Where are words?... Continued Discussion

I don't really see the point. Words in the mind are representations of the physical things. This makes them memories. If the question is where are memories, or how do memories exist, then this is a larger issue, one without an adequate answer. And it's not even close to being answered because we have no adequate understanding of the difference between the past (memories) and the future (anticipations).

So the use of words within the mind is an application of the past (memories) toward the future (anticipation). And we really have no idea of how memories differ from anticipations because we have no idea of how the past differs from the future. Focusing on the existence of words in the mind, which is clearly a unity of memory and anticipation will only enhance the ambiguity and confusion which exists in relation to this issue.

Quoting Agustino

For example - individuation. Individuation - that we see experiences as individual, and separate from one another, that we can even make such distinctions as red, blue, etc. - we don't get this concept from any one experience, or any multitude of experiences. Instead, in order to have more than one experience in the first place, individuation already must be possible.

I agree that individuation, or the capacity to individuate, is necessarily prior to the capacity to use words, and therefore prior to language in general. This is evident from the fact that in order to understand a statement we need to be able to individuate the words. Despite the fact that the statement is understood as a comprehensive "whole", this is a synthesis which only follows from analysing the parts individually and their relations to the other parts.

This appears to be a reflection of how we understand the world around us in general. We recognize, and come to understand individual things, objects, which though they are recognized as individuals, we still apprehend them as parts of a whole, so we proceed to understand their relationships with other individual objects. Since we apprehend the individuals as parts of a whole, we are driven to recreate that whole, as "the world", or "the universe", in synthesis, to further our understanding, just like we recreate "the statement" as a whole.

What people often fail to grasp is that the whole "the world" or 'the universe", which is referred to by these words is synthetic in this sense. We always understand composites by breaking them down into parts, then rebuilding the relationships in conceptual form, so that our understanding of such unities is always backward to their natural occurrence. It is always based in an analysis or deconstruction of the object, and this is backward to the creation of the object.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Words in the mind are representations of the physical things.

That's already obfuscation. The point of the article was that "words" are actually physical sounds. So they are not representations at all. So when I hear "apple", I experience the idea of apple - because there is a constant conjunction, due to habit, between hearing apple (experience 1) and feeling the conjoined properties of an actual apple, however vague (experience 2). So we're back to the Humean understanding where there are impressions and ideas (which are nothing but copies of impressions). Otherwise, we have the problem of explaining how it is that a sound can represent a taste + a sight + all the rest.

If that is the case, then we have a bit of a problem, because it seems that we have ideas for which there are no corresponding impressions. For we never have an impression of, for example, individuation. It is true that the impressions which we do have are individuated, but where is the impression of individuation itself? So then either individuation is a concept that emerges from other concepts (space, time, etc.) or it is a primary concept itself. From whence does such a concept originate? What does it mean to say that our mind has a capacity to abstract this concept from the impressions themselves? And if we were to say that, then it would follow that we do know something a priori about the impressions, namely that they are by necessity individuated.

Memory itself is another obfuscation. All that I mean by memory is precisely the habit of experiencing an actual apple however vaguely, everytime I hear the sound "apple". So memory is formed precisely of this constant conjunction - that is what memory is. Now the real question is why is there such a constant conjunction through time? Just cause our mind associates impressions that occur together with each other? And if so, what is this "mind" of ours, and why does it happen to have this property to associate impressions?

From another interview:

Parks (with my bolds):But the implications of this “official” view are profound. First it suggests our perceptions are radically separate from the external world, fenced off inside the skull. Second, and as a result, that we all live in error and need the authority of science to tell us what reality is really like. So it gives scientists considerable power.

Manzotti:Right, so maybe what we need to do is to get beyond the idea that consciousness is a “representation” of the world at all. Maybe it is simply reality. Maybe, as I hinted at the beginning, we have to do away with that subject/object distinction which lies behind this whole discussion.

Quoting Agustino

The point of the article was that "words" are actually physical sounds. So they are not representations at all.

That's not at al what the article actually says:

So, direct perception of sights and sounds in the world outside the body are very quickly ordered and colored by language inside our heads. “Once a thing is conceived in the mind,” wrote the poet Horace in the first century BC, “the words to express it soon present themselves.” And we call this thinking. All our experience can be reshuffled, interconnected, dissected, evoked, or willfully altered in language, and these thoughts are then stored in our brains.

Notice in particular the phrases "language inside our heads", and "we call this thinking".

Quoting Agustino

So when I hear "apple", I experience the idea of apple - because there is a constant conjunction, due to habit, between hearing apple (experience 1) and feeling the conjoined properties of an actual apple, however vague (experience 2). So we're back to the Humean understanding where there are impressions and ideas (which are nothing but copies of impressions). Otherwise, we have the problem of explaining how it is that a sound can represent a taste + a sight + all the rest.

This is actually where the obfuscation is, because the article is talking about words within our heads. Now you have jumped immediately to what the words are associated with in our minds, instead of considering what the author wants us to consider, and that is the existence of the words themselves within our minds.

The rest of your post, concerning individuation is irrelevant now, because individuation is already implied, as a necessary condition, for the existence of words in our heads. The words exist as individuals within our minds, and we can scramble them around creating different combinations in the process of thinking. What any particular word is associated with, what you call the "impression", is dependent on the combinations which one creates by scrambling the words around in one's head.

Quoting Agustino

Memory itself is another obfuscation. All that I mean by memory is precisely the habit of experiencing an actual apple however vaguely, everytime I hear the sound "apple". So memory is formed precisely of this constant conjunction - that is what memory is. Now the real question is why is there such a constant conjunction through time? Just cause our mind associates impressions that occur together with each other? And if so, what is this "mind" of ours, and why does it happen to have this property to associate impressions?

You don't seem to apprehend the fact that the mind creates these associated impressions. So any such "constant conjunction through time", is just what the mind has created, and it need not be constant. This is very evident from the fact that an individual's memory of a certain event will change as time passes, such that an event from last week will be remembered in a particular way, but if the person still remembers that event in thirty years from now, the memory will most likely not be the same. That is because to remain the same, the memory must be recollected in the exact same way each time.

The description of memory as "a constant conjunction through time", therefore is not accurate. Memory is better described in terms of repetition. We repeat to ourselves, often using words, over and over again, what has happened, and this is the act of remembering. So memory is really an habitual act. The fact that our memories change over time indicates that memory is not a case of putting something somewhere and later recollecting it, it is a case of knowing how to reproduce that activity of recollecting.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

That's not at al what the article actually says:

That's what Tim Parks says, I don't care about him. He's interviewing the other guy. What the other guy says matters, Tim is just making noise there.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Notice in particular the phrases "language inside our heads", and "we call this thinking".

And you ought to notice how the other guy corrects him. So read it more carefully, I can't do that for you.

Parks: But we were talking about words, Riccardo, not sofas and armchairs! Last time we talked about thinking things directly; this time we’re considering thinking in language, which is surely different.

Manzotti: Not at all. Words are really not so different from sofas and armchairs. They are external objects that do things in the world and, like other objects, they produce effects in our brains and thus eventually, through us, in the world. The only real difference is that, when it comes to what we call thinking, words are an awful lot easier to juggle around and rearrange than bits of furniture.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This is actually where the obfuscation is, because the article is talking about words within our heads.

Nope.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You don't seem to apprehend the fact that the mind creates these associated impressions.

No, the mind is a no-thing as far as I'm concerned. What is "mind"? Until it's clarified what that even means, you're saying nonsense by the "mind" creates.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This is very evident from the fact that an individual's memory of a certain event will change as time passes, such that an event from last week will be remembered in a particular way, but if the person still remembers that event in thirty years from now, the memory will most likely not be the same. That is because to remain the same, the memory must be recollected in the exact same way each time.

Yes, so this constant conjunction isn't always the same. There must be an input from the imagination to fill in gaps of vagueness.

Quoting Agustino

I've read the interview, but it all seems to be a "back to Hume" moment.

I am wary of this article. Take the remarks about colour,

Manzotti: In 1969, the anthropologists Brent Berlin and Paul Kay established that color names do not change the colors one sees, and later studies have confirmed this.

This is a scientific realist view of the situation and seems likely to be mistaken. Barbara Saunders has a trenchant critique of the Berlin/Kay view here. I am not clear if the rest of the Manzotti view is scientific-sounding assertion rather than based on good science.

Reply to Agustino
Oh sorry Augustino. I missed the whole interview. I read the first part, thought it was the end of the article, and lost interest. I'll read the rest and get back to you.

Quoting mcdoodle

This is a scientific realist view of the situation and seems likely to be mistaken. Barbara Saunders has a trenchant critique of the Berlin/Kay view here.

Can you please cite the parts of the article you linked to which discredits the views of Manzotti?

Manzotti:color names do not change the colors one sees

Also take a look at this. It seems that people can still perceive colors, even when they group them differently.

Reply to Agustino After reading through the interview, I would say that my original criticism still holds. Manzotti does not adequately distinguish between past and future, memory and anticipation. So he speaks about mental activity as "rearranging causal relations with past events". Memories of external objects are past events, but we still must account for the act of "rearranging", and this is the creative act which is driven by anticipation. Anticipation cannot be validated by external objects because it's object is non-existent, and so this mental act, the creative act of rearranging, also cannot be described in reference to external objects. And so Manzotti continues to speak about rearranging, and juggling, and learning, without accounting for the agent of this act. He answers this with ambiguity "I am nothing", or "I am part of everything". But the problem is that his position requires an agent, and this brings us right back to the internal. There is an internal agent which is doing the rearranging, the creating. So it isn't really an externalist position at all.

Quoting Agustino

No, the mind is a no-thing as far as I'm concerned. What is "mind"? Until it's clarified what that even means, you're saying nonsense by the "mind" creates.

Very clearly there has to be something which anticipates the non-existent states of the future, something which does the rearranging, which does the juggling, which does the learning. If you don't like the word "mind", then use "soul", or "agent", but the brain cannot completely account for this creativity because the brain is just another object. And that object only has past memories, and past memories cannot account for the anticipation of non-existent objects of the future.

Quoting Agustino

Yes, so this constant conjunction isn't always the same. There must be an input from the imagination to fill in gaps of vagueness.

So the input, from the imagination, and this is the creative factor, cannot be accounted for by the memories of past occurrences. It must be accounted for by reference to the anticipation of future occurrences. How can you account for the brain "representing" something which has not yet occurred? And this is what prediction is.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Manzotti does not adequately distinguish between past and future, memory and anticipation.

What's there to distinguish? And why is this relevant?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Memories of external objects are past events, but we still must account for the act of "rearranging", and this is the creative act which is driven by anticipation.

What do you mean by "rearranging" and why would this be driven by anticipation?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Anticipation cannot be validated by external objects because it's object is non-existent, and so this mental act, the creative act of rearranging, also cannot be described in reference to external objects. And so Manzotti continues to speak about rearranging, and juggling, and learning, without accounting for the agent of this act. He answers this with ambiguity "I am nothing", or "I am part of everything". But the problem is that his position requires an agent, and this brings us right back to the internal. There is an internal agent which is doing the rearranging, the creating. So it isn't really an externalist position at all.

Yes, you're right, it's not externalist. It collapses the distinction between external and internal.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And so Manzotti continues to speak about rearranging, and juggling, and learning, without accounting for the agent of this act.

Why is an agent needed? All that is there is the change from one impression to the next (or likewise from one idea to the next), why is there an agent needed to do the changing? Why can't the changing itself be basic?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Very clearly there has to be something which anticipates the non-existent states of the future, something which does the rearranging, which does the juggling, which does the learning. If you don't like the word "mind", then use "soul", or "agent", but the brain cannot completely account for this creativity because the brain is just another object. And that object only has past memories, and past memories cannot account for the anticipation of non-existent objects of the future.

I disagree. The whole point of the article, as I see it, is to strike at this distinction between inner and outer, internal and external. Nothing is internal or external, the distinction is false. All there exists is impressions and copies of impressions (ideas). What is external here? There is no external object to the impressions - the impressions themselves are the objects.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So the input, from the imagination, and this is the creative factor, cannot be accounted for by the memories of past occurrences. It must be accounted for by reference to the anticipation of future occurrences. How can you account for the brain "representing" something which has not yet occurred? And this is what prediction is.

Simple. The mind assumes that the same associations it's seen in the past will continue into the future. So if it finds something that smells like pineapple, but cannot see it, for whatever reason, then it will expect it to be pineapple. Remember that pineapple, on this account, is just a bundle of different impressions, smell being just one of them. So when we say it will expect it to be pineapple, we simply mean that the experience of the smell of pineapple, will recall/cause vague experiences of the taste of pineapple, and all the other previous impressions associated with it.

And when I say "the mind" above, that's just a way of talking. In reality, there would just be the association.

The point of the article was that "words" are actually physical sounds.

Say if this was the case, if words were like sign-posts that had no meaning associated with them. Then it would require an infinite regress of interpretations. That is, if you postulate a symbol or sign, that needs to be interpreted by inner-meaning, interpretation requires a interpreter. A interpreter's interpretation itself is subject to this issue of connection. This much is in Wittgenstein.

Quoting Marty

Say if this was the case, if words were like sign-posts that had no meaning associated with them.

They do have meaning associated with them. Hearing a certain combination of sounds (impression 1) evokes another set of impressions (however vaguely) which in the past were associated with it. So hearing the word "apple" invokes the impressions of an actual apple. There is no infinite regress and no problem.

But then the sound isn't distinct from meaning, but has a coextensive conceptual meaning. Unless its just a mere sound, in which case would go to the problem I mentioned earlier.

Quoting Agustino

What's there to distinguish? And why is this relevant?

It's relevant because of Manzotti's claim that mental activity is a rearranging of past things. But it is clear that in the mind there is future things as well as past things. So mental activity cannot be strictly a rearranging of past events, it also relates the past events to future events. So if he wants to discuss the rearranging of past things he needs to provide a means of separating past from future, such that he is discussing only past things, not past things in their relation to future things..

Quoting Agustino

What do you mean by "rearranging" and why would this be driven by anticipation?

"Rearranging" is Manizotti's word. And in his example of imagining furniture in a future home, this rearrangement is driven by anticipation. Also. when he uses "juggling" and "learning", these are both activities which are driven by anticipation of the future.

Quoting Agustino

Yes, you're right, it's not externalist. It collapses the distinction between external and internal.

No it clearly doesn't collapse that distinction, it makes it more evident, because the way he describes things implies a distinction between the internal agent which is carrying out these activities such as rearranging, juggling, and learning, and the things, the objects which form the past memories which the agent is engaged with in these activities.

Quoting Agustino

Why is an agent needed? All that is there is the change from one impression to the next (or likewise from one idea to the next), why is there an agent needed to do the changing? Why can't the changing itself be basic?

An agent is implied by Manizotti's description. Can you imagine rearranging, juggling, or learning, being carried out without an agent which is carrying out this activity?

Quoting Agustino

I disagree. The whole point of the article, as I see it, is to strike at this distinction between inner and outer, internal and external. Nothing is internal or external, the distinction is false. All there exists is impressions and copies of impressions (ideas). What is external here? There is no external object to the impressions - the impressions themselves are the objects.

If that is Manizotti's aim, then he clearly fails. He refers to words as well as other objects as "external objects". I think it's your turn to reread the interview.

Quoting Agustino

Simple. The mind assumes that the same associations it's seen in the past will continue into the future.

And you criticized me for using the word "mind", saying that it is "no-thing" and a term that needs clarification. You didn't allow me to say that the mind "creates" something, but now you've turned around to say that the mind "assumes" something. What's the difference between creating something and assuming something?

We're talking about how mental activity turns past memories toward the future events. If your claim is that this is done through the means of assumptions, then we must account for where these assumptions come from. As I said already, I believe the mind creates them. Where do you think they come from?

Quoting Agustino

So if it finds something that smells like pineapple, but cannot see it, for whatever reason, then it will expect it to be pineapple. Remember that pineapple, on this account, is just a bundle of different impressions, smell being just one of them. So when we say it will expect it to be pineapple, we simply mean that the experience of the smell of pineapple, will recall/cause vague experiences of the taste of pineapple, and all the other previous impressions associated with it.

See, you explain expectation through assumption. If it smells and looks like a pineapple one "assumes" that it will taste like a pineapple. But this is not really an assumption at all, it is a conclusion of inductive reasoning. Now we have to account for the mental performance which is inductive reasoning. This is to produce a generality from particular instances. A generality cannot be described as "a bundle of different impressions",. This would be a category mistake. A conclusion, a principle, which the agent can act on, in the future, is produced from the bundle of impressions. So there is a process of reduction whereby a bundle of impressions is reduced to a single (general) principle. Isn't this what we call abstraction?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It's relevant because of Manzotti's claim that mental activity is a rearranging of past things.

Yes, that is true.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

But it is clear that in the mind there is future things as well as past things.

That's not clear at all to me. How are there future things in the mind?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And in his example of imagining furniture in a future home, this rearrangement is driven by anticipation.

How is it driven by anticipation? He's imagining possible combinations, has nothing to do with the future as such. His purpose for imagining those possible combinations may be because he wants to see what ways there are to arrange his future house, but there's no necessary tie to the future in simply imagining possible combinations.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Also. when he uses "juggling" and "learning", these are both activities which are driven by anticipation of the future.

How?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

No it clearly doesn't collapse that distinction, it makes it more evident, because the way he describes things implies a distinction between the internal agent which is carrying out these activities such as rearranging, juggling, and learning, and the things, the objects which form the past memories which the agent is engaged with in these activities.

No, you don't get the gist of his enterprise at all. Here's another interview:

Manzotti: The enactivists toy with the first switch, without actually turning it all the way to not separate. They see that consciousness can’t be reduced to a property of the goings-on in the brain, so they start to look outside. But instead of considering the external object as such, they look at our dealings with the object, our handling the object, our manipulating the object, believing that consciousness is a product of the actions we perform. At the end of the day, though, the object remains doggedly separate from the subject who experiences it. And unfortunately, as we said last time, actions, whether they be eye movements, or touch, or chewing, are no better than neural firings when it comes to accounting for experience. How can my actions explain why the sky is blue or sugar sweet?

Parks: Okay, let’s stop playing with that switch and set it determinedly on subject and object not separate. As for the second switch, let’s again start with a subject that is not physical, since I suspect you are going to give that position short shrift.

Manzotti: Yes. This is the territory of Bishop Berkeley and Leibniz in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Crudely speaking, they proposed that subject and object become identical, the same thing, but both in a completely non-physical world.

His position is in the right-hand bottom corner. But I would push it even further, and argue that even the physical/non-physical distinction makes no sense.

So there is no internal agent at all carrying out the actions. The actions themselves are the agent. Why do we need an agent who is different from the actions themselves?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

An agent is implied by Manizotti's description. Can you imagine rearranging, juggling, or learning, being carried out without an agent which is carrying out this activity?

Yes, I can imagine rearranging, juggling, and learning happening by themselves, without an agent.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If that is Manizotti's aim, then he clearly fails. He refers to words as well as other objects as "external objects". I think it's your turn to reread the interview.

I did read it carefully. He refers to it as "external objects" the same way I referred to it as "mind" when you objected in the next paragraph, or when we say "the sun goes down" (of course in truth we know it doesn't really go down, it's just a manner of speaking).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And you criticized me for using the word "mind", saying that it is "no-thing" and a term that needs clarification. You didn't allow me to say that the mind "creates" something, but now you've turned around to say that the mind "assumes" something. What's the difference between creating something and assuming something?

I already addressed this:
Quoting Agustino

And when I say "the mind" above, that's just a way of talking. In reality, there would just be the association.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We're talking about how mental activity turns past memories toward the future events. If your claim is that this is done through the means of assumptions, then we must account for where these assumptions come from. As I said already, I believe the mind creates them. Where do you think they come from?

No, my claim is that there is no projection towards the future, just old ideas coming to mind when new impressions are encountered through old associations.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Where do you think they come from?

They are triggered by new impressions. New impressions are similar to old impressions, so they trigger the very same conjunction of ideas that previous impressions triggered.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If it smells and looks like a pineapple one "assumes" that it will taste like a pineapple.

No, there is no question of assumption. One just experiences the vague impression (ie idea) of the taste of pineapple upon seeing another impression closely associated with it.

Quoting Agustino

Can you please cite the parts of the article you linked to which discredits the views of Manzotti?

I think that Barbara Saunders raises legitimate philosophical and scientific doubts about Manzotti's remarks about colour, including a purported genealogy from Gladstone through Rivers, culminating in

[quote="Manzotti"] In 1969, the anthropologists Brent Berlin and Paul Kay established that color names do not change the colors one sees, and later studies have confirmed this.{/quote]

I don't know what you mean by 'parts of the article'. The whole article opposes the evolutionary model behind the Berlin-Kay model. There are many other articles by Saunders propounding this view, I just cited the most easily accessible one, and there is other literature supporting her philosophical doubts. I don't think this 'discredits' Manzotti, but I certainly think his views on color are glib and should take alternative paradigms into account.

Reply to mcdoodle Well, so that article doesn't contain a bit of information which actually invalidates the notion I quoted? Can you summarise for me then why it would invalidate it?

Quoting Marty

But then the sound isn't distinct from meaning, but has a coextensive conceptual meaning.

Yes, so long as you understand that "concept" means just a vague impression.

Quoting Agustino

there are some concepts which we do not encounter in experience, but which are nevertheless necessary for that experience to be possible in the first place.

Bootstrapping. The operating system loads itself.

Quoting Agustino

For example - individuation. Individuation - that we see experiences as individual, and separate from one another, that we can even make such distinctions as red, blue, etc. - we don't get this concept from any one experience, or any multitude of experiences. Instead, in order to have more than one experience in the first place, individuation already must be possible.

This needs a lot of work.

For starters, red does not work well as an example of an individual. It's lots of different things.

But to cut through to the core, how is learning what red is different from learning how to use the word "red"?

I don't think it is. If there are those who think that there is something more to red than how we use the word 'red', set it forth.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Words in the mind are representations of the physical things.

So red is represented by what physical things?

Your answers always reduce to "the red ones!"

I don't think that helps.

Quoting Banno

I don't think it is. If there are those who think that there is something more to red than how we use the word 'red', set it forth.

Different reds could be recognized in the environment even if the word "red" were nonexistent.

Reply to Janus Sure. What would that look like?

The bird learns to push the red leaver.

The point here is that red is not a thing in the head so much as a relation between behaviour and the way things are.

Quoting Banno

But to cut through to the core, how is learning what red is different from learning how to use the word "red"?

Words are irrelevant, it's concepts that matter. So sure, learning what red is, is the same as learning how to use the concept of red. Learning how to use the word "red" on the other hand is not very significant in and of itself.

Quoting Banno

Bootstrapping. The operating system loads itself.

How is it possible for the operating system to load itself? In order for that to be possible, certain things must already exist such as electricity.

Quoting Agustino

in order to have more than one experience in the first place, individuation already must be possible.

You have a weird way of thinking.
We do not need a concept of individuation to have experience. Experience underlies all conceptualising.
Living things from bacteria, to trees, to elephants big or tiny all experience living. none of them show any evidence of having a concept of "individuality".

Quoting charleton

We do not need a concept of individuation to have experience

Where does the concept of individual or individuation come from then?

Reply to Agustino Duh.

Have you thought about the possibility that is might come from experience?

Quoting charleton

Have you thought about the possibility that is might come from experience?

Sure. So in experience we find impressions - the impressions of red, yellow, hard, soft, sweet, sour, etc. Where amongst those impressions is there an impression of "individual"?

Reply to Agustino Think about child psychology.
From the womb in the first couple of years is where conceptualising starts to occur.
But experience predicates it all.
Quoting Agustino

mpressions of red, yellow, hard, soft, sweet, sour, etc. Where amongst those impressions is there an impression of "individual"?

Why are you asking that?
Proprioception, is an innate sense with which we experience our own bodies.

Quoting Agustino

Well, so that article doesn't contain a bit of information which actually invalidates the notion I quoted? Can you summarise for me then why it would invalidate it?

It was just a comment on the article, I wasn't trying to invalidate anything.

Quoting charleton

But experience predicates it all.

I agree. It doesn't follow though that the concept comes from experience itself.

Quoting charleton

Why are you asking that?
Proprioception, is an innate sense with which we experience our own bodies.

What does this have to do with the concept of an "individual"? I don't mean just and "individual" as in a person, but ANY individual whatsoever - the impression of red is an individual, the impression of blue is an individual, etc.

Reply to Agustino You started by saying we could have no experience without the concept of self as individual. Are you now rejecting that position?
yes/no?
Now you ask where the concept comes from?
If you answered yes above, spend some time thinking this through before you quiz me to death with you confrontational approach.
If you said no. then I have no idea why you are asking where it comes from. I assume you are going to say it has something to do with god, and so I bow out of the conversation with you.

Quoting charleton

You started by saying we could have no experience without the concept of self as individual. Are you now rejecting that position?
yes/no?

Well that's not what I said. I said we cannot have any experience without individuating things - into red, blue, sweet, sour, etc. That individuation cannot come from the senses. I still maintain exactly the same thing.

Quoting Agustino

in order to have more than one experience in the first place, individuation already must be possible.

Reply to charleton Yes, what about it? That means exactly what I said above. Individuation does not mean just individuation into a person as distinct from other persons. It means individuation of anything and everything.

Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue (Natalie Wolchover, Live Science, Jun 2012)

Calling roses, strawberries, blood, apples, Santa, etc red is a matter of appropriate language use (or predication).

In a different sense, the question posed by the Live Science article above may not be quite right.
That special format of personal experiences we call red (qualia) is more like an occurrence.
Something that happens for the experiencer, either part of a larger process (perception), or otherwise just a personal occurrence (dream, memory recall, hallucination).
Sometimes the process can go awry, e.g. synesthesia, phantom pain, hallucination.
Strictly speaking, such qualia happen for individuals, so "your red" being "my blue" from the article seems misleading; the article is worthwhile, though.
Fortunately we're rather alike, so unlike echolocation of bats, we can identify sufficiently shared experiences and call some of them red.

Quoting Agustino

we don't get thisconcept from any

As I said we do not need this CONCEPT to have experience.
You need to take more care with words

Quoting Agustino

It means individuation of anything and everything.

This is about conceptualising. All experience is prior.

Quoting charleton

This is about conceptualising. All experience is prior.

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from?

Reply to Agustino GOD?
LOL

Quoting Agustino

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from?

There is no "IT". It is just an abstraction you are conceptualizing.

Reply to charleton We weren't discussing God, I asked you an epistemological question. How do we know "individuation" granted that we must already be able to individuate in order to experience anything?

Quoting charleton

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from?
— Agustino


There is no "IT". It is just an abstraction you are conceptualizing.

Quoting charleton

There is no "IT". It is just an abstraction you are conceptualizing.

That's not true. Let me illustrate. Abstraction is something that happens after experience. For experience to occur, I must be able to distinguish between things - that means to see red, and blue, and feel hard and soft, etc. Red, blue, hard, soft, etc. are sense impressions. But all these sense impressions presuppose individuation, since they are all individuals, distinguished from each other. Red is not blue and is not hard, etc. So where does this individuation come from, if it is already required before I can perceive sense impressions?

Quoting Agustino

Abstraction is something that happens after experience

That's what I have been saying all along, obviously.
Go back and read your first post.

Quoting charleton

That's what I have been saying all along, obviously.
Go back and read your first post.

Can you please answer the question:

Quoting Agustino

So where does this individuation come from, if it is already required before I can perceive sense impressions?

I know that the concept of individuation will only enter awareness AFTER experience, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist prior to experience as an activity.

Reply to Agustino

For example - individuation. Individuation - that we see experiences as individual, and separate from one another, that we can even make such distinctions as red, blue, etc. - we don't get this concept from any one experience, or any multitude of experiences. Instead, in order to have more than one experience in the first place, individuation already must be possible.

No, I think individuation is a developmental achievement. We can watch a baby track a ball as it rolls by her in the first few months, when the ball rolls out of view the infants stops looking and puts its attention elsewhere, then a couple of months latter, the baby stretches its neck or crawls to see what happened to the ball, where it went. Object permanence is learned and probably a necessary step prior to individuation, language learning and the rest.

I think individuation is tied to the individual's body, that the entire body forms the basis for our interactions with the world. I don't think that a child understands the implications of its individualization without language, and it does not understand itself as a responsible agent until they are 4/7 yrs of age.

Surprised. No discussion of the imagination, at least that I noticed.

Quoting Cavacava

I think individuation is tied to the individual's body, that the entire body forms the basis for our interactions with the world. I don't think that a child understands the implications of its individualization without language, and it does not understand itself as a responsible agent until they are 4/7 yrs of age.

You're already stuck in a theoretical understanding here, where you assume that you are a child, with a physical body, etc. That's not interesting. I'm interested in how you arrived at this framework.

Quoting Cavacava

No, I think individuation is a developmental achievement. We can watch a baby track a ball as it rolls by her in the first few months, when the ball rolls out of view the infants stops looking and puts its attention elsewhere, then a couple of months latter, the baby stretches its neck or crawls to see what happened to the ball, where it went. Object permanence is learned and probably a necessary step prior to individuation, language learning and the rest.

This doesn't make sense. How can the boy track the ball if he cannot individuate it?

Quoting Agustino

This doesn't make sense. How can the boy track the ball if he cannot individuate it?

I agree with you. The power to individuate is a part of our instinct.

You're already stuck in a theoretical understanding here, where you assume that you are a child, with a physical body, etc. That's not interesting. I'm interested in how you arrived at this framework.

Piaget and Gopnik, et al, people who study babies behavior.

This doesn't make sense. How can the boy track the ball if he cannot individuate it?

To individuate is to "distinguish from others of the same kind; single out". A babies ability to follow patterns is from birth, but that does not enable them to distinguish objects as separate from one another or from themselves for that matter.

Quoting Cavacava

To individuate is to "distinguish from others of the same kind; single out". A babies ability to follow patterns is from birth

So it is prior to experience?

Reply to Agustino

Part of what it means to see at least for humans

Quoting Cavacava

Part of what it means to see at least for humans

So is it prior to the experience of seeing?

Reply to Agustino In the same way that the body is prior to the experience of seeing.

Quoting Cavacava

In the same way that the body is prior to the experience of seeing.

That makes no sense to me philosophically (at least for the purposes of this thread). It only makes sense within a limited scientific discourse. That scientific discourse is arrived at how? By means of experience. So what is arrived at by means of experience is used to tell me what happens prior to experience? :s

The notion of a body is arrived at within experience, and hence makes no sense out of it.

Reply to Agustino

The notion of a body is arrived at within experience, and hence makes no sense out of it.

We are clearly talking past each other here.

We are born with certain physical structures which enable us to experience the world, and how we see it depends on the adequate functioning of our physical senses.

Our ability to see colors is not learned, it is embedded in us, the same for pattern recognition, but it is from this information that we learn things such as object permanence, individuation, causality... that the truck is red.

Quoting Cavacava

We are born with certain physical structures which enable us to experience the world, and how we see it depends on the adequate functioning of our physical senses.

How do you know this? Is it because you've developed certain concepts based on experience, such as bodies, etc. and then applied them out of experience? How do you know what a physical structure is? You had experience I presume - and you started differentiating things like thoughts, and things like trees. You called the latter physical and the former mental. And yet, they are all within your experience. How can there be a non-experienced physical thing?! What would that even be?

Quoting Agustino

That's not clear at all to me. How are there future things in the mind?

When I think about something I will do tomorrow, that, "what I will do" is a thing in my mind, and it is a future thing.

Quoting Agustino

How is it driven by anticipation? He's imagining possible combinations, has nothing to do with the future as such.

In the example, he is thinking about an apartment he will furnish in the future. The act of rearranging is clearly driven by this anticipation. In all these acts, which Manzotti refers to, rearranging the furniture, juggling words, and the child learning, we can ask why does the person who does this, do this. The answer is always that the person anticipates a future need.

Quoting Agustino

His position is in the right-hand bottom corner. But I would push it even further, and argue that even the physical/non-physical distinction makes no sense.

So there is no internal agent at all carrying out the actions. The actions themselves are the agent. Why do we need an agent who is different from the actions themselves?

If that is his position, then his enterprise clearly fails for the reasons I've indicated. First, he doesn't properly distinguish between past and future, such that all objects in the mind, are explained by encounters with past objects (memories). He provides no explanation for the encounters in our minds with future objects (anticipation). Second, the terminology he uses reduces all things in the mind to "external objects", such that words are external objects. So he does not dissolve the externalist/internalist division, he just describes a hard core externalism.

Quoting Agustino

Yes, I can imagine rearranging, juggling, and learning happening by themselves, without an agent.

Well I'd like to see you describe that. An "agent" is a source of activity, an efficient cause. I really don't know how, you could explain any rearranging, juggling, or learning, going on without a source of activity. And the problem with Manzotti's claims, is that unless the agent is within the human being, as the human mind or soul or something like that, then the source of activity is the encounter with the external object which brings that object into the person's mind. But there is a break in the chain of efficient causation when the object goes into memory. And in reality, the efficient causation which is required to reproduce that object (recollect) is derived from the human agent's anticipation of a future thing, as per Manzotti's examples. It cannot be anything present to the individual which acts as the efficient cause of recollection, because Manzotti has already described the situation as the person's anticipation of the future occurrence as the efficient cause of these activities.

Quoting Agustino

No, my claim is that there is no projection towards the future, just old ideas coming to mind when new impressions are encountered through old associations.

This is in contradiction to Manzotti. He claims a projection towards the future. And he needs to include this projection toward the future, because it is a very real aspect of human activity. If it is your desire to produce a position without this projection toward the future, then you have just created a meaningless, unreal position. Why argue from a completely false premise?

Quoting Banno

So red is represented by what physical things?

In Manzotti's argument, the word "red" within your mind, is just an extension of the physical existence of the word "red" which you have already encountered. I called it a representation, but Augustine wouldn't like that because Augustine seems to think that Manizotti has devised a way to dissolve the division between the physical object and what I called the representation of it in the mind. The existence of the word is supposed to have a temporal extension in your mind, such that when you recollect the word, to think with it, you are not reproducing the word, it is just a continuation of the word's existence, it's temporal extension.

The problems with this position are numerous. One criticism I had, which Augustine failed to address, is why we need numerous encounters with the same word, in order to properly use that word. Augustine talks about a "bundle" of "impressions". But this doesn't account for what appears to be some form of inductive reasoning whereby the bundle of impressions seems to transform into one general principle which we call knowing how to use the word. The numerous encounters, what Augustine calls the bundle, reoccurring in each single instance of usage, is clearly inconsistent with Manzotti's position, which describes as an extension of existence of particular occurrences.

Reply to Agustino

You called the latter physical and the former mental.

No, those are your words not mine.

And yet, they are all within your experience. How can there be a non-experienced physical thing?! What would that even be?

I don't know what you are saying here.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

When I think about something I will do tomorrow, that, "what I will do" is a thing in my mind, and it is a future thing.

It's not future, it's happening right now, not in the future. If I have a thought, that thought occurs now, not in the future. So what future are you talking about? I might be thinking about what I will do tomorrow, but tomorrow is my distinction, which is occurring right now in the present. There is no tomorrow.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In the example, he is thinking about an apartment he will furnish in the future. The act of rearranging is clearly driven by this anticipation. In all these acts, which Manzotti refers to, rearranging the furniture, juggling words, and the child learning, we can ask why does the person who does this, do this. The answer is always that the person anticipates a future need.

I disagree that the person always anticipates a future need. What if I'm just imagining different ways chess pieces could be arranged on a chess board just for fun? For no purpose (that is located in the future) at all?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

First, he doesn't properly distinguish between past and future, such that all objects in the mind, are explained by encounters with past objects (memories).

I don't think there is any past or future in his vision. There is just the present. The past and the future are merely distinctions in the present. There is no other time but the present moment.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

An "agent" is a source of activity, an efficient cause. I really don't know how, you could explain any rearranging, juggling, or learning, going on without a source of activity.

So why can't the activity have no source? Why can't the activity just be? Where is the logical contradiction in this? It's only when we try to play a specific game, and look at the activity as something that we can predict, that we hypothesise a "past" and a "future", which are merely useful fictions. To use an economic example.

I was talking with ssu awhile ago about financial value. So I said that every businessman and investor wants to know the REAL value of an asset, not the market value, under the assumption that in the long-term, even if in the short-term the market can undervalue / overvalue it, the market will approach that real value. But why does the businessman / investor want to know this real value in the first place? Because they want to make a profit - they want to know what will happen to the markets so they can position themselves to make a profit. So what if there is actually no real value, and it is only their desire that makes them hypothesize a real value, which can be used to take decisions, and even very successful decisions, even though it's not real, and it's just a fiction? What if time (past and future) are likewise merely useful fictions?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

But there is a break in the chain of efficient causation when the object goes into memory.

Okay, but you're presupposing a certain view of time here. You're viewing time as something that flows as it were. Why can't there be no time? There is change, a continuous change, but without a past or a future. What you call past or future are merely useful fictions. You use this fiction to say that the past events cause the current ones. But why can't current events always include the so called past? Maybe the present doesn't include just what is visible, but rather it includes everything within itself, and we just break it up into future and past for ease of analysis.

Quoting Cavacava

I don't know what you are saying here.

Just that you are developing concepts in experience (such as "being born", "physical structures"), and then turn around and use them to explain the causes of your experience (which are clearly outside of experience). You're just being circular.

Quoting Agustino

I know that the concept of individuation will only enter awareness AFTER experience, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist prior to experience as an activity.

Get a life.
I've no idea what is wrong with your ability to think.

Reply to Agustino

But isn't a basic purpose of learning the construction of our world, which affects how we understanding it. We learn that objects don't just disappear when they go out of sight, that a ball rolls somewhere, we learn to think causally because this methodology is successful. Our conclusions are the product of our bodies ability to interact with the world and our ability to learn from those interactions.

Being circular can be a problem for logical thought, but I don't that has any bearing on what we experience phenomenally. The stick is phenomenally bent in water that's the way we experience it, we conclude that it is not bent, that light refracts its image and that the stick only appears bent. There is nothing wrong with this distinction assuming our senses are working properly. The conclusion that the stick is not bent, forms the basis of our understand of how light gets refracted, but it does not stop the stick from looking bent.

Quoting Agustino

It's not future, it's happening right now, not in the future. If I have a thought, that thought occurs now, not in the future. So what future are you talking about? I might be thinking about what I will do tomorrow, but tomorrow is my distinction, which is occurring right now in the present. There is no tomorrow.

The "thing thought about" is in the future. We have a distinction between the act of thinking, which is in the present, and the "thing thought about". In this case (Manzotti's interview), the things thought about are words. The existence of the words in thought is attributed to the past encounters with the physical occurrence of words. However, since we are discussing "things thought about", we must include things thought about which are in the future as well. We cannot just ignore the "things thought about" which are in the future, to focus on past "things thought about", just because the future "things thought about" do not fit into our preferred ontology. That will produce a lopsided and ineffective ontology

Quoting Agustino

I disagree that the person always anticipates a future need. What if I'm just imagining different ways chess pieces could be arranged on a chess board just for fun? For no purpose (that is located in the future) at all?

You can say things which are nonsense. Just because you can talk about doing something without purpose, doesn't mean that you can actually do that. When you decide to do something purposeless, then in making that decision, to do something purposeless, you have already given that act purpose.

Quoting Agustino

I don't think there is any past or future in his vision. There is just the present. The past and the future are merely distinctions in the present. There is no other time but the present moment.

That's false, the objects of thought in Manzotti's description are past encounters. Yet his description of thinking is to put these objects in relationships with future events:

Imagine you’re lying in bed planning to furnish a house you’ll soon be moving to in a distant town.
[future event]
...
When we say we are thinking, what we are actually doing is rearranging causal relations with past events, objects that we have encountered before, to see what happens when we combine them.
[past encounters]

Quoting Agustino

What if time (past and future) are likewise merely useful fictions?

I doesn't matter if it's fictional or not, past and future is a division which enters into Manzotti's description of thinking. Because it is an integral part of his description, then it is real as per that description. To say it is fictional is to say that his description is fictional.

One could perhaps produce a description without the references to future and past, but it wouldn't be Manzotti's description, it would be completely irrelevant to Manzotti. According to Manzotti, the existence of words, and other objects of thought, within the human mind in the act of thinking, is derived from past encounters. If we remove the past, claiming that the past is fictional, then there is no source for any objects of thought in the human mind. We're left with nothing.

Quoting charleton

Get a life.
I've no idea what is wrong with your ability to think.

I wonder what you'd say to Kant :p

Quoting Cavacava

We learn that objects don't just disappear when they go out of sight, that a ball rolls somewhere, we learn to think causally because this methodology is successful.

This isn't saying anything really. All that you're telling me is that I learn how to manipulate my experience better. I know that if a ball goes out of sight, there is a way to retrieve it, and that is by turning my head first, so that it enters into sight, and then going after it.

Quoting Cavacava

Our conclusions are the product of our bodies ability to interact with the world and our ability to learn from those interactions.

Why "bodies"? There are no bodies. There is just experience.

Quoting Cavacava

The stick is phenomenally bent in water that's the way we experience it, we conclude that it is not bent, that light refracts its image and that the stick only appears bent.

And what do you really mean by it isn't really bent? All that you mean is that in a certain experience (looking at the stink in water from outside the water), it really is bent. And that in a different experience - looking at the stick in water from inside the water yourself - it isn't bent. All that is, is two different experiences. Why do you feel the need to pick and choose one as the "reality" and the other as the "appearance"? You should take both of them as equally valid, because, in fact, they are. The only reason why you prioritise the one over the other is because it makes calculations easy - so again, predictions. Because you want to predict, you create the useful fiction of 'reality' and 'appearance', when in truth, no such distinction exists.

Same idea with the "size" of an object. A desk really is smaller when seen from far away. There is no "real" size as such of the desk. All that you're doing is that by your own fiat you say that the real size is the size you measure with a ruler that touches the desk. Why? Because you want it to have a size that you can measure in order to manipulate it better. So you create a useful fiction.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The "thing thought about" is in the future.

No, there is no thing apart from the thought. The thing is the thought. Or if you don't like it this way, there is one thought (the word) and another thought (idea, ie vague impression) which is the thing. Both are in the present.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We have a distinction between the act of thinking, which is in the present, and the "thing thought about".

Why?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I doesn't matter if it's fictional or not, past and future is a division which enters into Manzotti's description of thinking. Because it is an integral part of his description, then it is real as per that description. To say it is fictional is to say that his description is fictional.

Sure, his description is fictional, just like it's fictional when we say that the sun goes down. But it's a useful fiction.

Quoting Cavacava

The stick is phenomenally bent in water that's the way we experience it, we conclude that it is not bent, that light refracts its image and that the stick only appears bent.

Quoting Agustino

And what do you really mean by it isn't really bent? All that you mean is that in a certain experience (looking at the stink in water from outside the water), it really is bent. And that in a different experience - looking at the stick in water from inside the water yourself - it isn't bent. All that is, is two different experiences. Why do you feel the need to pick and choose one as the "reality" and the other as the "appearance"? You should take both of them as equally valid, because, in fact, they are. The only reason why you prioritise the one over the other is because it makes calculations easy - so again, predictions. Because you want to predict, you create the useful fiction of 'reality' and 'appearance', when in truth, no such distinction exists.

In addition to my previous remarks, consider a game. I play a game when the experience of seeing a stick bent in water is the signal to participants in the game to take a certain key action. Would I, in those cirumstances, say that the stick isn't really bent? No, of course not! Because it really is bent in that case. So as you can see, depending on what is useful to us, we make different choices in the distinctions we make. This doesn't make those distinctions real.

Reply to Agustino

Why do you feel the need to pick and choose one as the "reality" and the other as the "appearance"?

The phenomenal is real, it is the basis for what we conclude, not the other way around.

Quoting Cavacava

The phenomenal is real, it is the basis for what we conclude, not the other way around.

Right, so if everything is the phenomenal, then we don't have access to anything beyond it.

Reply to Agustino

If by that you mean things in them self, things outside of us, then yes I agree no access. It is a different story when it comes to the body, which is not beyond us, which is in my estimation the locus of the unity we call our self.

Reply to Agustino I think Kant would be as confused at your thinking as others are.

Quoting Agustino

Right, so if everything is the phenomenal, then we don't have access to anything beyond it.

This sort of misbegotten hyperbole is an example of the crazy world of Gusto.

Quoting charleton

I think Kant would be as confused at your thinking as others are.

I don't think you've read Kant. Or at any rate understood what he was saying. If you did, you would know that Kant spoke of transcendental conditions which must exist for any experience at all to be possible.

Quoting Cavacava

If by that you mean things in them self, things outside of us, then yes I agree no access. It is a different story when it comes to the body, which is not beyond us, which is in my estimation the locus of the unity we call our self.

I don't think it makes sense to talk of things "outside" of us, if by that we mean outside of experience. Our body is known within experience, and it is known as well as any other things can be known within experience.

I don't think it makes sense to talk of things "outside" of us, if by that we mean outside of experience. Our body is known within experience, and it is known as well as any other things can be known within experience.

Of course it makes sense to talk of things outside our self. These manifestation of the phenomenal are due to something, I see the smoke and I assume fire. We can talk about space exploration but I doubt I will ever experience it. We don't hold objects in existence by our thought, I only suggest that we can't know these things with any kind of absolute certainty, since they are our conclusions based on our phenomenal experience and there is no guarantee that our thought corresponds to the way things are in the world.

Our body is not like any other thing, it is not outside of us it is the limit, what separates the inside from the outside. Our intimacy with our body is unlike our experience with anything else.

Quoting Cavacava

Of course it makes sense to talk of things outside our self.

Notice the continuation "if by that we mean outside of experience"? I will take that as a yes. If so, then no, I disagree. The smoke and the assumed fire are both within the realm of phenomenal experience. We see the effect and must look for the cause within experience - there are no causes outside of experience.

Quoting Cavacava

Our body is not like any other thing, it is not outside of us it is the limit, what separates the inside from the outside.

I disagree that any such a limit really exists. Everything I experience is the same. I experience pain, just like I experience sunshine. Why is one outside, and the other inside? It seems somewhat arbitrary.

Quoting Agustino

And yet, "individuality" cannot come from experience (the senses), but rather experience presupposes it. So where does it come from?

This is how it seems to me:

Individuation is inherent to experience. Experience is obviously possible without an explicit concept of individuation. The ability to reflect on experience that comes with symbolic language use apparently allows us to reflect on what is inherent in experience. So, the question as to where individuation comes from seems ill-formed; perhaps you should be asking where experience comes from instead. (I don't think that question can be answered, though, since the very idea of 'getting outside of experience' in order to answer it is incoherent).

So, individuation comes with experience; they interdependently co-arise, and the explicit concept of individuation is enabled by symbolic language use. The idea of individuation is inherent in symbolic language use, but that idea need not be explicit. It is made explicit by reflection on what is entailed by experience.

Notice the continuation "if by that we mean outside of experience"? I will take that as a yes. If so, then no, I disagree. The smoke and the assumed fire are both within the realm of phenomenal experience. We see the effect and must look for the cause within experience - there are no causes outside of experience.

We build on our conclusions, when I see smoke, I don't have to see the fire to imagine it. I can imagine how it might feel to be weightless in space, even though I have never experienced it. We conclude causes we don't experience them as such, and we can be wrong.

[/quote]I disagree that any such a limit really exists. Everything I experience is the same. I experience pain, just like I experience sunshine. Why is one outside, and the other inside? It seems somewhat arbitrary.
[/quote]

I feel the warmth of the sun on my body when I go outside my house but the sun I see, I conclude is way outside of me, it is at a distance unlike my warm skin which is at no distance from me. The pain I feel from my stubbed toe, is hardly the same as my experience of the chair that I stubbed it on. How can you not get this difference, since it is only through our body that we can experience the world?

Quoting Cavacava

I feel the warmth of the sun on my body when I go outside my house but the sun I see, I conclude is way outside of me, it is at a distance unlike my warm skin which is at no distance from me. The pain I feel from my stubbed toe, is hardly the same as my experience of the chair that I stubbed it on. How can you not get this difference, since it is only through our body that we can experience the world?

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience? All that we mean by "sun" is a certain cumulation or association of experiences (the certain warmth, the certain sight, etc.)

Quoting Cavacava

We build on our conclusions, when I see smoke, I don't have to see the fire to imagine it. I can imagine how it might feel to be weightless in space, even though I have never experienced it. We conclude causes we don't experience them as such, and we can be wrong.

But still, there will be no fire outside of your (possible) experience.

Reply to Cavacava Quoting Agustino

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience? All that we mean by "sun" is a certain cumulation or association of experiences (the certain warmth, the certain sight, etc.)

And building on that, likewise, your body is also a cumulation of experiences, and nothing more. So in the end, it's all experience - both your body and the sun. There is nothing apart from the experience.

Quoting Agustino

Just that you are developing concepts in experience (such as "being born", "physical structures"), and then turn around and use them to explain the causes of your experience (which are clearly outside of experience). You're just being circular.

The circularity would apply equally to your questioning here as it would to Cava's answer that you are questioning.

SO, if some of our philosophical discourse is circular in this way, then absolutely all of our philosophical discourse is circular in this way, in which case there could be no point to any philosophical discussion at all.

Reply to Agustino

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience? All that we mean by "sun" is a certain cumulation or association of experiences (the certain warmth, the certain sight, etc.)

Your use of the word 'experience' is equivocal, not all our experiences are external to us. Our experience of the world forms the basis for internal experiences, what we imagine or conclude about what we experienced, our train of thought these too are experienced.

your body is also a cumulation of experiences, and nothing more

Our body is our only access to experiences in the great outdoors, it also provides me with my only access to the experience of my thoughts, my inner world. It is unique and as I previously stated the locus for unification of the self.

Quoting Banno

What would that look like?

Hard to say without using the word "red".

Quoting Banno

The point here is that red is not a thing in the head so much as a relation between behaviour and the way things are.

I would include cognition; a relation between cognition, behavior and the way things are. For me the salient point would be that cognition is not "in the head" any more than behavior or the way things are is

Quoting Agustino

No, there is no thing apart from the thought. The thing is the thought.

You are misrepresenting Manzotti's position. The word is an "external object" which is "encountered". Therefore it must exist prior to the thought which contains it. Unless the thought actually creates the word, the word necessarily exists apart from the thought. But Manzotti's description is that we encounter the word as an object, not that the word is created by thought.

If you want to put forth an ontology in which the thought actually creates the word, then this is completely different from Manzotti's. And you'll still have to account for the physical presence of the word, when we speak and write it down. This is when the word is separated from the thought, and this is inconsistent with your statement that there is no word apart from the thought.

Quoting Agustino

Sure, his description is fictional, just like it's fictional when we say that the sun goes down. But it's a useful fiction.

I don't see it as a useful fiction, I see it as a misguided ontology. And, if someone presented me an ontology which described the sun as going down, and going around the earth to come up on the other side in the morning, I would say it's a misguided ontology. Manzotti's ontology is very primitive and useless because he provides no distinction between particular instances of objects which we remember from the past, and general, universal principles, which we apply toward the future.

Quoting Agustino

The sun is nothing apart from your experience of it. So the warmth + the sight + etc. all the other impressions of it. Why do you feel the need to postulate a sun outside of experience?

Quoting Agustino

And building on that, likewise, your body is also a cumulation of experiences, and nothing more. So in the end, it's all experience - both your body and the sun. There is nothing apart from the experience.

Well, I for one like to think there's more to the world than what meets the eye (including my neighbor's dog). Solipsism is a performative contradiction.