Does everyone think the same way?
The thing that puzzles me is how do we know that two people are thinking the same way?
We've all heard of the question where my ''blue'' could be enitrely different from your version of ''blue''. Yet, we somehow (miraculously) agree on the proposition: the sky is ''blue''.
Taking this line of thought only a little further how do we know we're all thinking the same way? We could all have individual ways of thinking, entirely different from each other, yet we may (miraculously) come to the same conclusion.
I wonder...
We've all heard of the question where my ''blue'' could be enitrely different from your version of ''blue''. Yet, we somehow (miraculously) agree on the proposition: the sky is ''blue''.
Taking this line of thought only a little further how do we know we're all thinking the same way? We could all have individual ways of thinking, entirely different from each other, yet we may (miraculously) come to the same conclusion.
I wonder...
Comments (31)
It's not miraculous. We agree on that proposition because we were taught to use the word "blue" to name the colour we see the sky to be. It would only become problematic if I see two things as being the same colour but you see those two things as being two different colours.
I'd say that I know we're not thinking the same way, because numerically distinct things (such as one, my thinking, and two, your thinking) cannot literally be the same. That doesn't mean that our thinking cannot be similar, but it's not going to be the same.
You could say that in a very loose manner of speaking, with the quotation marks, sure, and certainly that's a common way of talking about it.
On my view we know that we're not literally thinking the same thing because it's incoherent that two numerically distinct things are identical.
We know that people do not think the same way, as we can have two people who are epistemic peers (have same evidence and same rational ability about a given subject) can reach two radically different conclusions on a problem.
That I'm afraid is impossible. The same evidence AND the same rational ability should take everyone to the same conlusion. That however, is beside the point I'm making.
I'll try and give you an analogy. Imagine two people A and B. A is wearing red filter glasses (i.e. allows only red light to pass through) and B is wearing blue filter glasses. Both of them are now shown a white object. As is expected A would see the object as red but would call this white while B would see it as blue and would only know it as white. In this case A's white is different from B's white and yet they'd both agree that the object is white.
Can you now extrapolate that to mental functions too?
Is this difference consequential or not?
How do you know this?
What distinguishes a red-red object from a red-white object? Isn't the red-white object redundant? Or?
The difference in you see is based in what is referred to qualia. We know that different people have different perceptions of the quality of color, for example. However, there would be no difference in the physical light waves that are orginally on the object. At best, you can argue qualia is different.
Depending on the subject in question, it becomes harder and harder to see how different indviduals responding to the same external, mind-independent reality could reach the same conclusion and have radically different internal thought processes whose differences are impossible to detect.
But it doesn't. What you really mean is that if everyone with the same evidence and rational ability started off with the same premises, then they would reach the same conclusion. But even that isn't the case, because there's often debate over whether a step in an argument is committing a fallacy or not.
This discernment is also demonstrably cultural. The Greeks referred to gold as red, and the ocean yellow. Some African tribes call the sky black even during the day, and have a great green discernment, far better than ours but can't distinguish light blues from greens where it's obvious to us. Russians don't have a single word for blue, but have two, one for light blue and the other dark blue and correspondingly have a better blue discernment than English speakers. Beyond that, there are even niche examples of experts, or people that have simply studied, and spend more time discerning colours, like an orchestra sounds different to a composer than a layman. On top of that, the genes for colour vision are on the X chromosome, so women have two sets, and are far less likely to be colour blind, and have a richer orange red discernment than men.
The forms of not only our thoughts, but our very perceptions are culturally structured to a shocking degree.
In that case, we could all be living in our idiosynratic private ''worlds'' - completely different from each other. In this case how do we find common ground? I know that logic appears to be universal in that it applies consistently to all people however could this not also be an illusion - a far far more sophisticated one?
The difficulties become much more apparent with philosophy. I think that traditionally, this is why there was an emphasis on rote learning, the Classics, and the basic curriculum - the 'three R's'. Part of the aim of that was to facilitate a common 'domain of discourse' within which meanings could be expressed consistently.
But that's gone. It's part of what modernity has lost. 'Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world'.
I may be wrong but it appears to me that scientific objectivity rests on multiple experiments showing the same result. This is puzzling. Each experiment is subjective - why else would science require multiple measurements? I fail to understand how a bunch of experiments, each individually subjective, add up to objectivity.
The above point I'm making is just another variation of my original question - how do we know we're same or different in our thoughts?
Can you explain yourself? Your last post seems to suggest that there's no hope for us and we'redoomed toconfusion. Yet in the quote above you say we only need to ''discern'' as in a silver lining of a cloud.
That doesn't strike me as a difficult question in the least. Imagine asking a person to describe something - say, a photograph with lots of objects in it - which you yourself haven't seen. Obviously, the report of a single person will be dependent on that person's mnemonic ability. And the odds are, it won't be very good. But get 10 people to describe it, or 20, or 100, and then you can average all the observations, screen out the subjectivities - the one or two who reported 'elephant' - and arrive at an 'averaged' picture of the result.
Besides, the whole point of scientific method is to bracket out the subjective elements. Philosophically, you can take issue with that - I do - but methodologically, there's no doubt scientific method does this very well.
(Incidentally, that well-chosen quote from Wosret is not of his own devising, but a timely allusion to traditional literature, to whit , 'the Tower of Bable'.)
Wayfarer's comment just reminded me of that. See, if we aren't speaking the same narrative, then we aren't speaking the same language, even if we're using the same words. There is an important sense in which our global narrative has never been more universal, but also the more universal it is, the less distinct it can be. Unfortunately what the details are when talking about people are the real people themselves. We've developed a highly abstract and universal language, but with no sense of who each other really are. What kind of character do they see themselves as, aspiring to, and those around them paralleling. Who are the villains and who are the heroes, and why? What's important, and why? How is it that we transcend these physical manifestations, and exist as anything we agree to in our collective narrative?
In the sense of what kind of story is the story of our lives, we've never been more confused.
(Y)
By saying things like, "Is that Stratocaster blue?" and the other person going, "Yeah, that's blue."
The fact that both people don't have exactly the same mental content doesn't matter for any practical purpose.
Suppose you and I have a hunch we're thinking of the same grocery store in town, but we're not sure. We might go there together and look. When each of us declares that he's thinking of a route to the place, we might check in a similar way whether it's the same route we have in mind. Or the same kind of endive or cheese.... Or the same philosophical view on justice or truth...
What is a "version of blue"? Which blue do you have in mind -- the blue of the sky right now out there, or the blue of that big old Buick on the corner? Our "versions of colors" appear determined at least in part "outside our heads", as it's sometimes put.
Our "versions of thoughts" seem determined at least in part in the same place. In many cases my actions give you a fair idea what I believe about the world, what propositions I'm disposed to assent to or deny, on the basis of my action in the world. In some of those cases, the actions in question are speech acts. We can determine whether we have similar thoughts about justice, truth, or works of fiction by speaking together about justice, truth, or works of fiction, for as long as it takes to get satisfied on this account. In one sense there is little difference between what we "think" about a subject or a proposition, and what we "say" (or would say) about the same subject or proposition when speaking sincerely. In another sense there may be differences. For instance: I may consistently and sincerely assert that some proposition is true, while consistently acting in some other way, without speech, as if it were false. In such cases it may seem my speech is inconsistent with my other action. You might do me the favor of bringing the discrepancy to my attention, and invite me to account for it.