other perceptual moment, much less somehow "shared'. What can be shared is what we say about the cradle, because we speak a common language. But even then each of us will have slightly different interpretations of what is said; there is no absolute fixed meaning in language. To give you another perspective on the uniqueness of individual perceptions, look what happens if we are each set the task of drawing the cradle.

Reply to Banno Meaning?

Quoting Janus

You don't know that the cradle appears exactly the same to both of us.

...and I don't know that it doesn't. Why preference the former? Besides, all indications are that we do see the same thing; and if we do not, we can talk about that, too; indeed, that is pivotal to progress.

And any slightly different interpretations of what is said can be ironed out, as well; or ignored, if they make no difference.

It seems to me that one cannot say what it is that is not shared; and hence that it is irrelevant to the discussion.

Reply to Olivier5 I invite you to join in the conversation with @Janus.

Quoting Olivier5

Intersubjectivity is a very useful concept, especially in philosophy of science, in that it bridges the gap between subjectivity and objectivity.It explains how we build some extent of objectivity NOT by deleting the observer (the subject) but on the contrary, by ADDING other observing subjects and comparing MANY subjective observations.

I want to understand what is added by the word subjective: compare the following to what you said above:
It explains how we build some extent of objectivity NOT by deleting the observer but on the contrary, by ADDING other observers and comparing MANY observations.

I've dropped the word "subjective"; what difference did it make?

Quoting Banno

...because you already learned to use "sharp" and "stabbing"...

I was responding to your question “why shouldn’t the sharing bring the aspect into being” which suggests a form of idealism, and in this case suggests that the pain is brought into existence by the use of the concept or coining of the word. I don’t believe that there was no pain felt (or no other sensory experiences to be had) prior to the concepts(s)/word(s) being coined. It seems like other animals have at least some of these experiences without language.

Reply to Luke SO what do you make of Reply to SophistiCat's discussion of smell and taste?

And going back to this...Quoting Luke

Seriously though, I think it's possible there could be both private and shareable aspects of subjectivity. We can use language to share some aspects, but other aspects cannot be shown or otherwise shared.

What is it that is not shared? Take the example of Newton's cradle, for instance. Do you agree with Reply to Janus ?

Quoting Harry Hindu

The difference between objectivity and subjectivity is that information about location relative to the body is absent in an objective view (ie. a view from nowhere vs. a view from somewhere).

I think Rousseau has the germ of a good point here - objectivity as the view not from nowhere, but from anywhere.

Quoting Banno

I want to understand what is added by the word subjective: compare the following to what you said above:
It explains how we build some extent of objectivity NOT by deleting the observer but on the contrary, by ADDING other observers and comparing MANY observations.

I've dropped the word "subjective"; what difference did it make?

Why, then you do not mention the fact that each individual observer is necessarily subjective and therefore fallible. The reason one needs more than one observer is thus obscured, it's not explicit anymore.

Quoting Olivier5

then you do not mention the fact that each individual observer is necessarily subjective and therefore fallible.

It's fallible because it is subjective? But that's not right. Let's look at something really subjective - that pain in your toe, for example. You cannot be wrong about that; it's one of the few places were certainty is certain...

Quoting Banno

What is it that is not shared?

One’s subjective experience. My pain is not your pain.

Quoting Banno

fallible because it is subjective? But that's not right. Let's look at something really subjective - that pain in your toe, for example. You cannot be wrong about that; it's one of the few places were certainty is certain...

What about the case of the amputee who feels pain in his missing arm? And people can also lie, or exaggerate.

Quoting Banno

But how could we possibly know that we "share common understandings"?

Through language, mathematics, conventions of all kinds, we share common understandings. If I ask you a question, ask you for something, give you something, we will generally have enough in common to understand each other. But if you and I were from completely different cultures or epochs then our conceptions may be so remote that we could barely communicate. You would not understand what I mean, or vice versa, even if the individual words were translated, because of the conceptual underpinnings, the intentions behind the words.

I got initiated into this line of thinking by reading Berger & Luckmann's Social Construction of Reality way back. At the time I was indignant - like you are now! 'Who put the stars in the sky?' I thundered (not meaning 'God' but meaning that 'the stars were in the sky before society was there to construct anything'.)

But after some time, I came around to their point of view, because i came to see that 'reality' is something other than simply 'nature' or 'the universe'. Why? Because we constantly impute things to it. We have our mental map which contains such imputations, judgements, order, hierarchy, which is validated by the culture we live in, which has an often-implicit sense of what is real. That is the sense in which reality is constructed rather than being simply 'the given'.

It goes back to Kantianism and its descendants. Phenomenology, initiated by Husserl, was indebted to Kant in that respect. Kant's 'copernican revolution' was precisely that 'things conform to thoughts' rather than vice versa. Whereas dogmatic realism asserts an objective domain existing independently of anything we think or do, as the constant underlying background; it takes that as 'the real' upon which our thoughts are 'constructed'. And constructivism tends to invert that. It takes a kind of perceptual shift - like a gestalt shift - to see it.

Quoting fdrake

Because the objective aspect generically is not dependent upon being shared. If the existence of the Earth depended upon being shared, you would expect intersubjectivity/sharing to be a factor in things like equations of motion and it just isn't. Li

Math is also not dependent on being shared. Would you call it objective?

Reply to Wayfarer :up:

Quoting Olivier5

What about the case of the amputee who feels pain in his missing arm? And people can also lie, or exaggerate.

Sure. I don't see the relevance. You claim was: Quoting Olivier5

Why, then you do not mention the fact that each individual observer is necessarily subjective and therefore fallible.

My point is that when you feel a pain, there is no place for doubt.

Now if you feel a pain in an amputated arm, you still feel a pain. That's not fallible.

And if someone claims to have a pain, when they do not, it is the claim that is false, not the pain - or lack thereof.

So, it seems to me that it would be an error to suppose that a claim is fallible because it is subjective.

Quoting Luke

What is it that is not shared?
— Banno

One’s subjective experience. My pain is not your pain.

Again, talk to the example of Newton's cradle - what is not shared there?

Reply to Wayfarer Thanks for the testimonial. My bit after the bit you quote is of import: 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.

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.

Misinterprets subjectivity as solipsism.

Reply to Wayfarer No.

Edit: I'm not keen on explaining Kant's errors again here. He wasn't to know that he was setting philosophy off after wild geese.

Care to respond to this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/500452 ?

Quoting Banno

The supposition is that we each have our own private sensations, which we then translate into a description of the way the cradle moves, put into words and find that we agree on the words used... is that the idea?

No. I tried to explain the rationale behind constructivism which was condescendingly dismissed as ‘a testimonial’, so I’ve done my bit.

Quoting Banno

One’s subjective experience. My pain is not your pain.
— Luke

Again, talk to the example of Newton's cradle - what is not shared there?

Like pain, one’s perceptions are not shared - you have yours and I have mine.

Reply to Wayfarer Cheers.

Quoting Luke

Like pain, one’s perceptions are not shared - you have yours and I have mine.

So... what is it about the Newton's cradle that is not shared?

Reply to Banno You asked what is not shared. I’ve answered the question.

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 commonalit

It's assumed. You make this assumption regularly, that you know how others feel or what they think.

Quoting frank

It's assumed.

What's assumed- Commonality? Or a private subjective world?

My 2 cents for now.

Guy yells in pain when his hammer misses and hits his finger instead.
Other guy notices, recognizes, points, and grunts "Hammer", "Pain".
When the grunts, the words, grow common, they're used for hammers and pains.
I'd think most have experienced the unpleasantry of pain, some by hammers.
That doesn't mean anyone has another's pain, and apparently that isn't required either.
At least hammers can be shared.
I guess, once word use stabilizes across, nuances may be discovered, and shared meanings eventually become auto-assumed.
Something similar could be said of the audio itself, saying and hearing words and phrases, plus writing and reading.
Language is social; it seems natural language can give lots of insight into others' personal experiences.

The pain is subjective (existentially mind-dependent and process-like).
The hammer is objective (existentially mind-independent and object-like).

Quoting Luke

I’ve answered the question.

Quoting Luke

...one’s perceptions are not shared

Quoting Banno

...all indications are that we do see the same thing; and if we do not, we can talk about that, too; indeed, that is pivotal to progress.

And any slightly different interpretations of what is said can be ironed out, as well; or ignored, if they make no difference.

It seems to me that one cannot say what it is that is not shared; and hence that it is irrelevant to the discussion.

Quoting Banno

...all indications are that we do see the same thing; and if we do not, we can talk about that, too; indeed, that is pivotal to progress.

And any slightly different interpretations of what is said can be ironed out, as well; or ignored, if they make no difference.

I don’t deny that we can see the same thing or that we can discuss disagreements, but still I cannot perceive your perceptions or feel your pain. That’s what is not shared. “If they make no difference” to what?

Quoting Banno

What's assumed- Commonality? Or a private subjective world?

I think most normal people assume both.

You demonstrate that you assume you can know what people think by asking questions.

You don't act like you can read minds, so you seem to assume their thoughts are hidden somehow.

Quoting Banno

What is it that is subjective in our observations of the cradle?

When I see that clip of Newton's Cradle, my first thought is "that looks fake". The accelerations and decelerations are not right, so the whole thing looks "off" to me, it's jerky, not smooth, fluid, as I think it ought to be.

If you think that there is nothing which is not public, then without a doubt you will be deceived.

Quoting Banno

So, it seems to me that it would be an error to suppose that a claim is fallible because it is subjective.

And it seems to me you are trying to confuse yourself. While an observer is always fallible -- that is to say that he may get some observations seriously wrong, either because of some bias or because he's lying -- a claim cannot logically speaking be said to be fallible: it's just true, not true, or somewhere in the middle.

Reply to Olivier5 Oh, I don't know. It seemed you were pretty clear:

Quoting Olivier5

Why, then you do not mention the fact that each individual observer is necessarily subjective and therefore fallible.

Reply to Banno I always try to be clear. An observer is subjective, hence fallible. A claim is not an observer. A claim can just be true or not.

You understand the difference between the concept of observer and the concept of claim, don't you? You are just playing stupid now.

That's the thing with human beings: you can't always trust what they say. Sometimes they even lie to themselves.

Quoting Olivier5

I always try to be clear.

Good. What 's with the comments about claims? I don't see the import to you.

PerhapsIm too tired to follow your line of thought, but you've several times said Quoting Olivier5

An observer is subjective, hence fallible.

despite my providing examples in which observers cannot be fallible. Meh. Leave it for tomorrow, maybe.

Or perhaps you might comment on Reply to Wayfarer's post.

Quoting Banno

despite my providing examples in which observers cannot be fallible.

If you provided any evidence that human beings are infallible, I must have missed it. An observer can lie, try to deceive, or he can be inaccurate or careless in his observations. Such things are known to happen, believe it or not. Which is why intersubjectivity is so important in the quest for objectivity: it allows some filtering out of individual subjective biases.

Quoting Olivier5

If you provided any evidence that human beings are infallible, I must have missed it.

Here you go...

Quoting Banno

that pain in your toe, for example. You cannot be wrong about that; it's one of the few places were certainty is certain...

See?

Quoting Banno

Physics by poll vote...

Intersubjectivity, at least in the sense I'm talking about, is not about majoritarian or even unanimous agreement on people's opinions, but rather about assembling a model that takes into complete and equal consideration all experiences.

When it comes to physics, or any physical sciences, that would mean that you don't just poll people on what they believe is true, but you do look for a theory that affirms all of everyone's observations.

I'll spare this thread the ethical analogue of that.

Quoting Pfhorrest

but you do look for a theory that affirms all of everyone's observations.

We've already been through this. Literally any theory at all can be made to match everyone's observations by the addition of another 'coupling' theory.

"The earth is flat".

"But the images from space show a round earth".

"OK then, the earth is flat, and the space photos are faked".

"So you can't hold the theory that the earth is flat, and the space photos aren't faked".

"No, but that wasn't the theory in question".

"OK, let's make it the theory in question - The earth is flat and the images from space aren't faked - that doesn't match all observations".

"Well, now that's the theory in question, sure it can - The earth is flat, the images from space are not faked, and a forcefield changes the apparent shape of the earth when looked at from a distance"

"Alright, but you can't hold the theory that..."

...and so on, ad infinitum.

Quoting Banno

that pain in your toe, for example. You cannot be wrong about that; it's one of the few places were certainty is certain...
— Banno

One of the few places, maybe, but 1) human beings can still misrepresent their pain, they can lie about it (or did you believe Trump really had bone spurs?); and 2) outside of these few places, human beings remain fallible observers. Therefore it is good practice to try and compare observations made by several people, whenever possible, in order to firm up our collective knowledge of stuff. That's the idea encapsulated in "intersubjectivity".

Quoting Banno

I think Rousseau has the germ of a good point here - objectivity as the view not from nowhere, but from anywhere.

Or a view from everywhere.

The thing about objectivity is that it does not include information about location relative to the body. A view does. So objectivity really isn't a view, rather it is an explanation that leaves out the irrelevant information about location relative to a specific body.

Quoting Banno

I'm not keen on explaining Kant's errors again here.

Now THAT I might find interesting. Direct me to it? To read, not to argue, promise.

Reply to Isaac I've never said that matching everyone's observations is the sole sufficient criterion for accepting a theory, only that it's a necessary one.

Literally my next thread I had planned after the conversation you're thinking of was to be on another criterion that would adjudicate between just such sets of theories as those. (Hint: it has to do with parsimony). It still would never pin down exactly one theory as the definitely correct one, but it would give reasons to prefer some of those theories over others so long as they still match all observations.

But just going around and around on whether or not it's ever possible to pin down one theory in particular as definitely the unique best one or else (as is my position) that we can only ever narrow down the range of possible theories, was so goddamn exhausting that I gave up on that series of threads for a while to focus on all of the many, many other things in life sucking up my limited time.

And now an idle comment in another thread that wasn't even mine has spun out into yet another interminable conversation with you that sucks up hours of every day, and when that's done I'll probably be too burned out to start anything new for even longer than I would have been before.

You are the sole reason I don't engage here as much as I otherwise would.

Quoting Pfhorrest

that we can ... narrow down the range of possible theories...

...is what I was disputing. We can't, as my example shows. Same will be true of parsimony, elegance, explanatory power, or any other such system you care to come up with. You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons and you'll come up with whatever post hoc rationalisation is required to make you feel comfortable with it.

Quoting Pfhorrest

You are the sole reason I don't engage here as much as I otherwise would.

That seems an odd thing to say. I can't think why you'd want to post your ideas on a forum and then complain about them being discussed. Did you just want everyone to say "wow, well done you"?

Quoting frank

Math is also not dependent on being shared.

I quite disagree with that; when applied to mathematics in total. It looks too much like the specialised language of a type of inquiry for me to think mathematics itself is not dependent upon being shared.

Would you call it objective?

Yes, if I wasn't splitting hairs like in this thread I'd have no bother calling it objective. It's not objective in the way you can "go out and look" at a ball's behaviour, say, but you can go "out and look" to see if a proof works. The autonomy of mathematical objects seems to derive from the fact that whether a statement implies another given its assumptions does not depend on who checks.

I don't know if that autonomy is more like the autonomy of nature or the autonomy of language, but I'd suspect it's closer to the latter; the moves humans make in logical+deductive inference games can be quite well modelled by a syntax of production rules.

Quoting Banno

Our talk about the word is conjured into being by use engaging in conversation

That's like sewing the form of life and nature into language, "our talk of the world is conjured into being by engaging in conversation", I stub my toe and scream "Ow!" - I refute it thus.

Quoting Banno

It seems to me that one cannot say what it is that is not shared; and hence that it is irrelevant to the discussion.

You can say what is not shared, but obviously you cannot share it. I think that's where you are becoming confused; you think because you cannot talk about (in the sense of share) what is not shared, that it is irrelevant. It may well be thought to be discursively irrelevant, just because it cannot be a part of discourse if you cannot share it, but on the other hand, it is anything but irrelevant to the individual, and it comes into play in discourse in indeterminable ways.

So it is relevant even though it's relevance cannot be explicated. For example if someone is in severe pain that will likely affect their level of discourse in indiscernible ways, even though they cannot share their actual pain, beyond telling you about it.

Quoting Olivier5

I always try to be clear. An observer is subjective, hence fallible. A claim is not an observer. A claim can just be true or not.

Claims are said to be fallible precisely insofar as they can be true or not.

Quoting Pfhorrest

You are the sole reason I don't engage here as much as I otherwise would.

Should be 'you are the sole reason I don't engage with you as much as I otherwise would'. I could relate to that; I feel that way myself when arguments are ad nauseum repeatedly distorted and I have to keep correcting misinterpretions only to have those corrections misinterpreted in turn.

Quoting Janus

Claims are said to be fallible precisely insofar as they can be true or not.

Yeah, I wondered about that.

Quoting Janus

Should be 'you are the sole reason I don't engage with you as much as I otherwise would'.

Nah I meant “here”; I’ve refrained from posting new threads a lot because of fear that they will turn into intractable time sinks going around and around with Isaac specifically clarifying exactly how it is that I don’t mean any of the crazy things he thinks I must but only something much more mundane. Only one other person here has been like that and he hasn’t posted for maybe a year now.

Quoting Isaac

that we can ... narrow down the range of possible theories... — Pfhorrest

...is what I was disputing. We can't, as my example shows. Same will be true of parsimony, elegance, explanatory power, or any other such system you care to come up with. You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons and you'll come up with whatever post hoc rationalisation is required to make you feel comfortable with it.

So your view is that there is no way at all to judge one belief to be better or worse than any other, and all there is is the fact that people believe different things and so whatever it's not like any of them are any more correct or incorrect?

Why are you arguing about anything then? My beliefs are different than yours, but it seems on your view they can't be any worse, they're just different, and there's nothing to do about that.

Quoting Isaac

I can't think why you'd want to post your ideas on a forum and then complain about them being discussed. Did you just want everyone to say "wow, well done you"?

No, but I want to get on with the meat of the things I’m trying to talk about instead of getting bogged down defending myself from the strange presuppositions you seem to uncharitably read into everything. It’s as though I was to tell an anecdote that began with “So I was at the store one day...” and you objected that I presume there exists only one store because I said “the”, and then we spend weeks arguing about what articles mean and the ontological commitments behind them and then maybe we eventually move on to whether it was really “one” day given that it was simultaneously a different day in America than it was in Australia and...

Reply to Pfhorrest All I meant to say was that perhaps you shouldn't allow anyone's tedious logic-chopping to stop you engaging here (on the Forum), but should allow it to stop you engaging them.

I certainly don't want to be the fly to the flypaper of such "interlocutors", and I understand it's sometimes hard, but I believe you can learn to resist the temptation.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I'd say that objectivity is the limit of any series of increasingly comprehensive intersubjectivities.

In other words, as you take into account more and more different perspectives, as your intersubjectivity gets more and more comprehensive, you get closer and closer to objectivity, and "at infinity", i.e. if you could ever perfectly account for absolutely every perspective, that would be objectivity.

This is reminiscent of Peirce's definition of truth as consisting in what the community of inquirers come to believe at the end of inquiry. And since the end of inquiry can never be reached but only asymptotically approached, truth never becomes absolutely determinable. (Hopefully I've remembered that in a not too distorted way).

Quoting Janus

Claims are said to be fallible precisely insofar as they can be true or not.

Irrelevant to anything. The point was that individual observers are fallible, hence the power of intersubjectivity. Banjo keeps trying to misunderstand this very simple idea that two minds are better than one. Don't play his games.

Quoting Pfhorrest

So your view is that there is no way at all to judge one belief to be better or worse than any other, and all there is is the fact that people believe different things and so whatever it's not like any of them are any more correct or incorrect?

I don't know where you'd get that from, it's literally in the quote "You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons". Does that sound like "no way at all"? I'm struggling how you can read "a whole slew of ... reasons" as "no way at all".

Quoting Pfhorrest

Why are you arguing about anything then?

I'm not arguing about anything. I'm critiquing your position. I assumed that's why you posted it. I haven't posted anything, not a single thread.

Quoting Pfhorrest

My beliefs are different than yours, but it seems on your view they can't be any worse, they're just different, and there's nothing to do about that.

I didn't say there's nothing to do about that. just that there isn't one single correct thing to do about that.

Quoting Pfhorrest

It’s as though I was to tell an anecdote that began with “So I was at the store one day...” and you objected that I presume there exists only one store because I said “the”, and then we spend weeks arguing about what articles mean and the ontological commitments behind them and then maybe we eventually move on to whether it was really “one” day given that it was simultaneously a different day in America than it was in Australia and...

So you wouldn't find it weird if I came to you with a mathematical proof and you said I'd made a mistake in step one and I said "I don't want you to say anything about step one, I know step one is right, I just want your view on steps two to ten"? My suspicion is that you'd just say "Why come to me at all then, if you already have an infallible means of checking the soundness of your steps?"

This is a perennial problem I see with a vast proportion of the threads here. Logic is not that hard, pretty much anyone with a graduate education (or intelligent enough to get one), can follow through the logical consequences of a position, from given premises. It's the premises that are interesting. You're an intelligent person, and you've clearly given this a lot of thought. I very much doubt you've made any glaring errors in following the logical consequences of your premises, I suspect, had you done so, you'd have spotted it yourself on the second reading and corrected it. But the hidden assumptions in your premises are a lot harder to spot, we all have our own blind spots for what seems right to us because the mental effort of dealing with cognitive dissonance is something we're programmed to avoid. The help other people can be is that they have different blind spots to you, so they can show you yours (and you theirs). These are all in the premises, these are all in imported assumptions, right at the start.

It's like you're presenting "if A then B, A therefore B" and you want us all to 'get into the meat' of "therefore B". Any stoned undergrad can do that. Hell, you can program a computer to do that bit. The bit that matters, the bit where others will have something interesting to say is "if A then B". Right at the start.

If you're just going to assume that every problem raised is a 'strange presupposition' or 'uncharitable reading' then you've simply assumed you own premises. Well then the rest follows flawlessly - well done.

Quoting Isaac

I don't know where you'd get that from, it's literally in the quote "You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons". Does that sound like "no way at all"? I'm struggling how you can read "a whole slew of ... reasons" as "no way at all".

The "you'll believe whatever you want to believe" part sounds like you think there is no way of correctly figuring out for sure which of several different beliefs that several different people all believe for that slew of different reasons is more or less correct to believe.

This is the crux of pretty much all of the disagreements you and I ever get into. When the question of "how should we do such-and-such" comes up, your answer is always "people do so-and-so". Okay, yeah, and? That's an answer to a different question entirely. It's like you just flatly refuse to express any prescriptive viewpoint at all, and go out of your way to try to read every question about one, or proposed answer to such question, as descriptive instead, so you can give your descriptive answers that I've little doubt are quite accurate but are nevertheless totally non-sequitur.

Quoting Isaac

I'm not arguing about anything. I'm critiquing your position.

A critique is a kind of argument. You are presenting things that you appear to think are good reasons to reject what you take my position to be. That's an argument.

If we all just think what we respectively think and there's no sorting out who's right or wrong, then there's no point in arguing, unless, as I'm beginning to suspect, you are not arguing in good faith, in pursuit of figuring out or convincing others what actually is true or false, but just as a way of metaphorically poking an anthill for idle fun, to watch the bugs react. That's the definition of an internet troll.

Quoting Isaac

I didn't say there's nothing to do about that. just that there isn't one single correct thing to do about that.

So if we think different things, and do different things about that disagreement, and neither the different things that we think nor the different things that we do to sort out that disagreement are any more or less correct than the other, where does that leave us?

Quoting Isaac

Logic is not that hard, pretty much anyone with a graduate education (or intelligent enough to get one), can follow through the logical consequences of a position, from given premises.

Most people here don't have a graduate education, and many are probably not intelligent enough to get one. (No offense intended to the nobody in particular who match that description). Highlighting the logical consequences of things may be too low-brow for you, but it's still something that many people here would likely find productive.

And aside from that, the things that I find most interesting, and am usually working toward highlighting, are neither the truth of the premises nor the logical inferences from them, but the parallels between different facets of philosophy as a discipline, like isomorphisms in mathematics. Not always between descriptive and prescriptive sides of philosophy either, but also entirely within one side of that divide, between different parts of it.

Also I enjoy just bringing attention to little-known views in philosophy, whether they're of my own invention or just things that I found buried in dusty corners of my recreational reading that were completely glossed over in my academic classes' surveys of all the prominent positions.

The kind of responses I would find most pleasant to get would be "oh hey that's a neat similarity you've observed there, never noticed that before" or "huh that's an interesting approach to that problem I've not heard of before". I'm not looking for people to tell me that I'm right, like you always seem to suggest, but just for people to find the approaches I mention curious, interesting, and worth further consideration, which I hope would then spawn some back-and-forth between different people discussing their merits without having their minds yet made up either way.

Quoting Isaac

If you're just going to assume that every problem raised is a 'strange presupposition' or 'uncharitable reading' then you've simply assumed you own premises.

My contention is not just that you're doubting the truth of premises I start with -- that's fine (although NB that premises are definitionally assumptions made at the start of argument, so saying I've assumed them is kinda missing the point) -- but that you seem to take my starting premises to mean something much stranger and less plausible than what seems a quite natural reading of them would be. Charitability in argumentation means interpreting an argument in the way that makes the most sense of it, but you seem to do exactly the opposite of that, and the whole conversation on my side then becomes trying to figure out exactly what other weird background assumption you're reading into my views that enables you to interpret what I'm saying in a way that would entail such obviously wrong conclusions that I am in no way endorsing.

You know the trope where a man compliments his wife somehow like "you look beautiful in that dress" and she responds "oh so I don't look beautiful normally?" and now he's on the back foot trying to figure out how to convey what he originally meant (and would charitably have been understood to mean) while she finds more and more ways of still interpreting him as insulting her? This feels a lot like that (though the misinterpretation of course is not as an insult, but as an absurdity or obvious falsehood).

Or, for another illustration: if I handed you an apple and you said “yuck! I hate apples!” that would be one thing, but if I hand you what I’m sure is an apple and you say “yuck! I hate eggplants!” then I’m going to be very perplexed about what is going on here. I hate eggplants too, but... this is an apple. Isn’t it? I wouldn’t offer you an eggplant, I agree those are gross. Why do you think this is one?

Quoting Pfhorrest

The "you'll believe whatever you want to believe" part sounds like you think there is no way of correctly figuring out for sure which of several different beliefs that several different people all believe for that slew of different reasons is more or less correct to believe.

That's what those slew of reasons are there to do. Help you work that out.

Quoting Pfhorrest

When the question of "how should we do such-and-such" comes up, your answer is always "people do so-and-so". Okay, yeah, and? That's an answer to a different question entirely. It's like you just flatly refuse to express any prescriptive viewpoint at all, and go out of your way to try to read every question about one, or proposed answer to such question, as descriptive instead, so you can give your descriptive answers that I've little doubt are quite accurate but are nevertheless totally non-sequitur.

It's not a flat refusal, but we have to set the parameters first. If you asked "how should I get to the pub?" and I answered "Just fly", or "Wish that you were there" or "Click your heels three times and think of beer", I think you'd quite justifiably say "No, how do I really get to the pub?", meaning that my answer about how I should behave needs to be within the parameters of how humans actually do behave. No matter what you say here, no matter what you think ... unless you are some Buddhist master, you are going to process moral dilemmas in the ways I've outlined, you can't not. So any solution to how we should carry out that processing must be within the parameters of how that processing is going to take place regardless of what we think.

Quoting Pfhorrest

If we all just think what we respectively think and there's no sorting out who's right or wrong, then there's no point in arguing

I don't see how that follows. Why would the only point in arguing be for me to change you from something right to something wrong? I could, for example, offer alternatives. I could help you strengthen your argument so you feel more confident about it. I could resolve internal contradictions which would otherwise cause cognitive dissonance.

Quoting Pfhorrest

a way of metaphorically poking an anthill for idle fun, to watch the bugs react. That's the definition of an internet troll.

I don't see how that follows either. I could enjoy the game (like chess, which is equally combative, but both parties benefit). I could have a passionate academic interest in how people defend their beliefs and how that approach has been changed by online social media...

Quoting Pfhorrest

So if we think different things, and do different things about that disagreement, and neither the different things that we think nor the different things that we do to sort out that disagreement are any more or less correct than the other, where does that leave us?

Pretty much the place human(-like) social relations have been for the past few million years.

Quoting Pfhorrest

The kind of responses I would find most pleasant to get would be "oh hey that's a neat similarity you've observed there, never noticed that before" or "huh that's an interesting approach to that problem I've not heard of before". I'm not looking for people to tell me that I'm right, like you always seem to suggest, but just for people to find the approaches I mention curious, interesting, and worth further consideration

So "well done you" then?

Quoting Pfhorrest

premises are definitionally assumptions made at the start of argument, so saying I've assumed them is kinda missing the point

I specifically said 'hidden assumptions'. The interest is in being shown the ones you didn't even know you had.

Quoting Pfhorrest

you seem to take my starting premises to mean something much stranger and less plausible than what seems a quite natural reading of them would be

Think about that. How are you judging 'natural reading'? I'm not the only person here who's taken your comments this way, that thread you started on epistemology had Janus, Banno, Srap and a few others all take your comments in this supposedly 'strange' way, and you judge it to be 'strange', how? Because it's not how it seems to you? Well, duh! That's why we present these things to other people, precisely because thing always seem clear to you, if they're the things you're saying, the point of putting out into the public is to see what they mean to others.

Quoting Pfhorrest

the whole conversation on my side then becomes trying to figure out exactly what other weird background assumption you're reading into my views that enables you to interpret what I'm saying in a way that would entail such obviously wrong conclusions that I am in no way endorsing.

Again, if you're simply assuming that my reading of background assumptions and the wrong conclusions they would lead to are erroneous, then you've just assumed you're flawless from the outset. I don't see the point of engaging in those conditions, but hey, it's your output.

Quoting Pfhorrest

if I handed you an apple and you said “yuck! I hate apples!” that would be one thing, but if I hand you what I’m sure is an apple and you say “yuck! I hate eggplants!” then I’m going to be very perplexed about what is going on here. I hate eggplants too, but... this is an apple. Isn’t it? I wouldn’t offer you an eggplant, I agree those are gross. Why do you think this is one?

Why would you be perplexed. It's obvious what's happening there. One of us has made a mistake identifying apples. Difficult to believe with actual apples...very easy to believe with something as complex as philosophical frameworks. In fact I'd go as far as to say it should be the default expectation.

Quoting Janus

You can say what is not shared, but obviously you cannot share it.

Just tell me what it is about the Newton's cradle that you cannot tell me, then.

It seems that all there is to your account is that One cannot see it from the exact same angle as Janus, at the very same time; trivial.

You go back to the pain example, which is not the source of disagreement. Sure, One does not feel the pain of another - mostly; that's not a point of disagreement here.

What it is about the Newton's cradle that you cannot tell me?

Reply to Banno That's hilarious; you're asking me to tell exactly what it is that I cannot tell you!

This is a great topic, because it will always gather a dozen or so folk who insist that there is something about which we cannot speak, and who will defend this interminably without much success.

Reply to Banno The obvious needs no defence; it's more a case of trying to find ways to help you see it.

Quoting Janus

?Banno That's hilarious; you're asking me to tell you what I cannot tell you!

Yeah, I was surprised; but you said you could:

Quoting Janus

You can say what is not shared, but obviously you cannot share it.

So, if you can say what it is that is not shared, say it.

Quoting Janus

?Banno The obvious needs no defence; it's more a case of trying to find ways to help you see it.

Well, perhaps; but it seems to me that this is the tip of an iceberg of philosophical nonsense. Giving primacy to a posited subjective, ineffable, private world creates philosophical problems.

Quoting Banno

Well, perhaps; but it seems to me that this is the tip of an iceberg of philosophical nonsense. Giving primacy to a posited subjective, ineffable, private world creates philosophical problems.

Primacy?

Reply to frank Yep.

Why else would so many folk feel the need to defend such a view?

Reply to Banno To say it in the way you are demanding would be to share it. What I can't share is what I feel when I look at things; the aesthetic response. I don't believe anyone simply looks at an object without an aesthetic response, without subtle feelings and associations. That's where the pain analogy is apposite; we are feeling beings, each with our own unique responses. That's also why I used the analogy of drawing objects; the vastly different results show how differently people see things.

Quoting Banno

Why else would so many folk feel the need to defend such a view?

Don't you occasionally grant that there's ineffable stuff?

Quoting Banno

Well, perhaps; but it seems to me that this is the tip of an iceberg of philosophical nonsense. Giving primacy to a posited subjective, ineffable, private world creates philosophical problems.

I'm not saying the ineffable has philosophical primacy; how could it? The point is though that any philosophy which tries (per impossibile) to leave it out entirely becomes thereby one-dimensional, even incoherent.

Quoting Janus

any philosophy which tries (per impossibile) to leave it out entirely becomes thereby one-dimensional, even incoherent.

How could a philosophy not 'leave it out'. It can't be said. What would a philosophy do to 'leave it in'. Wink at it?

Quoting Janus

What I can't share is what I feel when I look at things; the aesthetic response.

But that's not right. We do talk about the beauty of the balls; the way in which the conservation of energy is so astonishingly evident in their clanging one into the other; the mathematical precision with which the balls bounce. This:

...and where it is ineffable, we can use poetry and art to share.

Here's the edge of the world, where language curls back on itself: "I love you more than words can say" says how much I love you, in words.

Even with pain, we are certain of the agony of the burnt hand.

Different people see things differently. And yet, we can understand what it is like to be in someone else's place.

It's not so private, is it?

Quoting frank

Don't you occasionally grant that there's ineffable stuff?

Oh, all the time. I don't like to talk about it, though. :rofl:

Reply to Banno There's a difference between the allusive, indeterminate kind of sharing of the arts, which speaks to the reality that we do not all see the same way, (that's why we can be so surprised by art works) and the analytic formal way of empirical sharing that says we all see the same things. What can shared in the latter way can be precisely identified. If someone can't see that difference then there's not much to say about it.

Reply to Janus But let's go back to the topic of this thread. Suppose I allow that there are things that cannot be said, that are properly the domain of a subjective world.

Then how could that stuff become inter-subjective? By definition, it cannot move between subjects. Only the public, non-subjecitve stuff can do that.

So if we allow for a private subjective world, the notion of inter-subjective becomes a nonsense.

Hnece, Reply to Isaac

Quoting Banno

Oh, all the time. I don't like to talk about it, though.

Strangely enough, that makes for good conversations. :chin:

Quoting Janus

There's a difference between the allusive, indeterminate kind of sharing of the arts, which speaks to the reality that we do not all see the same way, (that's why we can be so surprised by art works) and the analytic formal way of empirical sharing that says we all see the same things. What can shared in the latter way can be precisely identified. If someone can't see that difference then there's not much to say about it.

Of course there is! Adding "intersubjectivity" only serves to confuse the two, making a nonsense of the whole.

Reply to frank Ah, Frank - I love you more than words can say.

Reply to Banno As I said private responses may only be alluded to, evoked, there is nothing determinable shared by the artist with the viewer or audience. The artwork allows a glimpse is all.

Quoting Banno

Of course there is! Adding "intersubjectivity" only serves to confuse the two, making a nonsense of the whole.

Nonsense! There is private subjectivity and there are various kinds and degrees of inter-subjective sharing. There will always be things which cannot be shared.To deny that seems absurd to me.

Reply to Olivier5 I'm not playing a game, much less anyone else's. I had thought you were saying that claims are not fallible; if you were not saying that then I was correcting a mistake you didn't make.

Quoting Janus

There is private subjectivity and there are various kinds and degrees of inter-subjective sharing.

That's the erroneous model, yes. What has happened is that as soon as philosophers admitted the ineffably sibjective into their menagerie of concepts, they found that they could talk about it after all, and had to pretend that it admitted of degrees - hence the oxymoron "intersubjective"!

Quoting Janus

The artwork allows a glimpse is all.

A glimpse? So art is ineffective? It tries to show stuff, but never properly succeeds? I think you are opening up a space for a contempt for art that you would not share.

Reply to Banno A glimpse is rich enough; and may be rich indeed. What can be determinably shared is the prosaic; and that is what diminishes art, and subjective experience.

Quoting Banno

Ah, Frank - I love you more than words can say.

Aw shucks. :blush:

Reply to Banno
In a recent thread I started arguing that solipsism is incompatible with ontic materialism. My interlocutor described solipsistic materialism to me as the existence of solitary subject in a material environment. This transitioned into an argument, where I was claiming that the materialist position can only hypothesize the existence of objectively correct perception, not inanimate ontology. I argued that aside from the experience with the perception of the environment, this environment cannot even be conceptualized. Therefore, I argued, that solipsistic materialism would be indistinguishable from intersubjective materialism (edit: more properly, from solipsistic idealism, because the emphasis is the presence of just one subject, not the definition of the external world - I got confused while ranting again). (I agree with the term "intersubjective", because "shared" impresses me as a term involving the use of communication, interaction or some other form of disclosure, whereas intersubjective does not.)

Quoting simeonz

Materialism to me has only one consequence, objective reality, meaning agreement between subjects about the nature of compelling external forces. There can be nothing to agree upon, if there is only one subject. The notion of objectivity becomes meaningless to me, if there are not multiple subjects.

Quoting simeonz

"Exist" is just another word for having a form. But the only way we define the idea of form is through the account of our interactions, through phenomenology. How can we talk about objectivity vs subjectivity of the form we perceive when there is only one subject. The two ideas are indistinguishable even conceptually to me. But I must say, I see where you are coming from. You are not asking the question epistemically at all it appears and to you the ontic difference is evident.

Consequently, I reviewed my earlier responses in the same thread, particularly concerning which theories I would consider meaningful (conceptually), and started to doubt myself. Namely, I claimed before:
Quoting simeonz

Some variants of dualism might be ontically distinguishable, albeit not in a way that can be corroborated. The differences might not be detectable on earth or might be perceivable only through the lenses of hypothetical psychic observer. I accept such notions, because like with solipsism, there is difference between the version of the proposed reality therein and the conventional ones, even if it fails to project into sensory experience. Such description is still irrefutable. I insisted originally that there are different categories of questions that we could ask to distinguish one theory from the rest - ontic, epistemic, ethical and antropological. Some are distinguishable only through some of these questions, but to me, all should be distinguishable in an unambiguous manner as ontic descriptions or they are synonyms to another theory.

I argued here that if a theory made distinct claim about the world, in a logically consistent manner, it is deserving of its title. Even if it is epistemically indistinguishable to other proposals.

What did I mean by epistemic and ontic? The epistemic aspect is what the subject can experience. Even if they can't corroborate their accounts to others, I consider their experiences sufficient epistemic justification. For example, theories with afterlife hypotheses may not be verifiable scientifically, but are observable, at least privately. Such ideas are outside the scope of the scientific convention, but these are antropological conventionalist facets, not ontic and epistemic. This obviousness of epistemics stops when probability becomes involved. The underlying propensities can be described as ontic or epistemic in character. I wont go there. But the compatibility of those cases can be argued with combination of many ideas like ethical utilitarism (we are interested only in the overall effect for humanity), evolutionary Darwinism (we have acquired statistical inferences as innate trait), the laws of large numbers (classical and frequentist probability are compatible), etc.

What about the ontic aspect of a theory? Is it about the subjective experience?

When I argued against the possibility of solipsistic materialism, I implied that the only source of ontology is in the experience of the subject. But is there room for it there if the private experience is also the reason for the epistemic definiteness of a theory? I claim, for example, that while solipsism and intersubjective idealism can not be discerned from one subject's private observations, they differ by the quantity of private vantage points available. Therefore, while their distinctive features can not be given account by any one individual, they are experienced collectively. Like a person with disassociative disorder, neither one of their identities can directly attest to the existence of the rest, but the collective experience of those identities is distinct from that of a person without the disorder. In this metaphor, the multiplicity does not appear evident, but it is a fact. The subjects don't have to confer their existence to others or to witness the existence of other subjects for separation of intersubjective idealism and solipsism.

Do I oppose solipsistic materialism, because I oppose external inanimate world of its own substance? I am not sure. I doubt the intelligibility of separate inanimate state. We have no notion of existence outside of the ourselves. Thinking about it, I think that we project being extent to the forms we contemplate, because we personify them. I am not sure if such mechanical transfer of our own qualities from the subject to the object when making a statement about the world corresponds to a meaningful proposition. Pantheism and solipsism at least construct the reality of mental fabric and the subject-object distinction is lost. I have been advertising them way too often, but I don't see enough discussions about them in the forum and their argument for the existence of the external world is supported by the subjective nature in all of the environment's constituents.

An argument against my doubts is that reality manifests beyond the scope of our prior experience with it. For this reason, we can infer that it is separate, possibly existing in its own timeline that protrudes beyond our cognition. Both materialism and solipsism can admit that mental events can be compelled by involuntary factors. But I am not sure that we can qualify such factors as externally existing. The independence itself here is not more then epistemic. Even though the experiences we have with the world cannot be attributed to recollection or volition, they are still merely independent from our knowledge and will, and not our existence. For example, walking into a room, the influx of information and our interactions cannot be extrapolated from our encounters with different rooms, but this does not demonstrate that the room exists without our account of it.

I think that these reflections raise some methodological questions. We can arrange notions in various combinations, project them, adulterate them, and presume that they constitute in meaningful statements. We cannot distinguish what is a proper and improper statement automatically. We have to admit all statements that might eventually have the potential to be intelligible, even if they turn out not to, because we cannot always check their intelligibility outright.

Edit -> Style changes
Edit -> intersubjective materialism -> solipsistic idealism.

Reply to Janus I was taking 'fallible' as meaning "capable of making mistakes". Defined as such, it does not apply to statements and claims, for which the correct adjective would be 'false'.

More importantly, the point I was making was about fallible observers.

Quoting Banno

That's the erroneous model, yes. What has happened is that as soon as philosophers admitted the ineffably sibjective into their menagerie of concepts, they found that they could talk about it after all, and had to pretend that it admitted of degrees - hence the oxymoron "intersubjective"!

Sure you can refer with an umbrella term to that which can only be indeterminably shared, to that which is private. It's the fact that we all have our private worlds which is the basis of commonality. Language and culture enable this, but there are obviously different degrees to which different aspects of individual experience can be shared.

Think of social animals: they can participate in communal life by responding to body language; the incarnate language of pleasure and pain, of friendliness and anger. But none of this that is shared among them is determinable; animals probably have no idea about, much less what, their fellows or themselves are feeling. We can do that by reflexive self-awareness and linguistically mediated memory.

Quoting Olivier5

I was taking fallible as meaning "capable of making mistakes". Defined as such, it does not apply to statements and claims.

OK, sure "capable of making mistakes" has a different sense than "capable of being mistaken"; the latter could apply to people or claims, whereas the former would seem a bit odd if you tried to apply it to claims. Language is not as tidy as we might like it to be.

Even if we allow that everyone has the same type of experience - which is very much in question here - by virtue of being human, it is still obviously a fact that each of us (each human subject) has a different token of experience.

Furthermore, there has been no support given for the apparent assumption of the OP that human experience is equivalent to, or can be completely defined by, language, or how the two are at all related.

Quoting Banno

Ah, Frank - I love you more than words can say.

But...you just did. :)

Reply to Banno
I ranted a lot in my previous post. My written English is not great, so it came out a little confused. I have edited it, but I'll summarize. We suppose that the material world can exist without us, and that this can account for the time before consciousness existed in the universe. But we have no concept of what existence is outside of ourselves, and the idea may be unintelligible. We may just be extrapolating our present experience with form, which we consider to exist through personification, whilst in actuality we don't have any idea of what existence for anything outside of the subject is conceptually. Pantheism and solipsism don't have that problem, because their subject nature is omnipresent.

Reply to Banno
I am not trolling, but you might want to read the mess again. Sorry, but my flow needs refinement.

Quoting Isaac

That's what those slew of reasons are there to do. Help you work that out.

The scenario in question is one where they have failed to do so, and we're looking for a way to move forward despite that impasse. Saying that what we're usually inclined to do is all we possibly can do is just to deny that any resolution to such an impasse is impossible, which is just to not try to resolve it.

Quoting Isaac

Why would the only point in arguing be for me to change you from something right to something wrong?

Did you mean this the other way around? Or are you suggesting I think that you're basically trying to lie to me? I don't think you're trying to change my views from right ones to wrong ones: I think you're misunderstanding what my views even are, possibly intentionally to create an argument for the sake of argument, but if not, that you're trying to change my views from ones you think are wrong to ones you think are right.

Quoting Isaac

I could, for example, offer alternatives. I could help you strengthen your argument so you feel more confident about it. I could resolve internal contradictions which would otherwise cause cognitive dissonance.

None of those things are arguments. Those are other kinds of responses I would find positive; and also things I would like to help other people do too. But none of them seem to be anything like you do around here. If you're aiming to do any of those things, it's coming off all wrong.

Quoting Isaac

I could enjoy the game (like chess, which is equally combative, but both parties benefit). I could have a passionate academic interest in how people defend their beliefs and how that approach has been changed by online social media...

Playing a competitive game with someone who's not trying to play that game with you, or using someone as a lab rat without their consent, are both trollish things to do, and in line with the "poking an anthill" metaphor anyway.

Quoting Isaac

where does that leave us? — Pfhorrest

Pretty much the place human(-like) social relations have been for the past few million years.

So you think progress beyond the impasses we've been stuck at is impossible, then?

Imagine if that view had prevailed during the transition from the Dark Ages to the dawn of the scientific revolution."There's nothing to be done about disagreements on what is real, as taught by the infallible church, other than try to kill the people who disagree."? That's pretty much the state of moral discourse still, except with the state in place of the church, in places where those aren't still the same thing.

Quoting Isaac

The kind of responses I would find most pleasant to get would be "oh hey that's a neat similarity you've observed there, never noticed that before" or "huh that's an interesting approach to that problem I've not heard of before". I'm not looking for people to tell me that I'm right, like you always seem to suggest, but just for people to find the approaches I mention curious, interesting, and worth further consideration — Pfhorrest

So "well done you" then?

Not in the sense of "you are correct! what a brilliant genius!" that you seem to impute. But also not "let's see how I can interpret you in a way that you're clearly wrong" either. Just "oh hmm curious" is the most I really hope for.

Quoting Isaac

that thread you started on epistemology had Janus, Banno, Srap and a few others all take your comments in this supposedly 'strange' way

We actually figured out the source of the misunderstanding in that thread: there are (at least) two different things meant by "confirmationism", one of them that I was arguing against, and another championed by someone (Hempel) who also argued against what I was arguing against. Janus et al thought I was arguing against Hempel's view, when I was actually arguing against the same view Hempel argued against. That explains why everyone kept saying things I already agreed with as though they were refutations of my position.

Quoting Isaac

Again, if you're simply assuming that my reading of background assumptions and the wrong conclusions they would lead to are erroneous, then you've just assumed you're flawless from the outset.

I don't have to assume I'm flawless to see that you clearly think I mean something other than I do. You're not bringing to light background assumptions that I actually hold, but taking what I say in a way that clearly takes me to think something other than I do, leaving me to figure out what it is that you must think that I think in order to misunderstand me in that way. I'm having to figure out what weird assumptions you're making about me, rather than you showing me what weird assumptions I'm actually making.

If you did actually understand what I was saying, and pointed out things that must be true in order for the things I think to be true, that would actually be helpful and welcome. But that's not what's happening. I'm just spending all my time clearing up your misunderstandings about what I think in the first place.

Quoting Isaac

Why would you be perplexed. It's obvious what's happening there. One of us has made a mistake identifying apples.

The perplexing thing is why that's happening. Do you just call the thing that I call an "apple" an "eggplant", and you hate the things that I call "apples"? If that's the problem, we're just using different words for the same thing, and deciding ad hoc to agree on terminology would clear everything up, aside from the mystery of how we ended up using words so differently and how do other people normally use them. Or else, do you perceive the thing that I'm offering you as the kind of thing that I call an "eggplant", even though I perceive it as the thing that I call an "apple"? In that case there's a much deeper mystery. Which of us is perceiving it incorrectly, and why?

My suspicion about our arguments is that I am offering you the thing I call an "apple" and you are perceiving it as an offer for the thing that I call an "eggplant" because you somehow use the word "apple" for the thing that I call an "eggplant".

Quoting Janus

OK, sure "capable of making mistakes" has a different sense than "capable of being mistaken"; the latter could apply to people or claims, whereas the former would seem a bit odd if you tried to apply it to claims. Language is not as tidy as we might like it to be.

Still, I believe the sentence "claim X is false" is clearer and more appropriate than "claim X is fallible".

If the word 'fallible' introduces confusion, the same idea can be stated without it: the value of intersubjectivity has a lot to do with the assumption that each individual observer may report incorrect observations, or be biased in a way that other observers may not be. In such an epistemology, having one's observations checked by others brings value, especially if the different observers are independent from one another and hence can be assumed to have different biases.

Quoting Janus

Language is not as tidy as we might like it to be.

Pretty much, yeah. Nothing inherently wrong with our conceptual model, nor the representational expressions for it. All language is ever meant to do is translate subjective activity into exchangeable representations. The problem only occurs for those suffering from the notion that the human system primarily operates on representations, and then operates on representations of representations iff the objects of the system given fait accompli, are then communicated. And we all know, don’t we?...that if we don’t like something, it must be wrong, right?

Agreed on your aesthetic response. That which we consider intrinsically private is thereby ineffable, but the representations of it, constructed a priori, as the only possible human means for creating objects which subsequently become perceptions to others, can be shared in a mutual exchange. But the one is not the other, nor can it ever be, for if such were the case, it would be impossible to explain why we are not immediately equipped with language, rather than merely the innate capacity to create and use it.

Which brings us to the cradle. There is nothing about the cradle, as a stand-alone empirical object or as an accurate depiction thereof, that cannot be perceived, and that which can be perceived can be named, and anything that is named can be shared by language. What cannot be shared amongst individual members using some common cognitive system, is the operation of the procedural components of that system which each member uses to relate his perception of some object to the name he gives to it, and by which his knowledge of it is possible.

I mean....how obvious can it be, that we never cognize or know our own thinking as it operates, but only cognize and know what is thought about. I can tell you all about that which I understanding, that of which I may or may not judge, and even what form the judgement takes, but I don’t even know how my faculties arise, where they came from, or even if they are in fact necessarily the case, so I’m not going to be able to communicate anything about them as they are in themselves, but only as I think them to be.

So....you’re correct, in that language is not as tidy as we might like it to be, but I would add it is our own fault that it isn’t, and for that, I would say it is our aesthetic response alone, that is sufficient causality. And that, for the simple reason that aesthetic response, in its common and ordinary iteration, is not predicated solely on logic, as are, theoretically, the remaining cognitive components.

Reply to Janus Nice.

Now, what about Quoting Banno

But let's go back to the topic of this thread. Suppose I allow that there are things that cannot be said, that are properly he domain of a subjective world.

Then how could that stuff become inter-subjective? By definition, it cannot move between subjects. Only the public, non-subjecitve stuff can do that.

So if we allow for a private subjective world, the notion of inter-subjective becomes a nonsense.

Quoting simeonz

In a recent thread I started arguing that solipsism is incompatible with ontic materialism.

Not sure of the relevance of this - but it seems to me that solipsism, in saying that I alone exist, simply rules out any other thing existing, including matter. SO yes, it is incompatible with materialism. Quoting simeonz

I was claiming that the materialist position can only hypothesize the existence of objectively correct perception, not inanimate ontology.

The view that there is only perception, with nothing behind it, is one of the strange garden paths that Kant found. It's a misreading, from what I understand, but @Mww would be able to tell us more. Quoting simeonz

Materialism to me has only one consequence, objective reality, meaning agreement between subjects about the nature of compelling external forces. There can be nothing to agree upon, if there is only one subject. The notion of objectivity becomes meaningless to me, if there are not multiple subjects.

One might swing this to a more direct argument against intersubjectivity as a suitable term:

If we suppose an objective reality, then we might suppose that what is true is what is the case in that reality. But intersubjectivity supposes that what is true is what is intersubjectively verified. Hence intersubjectivity is incorrect.

This is crude, and I won't defend it far. But it serves to bring the notion of truth into the discussion. One of the things that counts against talk of intersubjectivity is that it renders our propositions neither true nor false, only agreed on or disagrees on. Some would consider that a benefit - those under the spell of various forms of relativism, for example, or pragmatism.

But I am of the opinion that we can make true statements about how things are in the world around us. My coffee cup is nearly empty. That statement is true, and I do not need others to provide intersubjective verification of it in order that I believe it, or act on it by obtaining more coffee.

Quoting Janus

It's the fact that we all have our private worlds which is the basis of commonality.

Well, no. It's the fact that we can all talk about the same thing. It's the fact that we all share a public world which is the basis of commonality.

Quoting Janus

animals probably have no idea about, much less what, their fellows or themselves are feeling.

It seems you do not have a pet.

Quoting Luke

Even if we allow that everyone has the same type of experience - which is very much in question here - by virtue of being human, it is still obviously a fact that each of us (each human subject) has a different token of experience.

Types and tokens - here's a can of worms.

I like worms.

When you and I look tot he Newton's Cradle before us, do we see a type or a token? Is your claim that I see my token, you see yours, and together we make a type?

You see, I can't reconcile what you have said with how I understand types and tokens.

Reply to jorndoe Yep. Strange, ain't it?

Quoting simeonz

...we have no concept of what existence is outside of ourselves, and the idea may be unintelligible.

Yeah, we do. I have a clear notion of my coffee cup, and it is not inside me.

Reply to Banno
Notions aren't the sorts of things that have locations.

Quoting Mww

All language is ever meant to do is translate subjective activity into exchangeable representations.

A neat statement of the myth.

Translation occurs between languages, so if translation is the correct model, then there must be a subjective language to be translated into English.

There's a homunculus lurking here: it speaks in its own language, which is translated into English. But this has not explained how it comes about that the homunculi's private musing have meaning. Does this homunculus translate its language from yet another, deeper homunculus? Is it homunculi all the way down?

The supposition that our words gain their meaning by translating private meanings is fraught.

A better picture is to see that we do things with word as we use them; the meaning is not private, but constructed and shared in that very use. Instead of looking for the source of the meanings of our words in a hidden world in one's mind, look at what we are doing with words as we use them.

Reply to frank Coffee cups do.

Reply to Banno Yes, but the notion of a coffee cup doesn't.

The notion of a coffee cup might be part of an inquiry. You see an object on the table, but the lights are low, so it just looks dark. You turn on the light, and you see it's a coffee cup.

When you pick it up, you see the little notch where you dropped it. Now you know it's this coffee cup.

Reply to frank So what?

Quoting Banno

When you and I look tot he Newton's Cradle before us, do we see a type or a token? Is your claim that I see my token, you see yours, and together we make a type?

I think it was fairly clear from my post that I was talking about types and tokens of experience, rather than types and tokens of objects. My point was that your experience of the cradle and my experience of the cradle are different tokens of experience. Whereas, you seem to want to reject talk about tokens of experience on the basis that we each have the same types of experience, e.g. seeing Newton's Cradle.

How can we have a discussion about subjectivity (and how/whether subjectivity can be shared) if you reject all talk about different tokens of experience, i.e. if you reject subjective experience and subjectivity altogether?

Quoting Olivier5

If the word 'fallible' introduces confusion, the same idea can be stated without it: the value of intersubjectivity has a lot to do with the assumption that each individual observer may report incorrect observations, or be biased in a way that other observers may not be. In such an epistemology, having one's observations checked by others brings value, especially if the different observers are independent from one another and hence can be assumed to have different biases.

I have no argument with any of that. But I still don't think the word "fallible" causes any confusion.

Quoting Mww

So....you’re correct, in that language is not as tidy as we might like it to be, but I would add it is our own fault that it isn’t, and for that, I would say it is our aesthetic response alone, that is sufficient causality. And that, for the simple reason that aesthetic response, in its common and ordinary iteration, is not predicated solely on logic, as are, theoretically, the remaining cognitive components.

Right, I think I agree. You seem to be saying that if we didn't have any aesthetic response, then there would be nothing about the objects of sense that cannot be talked about in fully determinate terms, that is there would be nothing that could not be shared.

So, "it is our own fault" in the sense that we have aesthetic responses; do you think that is something we could actually dispense with even if we wanted to?

Quoting Banno

Well, no. It's the fact that we can all talk about the same thing. It's the fact that we all share a public world which is the basis of commonality.

I know I’m repeating myself but I’m more so saying this hoping to resolve disagreement with others. And seeing how others would disagree with me.

I think the main disagreement is in saying this “public world” is set in stone. That it is the same for all of us. It doesn’t need to be so for communication to take place.

We each have a private world. Some parts of that private world are isomorphisms of each other. Those parts are the public world. This “public world” is inter subjective. Because it is the isomorphic part (inter) of each person’s private world (subjective).

“Isomorphism” is a technical term that is part of introductory set theory. It means that two groups share the same “structure”. It would probably be easier to look it up but I’ll try my best to explain it.

So if I have a group of objects, and their colors. Let’s say for me, objects A, B and C have the colors X, X, Y respectively. And for you, object A, B, C have the colors Y, Y, X. Those two would be isomorphisms.

What will happen is, I will see A and say “This is red” for example. And you will see A and ALSO call it red. Same will happen for B. And for C we will both call it green.

So communication is possible, even though the private experience is different. That is because our experiences have the same “structure” in this case. And it is in these cases only where communication is possible. Note, A does not have to have the color X for both of us for communication to be possible. As long as every object that, for me, has the color X has the color Y for you, and every object that for me has the color Y has the color X for you, we can talk. Because the private experience itself is not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the structure. And that’s all we can talk about.

On the other hand, say someone sees, A, B, C as Z,Z,Z. We call that person “colorblind”. NOT because Z is different from X and Y. But because the structure is different. In their world, there is no distinction between C and A/B. So if they learn to call A “red” because they’ll see others calling it red, they will also end up calling C “red”. That’s how we know they’re colorblind.

The Xs, Ys and Zs are Qualia.

Quoting Janus

A glimpse is rich enough; and may be rich indeed. What can be determinably shared is the prosaic; and that is what diminishes art, and subjective experience.

Quoting Banno

Nice.

Now, what about

But let's go back to the topic of this thread. Suppose I allow that there are things that cannot be said, that are properly he domain of a subjective world.

Then how could that stuff become inter-subjective? By definition, it cannot move between subjects. Only the public, non-subjecitve stuff can do that.

So if we allow for a private subjective world, the notion of inter-subjective becomes a nonsense.

So, the issue you seem to be stumbling over is the distinction between what about our experience of sense objects can be determinably or definitively shared, and the kinds of responses to, associations with and feelings for them that cannot be determinably or definitively shared but may be evoked or alluded to by poetic language and the other arts. You still haven't dealt with the problem for your position which is demonstrated by the very different drawings of things that people produce.

Quoting Banno

It's the fact that we all have our private worlds which is the basis of commonality. — Janus


Well, no. It's the fact that we can all talk about the same thing. It's the fact that we all share a public world which is the basis of commonality.

The "public world" exists only in a formal sense; in actuality it exists only insofar as it is perceptually revealed privately to each of us in ways similar enough that we can talk about some features of what is perceived. If we didn't have private worlds of experience we would have nothing to talk about.

There is a commonality in the mere fact that we all do have such perceptual worlds, and that we simply pre-reflectively accept that others do have such worlds, even though we obviously cannot experience any perceptions but our own.

Quoting Banno

animals probably have no idea about, much less what, their fellows or themselves are feeling. — Janus

It seems you do not have a pet.

I actually do have two dogs. In any case, again you are misunderstanding what I've said; I said that animals probably have "no idea about, much less what, their fellows or themselves are feeling"; I didn't say they do not have feelings responses. I say they have no ideas about such things, because having ideas arguably requires language capability.

The part you left out should have given you the clue that I wasn't saying what you apparently thought I was:

Quoting Janus

Think of social animals: they can participate in communal life by responding to body language; the incarnate language of pleasure and pain, of friendliness and anger. But none of this that is shared among them is determinable; animals probably have no idea about, much less what, their fellows or themselves are feeling. We can do that by reflexive self-awareness and linguistically mediated memory.

Quoting Pfhorrest

The scenario in question is one where they have failed to do so, and we're looking for a way to move forward despite that impasse. Saying that what we're usually inclined to do is all we possibly can do is just to deny that any resolution to such an impasse is impossible, which is just to not try to resolve it.

What resources do you expect to tap into other than those of our mental processes? Do you think perhaps we should use supercomputers? It just seems you're saying "when all of our mental faculties fail to show us the right way, why not use some of our mental faculties to help". If a whole load of intuitions, gut feelings and empathetic emotional states, all processed by various rational algorithms didn't solve the problem, why would it help to throw away half the data sources and just do the calculation again?

Quoting Pfhorrest

Did you mean this the other way around?

I did, yes. Oops.

Quoting Pfhorrest

None of those things are arguments. Those are other kinds of responses I would find positive; and also things I would like to help other people do too. But none of them seem to be anything like you do around here. If you're aiming to do any of those things, it's coming off all wrong.

Oh dear! Come to think of it, my students used to have a similar complaint about my draconian marking scheme, maybe there's a pattern...

Quoting Pfhorrest

...using someone as a lab rat without their consent, are both trollish things to do

Really? I don't see taking an academic interest in people's posts as an unethical thing. Publishing examples thereof maybe, but I think you're trying to legislate the wind if you want people to suspended any meta-level interest in the way people present themselves or their ideas. Maybe if on some occasion one were to poke a little too hard just to see what happens that might cross a threshold, but would it be any worse than poking too hard out of anger or frustration? Notwithstanding, I always thought I was one of the lighter pokers. You should see the ethical compliance statement for the experiment Streetlight is running on us all.

Quoting Pfhorrest

So you think progress beyond the impasses we've been stuck at is impossible, then?

Yes.

Quoting Pfhorrest

Imagine if that view had prevailed during the transition from the Dark Ages to the dawn of the scientific revolution."There's nothing to be done about disagreements on what is real, as taught by the infallible church, other than try to kill the people who disagree."? That's pretty much the state of moral discourse still, except with the state in place of the church, in places where those aren't still the same thing.

We managed to live for nearly half a million years in fairly stable, egalitarian (if modern hunter-gatherers are anything to go by), and successful societies. In just the last 10,000 we've managed to enslave half the world, kill most of it's animals, make entire habitats uninhabitable, and now stand on the brink of self-destruction from irreversible climate change. I don't think it's our native faculties that are at fault.

Quoting Pfhorrest

Not in the sense of "you are correct! what a brilliant genius!" that you seem to impute. But also not "let's see how I can interpret you in a way that you're clearly wrong" either. Just "oh hmm curious" is the most I really hope for.

Is it not obvious from the extent of my engagement that I at least find your position curious?

Quoting Pfhorrest

We actually figured out the source of the misunderstanding in that thread: there are (at least) two different things meant by "confirmationism", one of them that I was arguing against, and another championed by someone (Hempel) who also argued against what I was arguing against. Janus et al thought I was arguing against Hempel's view, when I was actually arguing against the same view Hempel argued against. That explains why everyone kept saying things I already agreed with as though they were refutations of my position.

Well, that's not how I understood the critique, but I'm not going to get back into that again, the point is that even if the fact that "Janus et al thought I was arguing against Hempel's view, when I was actually arguing against the same view Hempel argued against." does explain why "everyone kept saying things I already agreed with as though they were refutations of my position" doesn't that just exactly prove my point. Your initial presentation was insufficient to give the clear understanding you thought you were imparting. People didn't misunderstand you in weird ways, they didn't interpret you uncharitably, they misunderstood you in a perfectly reasonable way and interpreted you wrongly, not for uncharitable reasons, but for reasons entirely resulting from the lack of clarity about the matter inherent in your presentation.

It seems very odd to expect charity from others, but when those others misinterpret or misunderstand you, your default explanation is that they're doing so deliberately out of malice. Surely charity works both ways, no?

Quoting Pfhorrest

I don't have to assume I'm flawless to see that you clearly think I mean something other than I do.

No, but you assume you're flawless to see that as my problem in understanding and not your problem in presentation.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I'm having to figure out what weird assumptions you're making about me, rather than you showing me what weird assumptions I'm actually making.

...is basically the definition of assuming you're flawless. My assumptions are the weird ones because...

Quoting Pfhorrest

If you did actually understand what I was saying, and pointed out things that must be true in order for the things I think to be true, that would actually be helpful and welcome. But that's not what's happening. I'm just spending all my time clearing up your misunderstandings about what I think in the first place.

You're not teaching me, you know that, right? I don't require my misunderstanding to be 'cleared up' because I'm not signed up to some 'Cult of Pfhorrest' where it's vital I understand exactly what you're saying. You are the one trying to publicise you ideas. If they cause misunderstanding you can either walk away, or try to present your ideas more clearly. Either way it's your choice and of benefit only to you. It shouldn't be an onerous task which needs doing. If it is then I'll save you the bother. I'm not in the least bit interested in what your philosophy actually is. Why on earth would I be? I have access via the internet to the libraries of the world, philosophy papers online and in journals, personally I'm even fortunate enough to have access to one or two philosophers themselves (if I'm willing to shell out for a flashy coffee). So please don't put yourself under any obligation to ensure that I've understood you properly unless you want to. I shan't be taking the exam later, and it's been longer than I care to remember since I had to be concerned about my grades.

___

Anyway, all this talk about your approach is way off-topic. Fascinating to me, but I suspect completely irrelevant to everyone else.

The on-topic point is that we personally find persuasive is a psychological matter, not a matter of some golden chalice of propositional properties, and it necessarily precedes any attempt at 'inter-subjective' agreement.

Reply to Banno Thanks for starting a thread with I question that I had asked.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, what's got me confused is how the convergence of ideas which is part of intersubjectivity seems to bear a resemblance to reproducibility in scientific objectivity.

As per scientific objectivity the convergence of observations by which I mean observations that have been made by many people is like a certificate of objectivity conferred on whatever the observation is - that it's not just a private, subjective affair.

Compare the above scientific principle if you will with what intersubjectivity is. Like scientific reproducibility, intersubjectivity too is about a convergence, a convergence of ideas, and yet the claim is that intersubjectivity and (scientific) objectivity are two different things.

Quoting Isaac

What resources do you expect to tap into other than those of our mental processes? ... If a whole load of intuitions, gut feelings and empathetic emotional states, all processed by various rational algorithms didn't solve the problem

What I'm advocating is a rational algorithm by which to process those things. We can invent new algorithms. You sound to be suggesting that it's only the intuitions, gut feelings, etc, that we have to rely on, and if those aren't doing the trick, tough, there's nothing more to be done. I'm suggesting that we can invent new things to try doing, besides just whatever comes naturally.

Quoting Isaac

I don't see taking an academic interest in people's posts as an unethical thing.

You seemed to be saying that you're pushing people's argumentative buttons to see how they react, out of academic interest. Just being curious what it is that people think would not be unethical. I would gladly explain in as much detail as you like what my views actually are, if you're just trying to understand what I think out of interest, even if you don't agree with those thoughts. I don't care to try to persuade you, or really anybody, that I'm correct. I'm not looking to "pick a fight", to try to tell people what to think or convince them to think as I do; I don't have the energy for that. I'm interested in sharing alternate possibilities about things that one could think, and then letting people choose between them as they please. And I just get tired of being argued against by people who don't even understand what claims I'm making.

That was the point of the apple/eggplant metaphor. If you just don't like apples, that's fine with me.

Quoting Isaac

So you think progress beyond the impasses we've been stuck at is impossible, then? — Pfhorrest

Yes.

Then your position is exactly the "just giving up" that I say all of the philosophical positions I'm against imply. Thanks for proving my point.

Quoting Isaac

It seems very odd to expect charity from others, but when those others misinterpret or misunderstand you, your default explanation is that they're doing so deliberately out of malice.

It's not my default explanation, or I wouldn't bother trying to explain myself. It's a suspicion I begin to have after going around and around in circles for a long time, running into increasingly implausible interpretations of what I'm trying to convey.

I didn't think Janus et al were being uncharitable, I thought they just misunderstood me somehow, and in the end we figured out how. It's only you who gives me suspicious feelings.

Quoting Isaac

You're not teaching me, you know that, right?

My point was that you are not teaching me, as you seemed to suggest. I'm not being shown some unseen assumptions I have, because you don't even accurately understand what my views are, so instead I'm working to figure out what assumptions you think I'm making that lead to that misunderstanding, so I can clear it up.

Quoting Isaac

I'm not in the least bit interested in what your philosophy actually is. [...] So please don't put yourself under any obligation to ensure that I've understood you properly unless you want to.

Okay, so back to ignoring you it is then. Saves me a load of time. I had gotten the impression that you didn't like that I was ignoring you before, didn't like that I thought you were arguing in bad faith and weren't worth responding to, and you were trying to extend an olive branch or something, to show that you mean well and we can have friendly productive conversations. The only outcome I hoped to get out of that latest one was to reach some point or another where I don't have to worry that every time I say anything here you're going to jump in and the whole thread will just become the same argument with you over again.

Quoting Banno

So what

I was hoping you'd take the stance that we can do without talk of concepts, ideas, and notions. If we think of universals as an aspect of investigation, of narrowing down from vagueness to specific, then we can't.

Quoting Pfhorrest

You sound to be suggesting that it's only the intuitions, gut feelings, etc, that we have to rely on, and if those aren't doing the trick, tough, there's nothing more to be done. I'm suggesting that we can invent new things to try doing, besides just whatever comes naturally.

And where does the will to invent these new algorithms come from? Where does the sense that they're working (or not working) come from? Where does the determination to follow through on their product come from? If we're bereft of intuition as to what's right, the why would we follow the prescription the algorithm produced, we might just as easily throw it away.

Quoting Pfhorrest

Just being curious what it is that people think would not be unethical. I would gladly explain in as much detail as you like what my views actually are

That assumes you have privileged and exhaustive insight into what you actually think which would be fully and faithfully reported verbally. I don't believe that to be the case, and I think a substantial canon of psychological literature supports my view. My interest is in what you actually think and how you actually arrive at and shore up those thoughts. I don't believe you have any more privileged an insight into that by reporting how it seems to you than I do by observing how you present ideas and respond to dissonance.

Quoting Pfhorrest

Then your position is exactly the "just giving up" that I say all of the philosophical positions I'm against imply. Thanks for proving my point.

I don't see it as giving up any more than I see acknowledging that we can't defy gravity as 'giving up'. We can lead perfectly happy lives within the limits of our abilities, I really don't see any reason to struggle against them.

Quoting Pfhorrest

It's a suspicion I begin to have after going around and around in circles for a long time, running into increasingly implausible interpretations of what I'm trying to convey.

Yeah, that's basically what I mean. When faced with the situation where a simple linguistic misunderstanding has to be ruled out, your only other recourse is that the other person must be maliciously misinterpreting you. Not that the other person has such a radically different way of looking at the problem, that your statements, in their framework, don't mean what you think they mean. Things that seem obvious to you don't always seem obvious to other people. One's language, one's whole presentations is infused with such seemingly obvious assumptions such that you don't even think about them and the word 'just mean' what they seem to you to mean. The only way to see what these are is to talk to other people with different assumptions and explore why what you're saying doesn't mean what you think it means.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I'm not being shown some unseen assumptions I have, because you don't even accurately understand what my views are

Again, how would you tell the difference between "I don't understand what your views are " and "your views mean, in my framework, exactly what I say they mean, they don't seem to mean that to you because of the hidden assumptions outlining your framework"?

Quoting Pfhorrest

The only outcome I hoped to get out of that latest one was to reach some point or another where I don't have to worry that every time I say anything here you're going to jump in and the whole thread will just become the same argument with you over again.

You realise that you ignoring me is not the same thing as me ignoring you. I have no problem at all with your responses to me, I've thoroughly enjoyed all of them, as I have the opportunity to read what you have to say. I'm intrigued by the limits you have on what you want by way of response, but I don't suppose now I'm going to get a chance to pursue that further.

Quoting Banno

I was claiming that the materialist position can only hypothesize the existence of objectively correct perception, not inanimate ontology.
— simeonz

The view that there is only perception, with nothing behind it, is one of the strange garden paths that Kant found. It's a misreading, from what I understand, but Mww would be able to tell us more.

If “only perception with nothing behind it” is meant to indicate the non-cognitive aspect of perception, then that is indeed Kant’s primary metaphysical consideration with respect to empirical knowledge acquisition. Accordingly, perception is nothing but the passive receptivity from which physical sensations arise; they are necessary for, but never enter into, this particular speculative epistemology. Perception tells us an object is present to sensibility, but not what the object is. I think what baffles the non-Kantian, and thereby turns him away from the theory, is why it should be that even a known object must still run the full gamut of reason, when it doesn’t seem necessary or productive to think about that which we’ve already learned.

I’m guessing the misreading follows from the alternate thesis that objects actually do tell us what they are, merely from being presented to us. This methodology seems to be entirely sufficient for extant experiences, but finer theorizing shows contradictions and absurdities will always arise from it. This is not to say Kant got our human knowledge acquisition system right, but only that a purely materialist position stands no chance at all of getting it right, if it grounds itself in experience alone.
—————

Quoting Banno

All language is ever meant to do is translate subjective activity into exchangeable representations.
— Mww

A neat statement of the myth. Translation occurs between languages, so if translation is the correct model, then there must be a subjective language to be translated into English.

Half is categorical error, half misses the point. If you’re interested enough, I’ll lay it out.

Still, it confuses the issue to say subjectively inventing words necessitates a subjective language. It could, re: Lewis Carroll, Lisa Gerrard, but it isn’t necessarily the case that it does.

Quoting Banno

we do things with word as we use them

Absolutely; uncontested. The invention of words is never in itself sufficient for intelligible communication. Words nonetheless need their own ontological legitimacy. Most folks don’t care about the origin of words, having learned them by rote, but never consider what each single word actually does.

Quoting Banno

the meaning is not private, but constructed and shared in that very use

This suggests we always understand each other. But we don’t, which implies what I mean in expressing something does not relate to what you think I mean when you hear it. It follows that either I’m using the wrong words which explains why you don’t understand me, or, I’m using the same word you would use but I assign a meaning to that word with which you do not find meaningful in the same way, which is just as valid an explanation. Mutual understanding is merely common meaning, but each meaning given by each understanding from individual systems, is itself necessarily private.

Another accountability must be reckoned, in that one of us may legitimately use a word from a common language, for which the other does not even know the meaning.

Superfluous philosophical nonsense for Everydayman? Ehhhhh....perhaps. Probably. OK, fine.....yes. But certainly not mythical.

Quoting TheMadFool

Thanks for starting a thread with I question that I had asked.

Thanks for not describing me as having ripped off your topic...!

Quoting TheMadFool

As per scientific objectivity the convergence of observations by which I mean observations that have been made by many people is like a certificate of objectivity conferred on whatever the observation is - that it's not just a private, subjective affair.

Compare the above scientific principle if you will with what intersubjectivity is. Like scientific reproducibility, intersubjectivity too is about a convergence, a convergence of ideas, and yet the claim is that intersubjectivity and (scientific) objectivity are two different things.

Yep, I think you hit the nail on the head. So Reply to Olivier5 is quite happy to bring intersubjectivity in to the discussion, not noticing how it is used by, for comparison, Reply to Pfhorrest, Reply to simeonz and Reply to Mww.

So there's folk as for various reasons don't differentiate between what is true and what is believed - they suppose for example that nothing is true, just believed to a greater or lesser extent. They've various epistemological structures to reinforce this view, versions of coherentism or pragmatism, sometimes rejecting truth outright, sometimes redefining it in terms of a sort of popular vote or a final goal.

I'd just point out that being popular or being useful is not the very same as being true. I hope that's apparent.

But also I've no objection to the suggestion that some experiment that is repeated successfully should reinforce one's belief in the result; that's not at issue here, at least for me.

Quoting frank

If we think of universals as an aspect of investigation, of narrowing down from vagueness to specific, then we can't.

Universals - they are medieval. Nor need they be vague: "seven" is not vague, nor is "odd number".

Quoting Mww

perception is nothing but the passive receptivity from which physical sensations arise; they are necessary for, but never enter into, this particular speculative epistemology. Perception tells us an object is present to sensibility, but not what the object is.

Psychologist and their fellow travellers have pretty much dismissed the notion fo passive receptivity - @Isaac? Nor does there seem to be any difficulty outside of philosophy tutorials in moving from perception-of-shoe to shoe. "...but not what the object is" - its a shoe. Kant lived a while back - things moved on.

Quoting Mww

If you’re interested enough, I’ll lay it out.

Not disinterested; I just have other things to do.

Quoting Mww

...subjectively inventing words...

Why "subjectively"? Would that we could share a bottle of red and clear these little oddities. I'm not sure if you are talking about some form of mentalese, or implying that all our words are subjectively invented. But ironing that out will take us away from the topic at hand. Sad.

Quoting Mww

the meaning is not private, but constructed and shared in that very use
— Banno

This suggests we always understand each other.

I don't see how. There will obviously be misconstruel during the construction process. In what follows you treat as if there were a fixed thing which is "the meaning of a word". What is that? Where do we find it? Is it located in each subjective mind?

In contrast, the suggestion is that we treat of the way we use words rather than a secret meaning we must guess.

A myth is a narrative that serves to explain certain otherwise curious behaviour. Killing goats at an alter, for example, or long posts on philosophy. Mine as well as yours. Cheers.

Quoting Banno

Universals - they are medieval

So is wearing pants.

Quoting Banno

Nor need they be vague: "seven" is not vague, nor is "odd number".

True. The vague universal is just one example of how we can't do without talk of concepts and notions. That doesn't imply anything ontological, anymore than talking about specific cups does.

Reply to frank Much as I love you, you are not saying enough to entice me into a continuing discussion.

So what? Pass me that yellow cup, would you? Are you wanting to say that the cup is no more than a perception? Out with it!

Quoting Banno

So what? Pass me that yellow cup, would you? Are you wanting to say that the cup is no more than a perception? Out with it!

I think we agree that we have no truth-apt ontological statements to make about either cups or numbers.

As for sharing ideas amongst ourselves, we have to assume that we do to even start the discussion about it. We agree on that as well, right?

Quoting frank

I think we agree that we have no truth-apt ontological statements to make about either cups or numbers.

Oh, I do - it's a yellow cup. Hence "there exists a yellow cup" is a true ontological statement. Quoting frank

As for sharing ideas amongst ourselves, we have to assume that we do to even start the discussion about it. We agree on that as well, right?

The idea is the sharing.

Quoting Banno

Oh, I do - it's a yellow cup. Hence "there exists a yellow cup" is a true ontological statement.

Ok. But then, the same logic applies to seven.

Quoting Banno

The idea is the sharing.

That sounds like some sort of zen mantra. Is there an ontological commitment behind it?

Quoting frank

the same logic applies to seven.

Why? Are you supposing tht all universals have the very same ontology? Why should that be so?

Quoting Banno

Why? Are you supposing tht all universals have the very same ontology? Why should that be so?

The logic was: it's a yellow cup, hence there exists a yellow cup.

Seven is a prime number, hence there exists a number 7.

Same thing.

Reply to frank Sure. Existence as being the subject of a predicate. A grammatical, not an ontological, fact.

I" m using "Here is a cup" as an ontological statement. Can you say "here is a seven"? Not in the same way.

Quoting Banno

I" m using "Here is a cup" as an ontological statement.

What ontology are you expressing? How does the statement differ from a grammatical fact so that it's ontological?

Quoting Banno

Psychologist and their fellow travellers have pretty much dismissed the notion fo passive receptivity

Indeed. I'd cite the evidence, but I fear the publication dates may upset poor @Mww. Like waking a sleepwalker, one must be careful with Kantians not to too abruptly alert them to the fact that people have, in fact, continued to think things after 1804.

Reply to Isaac Thanks for weighing in.

Reply to Banno

No problem.

To the topic... I have to admit to using the term myself quite a bit, but I've found myself persuaded by your arguments here. I really can't make an argument for what "inter-subjectively agreed" adds to just "agreed". All agreements in such a context are agreements between subjects. I begin to suspect the addition of the word tries to give the agreement some weight which would otherwise not be entailed by the agreement alone. Probably not a helpful thing to do when that is exactly the matter in question.

Reply to Isaac Cheers. It's a loaded term, and I suspect many of those using it - Reply to Olivier5? - do not see the baggage.

Reply to Banno What baggage would that be?

Reply to Olivier5 Quoting Banno

So ?Olivier5 is quite happy to bring intersubjectivity in to the discussion, not noticing how it is used by, for comparison, ?Pfhorrest, ?simeonz and ?Mww.

Quoting Isaac

what "inter-subjectively agreed" adds to just "agreed".

Well put, but it suggests an answer, which is "overcoming differences of perspective". So it's useful, because it succinctly forestalls the unnecessary baggage of "subjective" and "objective".

Reply to Banno So what baggage would that be? In a few well chosen words please?

You can do it.

Banno thinks that if two distinct frames of reference are made compatible through a transformation theory, then they become one. What Banno doesn't recognize is that this is just a matter of using theory to reconcile the differences between two distinct perspectives. And so it is just a matter of Banno saying that they are one, when they are treated by the theory as two, and that's hypocrisy.

Quoting khaled

We each have a private world

Anyone who cares to admit this for their own part, thereby participates in the intersubjective construction of private worlds.

In rather the same way that someone who admits to being single or married participates in the social construction of marital relations.

To admit is to let in. One admits a construct to one's private world in such a way that one's private world is itself a social construct that admits itself to itself.

Subjectivity is a social construct; subjectivity is intersubjective.

Quoting unenlightened

To admit is to let in. One admits a construct to one's private world in such a way that one's private world is itself a social construct that admits itself to itself

Public and private are two sides to the same coin. Can't have one without the other.

Reply to unenlightened Quoting unenlightened

intersubjective construction of private worlds.

Quoting unenlightened

Subjectivity is a social construct

Have no clue what this means. Subjectivity is not socially constructed.

Quoting unenlightened

Subjectivity is a social construct; subjectivity is intersubjective.

Regardless of whether subjectivity is public or private, each of us has their own experiences. I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain. Others can go through similar experiences and might be said to have felt the same types of pain as me, but not the same tokens of pain as me. This is what I understand "subjectivity" to mean in this context. The individuality of my body and my experiences is not a social construct, especially given that a society is a community of individuals, each with their own pains and viewpoints

Quoting Banno

Nor does there seem to be any difficulty outside of philosophy tutorials in moving from perception-of-shoe to shoe.

There shouldn’t be, even within philosophy, which doesn’t give a shit about what is known. Your handy-dandy little formula is mere memory; you musta already known what a shoe is in order to say “perception-of-shoe”. To be perfectly consistent, you are left with “perception-of-x to x”, which makes explicit you can never learn anything at all, if left to your own cognitive devices; for you, x can never be anything but x. And if every human ever, uses that formula.......where in the HELL did “shoe” even come from in the first place?????

Consider this, mon ami: your rational methodology bears striking resemblance to Hume and his “constant conjunction” theory, published a half century earlier than the epistemological philosophy I’ve been advocating, and chastised for as being outdated. Thing is.....humans haven’t significantly evolved since (+/-) the Neolithic era, insofar as the brain works pretty much the same way now as it did when we figured out how to get real food out of scruffy-assed seeds. I trust your intellectual capacity to draw the proper conclusions from such obvious implications.

So yes....things moved on. Things other than an irrefutable, thus entirely sufficient, scientific explanation for human experience. Without that, we are free to hypothesize as we wish. With proper regard to logic, of course. I hope you’ll agree that one is a fool to argue good logic just as much as one is a fool to argue good science.
——————-

Quoting Banno

the meaning is not private, but constructed and shared in that very use
— Banno

This suggests we always understand each other.
— Mww

I don't see how. There will obviously be misconstruel during the construction process.

I intended “we always understand each other” to indicate that if use alone was sufficient for both construction of meaning and sharing of it, I would only need your constructions given from your sharing in order to understand your meaning. Nevertheless, by saying there will always be misconstrueals merely admits an inconsistency in the your assertion that meaning is not private. You said it yourself: there will be misconstrueals in the construction process, but without mention of the sharing. Perhaps you were just trying to convey that we share our constructions and we construct what we share, which is true enough, but we certainly do not do both at the same time nor in the same way. It follows that if one of the two is private, then the meaning derived from it will be just as private. It can only be that if both construction and sharing are not private then meaning will not be private.
—————-

Quoting Banno

implying that all our words are subjectively invented.

Originally, they were. All of them. No words in Nature.
—————

Quoting Banno

the suggestion is that we treat of the way we use words.....

Yep, usually. Mutually intelligible language.

.......rather than a secret meaning we must guess.

Yep, as in codes. Not mutually intelligible language.

What’s common to both?

Reply to Olivier5 Idealism.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Banno thinks that if two distinct frames of reference are made compatible through a transformation theory, then they become one. What Banno doesn't recognize is that this is just a matter of using theory to reconcile the differences between two distinct perspectives. And so it is just a matter of Banno saying that they are one, when they are treated by the theory as two, and that's hypocrisy.

1+1=2.

Banno thinks that if two distinct numbers are made compatible through an equation, then they become one. What Banno doesn't recognise is that this is just a matter of using an equation to reconcile the differences between two distinct numbers. And so it is just a matter of Banno saying that they are one, when they are treated by an equation as two, and that's hypocrisy.

Familiar territory. I don't think you will be helping the case for subjectivism.

Reply to unenlightened I'm heading in that direction, but that might be a bit too far ahead.for those here to see.

Quoting Luke

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain.

Is this pivotal for you?

Suppose a clever surgeon wired your arm to mine, so that if I stick a pin in my thumb, we both feel it.

Is there anything here that is logically contradictory?

Is it a necessary fact that you do not feel my pain? Is it true in all possible worlds?

You might also Google Mirror Neurones and mirror-touch synesthesia.

It seems that your contention has been falsified. Perhaps even by intersubjective observation...!

Quoting khaled

Subjectivity is not socially constructed.

Why are you so sure? Why so certain?

The myth has you in its thrall; how could things be otherwise?

Quoting Mww

if use alone was sufficient for both construction of meaning and sharing of it, I would only need your constructions given from your sharing in order to understand your meaning.

That's not how it works. We work together to build the use of a word.

Quoting Mww

implying that all our words are subjectively invented.
— Banno

Originally, they were. All of them. No words in Nature.

SO... your claim is that originally there were words used only by one person... a private language?

What do you think they did with these words? What function could they have had - the individual grunted in a particular way each time they saw a particularly delicious fruit?

No; they grunted, and others understood this as indicative of ripe fruit.

Language is not private.

Quoting Banno

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain.
— Luke

Is this pivotal for you?

In terms of subjectivity? Yes.

Quoting Banno

Suppose a clever surgeon wired your arm to mine, so that if I stick a pin in my thumb, we both feel it.

Suppose Banno had to invent a fanciful hypothesis to avoid my argument.

Unless we were one and the same person in this scenario, then we would each be feeling our own individual pains, even if they both occurred at the same time, both occurred in the same locations in each of our bodies, and felt qualitatively the same to each of us. That’s what subjectivity is - it’s not our shared public (or “inter-subjective”) language.

Quoting Banno

It seems that your contention has been falsified.

Uhh how?

Quoting Luke

Uhh how?

I'm not going to spoon feed you.

Quoting Banno

You might also Google Mirror Neurones and mirror-touch synesthesia.

Reply to Banno Quoting Banno

I'm not going to spoon feed you.

How are mirror neurons relevant to each of us having our own individual pains? Do you want to argue that we don’t? Or that it’s not subjective? I mean, it’s fairly self-evident.

Reply to Luke I'm nonplussed. I was expecting some ad hoc notion to defend your hypothesis; instead you deny the facts.

...And this becomes about you, not about the argument. There is no point in continuing a discussion when you deny the facts: other people can fee your pain.

Google Mirror Neurones and mirror-touch synesthesia. Get back to me when you have something to say.

Reply to Banno You’re nonplussed and were expecting something else, but I’m making it about me? My argument stands if you ever want to try and counter it.

Other people cannot literally feel my pain, and you cannot literally feel anyone else’s. The expression “I feel your pain” can only be figurative. In empathy one can only feel one’s own pain, even if it is expressed or felt for others.

Quoting Luke

Other people cannot literally feel my pain, and you cannot literally feel anyone else’s. The expression “I feel your pain” can only be figurative. In empathy one can only feel one’s own pain, even if it is expressed or felt for others.

This view has been falsified. See Mirror Neurones and mirror-touch synesthesia.

Quoting Banno

This view has been falsified. See Mirror Neurones and mirror-touch synesthesia.

No. Visit your local emergency room. If you think you're feeling the pain of the patients, you're deluded.

Reply to Banno I’ve already explained why that fails:
Quoting Luke

Unless we were one and the same person in this scenario, then we would each be feeling our own individual pains, even if they both occurred at the same time, both occurred in the same locations in each of our bodies, and felt qualitatively the same to each of us.

Reply to Luke ... and there's the expected ad hoc hypothesis.

Ok, that renders your view irrefutable; you've just defined pain as a private sensation.

The twist is, you cannot therefore use the privacy of pain as evidence for subjectivism - at least, not without a vicious circularity.

Quoting Banno

Idealism

Naaah.

Quoting Luke

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain.

Quoting Luke

The expression “I feel your pain” can only be figurative. In empathy one can only feel one’s own pain, even if it is expressed or felt for others.

Imagine we agree about this. You me and Banno. How is that not intersubjective?

Imagine I don't think I have my own pain, and Banno thinks he has your pain. Are these our private subjectivities, about which no disagreement is possible?

Quoting Banno

Banno thinks that if two distinct numbers are made compatible through an equation, then they become one

You expect me to believe that? Two distinct things become one and the same thing, if they are assumed to be equal. No, equal things are not the same thing. Doesn't anyone have any respect for the law of identity anymore?

Whoosh!

Reply to Olivier5 Ok.

Reply to Banno It's associated most closely to Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. It's kosher.

Quoting Banno

We work together to build the use of a word.

Yep. That still presupposes the word, and, implies experience.
———-

Quoting Banno

implying that all our words are subjectively invented.
— Banno

Originally, they were. All of them. No words in Nature.
— Mww

SO... your claim is that originally there were words used only by one person... a private language?

Could be, if the inventor of the word was the only user of it, in an organized, structured composition. Turns out, that’s not the case, as the historical record verifies, but that is beside the point.

Plus....here we go again with the goalposts; I never said words used by only one person. I said words subjectively invented, which implies one person, but does not imply use, that being merely a possible consequent. While it may not make sense to invent a word then not use it, that doesn’t mean the use is necessary because of invention. The use is necessary for something else, which, again, presupposes the invention.
————-

Quoting Banno

What do you think they did with these words?

They created that organized, structured composition I just mentioned.

Quoting Banno

What function could they have had

Like I said a couple days ago: represent subjective activities.

Quoting Banno

the individual grunted in a particular way each time they saw a particularly delicious fruit?

Sure, why not. A grunt for pleasure, a grunt for danger, a grunt for the fun of grunting. All representing subjective activities, subsequently communicated. You did say individual, after all.

Quoting Banno

they grunted, and others understood this as indicative of ripe fruit.

BINGO!!!! One grunts, the others respond according to what they understand the grunt to mean. Now we gots ourselves the basics of grunt-language, and it isn’t private. All started by a lonely grunt over lovely fruit, which was. Hmmmm.....image a pair of these hairy dudes, eating the fruit of the one bush. Would they emit the exact same grunt?

A grunt ain’t nothing but a word that don’t need no spellin’.

Anyway....enough of this. I’m right in what I’m saying, you’re right in what you’re saying. It’s just that mine comes before yours. If you’d just grant the chronology, it’d be a done deal.

Quoting Mww

It’s just that mine comes before yours. If you’d just grant the chronology, it’d be a done deal.

But think about someone who's locked-in (they're conscious, but can't signal out in any way).

The language of their thoughts isn't native to them originally. They learned it through interaction.

Reply to Banno Because that makes no sense

Quoting Olivier5

It's kosher.

Don't tell Heidegger.

Quoting Banno

... and there's the expected ad hoc hypothesis.

Ok, that renders your view irrefutable; you've just defined pain as a private sensation.

The twist is, you cannot therefore use the privacy of pain as evidence for subjectivism - at least, not without a vicious circularity.

Where did I define pain as a private sensation? All I've said is that we each have our own. Even if I were to define pain as a private sensation, how is that irrefutable? If that's irrefutable, then so is the opposing proposition.

I've acknowledged that you and I can both mean the same thing by "pain" and that it can refer to the same qualitative feeling (and/or physical expression) for each of us. I don't believe that subjectivity necessarily entails or equates to privacy, whereas you treat the two as synonymous.

I agree with you that our language and the meanings of our words including "pain" are necessarily public. On the other hand, our existence as individuals with individual experiences, pains, perceptions and viewpoints is also evident. Moreover, our existence as individuals does not obviously depend on the existence of our public language; quite the opposite, in fact, since our public language obviously depends on our existence as individuals (who share the language). "In the beginning was the deed."

Your view strikes me as this: subjectivity is necessarily private, but language is necessarily public, therefore subjectivity is impossible. But how does a public language preclude the existence of a private subjectivity?

Quoting unenlightened

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain.
— Luke

The expression “I feel your pain” can only be figurative. In empathy one can only feel one’s own pain, even if it is expressed or felt for others.
— Luke

Imagine we agree about this. You me and Banno. How is that not intersubjective?

If we agree that we cannot experience each other's pain, then it is our agreement about the proposition which is intersubjective, not our experiences of pain which are intersubjective. Otherwise, we would not be in agreement.

Quoting unenlightened

Imagine I don't think I have my own pain, and Banno thinks he has your pain. Are these our private subjectivities, about which no disagreement is possible?

I'd imagine that a mental health professional might disagree with you both. As to "private subjectivities", your thoughts would be subjective insofar as they occur individually to you and to Banno. I suppose they would remain private to each of you until or unless they were expressed in some way (not necessarily linguistically).

Quoting Banno

Don't tell Heidegger.

I haven't talked to him since he missed my son's bar mitzvah.

Quoting Luke

On the other hand, our existence as individuals with individual experiences, pains, perceptions and viewpoints is also evident.

I don't understand how this becomes a difference of type (objective/subjective).

If I have a pain and you have a pain, they're unlikely to be the same whole experience, granted. So 'pain', the experience, is a family resemblance term, or, like Wittgenstein's Moses, one which is constituted of 'props'.

But those props are themselves only components publicly shared. My pain might be sharp and intermittent, yours might be dull and sickening. But 'sharp', 'intermittent', 'dull' and 'sickening' are shared terms, not private ones.

You might say that your 'dull' is different to my 'dull'. Yes, probably. But again the props which make up your 'dull' are still shared, I still know what you mean by each one.

No matter how we break up these multi-propped terms, we end up only with individual props which are themseves shared. I don't see where you end with with subjective meanings.

Quoting frank

The language of their thoughts isn't native to them originally. They learned it through interaction.

No one’s is; everyone does. Perhaps what is native in thought, is images.

Quoting frank

But think about someone who's locked-in (they're conscious, but can't signal out in any way).

Locked-in. Like....deaf-mute? Incapacitated somehow? Dunno. If he can’t get a signal out, he isn’t going to communicate anything, which makes words and language irrelevant anyway, as far as he’s concerned.

There’s always exceptions to the rule.

Quoting Isaac

If I have a pain and you have a pain, they're unlikely to be the same whole experience, granted.

I'm not talking about differences between your pain and my pain as though I were disputing the meaning of the word "pain". I'm pointing out what I take to be self-evident: that you can only have your pains and I can only have mine because we are two different people. This, for lack of a better term, ontological truth that we are each individual people is independent of the meaning of the word "pain".

Quoting Isaac

I don't see where you end with with subjective meanings.

I'm not suggesting "subjective meanings" or any private language.

Quoting Luke

that you can only have your pains and I can only have mine because we are two different people.

OK. Then I'm missing how this relates to subjectivity. I can only have my phone and you can only have your phone. That's there in the definition of 'my' and 'yours'. But we don't say phones are subjective. So what are we saying that's different about pain?

Quoting Isaac

I can only have my phone and you can only have your phone. That's there in the definition of 'my' and 'yours'. But we don't say phones are subjective.

We don't say that I can only have my phone and you can only have yours, either.

Quoting Luke

We don't say that I can only have my phone and you can only have yours, either.

Yeah, bad example, too easily confused with property talk. Noses would be better. You can only have your nose, even if we swapped with some horrific plastic surgery, what was mine would become yours. But noses are not subjective, right?

Edit - What I'm saying is that you seem to be arguing that pain is subjective not because it's unique (I might well have an experience with coincidentally exactly the same components as yours), not because it's private (the terms we'd use, if broken down would forever be public meanings), but rather simply because it takes place, is embodied, in you not me. But that's the same with noses.

Reply to Isaac I consider subjectivity to be somewhat synonymous with personhood and its traits, such as conscious awareness, rational thought, sensory perception, and the ability to feel pain. This is how our being two different people/persons relates to subjectivity.

Quoting Luke

I consider subjectivity to be somewhat synonymous with personhood and its traits, such as conscious awareness, rational thought, sensory perception, and the ability to feel pain. This is how our being two different people/persons relates to subjectivity.

I see. Doesn't that open you up a little to @Banno's complaints that

Quoting Banno

you cannot therefore use the privacy of pain as evidence for subjectivism - at least, not without a vicious circularity.

You've defined 'subjectivity' in terms that assume the existence of subjective properties (conscious awareness, rational thought, sensory perception, and the ability to feel pain), so we can't then prove something like pain is subjective. It's just in the list there, the list of things you associate with subjectivity. It would be tantamount to saying "pain is subjective because it's in the list of things which are subjective".

What I suppose I'm asking for is an account of some the factors that unite the things in that list and set them collectively apart from things like noses, outside that list.

Quoting Mww

Plus....here we go again with the goalposts; I never said words used by only one person. I said words subjectively invented, which implies one person, but does not imply use, that being merely a possible consequent. While it may not make sense to invent a word then not use it, that doesn’t mean the use is necessary because of invention. The use is necessary for something else, which, again, presupposes the invention.

This relates directly to the faulty dichotomy which people like Banno seek to create. That dichotomy stipulates that either a language must be public (comprehensible to all), or private (comprehensible to only one person. The dichotomy is faulty because those who employ it do not distinguish between what is potentially comprehensible to others, and what is actually comprehensible to others.

So the invented, private language, which is not actually comprehensible to others, but potentially comprehensible to others, requiring an act of teaching, or some other form of learning, is excluded as not truly private, because it is potentially comprehensible. Then the role of the private language within the overall public language is dismissed because the notion of "private language" is rejected as unreal by that premise that it is potentially comprehensible. However, since the invented, private language, is actually incomprehensible to all others, prior to being learned by others, and it is a true language employed by the individual, the rejection of private language is unjustified.

Quoting Mww

Locked-in. Like....deaf-mute? Incapacitated somehow? Dunno. If he can’t get a signal out, he isn’t going to communicate anything, which makes words and language irrelevant anyway, as far as he’s concerned.

Locked in.

Your speech production center is separate from your sound interpretation area. You can talk to yourself.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Pretty much as I see it, yep. Although I think Banno will reject the claim he creates false dichotomies, in that he is on the record as categorically rejecting half of it, that is, private language. I bet he says refusing to grant the validity of a true dichotomy is hardly the same as creating a false one.

It is easily neglected that private language is not self-contradictory; one can readily structure a publicly incomprehensible composition of invented words, however impractical it may be. I gave two examples, and I’d be surprised if there weren’t others.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

distinguish between what is potentially comprehensible to others, and what is actually comprehensible to others.

Which brings up the notion of intentionality, re: Brentano, 1874. The measure by which the potential transfers to the actual. We usually do wish to be understood when we communicate, which is determined primarily by how much we care about the composition of our expressions.

Reply to frank

Oh. Ok. I forgot about that. Exceptions to the rule?

Sure we talk to ourselves, but can we without a language given from experience? Or, as you say, interaction? I don’t see why not. If I’m totally locked-in, say from birth, it wouldn’t be possible to relate my internal speech a posteriori anyway, so the chances of confusing myself are exactly zero. But it’s impossible to conceive these conditions anyway, so......

Quoting Mww

But it’s impossible to conceive these conditions anyway, so......

True. What's the PLA's take-away? It's not actually an argument. It's just a handfull of reckons.

It suggests that linguistic structure is reinforced by use in situ. That's only astounding if you were thinking of words as labels for platonic forms. Who does that?

It certainly doesn't preclude language use that simply isn't shared with others. Neither does it suggest that locked-in people are only conscious when someone is asking them to blink. That's just retarded (or at least completely unargued for.)

Quoting frank

What's the PLA's take-away? It's not actually an argument.

Funny, though, the academic/peer-reviewed argument is that the PLA is nothing but argument, because there are no principles on which it could be grounded as a legitimate dialectical thesis, as had always been the wont of pure philosophy. I mean....from Locke to Fodor it’s been said that words are nothing but a map of subjective representation to meaning, and language merely stands for the possibility of a common map, all with no discourse on method.

Personally, I don’t see why there couldn’t be a comprehensible private language, contra Wittgenstein. Because it’s private, it must have been built by me, so it would only have to be comprehensible to me. And if it is absolutely impossible for me to misunderstand myself, and none of the ingredients of a possible private language contradict any of the others, it must be possible.....

Quoting frank

It certainly doesn't preclude language use that simply isn't shared with others.

.....just like that.

Quoting Mww

Funny, though, the academic/peer-reviewed argument is that the PLA is nothing but argument, because there are no principles on which it could be grounded as a legitimate dialectical thesis

Could you help me understand this? Isn't it drawing on common sense?

Quoting Mww

Personally, I don’t see why there couldn’t be a comprehensible private language, contra Wittgenstein. Because it’s private, it must have been built by me, so it would only have to be comprehensible to me

Does "private" mean untranslatable even in principle?

Quoting Mww

..just like that.

That's a thumbs up, right?

Quoting frank

Could you help me understand this? Isn't it drawing on common sense?

I’m not a fan of analytic philosophy in general, and language philosophy in particular, so I’m not going to give an unbiased critique. See Antony Nickels; he knows this stuff inside out, but that doesn’t guarantee another’s understanding of it.

Quoting frank

Does "private" mean untranslatable even in principle?

It does to Wittgenstein. To me, private merely indicates contained in and used by the subject which thinks it. Post-moderns shy away form “subjective”, so they invoke “private” to substitute for it. Nevertheless, why would a private language need to be translatable? Why call it private if it’s not intended to represent a single mind, or consciousness, or user.

Yep. Thumbs up. Still just my opinion though.

Quoting Mww

To me, private merely indicates contained in and used by the subject which thinks

Maybe no one in this thread is actually talking about the PLA. We're just talking about subjectivity.

Quoting Mww

Nevertheless, why would a private language need to be translatable?

If I tried to make a personal language (so we dispense with Witt altogether), I think I would end up mimicking English and Spanish.

I don't know how to make an untranslatable language. My guess is that any language I make up would relate to things that are innate in humans, like the concepts of light/dark, soft/coarse, easy/hard, sun, moon, hurt, yummy, etc. So it would be translatable.

Quoting frank

I don't know how to make an untranslatable language.

Yeah, but.....translatable by who? I don’t need my private language translated, and for somebody else to translate means it isn’t private.

I think I could make an untranslatable language if I had my current consciousness unloaded. But for that, I’d have to be 100% feral, meaning, from birth. But if I was 100% feral I wouldn’t survive long enough to load that version of my consciousness with conceptions words represent, which makes language creation moot. If I was in a vegetative state I might have an unloaded consciousness, or at least a useless one, but what use does a vegetable have for language.

Bottom line is....we’re human so anything we do must be something a human can do. If we’re going to have a language we have to develop one the way humans do. It would, as you say, have to relate to things innate to humans. Trying to figure out a non-human way, post hoc, is doomed to failure from sheer inconceivability.

Reply to Isaac Thanks. Yes, that's the point.

Noses are a neat example.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

That dichotomy stipulates that either a language must be public (comprehensible to all), or private (comprehensible to only one person.

Quoting Mww

Pretty much as I see it, yep.

You sure you want to throw in your lot with a bloke with an eccentric notion of equality, Mww?

Making up stories about what I've claimed is not very fair. Language cannot be private. In that I'm in agreement with Wittgenstein and quite a few others. Meta's argument would be that talk of unicorns must be misguided because it creates the false dichotomy of unicorns and non-unicorns.

Is my argument so strong that the only way to counter it is to make up another argument and pretend it is mine?

Quoting Mww

Yeah, but.....translatable by who? I don’t need my private language translated, and for somebody else to translate means it isn’t private.

Point is, your private language would be built off work done by others, so it wouldn't really be your own personal thing.

If you were feral, I don't think your natural capacity to speak would be activated. It would remain latent.

Quoting frank

I don't know how to make an untranslatable language.

That's pretty much it.

So how could one make a private language - one that could not be translated in principle?

There is considerable discussion of private language - the SEP article provides a good summary. That discussion is pretty much restricted to the exact nature of the argument in Philosophical Investigations - that is. to exegesis. The notion that language is at its core social has few objectors; at least, outside this forum. But look at section 4.1 for what I think is a fair conclusion - particularly the example of playing chess by oneself.

What is salient here is that while chess is a game for two players, it is possible to play it by oneself. What would be absurd would be to conclude that therefore chess must essentially be a game for one player, which is occasionally played by two people - intersubjectively.

Quoting Banno

The notion that language is at its core social has few objectors;

Probably because it's not saying much more than that language, like individuality, requires a social setting as a launch pad and touchstone.

So what?

Reply to frank SO...Quoting Banno

What is salient here is that while chess is a game for two players, it is possible to play it by oneself. What would be absurd would be to conclude that therefore chess must essentially be a game for one player, which is occasionally played by two people - intersubjectively.

...which takes us back to the OP...
Quoting TheMadFool

Well, what are the differences between objectivity and intersubjectivity?

Quoting Isaac

I see. Doesn't that open you up a little to Banno's complaints that

you cannot therefore use the privacy of pain as evidence for subjectivism - at least, not without a vicious circularity.
— Banno

No, because I’m not saying that pain must be private.

Quoting Isaac

You've defined 'subjectivity' in terms that assume the existence of subjective properties (conscious awareness, rational thought, sensory perception, and the ability to feel pain), so we can't then prove something like pain is subjective. It's just in the list there, the list of things you associate with subjectivity. It would be tantamount to saying "pain is subjective because it's in the list of things which are subjective".

You were pressing me to explain why pains are subjective but noses are not. I offered an explanation in terms of personhood. A better explanation, more relevant to the OP, might be that the subjective is whatever aggregates to make the “intersubjective”. My view is that it’s individual people.

Reply to Banno Reply to unenlightened I should elaborate. When I say “subjectivity is not intersubjective” I don’t mean that in a linguistic sense. Obviously the world “subjective” has a socially constructed meaning. What I mean to say is that, even without any agreement, people still have subjective experiences. That even if no language existed, people wouldn’t suddenly stop experiencing fear or anger. Even if there were no words to call those things.

Quoting Banno

You sure you want to throw in your lot with a bloke with an eccentric notion of equality, Mww?

I was agreeing with the gist of his comment as it relates to mine. No more, no less. I didn’t see anything in it having to do with equality.

I accept you agree with Wittgenstein. I agree private language is entirely impractical for intelligible communication, which is language’s only purpose, but do not agree it is impossible to create. I gave two examples of it.

Quoting Banno

What is salient here is that while chess is a game for two players, it is possible to play it by oneself. What would be absurd would be to conclude that therefore chess must essentially be a game for one player, which is occasionally played by two people - intersubjectively. — Banno

...which takes us back to the OP...

Well, what are the differences between objectivity and intersubjectivity? — TheMadFool

Interesting. So would you argue that the set of things we declare to be real is largely produced intersubjectively and has the stamp of culture on it?

If you prefer not to answer, that's fine.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

No matter how we break up these multi-propped terms, we end up only with individual props which are themseves shared. I don't see where you end with with subjective meanings.

I wouldn’t say “subjective meanings” so much as “subjective experiences”. But I think it’s possible to have a public language, about subjective experiences. That’s what intersubjective means (though this thread quickly deviated from the distinction between intersubjective and objective)

You don’t need to have the same experience to talk about something, all you need is to have a similar “structure”.

Say when I look at objects A, B and C I have experiences X, X and Y. When you look at objects A, B and C you have experiences Y, Y and X. Or even Z,Z,R. When we want to communicate these experiences, we would BOTH call A “red” and C “green”.

Different experiences, shared meaning. Because the meaning comes not from the experiences, but their structure, their relationship to other experiences. As long as the structure is the same, we can talk. “Red” isn’t referring to a particular experience, (not a particular X or particular Y) but rather a shared structure (A and B are the same experience but C is different. Doesn’t matter what the actual experience is. Same structure)

Now if someone looking at the same set of objects experiences Z,Z,Z, and he learned that “Things that produce the experience Z are called red” he would be colorblind. In his world there is no distinction between C and B/A. He would look at C and say “this is red” because that’s what he learned to call objects that produce the experience Z. That’s when we know he’s colorblind.

Quoting Banno

You sure you want to throw in your lot with a bloke with an eccentric notion of equality, Mww?

Do you really think that upholding the difference between being equal, as two human beings are equal, and being one and the same thing, like I am the same as myself, and no one else, is an eccentric notion?

Quoting frank

If you were feral, I don't think your natural capacity to speak would be activated.

I dunno....a feral cat does the same basic stuff as a regular cat. A feral human, if there could be such a thing, might just be what we’d call uncivilized. Still have the same innate capacities, I would guess. Again....the reality of it would be inconceivable, even if the logic is not.

Quoting frank

Point is, your private language would be built off work done by others

Agreed, hence my (edited) unloaded consciousness stipulation.

Quoting Mww

I dunno....a feral cat does the same basic stuff as a regular cat. A feral human, if there could be such a thing, might just be what we’d call uncivilized. Still have the same innate capacities, I would guess. Again....the reality of it would be inconceivable, even if the logic is not.

There have been a few cases of feral children. In some cases they never learn to speak. If private speech is primary, you'd expect them be able to adapt, though their inability could stem from various things.

Quoting Mww

Point is, your private language would be built off work done by others — frank


Agreed, hence my (edited) unloaded consciousness stipulation.

Right. We have limited scientific info on that (private language bootstrapping). Chomsky mentioned that we can't get that kind of knowledge because it would be unethical to do experiments.

How does your view about private language flow into your ontology? I'm guessing you're a realist.

Quoting frank

So would you argue that the set of things we declare to be real is largely produced intersubjectively

No - I would not use that word; nor the notion of reality that seems implicit. Far too broad.

Poor us, Frank; you only ever ask half an question, I only ever provide half an answer.


Between us we have half of a conversation...

Quoting khaled

Obviously the world “subjective” has a socially constructed meaning.

Quoting Banno

Subjectivity is not socially constructed.
— khaled

Why are you so sure? Why so certain?

The myth has you in its thrall; how could things be otherwise?

I rather like the chess analogy,
Quoting Banno

What is salient here is that while chess is a game for two players, it is possible to play it by oneself. What would be absurd would be to conclude that therefore chess must essentially be a game for one player, which is occasionally played by two people - intersubjectively.

Since chess is a social construct, playing chess by yourself is also a social construct...

Quoting Banno

Poor us, Frank; you only ever ask half an question, I only ever provide half an answer.

That's fine. I had a feeling you wouldn't be able to answer.

I think Mww will say whether he thinks reality is a social construct.

Reply to Banno Quoting Banno

Since chess is a social construct, playing chess by yourself is also a social construct...

Sure but I’m saying that even if you had no one to play with the board doesn’t disappear. If that makes sense.

Even if the word “fear” was never created, people would still be afraid in certain situations. They just wouldn’t know what to call it. And they might consequently “play chess with themselves” and call it “reef” or whatever.

The word comes into circulation when you notice that everyone has a word that describes similar situations (when you’re afraid)

Reply to khaled OK.

Quoting frank

I think Mww will say whether he thinks reality is a social construct.

OK.

You do see that the question you asked Mww is different to the question you asked me..?

Mortgages and Football associations are social constructs. Mountains, no. Chairs... yes and no.

Reply to Banno can’t tell if that’s agreement or dismissal. Which is it?

Reply to khaled Well...

Reply to Banno care to elaborate what issue you see with it?

Reply to khaled I'm just not seeing the point.

Reply to Banno I thought you were saying that without the word, the emotion would somehow no longer be experienced. If not then I don't get what "Subjectivity is intersubjective" means even though you and unenlightened seem to be agreeing on it. What does that mean?

Reply to khaled I'm too tired at the moment to follow the confusion in this discussion. I don't see how "Subjectivity is intersubjective" is the same as "without the word, the emotion would somehow no longer be experienced", and I don't recall agreeing to such a claim anyway. At the least it would help if you provided links to the posts. I'm not sure which of the various objections to the OP belonged just to you, and would like to keep your part of the chat clear of Mww's Kantian oddities, Frank's noncommitment and Luke's disembodied pains.

Reply to Banno Quoting Banno

I don't recall agreeing to such a claim anyway.

Here:

Quoting Banno

Subjectivity is not socially constructed.
— khaled

Why are you so sure? Why so certain?

The myth has you in its thrall; how could things be otherwise?

You called it a myth.

Quoting Banno

I'm too tired at the moment to follow the confusion in this discussion.

Me too honestly. I think we mostly agree, just keep misunderstanding each other.

Quoting Banno

I don't see how "Subjectivity is intersubjective" is the same as "without the word, the emotion would somehow no longer be experienced",

Well I read it something like: "Experiences are socially mediated". As in without the word the experience doesn't happen. I can't really interpret that 3 word combination. Just looks like word salad to me. But that was my best shot.

Quoting frank

That's fine. I had a feeling you wouldn't be able to answer.

Banno is a denier of the mental world. That's where his fear of certain words come from, and he cannot really say it out loud because he knows how ridiculous it may sound. Hence his timid questions and evasive answers.

Quoting Luke

You were pressing me to explain why pains are subjective but noses are not. I offered an explanation in terms of personhood. A better explanation, more relevant to the OP, might be that the subjective is whatever aggregates to make the “intersubjective”. My view is that it’s individual people.

Yep. That's the bit I saw as circular; because your definition of individual persons contained their ability to feel pain as one of the defining factors. So you end up with "pains are subjective because they're in the list of things which are subjective".

Why are persons defined by their ability to feel pain, but not by their having noses?

Reply to Olivier5 Yep. No mental stuff here.

Quoting khaled

"Experiences are socially mediated". As in without the word the experience doesn't happen.

...as in the experience would be different.

Reply to Banno Exactly. If somebody rings, you try to pretend that nobody's at home. Hence your difficulties to express yourself clearly: a self-professed zombie with no mental world cannot be expected to make much sense. If you were to articulate clear positions, it would blow your cover.

Reply to Banno I can buy that.

And the experience is not mental stuff?

Reply to khaled

(I'm missing your notifications by the way - there's some software glitch which seems to make this happen occasionally, I only just spotted this post by chance - apologies if I've missed anything else)

Quoting khaled

Say when I look at objects A, B and C I have experiences X, X and Y. When you look at objects A, B and C you have experiences Y, Y and X. Or even Z,Z,R. When we want to communicate these experiences, we would BOTH call A “red” and C “green”.

Different experiences, shared meaning.

Yep, I'm with you so far.

Quoting khaled

“Red” isn’t referring to a particular experience, (not a particular X or particular Y) but rather a shared structure (A and B are the same experience but C is different. Doesn’t matter what the actual experience is. Same structure)

Sort of. I think this is highly speculative and would need some neurological support which isn't really there - but we can shelve that for the time being, I get that it's plausible.

Quoting khaled

Now if someone looking at the same set of objects experiences Z,Z,Z, and he learned that “Things that produce the experience Z are called red” he would be colorblind. In his world there is no distinction between C and B/A. He would look at C and say “this is red” because that’s what he learned to call objects that produce the experience Z. That’s when we know he’s colorblind.

Maybe, but we also know we're colourblind by being told we are, but again, I sense that's not the relevant point so we won't derail into it.

Here's what I see as the relevant issue with what you've laid out here. What's wrong with the following conversation (using your terms)

"What's 'red' like for you?",

"Oh when I see red I get lot's of X's and a Y"

"Yeah, I get a few Xs too, but for me it's mainly Ys, plus a Z oddly enough"

"Yeah Z is odd, I've never heard of anyone getting that off seeing red before"...

...then repeat the same conversation fo talking about the experience of X, Y and Z themselves (composed perhaps of a,b, and c in varying proportions).

Reply to khaled ...stuff...

The notion of individuality in relation to mental attributes is fraught. Some folk treat pains like noses.

Reply to Isaac Quoting khaled

Red” isn’t referring to a particular experience

Quoting Isaac

Sort of.

We had a whole fight about this on the last qualia thread. You insisted that "red" does not refer to experiences. If you were going to disagree with anything I definitely didn't expect it to be this.

But I'll take a sort of.

Quoting Isaac

What's wrong with the following conversation (using your terms)

"What's 'red' like for you?",

"Oh when I see red I get lot's of X's and a Y"

"Yeah, I get a few Xs too, but for me it's mainly Ys, plus a Z oddly enough"

We don't have an "outside perspective" from which we can see that I am seeing Xs and you are seeing Ys. We can't talk about the Xs and Ys. You only have access to your experiences and I only have access to mine.

The answer to "What's red like for you" is "How the fuck do you expect me to answer that?"

Outside of a fantasy show, we can't "swap bodies" to check.

Quoting khaled

We don't have an "outside perspective" from which we can see that I am seeing Xs and you are seeing Ys. We can't talk about the Xs and Ys. You only have access to your experiences and I only have access to mine.

Outside of a fantasy show, we can't "swap bodies" to check.

Why would we need to swap bodies? Surely Whatever these Xs and Ys are they have a physical effect (otherwise how are you distinguishing them?) So we can either observe, or talk about, that effect. If there's no such effect, the X isn't really different form Y, is it?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

Surely Whatever these Xs and Ys are they have a physical effect

No. Different physical effects produce Xs and Ys. We just came back from an epiphenomenalism thread so you know what I mean here hopefully.

Quoting Isaac

If there's no such effect, the X isn't really different form Y, is it?

It still is. I don't see the problem with there being a difference that has no effect.

Quoting khaled

No. Different physical effects produce Xs and Ys. We just came back from an epiphenomenalism thread.

Yes, I meant that we'd have to know them somehow, in order to implicate their existence. Like with epiphenomenalism. We have a word 'decision' because we all have some feeling about having 'decided' something, even though physically no action-initiation actually took place.

I'm saying without the equivalent for X and Y, why are we postulating their existence?

Yours seems to be a plausible theory without a phenomena to explain.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

We have a word 'decision' because we all have some feeling about having 'decided' something, even though physically no action-initiation actually took place.

And we all have a word "Red" because we all have some experience of X/Y/Z/J/G/H/Doesn't matter as long as the structure is preserved. Even though no action-initiation actually took place.

Quoting Isaac

I'm saying without the equivalent for X and Y, why are we postulating their existence?

Xs and Ys are experiences. They're that "feeling of deciding something" in epiphenomenalism.

You ask how we know our own experiences exist? You also have to answer that question then. I don't think it's a meaningful question.

Quoting khaled

Xs and Ys are experiences. They're that "feeling of deciding something" in epiphenomenalism.

Right. But we have a word for 'feeling of deciding something'. We call it a 'decision' and we talk about it to each other. there's something there to be referred to so we came up with a word for it and we talk about it. If X and Y were like that, why (after a few million years) do we not have words for them?

Quoting khaled

You ask how we know our own experiences exist? You also have to answer that question then.

We talk to other people about them?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

there's something there to be referred to so we came up with a word for it and we talk about it.

Correct. That's precisely the Xs and Ys. I just use them as placeholders. Because the point is, we do not all need to be having X to refer to it as a "decision". All we need for communication is for our experiences to have the same structure. Not the same content. The content never comes into the picture and it makes no difference.

Quoting Isaac

We talk to other people about them.

So if you never learned a language you couldn't be angry?

Quoting khaled

Correct. That's precisely the Xs and Ys. I just use them as placeholders.

So they're not private then. We talk about them and have words for them.

Quoting khaled

We talk to other people about them. — Isaac


So if you never learned a language you couldn't be angry?

You didn't say anything about being, you said 'knowing'.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

So they're not private then. We talk about them and have words for them.

No. As my example showed, you can have radically different experiences and still talk. A public language about private experiences.

If, when looking at something you experience what red refers to for you (X), and I experience what red refers to for me ( Y ) we can talk.

However X and Y do not need to be the same. X and Y are variable names. They can contain anything.

Not that we can confirm if they are or not. Because whether or not they're the same makes no difference to communication or behavior.

The words don't refer to X and Y. But only their position in the structure. When you say "That is red" I can infer that you had some experience X. When I say "That is red" you can infer that I had some experience Y (again, these are just variable names). However you cannot infer that X and Y are the same.

Quoting Isaac

You didn't say anything about being, you said 'knowing'.

Fair enough.

Quoting khaled

So they're not private then. We talk about them and have words for them. — Isaac


No. As my example showed, you can have radically different experiences and still talk. A public language about private experiences.

But your example of radically different experiences consisted of saying that experiences of red for one person might be constituted of X,X, and Y, yet for another X, Y and Z, yes?

We've just established that we do, in fact, have words for X, Y and Z (they're just placeholders here). So the differences are not private after all, we can talk about them in terms of Xs, Ys and Zs, all of which have public meanings (like the meaning of the word 'decision').

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

But your example of radically different experiences consisted of saying that experiences of red for one person might be constituted of X,X, and Y, yet for another X, Y and Z, yes?

No. It was X,X, Y and Y,Y, X. Point is it's the same structure. As in, the first two objects are the same color and the last one is different. I am not using them as variable names here. X is distinct from Y.

If you were seeing X, X, Y respectively and I was seeing X, Y, Z respectively when looking at 3 objects one of us is color blind. Portably you. As for you, the first and second object seem the same color. While for me all 3 are different colors.

Quoting Isaac

We've just established that we do, in fact, have words for X, Y and Z

We don't.

Quoting khaled

The words don't refer to X and Y. But only their position in the structure. When you say "That is red" I can infer that you had some experience X. When I say "That is red" you can infer that I had some experience Y (again, these are just variable names). However you cannot infer that X and Y are the same. As they don't need to be at all.

As long as everything that produces X for you produces Y for me, we can talk. Once something produces X for you and produces Z for me for example, we will have a disagreement about what color it is. Not because X is different from Z, but because the structure is different.

Quoting khaled

No. It was X,X, Y and Y,Y, X. Point is it's the same structure. As in, the first two objects are the same color and the last one is different.

If you were seeing X, X, Y and I was seeing X, Y, Z when looking at 3 objects one of us is color blind. Portably you. As for you, the first and second object seem the same color. While for me all 3 are different colors.

Ah yes, I made a mistake there I should have written Y,Y and X for the second person. The point still stands though.

Quoting khaled

We've just established that we do, in fact, have words for X, Y and Z — Isaac


We don't.

Why not? They're different components of experience, epiphenomenologically arisen, just like 'decision'. But we have a word for 'decision' because the feeling is a part of our lives. Why no words for X and Y. If they're identifiable feeling we have, parts of our experience of 'red', the why would there be no words for them?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

They're different components of experience, epiphenomenologically arisen, just like 'decision'.

Correct.

Too bad words don't refer to components of experience.

Quoting khaled

The words don't refer to X and Y. But only their position in the structure. When you say "That is red" I can infer that you had some experience X. When I say "That is red" you can infer that I had some experience Y (again, these are just variable names). However you cannot infer that X and Y are the same. As they don't need to be at all.

Quoting khaled

As long as everything that produces X for you produces Y for me, we can talk. Once something produces X for you and produces Z for me for example, we will have a disagreement about what color it is. Not because X is different from Z (as X was already different from Y but we were talking just fine), but because the structure is different.

Quoting Isaac

But we have a word for 'decision' because the feeling is a part of our lives.

The word for "decision" is not referring to an experience. But its position within a structure.

Just like in my example: We looked at 3 different objects. I had X,X,Y experiences and you had Y,Y,X experiences (Z,Z,F would also do. Point is structure is preserved).

Yet we both called the first and second objects "red" and the last one "green".

So "red" cannot be referring to X (as you were having Y) and "green" cannot be referring to Y (as you were having X)

So then what "Red" refers to is the position of these experiences within the structure. Their relationship to others. And not any specific X, Y, Z or F

Again, really weird for me that now you're the one saying that words refer to experiences or aspects of experiences. When you adamantly disagreed last time.

Quoting khaled

So "red" cannot be referring to X (as you were having Y) and "green" cannot be referring to Y (as you were having X)

What I'm asking is why postulate that I'm having X and you Y, unless you've got some reason (my response or my subsequent words) to believe our experiences are different? If they seem the same in every conceivable way, why fabricate a possible way in which they might, nonetheless, be different?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

What I'm asking is why postulate that I'm having X and you Y, unless you've got some reason (my response or my subsequent words) to believe our experiences are different? If they seem the same in every conceivable way, why fabricate a possible way in which they might, nonetheless, be different?

I am not definitively saying they are different. I am pointing out that we have just as much reason to believe they are the same as to believe they are different. As they can be radically different without breaking anything (We'd still be able to talk and do everything exactly the same way as we used to before)

I would ask you the same question. What's your reason for believing that they are the same? Even though nothing changes were they different.

Quoting khaled

I am pointing out that we have just as much reason to believe they are the same as to believe they are different.

We really don't. If absolutely every measure we can detect shows no difference, that is excellent grounds for assuming they are the same.

It's the same ground for believing there are no unicorns

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

If absolutely every measure we can detect shows no difference

We have taken no measures to examine X and Y directly.

Every measure we have taken would produce the same result were they different. Because every measure we have taken can only say things about the positions, not contents of our experiences. If you think otherwise give an example.

What measure have we taken that can definitively say that X and Y are the same and not just that they occupy the same position?

Quoting khaled

We have taken no measures to examine X and Y directly.

What makes you think that?

Quoting khaled

Every measure we have taken would produce the same result were they different. Because every measure we have taken can only say things about the positions, not contents of our experiences. If you think otherwise give an example.

You agree our experiences are generated by our brains right? And identical brain activity cannot produce different experiences (otherwise there would need to be some other physical source for the epiphenomenon)?

Edit - I ought to clarify, because people seem to consistently get the wrong impression from my posts - I don't actually believe that there is no difference. I believe there is and it's detectable. I believe in your Xs and Ys, I just believe they're identifiable and nameable. What I'm doing here is interrogating your argument, nit stating my own position.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

And identical brain activity cannot produce different experiences (otherwise there would need to be some other physical source for the epiphenomenon)?

No I don't agree there. What makes you think that?

I would agree that identical brain activity will produce experiences that occupy the same structure. But I don't see a reason to believe they're the same.

Say we have identical brain activity when looking at the 3 objects. It could still be the case that you see Y,Y,X and I see X,X,Y. Assuming neither is colorblind.

Quoting khaled

No I don't agree there. What makes you think that?

I would agree that identical brain activity will produce experiences that occupy the same structure. But I don't see a reason to believe they're the same.

Do you believe epiphenomenon are caused entirely by physical factors?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

Do you believe epiphenomenon are caused entirely by physical factors?

Sure.

Quoting khaled

Sure

So then, if there are differences in the epiphenomena, those differences must have been caused by differences in the preceding physical cause, otherwise how do you explain them, causally?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

So then, if there are differences in the epiphenomena, those differences must have been caused by differences in the physical cause

Sure. I concede.

Then again, you never have identical brain states. Or identical brains. So privacy can have a home there.

Quoting khaled

Then again, you never have identical brain states. Or identical brains.

Yeah. Did you happen to read my edit in my third to last statement? I agree with you that we have different brain states in virtually every case. The brain states which (variously) cause me to reach for the word 'red' will, almost without doubt, be different from the range which cause you to reach for the word 'red'. All of which is what I take you to mean with your X,X,Y vs X,Y,Y example.

The point at which I disagree is that these are intrinsically private. They're different brain states. They may be accessible to introspection, in which case we can (and probably have) come up with words for them that way, or they may be accessible only to neuroscience or cognitive psychology, in which case we can come up with technical terms for them.

Either way, there's no need to assume a necessary and intrinsic privacy to these constituent elements.

Maybe a pragmatic one?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

X,X,Y vs X,Y,Y example.

XXY and YYX but sure. XXY and XYY are different structurally (person 1 thinks the first 2 objects are the same but person 2 thinks the last 2 objects are the same).

Quoting Isaac

They may be accessible to introspection, in which case we can (and probably have) come up with words for them that way, or they may be accessible only to neuroscience or cognitive psychology, in which case we can come up with technical terms for them.

Problem is, we have no way of quantifying the impact of brainstates on Xs and Ys. Maybe something very insignificant is the difference between you having XXY or having ZZR or having KKU. Nor will we be able to quantify said impact because we have no way of detecting whether you're having XXY, ZZR or KKU. That is because there is no practical difference between you having XXY or ZZR or KKU. But if you're having EEE that's detectable. Because you will give a different answer to the color of the last object. You will claim that the 3 objects have the same color.

Sure I can agree that an identical brain will produce the exact same experience but the impact of the brain on experience is unquantifiable.

So intrinsic privacy? No. If you have the same brain and body you'll have the same experience (and also be the same person). But pragmatic? Definitely. What differences in the brain produce which experience "flavors" (XXY or GGR or JJL or whatever)? I have no clue. Nor do I think we will have a clue. Because someone having XXY and someone having GGR will act the exact same way.

Thread start looked promising, but going to the last page i mainly see stuff that looks like mathematical equations.

Could anyone active in the thread summarize the findings so far in this thread?

Quoting Luke

I'd imagine that a mental health professional might disagree with you both

Always a good argument> if you disagree with me you must be mad! I could argue that madness is an intersubjective phenomenon, as in, we have to institute (or in this case imagine), a mental health professional who is magically endowed with "the objective truth" about my subjectivity.

It is after all the first principle of psychology that the psyche can be known objectively. Far be it from me to forbid anyone from dismissing the whole of psychology, but then your reference to my health professional loses what little rhetorical force it might have had.

Quoting Isaac

Yep. That's the bit I saw as circular; because your definition of individual persons contained their ability to feel pain as one of the defining factors. So you end up with "pains are subjective because they're in the list of things which are subjective".

Only if "subjective" and "person(hood)" are the same word. Anyway, so what if it's circular? My point wasn't to define subjectivity, only to point out that it is not identical to privacy.

Quoting Isaac

Why are persons defined by their ability to feel pain, but not by their having noses?

Don't you have any idea of what "subjective" means? The dictionary offers this relevant definition: "dependent on the mind or on an individual's perception for its existence."

But I'll try again, in good faith, to answer the question in my own words. A person or conscious subject is the centre of consciousness or "I" who experiences, perceives, feels pain, thinks, deliberates, plans, remembers, uses language, is aware that they have swapped noses with someone, etc. These things, including the ability to feel pain, are typically constitutive of personhood or subjectivity. These things are dependent on consciousness, or are "mind-dependent", and they disappear together with consciousness. Noses do not.

Quoting unenlightened

Always a good argument> if you disagree with me you must be mad!

That wasn't my argument. I suggested that a mental health professional might disagree with you if, as you stated, you were to think that you didn't have your own pains and Banno was to think that my pains were his. That was intended as a lighthearted remark because those are abnormal views to hold. But if you wish to take that as my argument and ignore the rest, then...nice chatting with you.

Quoting Luke

That was intended as a lighthearted remark because those are abnormal views to hold.

Alas, you miss the point again. How can you say what is normal or abnormal without comparing subjectivities? You cannot have normal and abnormal private worlds - they have to be public so we can compare. Whether your heart is light or heavy as compared to mine is something you need to be positing as unknowable.

But excuse me for taking what you say seriously; I'll try and remember not to in future.

Quoting Banno

No mental stuff here.

You don't say?

Quoting unenlightened

How can you say what is normal or abnormal without comparing subjectivities?

How can we "compare subjectivities" if, as per you original claim "Subjectivity is a social construct; subjectivity is intersubjective"? If subjectivity is already intersubjective and no more than a social construct, then what's to compare? How can we compare what is already intersubjective, and what are we comparing it to?

Quoting unenlightened

You cannot have normal and abnormal private worlds

Again, not my argument. You seem to be making the same conflation as Banno between "subjective" and "private". My whole point here is that these are not the same.

Quoting Banno

Since chess is a social construct, playing chess by yourself is also a social construct...

Playing chess would be analogous to using language?

If using language by yourself is a social construct, then all language use is socially constructed.

Science is language use. Science is a social construct. The conclusion is that we never leave the land of discourse.

Again, I'm not expecting you to address this, I'm just interested in where the paths lead.

Quoting Olivier5

Banno is a denier of the mental world. That's where his fear of certain words come from, and he cannot really say it out loud because he knows how ridiculous it may sound. Hence his timid questions and evasive answers.

I agree that introducing jargon should only be done when there's a really good reason for it.

Quoting Luke

You seem to be making the same conflation as Banno between "subjective" and "private". My whole point here is that these are not the same.

Quoting Luke

your thoughts would be subjective insofar as they occur individually to you and to Banno. I suppose they would remain private to each of you until or unless they were expressed in some way (not necessarily linguistically).

Quoting Luke

I consider subjectivity to be somewhat synonymous with personhood and its traits, such as conscious awareness, rational thought, sensory perception, and the ability to feel pain.

And is this your subjective feeling about things, or is it the way things are? This is the problem: if awareness, senses, feelings, and thoughts are all subjective, there doesn't seem much left to be objective except some hypothetical noumenon, which no one has access to. And thus the subjective becomes necessarily private, because one only has one's own subjective perceptions of the expressions of another's subjective feelings. There is no point of contact.

Reply to unenlightened I can't have your (subjective) pains because you and I are different people, but that doesn't mean your pains are necessarily private.

Reply to unenlightened Quoting unenlightened

This is the problem: if awareness, senses, feelings, and thoughts are all subjective, there doesn't seem much left to be objective except some hypothetical noumenon

The structure of the thoughts senses and feelings can be the same.

Public language can’t talk about private/subjective events, only their structure. And that’s all you need for communication. See my replies to Isaac for details. Or the original comment of mine you replied to.

The “point of contact” is the similar structure of our experiences.

Quoting khaled

The “point of contact” is the similar structure of our experiences.

And is that your subjective feeling, or do you have access to the structure of other people's experiences? Folks are so keen to explain to my mere subjectivity just why n the one hand my feelings are abnormal and wrong, and on the other that they know what they are because they have the access I somehow lack.

I maintain that we all inhabit the same world, but I am called naive.

Reply to unenlightened Quoting unenlightened

or do you have access to the structure of other people's experiences?

I can infer it yes.

Let’s call experience you are subjectively having when looking at a red apple X. And let’s call the experience I am subjectively having when looking at a red apple Y.

We both communicate our respective experience by saying “that’s red”

If we both look at blood, again you will have X and I will have Y. We will again say, that’s red.

But if you look at grass and have X, and so say “That’s red” then we have a different structure. You’re probably colorblind, as you can’t recognize green things.

I on the other hand properly have a different experience from Y when looking at grass (let’s call it Z) and so I say “that’s green”

Now, importantly: Whether or not X and Y are the same experience makes absolutely no difference. What matters is the structure. If the same objects consistently produce the same experience (X for you Y for me) we can talk.

X and Y do not have to be the same at all.

A public language, based on private experiences.

Quoting khaled

Now, importantly: Whether or not X and Y are the same experience makes absolutely no difference. What matters is the structure.

I find this an entirely agreeable explanation, except that I take it one step further, and say that things that make absolutely no difference should be treated as non-existent. So I never speak of X or Y at all, but only of red apples and blood and green grass and colourblindness and such. Subjectivity disappears from the conversation, because there are no words for X or Y and can be none. There are apples and grass and colours, and blindness, and we agree abut that.

Oh look! It's the private language argument again.

Reply to unenlightened Quoting unenlightened

except that I take it one step further, and say that things that make absolutely no difference should be treated as non-existent.

Nah.

If there was an app on your phone that repeatedly printed “Please don’t close me or I’ll be in terrible pain” would you be under obligation not to close it? I would say no. Because the app doesn’t have Xs and Ys. Even though it is clearly using the shared language and you know exactly what it’s saying.

Xs and Ys matter a lot. I would say they’re the basis of ethics. If we have good reason to believe that something doesn’t have Xs and Ys we don’t feel morally obligated towards it. Which is why I don’t say they don’t exist, even though they make no difference.

And even if they didn’t, I don’t see a reason to say something doesn’t exist when it merely makes no difference. All that does is be confusing. Just say “Xs and Ys make no difference”. It’s not much longer.

We all know what happened the last time someone started a thread about a bearded man talking about how Xs and Ys don’t exist. Interminable discussion.

Quoting unenlightened

So I never speak of X or Y at all

Nor can you. How you would you even start to do so? The difference has no perceivable effect. Only differences in experience structure have perceivable effects.

Quoting unenlightened

Subjectivity disappears from the conversation

It never entered. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Quoting Ansiktsburk

Could anyone active in the thread summarize the findings so far in this thread?

Some thread participants like the concept of intersubjectivity, while others are suspicious about it. The latter tend to be the 'non-selfers' ie people who don't actually agree that they are, well, people with minds (they often think of themselves as predetermined puppets instead). The former tend to be folks who are comfortable with the concept of "mind".

Different 'levels' or 'depth' of intersubjectivity have been mentioned. That's where it's interesting to me.

At the simplest level, intersubjectivity was presented as the bridge between subjectivity and objectivity, ie the process by which we progressively build a more and more objective account of events by aggregating, comparing, contrasting different subjective accounts. This is the Popperian view of it: intersubjectivity as a tool for science. It's pretty evident, almost trite at this level.

At a more complex level (call it the Husserlian view), some have pointed out that intersubjectivity also impacts on individual subjectivity. Therefore, it is not just a way to build objectivity from subjectivity, as in the Popperian view: exchanging with others also helps us conceptualise and understand our own subjectivity. There are feedback loops between the subjective self and the social, intersubjective cultural environment. It's a two-way street between them. This is important for a host of reasons, if only because it shows that the Popperian view underestimated the risk of echo chambers: like-minded people agreeing incorrectly about something.

Quoting frank

How does your view about private language flow into your ontology? I'm guessing you're a realist.

The easy part, and.....good guess. An empirical realist, certainly, insofar as to deny spacetime reality independent of me, yet necessarily causal in itself, is both contradictory and dangerous. At the same time, there seems to be some sort of internal reality that is very different. And from that seeming.......let the games begin.

Somewhat less easy, is the doctrine of ontology.....taken to reference the science of the nature of being. Ehhhhh.......whatever is, is whatever it is, the nature of its being given immediately to me upon my knowledge of it, which follows seemingly from my own internal reality. In general, epistemology holds the more fundamental metaphysical domain, than ontology. Doesn’t matter what the ontology of a thing is, if a valid methodology for knowledge doesn’t precede. Plus....I prefer to keep my -ologies and -isms as plain and simple and few as possible.

So.....because I know from experience what “language” entails, and I know I can assemble the representations of my conceptions into an organized composition, which is exactly what experience informs me is “language”, I am authorized to think “talking to myself” is a legitimate rational exercise, which is logically the same as having a language contained in, and used by, me alone. Hence, an ontology of private language in the logical sense, is given.

This is, of course, thoroughly refuted by merely changing the prioritization inherent in concept of language itself, from its altogether necessary internal construction by a subject, to its altogether contingent external employment by some other subject, which is exactly what post-Enlightenment analytic philosophers did.
————-

In context.....

Quoting frank

So would you argue that the set of things we declare to be real is largely produced intersubjectively and has the stamp of culture on it?

Quoting Banno

No - I would not use that word; nor the notion of reality that seems implicit.

Quoting frank

I think Mww will say whether he thinks reality is a social construct.

Quoting Banno

OK. You do see that the question you asked Mww is different to the question you asked me..?

......it appears Frank equates “the set of things we declare to be real” spoken to Banno, with “reality” asked of me. I’m OK with that part, at least as it pertains herein. It then appears Frank equates “produced intersubjectively and has the stamp of culture” spoken to Banno, with “a social construct” asked of me. I’m OK with that, too, in context herein.

I disagree with Banno in that he claims it is a different question. On the other hand, I agree with Banno, in that I wouldn’t use the term “intersubjectivity”, and I would thereby reject the implication the term carries, with respect to reality, specifically, insofar as I disagree with the notion that reality is a social construct.

The really cool part is, those “Kantian oddities” Banno tosses about in such cavalier fashion, offer the perfect logical exposition for the ambiguity and general logical vagaries contained in the term “intersubjectivity”, justifying its epistemological exclusion. Which, ironically enough, does nothing to exclude it from psychological doctrines, where ambiguity and logical vagaries prosper.

Quoting Mww

Ehhhhh.......whatever is, is whatever it is, the nature of its being given immediately to me upon my knowledge of it, which follows seemingly from my own internal reality. I

So you're a soft ontological anti-realist, which means you don't put much stock in metaphysics.

Reality, or whatever may be the case, impresses itself on your internal workings and from there, you say things about it using a preformulated language, but the picture you paint with your language-use is not a social construct. It's the way things are as far as you are able to know given your floppy fins and your well-endowed bobble head.

That's what I expected you to say.

Reply to frank

Soft ontologist I can live with, but you can’t get “anti-realist” from my “empirical realist, certainly”.

For me to require “some sort of internal reality”, presupposes some sort of speculative metaphysics, because that’s the only means to it.

And I’ll have you know my fins are no more floppy than anybody else’s, thank you very much.

Quoting unenlightened

I find this an entirely agreeable explanation, except that I take it one step further, and say that things that make absolutely no difference should be treated as non-existent. So I never speak of X or Y at all, but only of red apples and blood and green grass and colourblindness and such. Subjectivity disappears from the conversation, because there are no words for X or Y and can be none. There are apples and grass and colours, and blindness, and we agree abut that.

Oh look! It's the private language argument again.

:rofl:

Quoting Mww

I am authorized to think “talking to myself” is a legitimate rational exercise, which is logically the same as having a language contained in, and used by, me alone. Hence, an ontology of private language in the logical sense, is given.

Do you play chess against yourself? Does that make Chess a one-player game?

What you call a private language seems to be quite different to the sort of thing that is the subject of philosophical discussion. I'm not surprised.

Reply to Ansiktsburk
Quoting Olivier5

The latter tend to be the 'non-selfers' ie people who don't actually agree that they are, well, people with minds (they often think of themselves as predetermined puppets instead).

That's rubbish, of course. No one is denying that we have minds. What is denied is a particular model of the mind.

Here's a neat summary of the key point:
Quoting Isaac

The point at which I disagree is that these are intrinsically private. They're different brain states. They may be accessible to introspection, in which case we can (and probably have) come up with words for them that way, or they may be accessible only to neuroscience or cognitive psychology, in which case we can come up with technical terms for them.

If this is the case, then the term "intersubjective" is an unworthy replacement for "objective", because implicit in its use is the vague notion of intrinsically private mental goings-on of some unspecified sort.

That's about it. Most of the discussion is simply triangulating different notions and terms.

Quoting Banno

implicit in its use is the vague notion of intrinsically private mental goings-on of some unspecified sort.

May I ask, what does "intrinsically private" mean in this context? Can anyone try and define it? And what is the connection with public discourse? It would seem that something "intrinsinctly private" would be the opposite of intersubjectivity, rather than entailed by it.

Quoting Mww

I agree private language is entirely impractical for intelligible communication, which is language’s only purpose, but do not agree it is impossible to create. I gave two examples of it.

As I understand it the crux of the idea of the impossibility of a private language is that, if you decided to create one, you would not be able to understand any of its non-ostensive terms except by translating them into your native, public language; which means it would not really be a private language at all.

So, I agree with Banno that there can be no private language, but I disagree with him and Isaac insofar as I think there obviously are private experiences.

Quoting Mww

Soft ontologist I can live with, but you can’t get “anti-realist” from my “empirical realist, certainly”.

Ontological anti-realism is just some level of skepticism about ontology in general.

Quoting Janus

As I understand it the crux of the idea of the impossibility of a private language is that, if you decided to create one, you would not be able to understand any of its non-ostensive terms except by translating them into your native, public language; which means it would not really be a private language at all.

No, I don't think so. It's about rules that only you know about.

Quoting Olivier5

May I ask, what does "intrinsically private" mean in this context?

Good question. There's a thread about it.

Quoting Janus

I disagree with him and Isaac insofar as I think there obviously are private experiences.

...ones that we seem to be able to talk about pretty readily. So the question is, in what useful sense are they private?

Quoting Banno

Good question. There's a thread about it.

Which brings only confusion.

By definition, private means "not shared". What is "not shared" is not "intersubjective". Intersubjectivity cannot imply it's negation. You're just obfuscating.

Quoting frank

No, I don't think so. It's about rules that only you know about.

What do you mean?

My point was, to give an example, you make up novel words (sounds and a script to represent them) for objects, and be able to determine their meaning by visualizing the objects, but how would you determine the meanings of your new terms for words like 'and' 'the' 'this' 'that' 'how' 'why' 'what' etc, etc without referring to those words in your native, public language? If you cannot do without referring to your native language, then your made up language does not qualify as fully private.

Quoting Banno

...ones that we seem to be able to talk about pretty readily. So the question is, in what useful sense are they private?

You seem to be failing to understand that there are also experiences which cannot be described, and that even in the case of those experiences which can be described; the description is public (in the sense of being given in a public language), but the description is not the experience, so its public face will not be adequate to the private nature of the experience in any case.

Quoting Olivier5

By definition, private means "not shared". What is "not shared" is not "intersubjective". Intersubjectivity cannot imply it's negation. You're just obfuscating.

If, as you say, there are intrinsically private mental phenomena, all you need do to prove their existence is to list them.

Off you go, then.

Quoting Banno

I'm not surprised.

Excellent. I haven’t exceeded my intentions.

Quoting Janus

if you decided to create one, you would not be able to understand any of its non-ostensive terms except by translating them into your native, public language

True enough, which mandates that if I create a private language, its terms must directly correspond to their respective antecedents. Which they will, or the creation of that which represents a range of my subjective activities is impossible.

You, of all people, may understand the schema of conceptions are entirely the product of imagination, which is sufficient reason for justifying that I can name any perception of mine, any damn thing I want.

Quoting frank

Ontological anti-realism is just some level of skepticism about ontology in general.

Ok. I grant ontology in general, so I guess I don’t have some level of skepticism about it. I’m certainly skeptical that my knowledge of things is complete or true. Which is a metaphysical condition, I would say.

Quoting Banno

If, as you say, there are intrinsically private mental phenomena

I never said any such thing. Don't even know what intrinsically private means... There are things that are not said, by convention. Speaking about them is not proper, not done, or it hasn't been done yet. There are also things that people would rather not say about themselves, things they would rather keep private. It doesn't mean that it cannot possibly be made public by some absolute logical impossibility.

Reply to Mww This is soft ontological anti-realism:

Quoting Mww

Ehhhhh.......whatever is, is whatever it is, the nature of its being given immediately to me upon my knowledge of it, which follows seemingly from my own internal reality. In general, epistemology holds the more fundamental metaphysical domain, than ontology. Doesn’t matter what the ontology of a thing is, if a valid methodology for knowledge doesn’t precede. Plus....I prefer to keep my -ologies and -isms as plain and simple and few as possible.

"Anti-realism" isn't a specific view. There's moral anti-realism, bovine anti-realism, etc.

Reply to Olivier5 What's your take on reality? Is it a social construct?

Quoting Janus

My point was, to give an example, you make up novel words (sounds and a script to represent them) for objects, and be able to determine their meaning by visualizing the objects, but how would you determine the meanings of your new terms for words like 'and' 'the' 'this' 'that' 'how' 'why' 'what' etc, etc without referring to those words in your native, public language? If you cannot do without referring to your native language, then your made up language does not qualify as fully private.

Yes. I basically said this to Mww, but it's not the PLA.

Quoting frank

What's your take on reality? Is it a social construct?

Large parts of it are, things like language, the economy, science, or art are evidently of a social nature, and therefore co-constructed. But other things, like planets or stars or other living species, existed before us, I think. In fact they were there long before any Homo sapiens started to name anything, so they can't be depended on human cultures.

Quoting Olivier5

But other things, like planets or stars or other living species, existed before us, I think. In fact they were there long before any Homo sapiens started to name anything, so they can't be depended on human cultures.

So realism for both subjective and objective narratives. :up:

Reply to frank Both realist in the general sense, that I can and must conceive of a mind-independent reality, that whatever is the case is the case, irrespective of what we may think of it; and sceptic about human beings' capacity to see this reality as it is. We are very good at projecting our mental categories onto the world, and some of that is useful but one has to guard against the tendency.

There IS a territory. But the map is NEVER the territory.

Quoting Olivier5

May I ask, what does "intrinsically private" mean in this context? Can anyone try and define it? And what is the connection with public discourse?

The sort of question that come's up now and then is "How do i know that my experience of red is the same as your experience of red?" The answer to this is not that we agree which things are red. And because of this, "my experience of red" becomes intrinsically private, because there is no access whatsoever to it by anyone else. It might be 'like' your experience of green, or your experience of conservatism, or your experience of cats. and nobody could ever possibly know.

This is of course utter tosh. But the reason it is tosh is that no one has "an experience of red", they merely experience things as red, or as not red. Ask a silly question, and you get an intrinsically private experience.

Quoting unenlightened

no one has "an experience of red", they merely experience things as red

What’s the difference?

Reply to Luke have you ever seen red by itself?

What would that be like? Just the one colour over your entire visual field?

Quoting Banno

have you ever seen red by itself?

What would that be like? Just the one colour over your entire visual field?

Not that I can recall, no. Why do you ask?

Quoting unenlightened

I find this an entirely agreeable explanation, except that I take it one step further, and say that things that make absolutely no difference should be treated as non-existent.

This is a mistake. If it can be recognized by you as a thing, then by that fact, it has made a difference, and cannot be excluded as non-existent. In other words this is willful ignorance, denying the existence of something you recognize as existing. It's nothing more than saying I have recognized the existence of this thing but since it makes absolutely no difference to me (I care nothing about it), I can claim it as non-existent. The problem being that whether or not something makes a difference is a subjective judgement, and the fact that you don't care about it doesn't mean that no one cares about it..

Reply to Luke I wonder if it is what @unenlightened has in mind,

Reply to Banno I don't see why having "an experience of red" necessarily implies "seeing just the one colour over your entire visual field". Therefore, I still don't understand how having "an experience of red" differs from having an "experience [of] things as red".

Quoting unenlightened

...no one has "an experience of red", they merely experience things as red, or as not red...

Which requires knowing which sorts of things we call "red"; knowing how to use "red". Such experience cannot rightfully be called "subjective" or "private" in any sensible way for experiencing red things as such cannot even happen without intersubjective public language use. If personal experiences are to count as subjective and/or private, then they cannot be existentially dependent upon intersubjective and public things like knowing how to use "red", and/or knowing which sorts of things are called "red".

Quoting Luke

Therefore, I still don't understand how having "an experience of red" differs from having an "experience [of] things as red".

AH, well. just so long as you are not seeing red. That't be idiomatic.

Quoting frank

My point was, to give an example, you make up novel words (sounds and a script to represent them) for objects, and be able to determine their meaning by visualizing the objects, but how would you determine the meanings of your new terms for words like 'and' 'the' 'this' 'that' 'how' 'why' 'what' etc, etc without referring to those words in your native, public language? If you cannot do without referring to your native language, then your made up language does not qualify as fully private. — Janus


Yes. I basically said this to Mww, but it's not the PLA.

Quoting frank

No, I don't think so. It's about rules that only you know about.

I wasn't suggesting that this is explicitly the way the PLA is laid out. But, think about it: it being impossible that there be rules only you know about is the same thing as the impossibility of having non-ostenstive words that are not understood in terms of a public language in a purportedly private language. The best that could be done then, would be to have private names for objects that can be pointed to, which doesn't really amount to much of a private language.

Quoting Mww

You, of all people, may understand the schema of conceptions are entirely the product of imagination, which is sufficient reason for justifying that I can name any perception of mine, any damn thing I want.

Right, so as I said above it is not possible to create a private language (one constructed entirely in private terms) but it is possible to have private names for things that can be pointed to. We seem to be in agreement.

Reply to Mww Quoting Olivier5

But the map is NEVER the territory.

Can maps be more or less adequate to the territory?

Hey, @frank - what's your take on reality?

I think it an odd question; perhaps your answering it will make clearer what it is you are after...?

That the map is not the territory does not render the map wrong.

This reads like a Sex Ed class. Everyone is talking about it but no one wants to spell it out. The forbidden word. Qualia. :rofl:

Reply to Olivier5 Fine.

The reference to Popper was interesting. I'd forgotten he used the term, so I retrieved LSD and Against Method from their place on my shelf for a bit of reminiscing. Popper gives due credit to Kant, Feyerabend gives some rather nice examples. Cheers.

Reply to khaled Qualia are only one example of the problem.

...

Quoting unenlightened

"my experience of red" becomes intrinsically private, because there is no access whatsoever to it by anyone else. It might be 'like' your experience of green, or your experience of conservatism, or your experience of cats. and nobody could ever possibly know.

Okay, or "how it feels to be a bat". Indeed a rather immaterial, speculative question.

I believe your red is my red, because the underlying mechanism to produce those tints is biological and biology is very conservative, it change very very slowly and cannot be parametered at will like, say, a digital computer. We have more or less the same basic metabolism that bacterias, molluscs and bats have. Your and my metabolism are very similar, so chances are that we see colors more or less the same way, because those color are metabolic in nature. (Baring color blindness in one of us)

Of course there's no way to check that empirically, so it remains hypothetical. But I don't lose sleep over that.

Seems to me that every conscious sensation can be made "public" by throwing some words in the public space about it. It doesn't mean we share our real, actual sensations this way, only words for them.

That's because the practice of "sharing" through language is not at all like sharing a meal or sharing a car. I cannot literally put my sensations on the table and share them with you as we would share a meal. Words are not the things they denote but mere tokens for them. So when you express yourself in words, you are of course not sharing the actual things that happened to you, only a symbolic representation of them, more or less precise, more or less faithful, that the listener will decode more or less well, and it will evoke some ideas in his mind hopefully not too dissimilar to what you tried to say.

Quoting khaled

Problem is, we have no way of quantifying the impact of brainstates on Xs and Ys.

I don't see how that's at all relevant. You're positing that there's some epiphenomenal effect (X or Y) which is a physical consequence of some particular brain state, but the phenomenological associate of which is identical in each case (otherwise we'd be able to access it by introspection). So Xs and Ys don't have properties, they are properties - properties of brainstates X1 and Y1. If X and Y had properties, then you'd be positing either epi-epiphenomenon, or you'd be arguing that X and Y are, in fact, physical.

Quoting khaled

we have no way of detecting whether you're having XXY, ZZR or KKU

We do. We can detect brain states and XXY, ZZR and KKU are directly, inseparably linked to different brain states, so we know exactly which you're having.

Quoting khaled

there is no practical difference between you having XXY or ZZR or KKU.

There's the difference in fMRI scan.

Quoting khaled

someone having XXY and someone having GGR will act the exact same way.

But will show a different fMRI image. So we do know. It's just that XXY and ZZR become highly technical terms in neuroscience. Which, having no impact on ordinary life whatsoever, is where they should stay.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This is a mistake. If it can be recognized by you as a thing, then by that fact, it has made a difference, and cannot be excluded as non-existent.

It is not a mistake. because it cannot be recognised as a thing. "I see a red apple" means I see a thing in the world that is red. There is nothing in my interior world that is red. But "an experience of red" suggests that the red is in my head in my interior world (whatever that is). But I don't see colour in my experiences, because I never look at them - my eyes point outwards not inwards. It is a linguistic construction that is mistaken for a thing The experience of seeing cannot be seen and thus cannot be coloured. Only what is seen is coloured and never the experience of seeing.

Quoting Olivier5

I believe your red is my red, because the underlying mechanism to produce those tints is biological and biology is very conservative, it change very very slowly and cannot be parametered at will like, say, a digital computer.

As you see above, I do not think I am red or have a red or a red experience, and I don't believe you do either. I see red things, and rarely I see red illusions which are errors of seeing. But my seeing experiences no more have colour than they have smell.

Quoting Luke

My point wasn't to define subjectivity, only to point out that it is not identical to privacy.

Odd. So there could be something publicly shared yet which is entirely subjective? I'm not following you.

Quoting Luke

The dictionary offers this relevant definition: "dependent on the mind or on an individual's perception for its existence."

That seems a reasonable definition, but then it would make my phones example not so terrible after alll. You said

Quoting Luke

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain.

But not, it seems, because your pain is intrinsically private and so inaccessible to be, but simply because your pain takes place in your mind (the mind you own), and if (via @Banno's arm-wiring experiment) it actually took place in someone else's mind, it simply wouldn't be your pain anymore, buy virtue entirely of whose brain it was in. Like phones. My phone is 'my' phone entirely by virtue of whose legal possession it is in, no property of the actual phone. Your pain is 'your' pain entirely by virtue of whose mind it is in, not any property of the actual pain.

So what on earth would 'intersubjective' mean? Something which takes place in multiple minds at once? Not sure where that model leaves intersubjectivity.

Quoting Janus

But the map is NEVER the territory.
— Olivier5

Can maps be more or less adequate to the territory?

Yes of course, some maps are more accurate (or less inaccurate) than others, for a given purpose.

Quoting Banno

?Luke I wonder if it is what unenlightened has in mind,

Not really. One might have such an experience in sunshine with one's eyes shut. It is the situation where it makes most sense to talk about 'an experience of red'. But it is an experience that anyone can have who can see in colour. And if you ask what it is like, I might liken it to a glorious sunset or something. I still wouldn't be talking about "my experience of red" as if it were something similar or different to "your experience of red".

Most of the time one can live with a colourblind person and not notice that they see things differently. They usually do not notice themselves, and talk about colours just like a human being. But they sometimes make mistakes, and my friend discovered one day that he was red/green colourblind when he applied to be a telephone engineer and had to do a test. We were both surprised. So here is a question for philosophers - What is the experience of red of someone who is colourblind but does not know it? Expect to construct a large edifice in explaining this mystery.

Reply to Isaac I think you have to use the reply feature for me to get notifications because I missed this.

Quoting Isaac

We do. We can detect brain states and XXY, ZZR and KKU are directly, inseparably linked to different brain states, so we know exactly which you're having.

Let's look at the original example I gave. XXY and YYX. With the objects being red, red, green respectively. Here, it just so happens that the experience that causes you to reach for the word "Red" (X) is precisely the experience that would cause me to reach for the word "Green".

You can do an fMRI scan on both of our brains, and you wouldn't be able to extract this piece of information. We will show very similar activity. But since we don't have the exact same brains and bodies, that can account for why I'm having XXY as opposed to you having YYX. However you can't for example say: "Khaled's experience of red is Isaac's experience of green". You do not have evidence to conclude this. Because I could just be having KKR, or JJL, or MMW and in all of these cases we will both show similar fMRI scans.

Or to explain it another way:

Sure I agree that certain physical states cause certain mental states. Let's take an example where I have XXY and you have LLE. There will be a set of variables that determine why you have LLE and I have XXY. However this set of variables is undiscoverable. Since whether or not you have XXY or LLE makes no difference as long as structure is preserved. For all we know, the shape of your nose could be the reason you are having LLE as opposed to XXY.

There is a humongous set of things that are different about our physical conditions that can be used to explain why you have a different experience from me. We have no way to narrow it down. Because we have no "outside perspective" from which we can say "Ah, yes, it seems that people with this type of nose have Ls instead of Xs when looking at blood". We have no access to whether or not we are having the same Xs and Ys or how they're related.

We have no way of checking the dependent variable so we can't narrow down what the independent variables are. Though we know the independent variables belong to the set of "Physical differences".

Reply to unenlightened Quoting unenlightened

What is the experience of red of someone who is colourblind but does not know it?

You can't explain to someone what an experience is like so I'm not sure what you're asking. As you said: The subjectivity leaves the picture. We can't talk about it.

What's the experience of red to someone who is not colorblind? How would you even answer that?

Quoting khaled

You can't explain to someone what an experience is like so I'm not sure what you're asking. As you said: The subjectivity leaves the picture. We can't talk about it.

But in this case we can talk about it. We discovered a difference. Richard discovered that he couldn't see red, but he had been seeing red all his life. So there is an experience of red of someone who cannot see red. In this case, it's is not that we cannot talk about it because it is private or subjective, but that we cannot talk about it because it never existed in the first place. 23 odd years of talking about something he could not see and not noticing that he could not see it. And no one else noticing either.

Quoting khaled

the experience that causes you to reach for the word "Red" (X) is precisely the experience that would cause me to reach for the word "Green".

Now you're leaving the realm of epiphenomenon. The epiphenomenon X can't 'cause' anything.

Quoting khaled

You can do an fMRI scan on both of our brains, and you wouldn't be able to extract this piece of information. We will show very similar activity.

Similar, but different. If fMRI isn't fine-grained enough, we could use nanotube probes.

Quoting khaled

However this set of variables is undiscoverable. Since whether or not you have XXY or LLE makes no difference as long as structure is preserved.

But it is discoverable because it's associated with different brain states, which we can detect.

Quoting khaled

we have no "outside perspective" from which we can say "Ah, yes, it seems that people with this type of nose have Ls instead of Xs when looking at blood". We have no access to whether or not we are having the same Xs and Ys or how they're related.

Brain states. We can ask why some people's brains look like X when being shown a red square and others look like Y. We can correlate the results with variables we suspect might be involved, test the significance...you know, normal scientific practice.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

Now you're leaving the realm of epiphenomenon. The epiphenomenon X can't 'cause' anything.

Misspoke. How about "comes with". Idk why you're raising this objection now though because that's always what I've said.

Quoting Isaac

Brain states.

But we don't know if brainstate1 causes X or Y or Z or U or G. That's the point. We cannot see the value of the dependent variable to be able to find the independent variables.

Quoting Isaac

But it is discoverable because it's associated with different brain states, which we can detect.

But we don't know which brain state causes X as opposed to Y or Z or U or G. Because as long as the structure is the same we have no idea if the subject is having an X or Y or Z or U or G.

Quoting khaled

But we don't know if brainstate1 causes X or Y or Z or U or G.

There's no knowledge there to be gained. Epiphenomenon X doesn't pre-exist. We've got no reason at all to assume it. The only justification for labelling epiphenomenon X would be if we had a modelling assumption that a unique epiphenomenon existed for each unique brain state. Under such an assumption we would, on noticing brain state X, invoke the theoretical existence of epiphenomenon X. We'd just have no reason at all to do it the other way around - invoke epiphenomenon X (for no reason at all) and then search for the brain state which might match it, if it even exists. Why would we do that?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

Epiphenomenon X doesn't pre-exist. We've got no reason at all to assume it.

I would say that that we have experiences is a bit more than an assumption no? It precedes the neurology even.

Epiphenomenon X does pre-exist. The experience you get when looking at red things precedes your knowledge of whatever brainstate is behind that experience. Evidence: I have an experience when looking at red things, yet I have no clue what my brain is doing at the time.

Now, I can assume you also have some experience when looking at red things. We can call mine X and yours Y. Both pre-exist. Both precede the neurology. And they do not have to be the same.

The difference between them would be due to physical differences. Which physical differences, we have no way of determining. Because we cannot study these pre-existing epiphenomena.

As to why we would want to in the first place? No clue, you're the one that proposed it:

Quoting Isaac

The point at which I disagree is that these are intrinsically private. They're different brain states. They may be accessible to introspection, in which case we can (and probably have) come up with words for them that way, or they may be accessible only to neuroscience or cognitive psychology, in which case we can come up with technical terms for them.

Quoting Isaac

Odd. So there could be something publicly shared yet which is entirely subjective? I'm not following you.

In the relevant Wittgensteinian sense, there could be something publicly shareable, in principle, which is entirely subjective. There are such things, such as thoughts one has which are not yet shared, unexpressed pain hiding behind a stoic disposition, a poker face, and the like.

But even if it becomes shared, there remains an intrinsically private aspect - how it feels to the subject. What cannot be shared is for me to have your pains and vice versa.

Quoting Isaac

Like phones. My phone is 'my' phone entirely by virtue of whose legal possession it is in, no property of the actual phone. Your pain is 'your' pain entirely by virtue of whose mind it is in, not any property of the actual pain.

Phones are not mind-dependent, but yes, pains are subjective to the mind/person that experiences them.

Quoting Isaac

So what on earth would 'intersubjective' mean? Something which takes place in multiple minds at once? Not sure where that model leaves intersubjectivity.

Publicly shared, I suppose; an expressed subjective experience that is made public, usually via language but not necessarily.

Quoting khaled

would say that that we have experiences is a bit more than an assumption no? It precedes the neurology even.

Epiphenomenon X does pre-exist. The experience you get when looking at red things precedes your knowledge of whatever brainstate is behind that experience.

That's proof that we have epiphenomenon, not that we have unique epiphenomenon X or Y in response to the same external inputs. Alk the evidence you have so far is that our epiphenomena are the same in response to the same stimuli. We reach for the same words, we understand the same implications, we even notice those who don't respond the same and single them out as being in need of help.

The only justification for thinking your epiphenomena are unisex would be if we...

a) had a modelling assumption that unique brain states resulted in unique epiphenomena, and

b) noticed unique brain states in response to identical stimuli.

Other than that we've no reason at all to assume our epiphenomena are different, in fact the evidence seems to point to them being the same in most cases.

Quoting Luke

In the relevant Wittgensteinian sense, there could be something publicly shareable, in principle, which is entirely subjective. There are such things, such as thoughts one has which are not yet shared, unexpressed pain hiding behind a stoic disposition, a poker face, and the like.

Yeah, I can agree with that. So is that what you mean by subjective but not intrinsically private? Something which requires a mind but has not yet been shared despite being shareable?

Quoting Luke

even if it becomes shared, there remains an intrinsically private aspect - how it feels to the subject. What cannot be shared is for me to have your pains and vice versa.

So you seem back to intrinsically private again. If subjectivity is not the cause of a thing being intrinsically private, then what is?

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

Alk the evidence you have so far is that our epiphenomena are the same in response to the same stimuli.

False. We have no evidence of that. As I've shown, you can have radically different epiphenomena and still be able to do all of:

Quoting Isaac

We reach for the same words, we understand the same implications, we even notice those who don't respond the same and single them out as being in need of help.

So that in itself is not proof.

Quoting Isaac

Other than that we've no reason at all to assume our epiphenomena are different

Agreed. And no reason to assume they're the same.

Quoting Isaac

a) had a modelling assumption that unique brain states resulted in unique epiphenomena, and

b) noticed unique brain states in response to identical stimuli.

These would be reasons for deducing a differently structured set of epiphenomena not even different ones.

Let's say you have XXY and I have YYY. I would probably be colorblind in that case. Because I can't tell the difference between the first two and the last object. You do an fMRI scan and find some difference or other in my brain state.

But in this example, we have the same epiphenomena ( Y ) in some cases. So the difference the fMRI detected is not necessarily a difference in the Xs and Ys but again, a difference in their structure.

Quoting khaled

We have no evidence of that. As I've shown, you can have radically different epiphenomena and still be able to do all of:

I don't disagree with that. It's about parsimony. Why introduce something for which there's no evidence?

Quoting khaled

no reason to assume they're the same.

That's the default position. We don't subdivide without cause because it is less parsimonious to do so. We don't add unnecessary complexity to our models, why would we?

Quoting khaled

So the difference the fMRI detected is not necessarily a difference in the Xs and Ys but again, a difference in their structure.

No, because we just established that epiphenomena are caused by physical phenomena. So if there's a difference of any sort whatsoever in the epiphenomena, it must result from an equivalent difference in the the causing physical phenomena. Otherwise we've invoked some other non- physical causal factor.

Reply to Isaac I'll put it another way. Physical difference result in mental differences correct? So let's split up physical differences into two types, structural, and content-determining.

A structural physical difference results in different structures of epiphenomena. So for example, glaucoma, is an example of of structural physical difference. As if I have glaucoma the structure or my experiences will be different from yours. You'll have XXY and I'll have LLL for example. I won't be able to tell that the last object has a different color. There is a clearly measurable difference in behavior.

A content-deciding physical difference results in different epiphenomena. So assuming neither of us is colorblind (neither of us has structural physical differences), it is still possible that you are having XXY and I am having something like AAB. We would still be able to communicate. But the content-deciding physical difference is what makes me have AAB as opposed to XXY.

My point is, we can never find out what the content-deciding physical differences are. Because, although they exist, we have no way of surveying the dependent variable. If you have XXY and I have AAB no test will tell me exactly why. I can come up with any number of physical differences between us that can account for the difference in experience. The size of your toe could be what's causing you to have AAB for all I know. So I can never narrow it down.

On the other hand, structural physical differences are very easy to see. Because we can test for the dependent variable (the structure). You can ask me to name the color of 3 objects, and if I can't distinguish, then you can scan my brain and compare it to people who CAN distinguish. In this case, you will be able to find out exactly what physical differences bring about color blindness. That is because you were able to test for the dependent variable (the structure).

Quoting Isaac

Why introduce something for which there's no evidence?

I am not definitively saying that our experiences are different I'm saying they could be. There is just as much reason to assume they are the same as to assume they are different. The model doesn't become any more or any less complex by assuming either.

Quoting Isaac

So if there's a difference of any sort whatsoever in the epiphenomena, it must result from an equivalent difference in the the causing physical phenomena. Otherwise we've invoked some other non- physical causal factor.

Correct, and we will have no way to narrow down which physical phenomena is doing it. Because a difference in the content of the epiphenomena makes no difference as long as structure is maintained. So we cannot access the dependent variable to see how it changes (because it makes no difference how it changes)

Quoting unenlightened

What is the experience of red of someone who is colourblind but does not know it?

Yes, :ok: if we can address it without slipping back into the Cartesian version, as possibly here,

Quoting unenlightened

23 odd years of talking about something he could not see and not noticing that he could not see it.

... as though (on one reading) the problem (slash non-problem) is that he was seeing a different colour but calling it like us.

Better to address it as: what class of things (even better: class of illumination events) was he associating with any one thing he called red, i.e. what things was he disposed to call red, i.e. what was the extension of "red" when he asserted it of a thing?

And then, what if anything does that difference in our external reds have to do with our colour discourse which purports to talk about internal reds?

Quoting Isaac

So you seem back to intrinsically private again. If subjectivity is not the cause of a thing being intrinsically private, then what is?

I've said from the outset that subjectivity has both private and public aspects. On reflection, though, perhaps it should be that subjectivity has both intrinsically private (unshareable) and non-intrinsically private (shareable) aspects.

Originally, my view was basically that the internal (e.g. feeling of pain) was private and the external (e.g. expression of pain) was public. Your questioning on the matter has led me to reassess the distinction between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. What is expressed (e.g. an expression of pain) now seems better categorised as intersubjectivity. However, I have trouble giving up the idea that there remains a degree of subjectivity in the expression of subjective experience, i.e. in the intersubjective, especially since those expressions are made by individual subjects. Maybe intersubjectivity also requires an element of understanding rather than mere expression (or sharing). If a lion could talk...

Quoting unenlightened

As you see above, I do not think I am red or have a red or a red experience, and I don't believe you do either. I see red things,

You probably are reddish here or there. Most probably your blood is red, for instance.

(Hey, I can nitpick too)

Reply to Banno Yes, Popper saw himself as Kantian.

Quoting unenlightened

It is not a mistake. because it cannot be recognised as a thing. "I see a red apple" means I see a thing in the world that is red. There is nothing in my interior world that is red. But "an experience of red" suggests that the red is in my head in my interior world (whatever that is). But I don't see colour in my experiences, because I never look at them - my eyes point outwards not inwards. It is a linguistic construction that is mistaken for a thing The experience of seeing cannot be seen and thus cannot be coloured. Only what is seen is coloured and never the experience of seeing.

Again, I think that's obviously a mistaken proposition. We all "look" at our experiences, we look at them with our minds. If we didn't we'd have no memory, as that's what memory is, looking at our experiences. So when you look at a red apple, and turn away and later talk about it, you are looking at your experience of having seen a red apple and this is what allows you to talk about it. When you understand that this is the reality of the situation, that your mind (your "interior world") is necessarily the medium between the red apple, and talking about the red apple, then the interior world is necessarily a "thing" which we can talk about. Otherwise we cannot account for our capacity to talk about remembered things.

I think you'll find that it's very clear that you don't see colour with your eyes. "Colour" refers to a generic concept, grasped only by your mind, while your eyes see particular instances of different colours. It really doesn't matter that people say "I see colour with my eyes" because our common expressions do not represent what is really the case, they are just formed around facilitating communication. We also say that the sun comes up, and the sun goes down. We need to get beyond what the common expression appears to mean, to understand what is really the case in that situation referred to by "I see colour with my eyes".

Quoting Banno

Hey, frank - what's your take on reality?

I think it an odd question; perhaps your answering it will make clearer what it is you are after...?

I think that question was put on the table by the OP. MU expressed my view pretty well:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If it can be recognized by you as a thing, then by that fact, it has made a difference, and cannot be excluded as non-existent.

That's indubitable. Theories are secondary (in my view). People who reverse that and put theories first are acting out some psychological shenanigans.

I understand the idea that the psyche is not really as private as it seems, the ego being the part that claims privacy for itself and the rest obviously open to instinct, cultural heritage, collective unconscious, or whatever

Plato would agree with this. Schopenhauer would, so my philosophical heroes are in that camp, but maybe not in the direction you're pushing toward? I don't know. You're not being explicit about the direction you're going in ontologically, and I don't expect that to change.

So I make up an OP who is arguing that subjective privacy is an illusion because the ego itself is, but as opposed to opening up to idealism, as this view traditionally does, we go in the deadened direction of eliminativism.

In this setting, making the ego an illusion should also make the whole world into an illusion. There's nobody in this thread who will take up this side of the topic and explore it, so it just lays there, poor thing.

Thanks for asking.

Quoting Janus

Can maps be more or less adequate to the territory?

I guess, sure, but “more or less” is pretty open-ended and “adequate” doesn’t say much.

What’s the catch?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We all "look" at our experiences, we look at them with our minds. If we didn't we'd have no memory, as that's what memory is, looking at our experiences.

No, we don't.

Memory is not looking at experiences, because one can remember in the dark. I remember the last time I was in the chip shop, the smell of hot fat and vinegar, the soft shine of the stainless steel counter and the bubbly battered fish hot under the lights. But I am looking at the words appearing on the computer screen and smelling the clean washing just out from the dryer.

There is no confusion of memory and experience, even if the memories are vivid, as they often are, though there might be, if one were not fully conscious. You can imagine me typing, my wife can see me typing, and neither of you confuses their actual seeing with their imagining or remembering by and large. "The mind's eye" is a metaphor, and you are allowing a turn of phrase to deceive you again.

In fact there is a test for eidetic memory (which in my case I have not got), in which you have to compare memory to present experience by 'as it were' superimposing them. This illustrates both how very different they are and how hard it is for most of us to put them together.

Quoting Janus

the schema of conceptions are entirely the product of imagination, which is sufficient reason for justifying that I can name any perception of mine, any damn thing I want.
— Mww

Right, so as I said above it is not possible to create a private language (one constructed entirely in private terms) but it is possible to have private names for things that can be pointed to. We seem to be in agreement.

Close, but not entirely. If I combine a few imagined, private, names in an organized composition, wouldn’t I have created an imagined, private language? Note there is yet no incursion of meaning, intentionality, or explanation. There is only composition from extended representations relating to each other, which sufficiently defines the conception of language in the first place (contra Witt), as yet having nothing to do with the use of it.

“....When we say: “every word in language signifies something” we have so far said nothing whatsoever; unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make...”
(Wittgenstein, P.I.,1,13, in Anscombe, 1958)

Quoting unenlightened

there is an experience of red of someone who cannot see red.

Nice plot twist.
Quoting Olivier5

Popper saw himself as Kantian.

I will try not to hold it against him.

Reply to Mww Sure, you can play chess by yourself. It's still a game for two players.

Quoting Olivier5

Yes of course, some maps are more accurate (or less inaccurate) than others, for a given purpose.

So, we must know something of the territory in order to be able to say that some maps (or models) are more accurate than others?

Quoting Mww

Close, but not entirely. If I combine a few imagined, private, names in an organized composition, wouldn’t I have created an imagined, private language?

I guess it depends on how you define 'language'. It seems to me that you could create a private set of words, and even phrases, for things you can visualize.This invites the question as to just how much, with what degree of complexity, we can think without language. It seems we learn the more complex concepts through language and other forms of interaction with others which are only possible in a linguistic culture. It certainly doesn't seem possible that and English speaker could create a private language anywhere near as complex and comprehensive as English without relying on English to do it. This reliance would mean that the created language is not entirely, or even mostly, private at all.

Quoting Mww

I guess, sure, but “more or less” is pretty open-ended and “adequate” doesn’t say much.

What’s the catch?

The catch is, as I replied above to Olivier5, that we must know something of the territory in order to determine that some maps are more accurate than others. The question is how do we know anything of the territory if not through maps (models or representations or whatever you want to call them)? ( I'm not suggesting we don't; I'm asking the question because I think we must).

Quoting Janus

So, we must know something of the territory in order to be able to say that some maps (or models) are more accurate than others?

Indeed, we can only map what we know, or think we know. Nevertheless, the map will never be the territory, for a host of reasons e.g.

1. A representation of something is by definition not the thing it represents. As Magritte put it, this is not a pipe.

2. The territory keeps changing, so maps are always outdated.

3. No map can be exhaustive of all possible variables and dimensions, and in any case map users are not interested in knowing all there is to know about a territory, only some aspects of the territory would typically interest them.

4. We don’t know everything about the territory, so cannot map everything.

5. Such a map would have the same size as the territory and would be quite useless as a map.

Reply to Banno

As far as the playing of the game is concerned, there are two players if I am playing both colors. The quality of the game isn’t the least affected no matter who’s moving the pieces, as long as the movements conform to the rules.

Popper appreciates you respecting his metaphysical dispositions. If it’s any consolation.....Einstein didn’t.

Quoting unenlightened

I still wouldn't be talking about "my experience of red" as if it were something similar or different to "your experience of red"...

What is the experience of red of someone who is colourblind but does not know it?

Mustn’t my experience of red (as a non-colourblind person) and your friend’s experience of red be different, just as they would be different if your friend was blind and unable to see? My ability to distinguish red from green, or your friend’s inability, is not due to linguistic fluency. Therefore, isn’t the difference of experience at least part of what it means to be blind or colourblind?

Quoting Olivier5

the map will never be the territory, for a host of reasons e.g.

Yes and your point no. 1 is great but then you get carried away, and no. 5 is silliness you probably didn't mean, like

Quoting bongo fury

If you were to make a truly complete map or model of something, you could not help but replicate its function, and so build a replica, a simulation.
— Pfhorrest

Reply to unenlightened Quoting unenlightened

Richard discovered that he couldn't see red, but he had been seeing red all his life.

If he couldn’t see red he can’t have been seeing red all his life. So idk what you mean here.

I would say “Richard discovered that he couldn’t distinguish red, but he had been having certain experiences ( Y) which he described by using the word ‘red’ all his life”.

So when you line up 2 green objects and a red one, you would have experienced ZZL but Richard would have experiences YYY. To Richard, there is no difference between the 3 objects (I’m assuming he’s red green colorblind) and he would call all of them red. Or all of them green. Depends on what he’s been saying upon having Y up to this point.

As to what Y is, I have no clue. Nothing to contrast it with. Can’t talk about it. Same with Z and L.

Quoting unenlightened

Memory is not looking at experiences, because one can remember in the dark. I remember the last time I was in the chip shop, the smell of hot fat and vinegar, the soft shine of the stainless steel counter and the bubbly battered fish hot under the lights. But I am looking at the words appearing on the computer screen and smelling the clean washing just out from the dryer.

I said "look at them with our minds". Obviously I wasn't talking about looking at them with your eyes. And the point was that when we recall memories we are looking at things with our minds.

Of course you can continue to deny that it's possible to look at something with one's mind, and therefore deny that there's anything being looked at with the mind, but I don't see the point in such a denial. Philosophy is an attempt to understand these things which we look at with our minds, so denial that they even exist is a step in the wrong direction, a mistake.

Quoting Janus

we must know something of the territory in order to determine that some maps are more accurate than others.

Agreed.

Quoting Janus

The question is how do we know anything of the territory if not through maps (models or representations or whatever you want to call them)?

There’s no map of my house, but I know the territory pretty well. Could we say experience is the same as models, representations or whatever you want to call them? Hope so, because otherwise it’d be pretty hard to explain how Lewis and Clark came back with a map, but they didn’t leave with one.

Quoting Luke

Mustn’t my experience of red (as a non-colourblind person) and your friend’s experience of red be different, just as they would be different if your friend was blind and unable to see?

Richard cannot distinguish red from green.You can, we assume. I don't know what you want to say about Richard's experience or about yours. I suggest that as a matter of fact, Richard has no experience of red, but only the illusion that he experiences red. Or to put it another way, his experience of red is socially constructed. In the light (haha) of this, I for my part start to wonder about experience altogether.

I experience, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.

Quoting unenlightened

I experience, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.

So, you experience but you don’t have experiences. I don’t understand the distinction.

Your experience is the world, or is of the world?

Quoting bongo fury

If you were to make a truly complete map or model of something, you could not help but replicate its function, and so build a replica, a simulation.

But since the territory has a simulation in it, the simulation will have to have a fully functional simulation in it and then *eyes start to spin around like pinwheels*

Reply to Olivier5

I don't need a map unless I'm lost. Like if I were to drive through a town in Ohio where every street looks exactly like every other street, I would look for signs. "I see a street sign" is a subjective account. What happens next is magical because I use the sign to see where I am on a mental map I keep with me at all time while driving in Ohio.

That map is an objective view. So far there is no need to explain this with any interaction between humans.

Or is there?

Reply to khaled Quoting khaled

So let's split up physical differences into two types, structural, and content-determining.

I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying now, thanks. It seems an odd theory, but valid. I just disagree about one point, but I think it's more a matter of personal judgement than logic or empirical fact

Quoting khaled

There is just as much reason to assume they are the same as to assume they are different. The model doesn't become any more or any less complex by assuming either.

I maintain that creating subdivision where there need be none, creating alternate options where one would suffice - that is making a model more complex. We could say that we each have X and nothing about the world we experience would be less well explained by that. You add that it could be X or Y you create an unnecessary bifurcation. Additional bifurcations is pretty much the definition of complexity, I'd be interested in how you're defining model complexity in such a way as neither decision points nor number of variables contribute to complexity.

Quoting Luke

Maybe intersubjectivity also requires an element of understanding rather than mere expression (or sharing).

Then wouldn't that be problematic for the idea that such feelings are intrinsically private?

Quoting bongo fury

the map will never be the territory, for a host of reasons e.g.
— Olivier5

Yes and your point no. 1 is great but then you get carried away, and no. 5 is silliness you probably didn't mean, like

Point 5 is simply that a map with everything to know about the territory on it (an exhaustive map) would be impossibly bulky. For instance, the individual atoms composing any territory are part of it and thus the map would need to map each and every atom of the territory if it was to be exhaustive. But to do so, to map all the atoms in a given place, and to print that map on paper (itself composed of atoms), each territory atom would need to be mapped on a piece of paper composed of several atoms. Therefore the map would be LARGER than the territory. e.g. you would need one square meter of map to describe one square milimeter of reality.

Quoting frank

That map is an objective view. So far there is no need to explain this with any interaction between humans.

The map may not necessarily be objective. The "map" here being a metaphor for any representation, model or picture, including mental maps, which I guess are just maps written down on grey matter.

The phrase "the map is not the territory" implies that any representation of anything is but a gross simplification of it. Reality is far too rich and complex for us to be able to describe it exhaustively. So when we represent something, we always only represent an aspect of it, with a certain (limited) precision level.

The quantity of information necessary to "see the world as it is" would be infinite. It is therefore impossible to see the world as it is: there's just too much to see.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

We could say that we each have X and nothing about the world we experience would be less well explained by that. You add that it could be X or Y you create an unnecessary bifurcation. Additional bifurcations is pretty much the definition of complexity

Fair enough. Maybe it is more complex. But definitely more intuitive and less confusing. Because we can picture having different Xs and Ys. I can imagine having different "flavors" of experience (same structure different content). Idk why I would choose a model that suggests that that cannot be done. When it can be. And I definitely find that less confusing than unenlightened and Banno's "Xs and Ys don't exist". Your model of "Only X exists, there can be no alternative called Y" is just unsupported, although simpler and adequate for explanation.

I like m'Qualia.

And regardless of more complex or not, the variable being introduced is unimportant for any scientist. The flavors of experience don't matter, nor can we investigate what causes them, nor can we even know if they're being caused or not. So regardless, neurologists will continue on their merry way whichever model is adopted.

Quoting Olivier5

The quantity of information necessary to "see the world as it is" would be infinite.

Likewise any object.

Goodman, Problems and Projects:The notion of the structure of a work [or any object] is as specious as the notion of the structure of the world. A work, like the world, has as many different structures as there are ways of organising it, of subsuming it under categorical schemata dependent upon some or other structural affinities with and differences from other works.

Quoting Isaac

Maybe intersubjectivity also requires an element of understanding rather than mere expression (or sharing).
— Luke

Then wouldn't that be problematic for the idea that such feelings are intrinsically private?

Feelings are intrinsically private and unshareable only in the sense that I can't have yours and you can't have mine. But feelings are also non-intrinsically private and shareable in the sense that they can be expressed via language, body language, or otherwise. Intersubjectivity deals only with the latter.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Of course you can continue to deny that it's possible to look at something with one's mind

And I will. Do the test linked above, and find out how well you can hold a simple image in your mind for a few seconds. I cannot do it very well at all, and have to try and remember structures of symmetry and asymmetry. Eidetic memory is very very rare.

Quoting Luke

Your experience is the world, or is of the world?

I don't understand the distinction. I don't imagine I experience the whole world all at once, if that's what you mean.

Quoting unenlightened

Your experience is the world, or is of the world?
— Luke

I don't understand the distinction. I don't imagine I experience the whole world all at once, if that's what you mean.

It didn't make much sense to me either, but I was trying to make sense of this:

Quoting unenlightened

I experience, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.

You call your experience the world? Are you a solipsist, then?

Quoting bongo fury

Likewise any object.

Evidently. Literature presents a few cases of authors who tried to exhaust or at least give some justice to the infinite richness of a specific part of reality (often very 'small'). Robbe-Grillet wrote a full page about a tomato slice. Most famously, the manuscript of the first tome of In Search for Lost Time was rejected by three or four Parisian editors, essentially because, as the Ollendorff edition house wrote back to Proust: «Je ne puis comprendre qu'un monsieur puisse employer trente pages à décrire comment il se tourne et se retourne dans son lit avant de trouver le sommeil.»

Proust was trying to describe, in his introduction to the novel, how it felt to become asleep at night in one's bed, to progressively abandon oneself to sleep. He needed thirty pages for that exploration of a topic he would come back several times later in the novel. He ended up paying for the publication of his novel, which got some critical traction as well as much spite, enough "buzz" to find an editor.

Proust knew of course that reality was inexhaustible, infinitely rich. Hence the role of the artist, which is to explore and share his original, personal, creative but true view of it.

Quoting unenlightened

And I will. Do the test linked above, and find out how well you can hold a simple image in your mind for a few seconds.

Looking at something with the mind does not mean to hold an image of it, it means to think about it. There are many different ways of thinking about things, such as establishing associations and relationships. This is how language facilitates thinking, by replacing the image with a symbol. Then the mind can make associations between symbols (words or numbers) without the difficult task of holding visual images. Now we're not only talking about visual images, but aural images, as well. I'm sure you have the capacity to bring these aural images of words into your mind, from memory. And while you're looking at these aural images, consider how easy it is to hold the visual images of numerals and other mathematical symbols in your mind.

Quoting Olivier5

The map may not necessarily be objective. The "map" here being a metaphor for any representation, model or picture, including mental maps, which I guess are just maps written down on grey matter.

Ok. It's just that real maps really are objective accounts.

Quoting frank

Ok. It's just that real maps really are objective accounts.

Ok. I'm just worried about giving the impression I'm talking literally of real geographical maps. Rather I am speaking of any representation, geographic or not.

This clarification made, real cartographers try to be objective, that's true, but they are only human and they do display biases. Cartographers also work for states, princes, governments, who have strong political and other interests. These interests are often displayed on maps, eg through toponymy (the name of places). In territories that are disputed by several cultures or ethnicities (Palestine, Balkans etc etc), naming a village or a mountain on a map in one language rather than the other is to symbolically appropriate the place. To shape the intersubjective view of the territory.

During the European colonization of Africa, to map a place was often enough to claim it as yours. E.g. during the early 20th century, the Italians produced inaccurate maps of the Horn of Africa, showing as theirs places they never had control of. These maps then gave them a diplomatic advantage in their disputes with the Ethiopian Negus, who had no cartographer and could not prove those claims wrong. This is why the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea is disputed to this day, and it has led to several wars.

Quoting Olivier5

This is why the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea is disputed to this day, and it has led to several wars.

That's interesting. It highlights the existentialist point that the objective narrative is not necessarily closer to the truth. It's apt to be further away. The only thing you know for sure is what it feels like to be alive and feel what you feel. As soon as you place yourself in an environment (locate your self on a map), you're off to the realm of objectivity.

Quoting Olivier5

The quantity of information necessary to "see the world as it is" would be infinite. It is therefore impossible to see the world as it is: there's just too much to see.

The quantity of information necessary to "say" the world as it is might be infinite; one could not put it into words. But saying we don't see the world as it is isn't right, either. We do see things as they are - the sugar in the bowl, the tree in the garden. Sure, we don't see it all, but we do see enough to get by.

We might do well to avoid this trap: inventing a distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-as-experienced, only to find that we cannot say anything about the thing-in-itself; and thinking we have found some profound truth when all we have done is played a word game. We can say true statements about how things are, not just about our experiences of them.

Yeah... omniscience is not required for knowledge. We need not know everything in order to know some things. Just because we do not see everything as it is does not mean that we cannot see anything as it is.

Reply to creativesoul Reply to Banno

Agree, but beware also the profundity of "as it is":

Quoting Nelson Goodman: Languages of Art

"To make a faithful picture, come as close as possible to copying the object just as it is". This simple-minded injunction baffles me; for the object before me is a man, a swarm of atoms, a complex of cells, a fiddler, a friend, a fool and much more. If none of these constitute the object as it is, what else might? If all are ways the object is, then none is the way the object is.

Nelson Goodman: Languages of Art:If all are ways the object is, then none is the way the object is.

That brings us back around to the intersubjective reality:. for a long time, lines of perspective were a requirement for the production of realistic landscapes. There are many artists who still think that way. But that's not how the world really looks.

Quoting frank

But that's not how the world really looks.

It's not even the way the world (or even a manageable portion of it) looks from a particular perspective (e.g. the lens of a security camera). It's just a symbol that refers to that portion (and others such as its own) according to well-established rules.

Nelson Goodman: Languages of Art:If all are ways the object is, then none is the way the object is.

All of them and more compose what must be a unique reality, with many different facets.

Quoting bongo fury

. It's just a symbol that refers to that portion (and others such as its own) according to well-established rules.

Exactly.

Quoting creativesoul

omniscience is not required for knowledge. We need not know everything in order to know some things. Just because we do not see everything as it is does not mean that we cannot see anything as it is.

It just means our knowledge of it is and forever will be incomplete and perfectible.

Quoting frank

That brings us back around to the intersubjective reality:. for a long time, lines of perspective were a requirement for the production of realistic landscapes. There are many artists who still think that way. But that's not how the world really looks.

"...really..."

No.

Quoting Banno

We do see things as they are - the sugar in the bowl, the tree in the garden. Sure, we don't see it all, but we do see enough to get by.

Key words: to get by. Which a good way to put it. Our senses have been selected to help us get by, based on their utility to survive and procreate. That 's why we can taste the sugar in the bowl, and see a red apple in the tree.

Reply to Olivier5

If you like; but I've seen the phases of Venus. Some folk mistakenly think our senses a restriction.

I'd take a step back from senses, and hence from pragmatism, and replace meaning with use.


Edit: Popper seems to have at the back of his mind that the stuff we agree on - intersubjectively - is what is real. But if pushed he might have said that the stuff we agree on is the stuff we can use to get by. Wittgenstein might have pointed out that it's not actually necessary for us to agree as to what is the case in order to get by.

Quoting Olivier5

This clarification made, real cartographers try to be objective, that's true, but they are only human and they do display biases

Right, but I think your personal objective narrative goes unexamined for bias. It's pinned as reality, right?

Reply to bongo fury That's what we both said.

Too often a neophyte will present the profound truth that we cannot say anything true. You've seen it.

They'll next water that down to that we can't know how things are in themselves, only what we sense. Very many get stuck here, never noticing the phases of Venus. Their approach seems to be to do philosophy first, and let that lead their conviction, rather than to look around at what we do know.

They might move on to the further dilution that we can at least agree on the stuff around us, but that there are still things that are private, and hence that we others cannot possibly understand.

That's still mistaken.

Reply to frank Quoting bongo fury

It's just a symbol that refers to that portion (and others such as its own) according to well-established rules.

...then you should have no trouble setting those rules out, so we can share them.

The history of philosophy in the 20th century shows this to be a somewhat fraught exercise.

Have a go yourself, if you like. You'd think it would be easy.

Quoting Banno

but that there are still things that are private, and hence that we others cannot possibly understand.

That's still mistaken.

How could you possibly know that there is nothing in the experience of others that you could not understand? Huge groundless assumption!

Quoting Banno

.then you should have no trouble setting those rules out, so we can share them.

The rules referenced there are the rules of perspective in visual art.

Reply to Janus Yep.

As groundless as the assumption that there are such things.

Quoting frank

The rules referenced there are the rules of perspective in visual art.

Ah.


So what are they?

Reply to Banno

Pick a vanishing point, draw lines from the foreground to the vanishing point. Lay your stuff on the lines.

Reply to frank

Quoting bongo fury

It's just a symbol that refers to that portion (and others such as its own) according to well-established rules.

So... to teach someone to draw in perspective, we write "Pick a vanishing point, draw lines from the foreground to the vanishing point. Lay your stuff on the lines." on the board, then we're good? They know the rule, so they can draw in perspective.

Reply to Banno No, you'd draw it for them.

Quoting Olivier5

All of them and more compose what must be a unique reality, with many different facets.

So,

Quoting bongo fury

the notion of the structure of the world.
-- Goodman

?

Reply to frank :ok:

Rules... conventions... traditions... customs...

Quoting frank

Ok. It's just that real maps really are objective accounts.

You might think so, but it is always subjects who decide what to put on maps, therefore maps are inherently subjective.

Suppose there's an array of one hundred items in front of you, and you draw a map locating the relative position of twenty items. Regardless of how true your representation of the locations of those items is, your map is subjective, because you have chosen which items to map.

Quoting Banno

But saying we don't see the world as it is isn't right, either. We do see things as they are - the sugar in the bowl, the tree in the garden. Sure, we don't see it all, but we do see enough to get by.

The issue is the process by which, what we do see, is selected from everything else, just like in the example of drawing a map, above. There is a process which makes us see crystals of sugar rather than molecules of sugar. But we smell and taste molecules. And I don't think we sense atoms in any way. Since this process is properly "of the subject", then the world which we see is subjective. Agreement between us, because the process is similar between similar beings, makes our descriptions intersubjective. But this does not change the fact that the aspects sensed are selected for, by the living systems of the subjects, so it does not make it any less subjective.

Quoting Luke

I experience, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.
— unenlightened

You call your experience the world? Are you a solipsist, then?

EDIT:

I experience something, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.
— unenlightened

Is that any clearer? Thus I am wearing a red fleece today, "The fleece is red", not "my experience is red".

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Looking at something with the mind does not mean to hold an image of it, it means to think about it.

Then looking is a misleading way to express, which is what I told you a while back. Yes I can remember stuff and manipulate concepts. And this means that I have a mind. Some people, but very few, can remember and recall complete images. They have minds too, that work slightly differently.

Reply to Banno

Quoting Banno

We can say true statements about how things are, not just about our experiences of them.

Isn’t this just reinforcing the distinction you say we shouldn’t “invent”? A distinction between how things are and our experiences of them?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Regardless of how true your representation of the locations of those items is, your map is subjective, because you have chosen which items to map.

Right, and there are no doubt various influences on your choices that come through in your map-metaphor. If you start taking your metaphor as a higher truth, it would be good for someone to remind you that it's adulterated.

But what happens if there are no individual perspectives going into the production of the map?

IOW, if what we take to be individual perspectives are actually all cultural constructs? Is our map then also a purely cultural construct? What would the implications of that be?

Reply to Banno Almost as groundless, except I know there are things in my own experience I cannot verbalize or explain to myself, much less to you.

Quoting unenlightened

Then looking is a misleading way to express, which is what I told you a while back.

Actually it's a very common use of the word "look", you're just obstinate, refusing to look at anything unless it's in front of your eyes.

Quoting frank

But what happens if there are no individual perspectives going into the production of the map?

I don't see how that's possible. Have you ever seen a group of people working together before. It's all individual perspectives going into the production.

Quoting frank

IOW, if what we take to be individual perspectives are actually all cultural constructs? Is our map then also a purely cultural construct? What would the implications of that be?

There is a small number of people who work together to produce a map. There is a very large number of people who make up a culture. It would be a fallacy of composition to say that the culture constructs the map. We also have the same type of fallacy if we try to say that the individual's perspective is the perspective of the culture. It's plainly and simply illogical.

Quoting frank

Right, but I think your personal objective narrative goes unexamined for bias. It's pinned as reality, right?

The way I understand these words, your personal narrative is by definition subjective because your are a subject. Keeping in mind that what you perceive is only a partial and imperfect view is important to be able to hear what others are saying

Quoting Banno

Popper seems to have at the back of his mind that the stuff we agree on - intersubjectively - is what is real.

Popper was a realist. He saw intersubjectivity as a tool, as means to an end, which is knowledge.

Reply to bongo fury So what? There's no structure to things? Things are whatever we want them to be? Is that what you and this guy Goodman are saying?

To me, reality is precisely what imposes itself on us, what resists our fancy. What is, irrespective of what you think of it. More often than not, reality is what you don't want it to be.

Quoting Banno

replace meaning with use.

That can't be done. It leads to logical contradictions. Meaning is not disposable.

Quoting unenlightened

EDIT:

I experience something, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.

Is that any clearer?

It seems to run afoul of your earlier complaint, since it implies that you experience "the whole world at once".

Quoting unenlightened

Thus I am wearing a red fleece today, "The fleece is red", not "my experience is red".

What relationship is there between "the fleece is red" and your experience?

I get the sense you would prefer to reject subjective experience from your explanations entirely. After all, if subjective experience has no place in language then maybe it does not exist at all? For example, you said that your friend Richard did not have an experience of red, and instead you thought the experience of red might be an illusion for him. But an illusion is also an experience. If experience has taught me anything, it's that I experience things.

Quoting Olivier5

Popper was a realist. He saw intersubjectivity as a tool, as means to an end, which is knowledge.

Yep. Hence the next part of what I wrote.

Quoting Banno

Yep, I think you hit the nail on the head. So ?Olivier5 is quite happy to bring intersubjectivity in to the discussion, not noticing how it is used by, for comparison, ?Pfhorrest, ?simeonz and ?Mww.

So there's folk as for various reasons don't differentiate between what is true and what is believed - they suppose for example that nothing is true, just believed to a greater or lesser extent. They've various epistemological structures to reinforce this view, versions of coherentism or pragmatism, sometimes rejecting truth outright, sometimes redefining it in terms of a sort of popular vote or a final goal.

I'd just point out that being popular or being useful is not the very same as being true. I hope that's apparent.

But also I've no objection to the suggestion that some experiment that is repeated successfully should reinforce one's belief in the result; that's not at issue here, at least for me.

There seem to be some kind of a paradox hidden in this part of the philosophical universe. Scientific reproducibility, as understood in the obvious way, would have us believe that, well, more the merrier - the probability of something being real is directly proportional to the number of observers that report whatever that something is.

On the flip side, there exists a named fallacy that cautions us against such a mindset called, if I remember correctly, argumentum ad populum which basically denies any link between beliefs and the number of believers.

Perhaps, there's a difference, subtle or not, you be the judge, between observation and belief. The scientific principle of reproducibility is about observation and the argumentum ad populum fallacy concerns beliefs. While it's true that when it comes to observations, the number of observers has a major role to play in the authentication of the observation, the same doesn't apply, in fact the situation is the exact opposite in a sense, when beliefs are an issue.

Frankly, I have no clue. Both beliefs and reproducibility-based verification of observations seem inferential in character and hence, both should be equally fallacious if numbers are treated as a measure of truth/realness.

Quoting khaled

Because we can picture having different Xs and Ys. I can imagine having different "flavors" of experience (same structure different content). Idk why I would choose a model that suggests that that cannot be done.

I don't believe you can. I think what you're imagining has properties, on analysis, which render it non-epiphenomenonological. The thing you're imagining is actual experience (by which I mean the particular chain of responses and recall that's set in motion by whatever feature of perception we're talking about. The reason experience feels so unique is not because it's intrinsically so, but because the individual response is so complex and (to an extent) unending. When do you finish responding to things? The red carpet you crawled on as a baby - there's still neural firing going on today that was set in motion by the photons from that carpet hitting your eyes. The thing is, if you remove the distinguishable sub-types (colour, texture, whatever...) then your example of reaction YYY is absolutely impossible. Everyone's structure is going to be ABC, or DEF, or GHI because no-one is going to respond in the exact same way to three separate instances of anything. The only reason why we can say the colourblind have AAA, whist the normal sighted have AAB is if we've already but arbitrary boundaries on 'experience'. We arbitrarily say we're only interested in the activity of the V4 visual cortex, or we're only interested in the language of colour. Otherwise there's no reason to say our first two (the AA bit) were, in fact the same. They weren't the same experience, without a shadow of a doubt they were different, just not different in terms of the name we'd give to the colour component.

If we're to postulate an epiphenonena associated with physical neural activity, then everyone's epiphenimenal experience is going to be ABC, and DEF and so on. The only way round that is to constrain the type of difference in these epiphenomena we're focussing on, but in doing that we no longer can claim to be unaware of what constitute the physical difference, we're constraining that to colour, so the physical difference is going to be somewhere in the V4 region.

Quoting Luke

Feelings are intrinsically private and unshareable only in the sense that I can't have yours and you can't have mine.

But as I said earlier. That's not a property of the feelings. It's the same with noses, I can only have my nose, because, even if it were transplanted onto you, it would become your nose in the process.

Quoting Luke

But feelings are also non-intrinsically private and shareable in the sense that they can be expressed via language, body language, or otherwise. Intersubjectivity deals only with the latter.

Still not sure how it 'deals with'. Say I have a feeling X. I show you, using body-language, speech etc. You now know I have feeling X, you may even have feeling X too by the action of your mirror neurons. We've shared feeling X. So is feeling X inter-subjective now? That seems to leave the distinction between subjective and inter-subjective one of arbitrary historical record.

Quoting Isaac

That's not a property of the feelings.

Then what is it a property of?

Quoting Isaac

Say I have a feeling X. I show you, using body-language, speech etc. You now know I have feeling X, you may even have feeling X too by the action of your mirror neurons. We've shared feeling X. So is feeling X inter-subjective now? That seems to leave the distinction between subjective and inter-subjective one of arbitrary historical record.

We haven't "shared" the feeling in that we both partake of the same feeling. I have my feeling and you have yours, even when they occur at roughly the same place and time.

Perhaps it should be clarified that what is private is having the feeling and what is shareable is expressing the feeling, and that these are not the same thing. I might choose not to express a feeling, or at least try hard to suppress its expression. I can sometimes hide my pain or my thoughts or make the conscious effort not to react to (i.e. express) the feelings I have. The distinction between having feelings and expressing feelings is identical to the distinction between subjective and inter-subjective.

Quoting Luke

That's not a property of the feelings. — Isaac


Then what is it a property of?

You. The things you possess are a property fo you (and the law of the country you live in, when it comes to stuff not part of your body). The feeling 'pain' doesn't have the property {belongs to Luke}. How could it?

There's a feeling 'pain' in your body when you stub your toe, there's one in my body when I stub mine. The feeling 'pain' hasn't been changed in any way by whose body it's in, it's just a conceptual collection of worldly events (nociceptor activity, yelling, cringing, defence reflex etc...). When those events are centred on your body, it's your pain, when they're centred on my body it's my pain, but the collection of events that constitute 'pain' is a cultural, linguistic fact, it's not yours or mine. What 'pain' is is determined by the loose collection of events we're collectively prepared to accept to qualify for a use of the term. The props. They belong the the language community, not any individual.

Quoting Luke

We haven't "shared" the feeling in that we both partake of the same feeling. I have my feeling and you have yours, even when they occur at roughly the same place and time.

Perhaps it should be clarified that what is private is having the feeling and what is shareable is expressing the feeling, and that these are not the same thing.

Right. Same with noses. Having a nose is not the same as talking about a nose. But noses are not private as a consequence. Your nose is not the same as my nose. But noses are still not private as a consequence.

Quoting Isaac

noses are still not private as a consequence.

Noses are private on the inside.

Quoting Olivier5

Noses are private on the inside.

Rhinoscopy.

Reply to Isaac An intrusive procedure.

Reply to Isaac Quoting Isaac

then your example of reaction YYY is absolutely impossible. Everyone's structure is going to be ABC, or DEF, or GHI because no-one is going to respond in the exact same way to three separate instances of anything.

Sure but I was simplifying by only talking about color.

Quoting Isaac

but in doing that we no longer can claim to be unaware of what constitute the physical difference, we're constraining that to colour, so the physical difference is going to be somewhere in the V4 region.

Not necessarily. Differences in the V4 region, that we have studied, are structural physical differences.

I'm imagining having a different experience due to having a different content-determining physical difference. And as I've shown, we can never narrow down what the content-determining physical differences are. The difference between AAB and GGR, constricting it only to color, could be the difference in toe shape of the participants for all we know. Even narrowing it down to color, we have no evidence that the difference is in the V4 region.

However we can in fact know, that the difference between AAB and GGG is a difference in the V4 region, or the eyes themselves, or what have you. Because we have access to the dependent variable (the structure) and so can narrow down what physical differences cause it to change. Going from knowing that the V4 region is responsible for structural difference in experiences of color does not lead to the conclusion that it is also responsible for the content-determining differences.

Quoting Isaac

I don't believe you can.

I can imagine what the world would look like with all its colors inverted. I'm sure you can too.

Quoting Luke

I get the sense you would prefer to reject subjective experience from your explanations entirely.

What other kinds of experience are there?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Actually it's a very common use of the word "look", you're just obstinate, refusing to look at anything unless it's in front of your eyes.

:rofl: It's very common to be misled. I do see what you mean though. But in the context of a discussion of colour and colour experiences, Richard does not see what you mean by 'red', though I do. And this is using 'see' in its visual sense. I am obstinate about that.

Quoting Olivier5

So what? There's no structure to things? Things are whatever we want them to be? Is that what you and this guy Goodman are saying?

I think what he is saying is that good analysis of intersubjective representations on a non-cosmic scale is always hobbled by reasoning about their possible foundations on a cosmic scale. I.e. about, usually, objectivity.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

would be a fallacy of composition to say that the culture constructs the map. We also have the same type of fallacy if we try to say that the individual's perspective is the perspective of the culture. It's plainly and simply illogical.

I think the PLA was supposed to cover that.

Quoting Isaac

Feelings are intrinsically private and unshareable only in the sense that I can't have yours and you can't have mine.
— Luke

But as I said earlier. That's not a property of the feelings.
— Isaac

Then what is it a property of?
— Luke

You. The things you possess are a property fo you (and the law of the country you live in, when it comes to stuff not part of your body). The feeling 'pain' doesn't have the property {belongs to Luke}. How could it?

You're saying that pain is not a property of me. But aren't my pains a property of me? I have them. Otherwise, pain is not a property of anybody, so what's the purpose of talking about properties in relation to pain?

Also, just wondering: do you consider my body to be a property of me?

Quoting Isaac

There's a feeling 'pain' in your body when you stub your toe, there's one in my body when I stub mine. The feeling 'pain' hasn't been changed in any way by whose body it's in, it's just a conceptual collection of worldly events (nociceptor activity, yelling, cringing, defence reflex etc...). When those events are centred on your body, it's your pain, when they're centred on my body it's my pain, but the collection of events that constitute 'pain' is a cultural, linguistic fact, it's not yours or mine. What 'pain' is is determined by the loose collection of events we're collectively prepared to accept to qualify for a use of the term. The props. They belong the the language community, not any individual.

I take the moral of Wittgenstein's beetle to be that our sensation terms get their meanings from the expression of feelings - from our behaviours (e.g. your "conceptual collection of worldly events") - not from the feelings or private sensations themselves. Therefore, the word "pain" refers only to the outward expression of the feeling, not to the internal feeling.

@unenlightened's friend Richard learned to use the word "red" despite his difficulty or inability to distinguish red from green, or whatever his private sensation of red was like. Richard's colourblindness was no doubt detected/diagnosed on the basis of his verbal responses, not via the impossible act of looking at his private sensations. But it's unjustified to infer from the private language argument that we do not have private sensations.

Quoting Isaac

Perhaps it should be clarified that what is private is having the feeling and what is shareable is expressing the feeling, and that these are not the same thing.
— Luke

Right. Same with noses. Having a nose is not the same as talking about a nose. But noses are not private as a consequence. Your nose is not the same as my nose. But noses are still not private as a consequence.

I'm not saying feelings are private because having a feeling is not the same as expressing a feeling. I'm saying feelings are private because nobody else can have your feelings; they can only have their own. Noses and feelings are also dissimilar because your nose is not fleeting like a feeling, and you don't express your nose in any similar sense. You can also get a nose transplant but not a feeling transplant. And noses are not subjective (mind-dependent).

Quoting unenlightened

I get the sense you would prefer to reject subjective experience from your explanations entirely.
— Luke

What other kinds of experience are there?

None. I just added it in to emphasise what I took you to be rejecting.

Reply to frank
No, the PLA wasn't supposed to cover that, nor does it cover that.


Quoting unenlightened

It's very common to be misled. I do see what you mean though. But in the context of a discussion of colour and colour experiences, Richard does not see what you mean by 'red', though I do. And this is using 'see' in its visual sense. I am obstinate about that.

Well, I'll have to beg your pardon, and I hope you'll accept my apology for interrupting a discussion you were having with a number of other people. I can easily understand how you took me in the wrong direction. You didn't seem to have ever grasped what I was objecting to in the first place.

What I disputed was what you appeared to be asserting, that the difference between Richard's colour experience, and Unenlighten's colour experience, is non-existent, just because you apprehend it as insignificant.

Quoting unenlightened

I find this an entirely agreeable explanation, except that I take it one step further, and say that things that make absolutely no difference should be treated as non-existent. So I never speak of X or Y at all, but only of red apples and blood and green grass and colourblindness and such. Subjectivity disappears from the conversation, because there are no words for X or Y and can be none. There are apples and grass and colours, and blindness, and we agree abut that.

Notice your use of "absolutely" to qualify "no difference". That there is "no difference". is simply a subjective opinion, and you use "absolutely" in an attempt to make this judgement sound more authoritative. Furthermore, your mention of colourblindness indicates that you actually recognize such differences as being very real. Therefore you clearly acknowledge the reality of these differences, and your attempt to make them disappear by saying that they make no difference is a foolish error which will inevitably lead to misunderstanding when you assume that another person apprehends a specified thing in the same way that you do.

After that, our discourse went in two different directions. I wanted you to see that since these differences are real, then a person's experience of colour itself can be considered as a thing with properties, which we can talk about. It is necessary to assume it as a distinct thing with properties, in order to support such differences. So we can talk about that thing and its properties, and what make's one person's experience of colour different from another's, being distinct things. However, we need to allow that your experience and my experience are distinct things. If we premise that they are one and the same thing, then the fundamental laws of logic, identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle, get in the way, preventing us from talking about the reality of these differences. You seemed to insist that the only type of thing we ought to talk about is a thing which we can see with the eyes.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

No, the PLA wasn't supposed to cover that, nor does it cover that.

Gotcha. Nice smack down. So you'd agree that society is a prerequisite for individuality, that the subjective narrative is influenced by society, if only because such narratives are frequently directed at others, but the ego (I) itself can't be reduced to social interaction because that's just retarded. Is that your view?

Quoting Olivier5

Right, but I think your personal objective narrative goes unexamined for bias. It's pinned as reality, right? — frank


The way I understand these words, your personal narrative is by definition subjective because your are a subject.

I'm saying you carry an objective image of the world around with you and use it to make sense of your subjectivity and vice versa.

That objective image is yours because it's unique. You have your own little trails marked in it, your own blindspots and errors, your own mythology.

Yes, ideally, everyone has the same objective image and it's 100% accurate, but that's really a goal, it's never a reality.

So you have your own private map of the universe, though much of it is copied from textbooks.

Quoting frank

That objective image is yours because it's unique. You have your own little trails marked in it, your own blindspots and errors, your own mythology.

Very much so, but in what sense is this image objective?

Quoting Olivier5

Very much so, but in what sense is this image objective?

It's a map-like image. You don't see it out of your eyeballs. You see it with your mind's eye.

Why? What's your definition of objective?