Argument that there is more to perception than information? All thrme factors you mentioned I would say come under the banner of information in the same way as perception, at least under my philosophy of mind.

Whether you believe in it is beside the point. It has been documented extensively in books on meditative awareness and trance states. — Wayfarer

Yes, sure it has been documented; I just wouldn't interpret it in the way that those people would i.e. that there is some kind of thing called oure awareness independent of our percepts.

The problem with your argument is that it is essentially reductionist. While it aligns well with information theory and cognitive neuroscience, which view experiences in terms of the brain processing and distinguishing environmental stimuli, explaining how physical processes (like neuronal activity and the making of distinctions) amount to subjective experiences is a different matter. — Wayfarer

It isn't reductionist.
I haven't said experiences are the same as brains or information in information theory, and if anything you could argue that all of those concepts are constructs we have created rather than the things in themselves.

Information is about distinguishing things.

I have said that experience is what it is like to be information.

That corresponds to saying experience is what it is like to distinguish something.

In a panpsychist universe, that is very obviously trivially tautological.

In a dualist universe where there were experiences AND something else where you could define distinctions or perhaps correlations then I think a mapping between experiences and those distinctions is sufficient. And I think neuroscience tells us that mapping exists. In the panpsychist case, you could argue that you were simply mapping something to itself vicariously through a constructed representation of scientific objects or information.
I don't need to make a reductive explanation to assert a mapping. I haven't tried to explain anything about experiences. Just seems trivial to me that when I experience something, I am making a distinction, which is what my notion of information is all about. Almost trivially, anything is in some sense a distinction, so to say the relationship between experience and distinctions doesn't really make sense.

Space, time, and matter no longer make any mathematical sense within a black hole's singularity, are often enough said to "break down" at such juncture, and with some affirming that information itself becomes erased therein.

Again, why would information be assumed to survive at such juncture? — javra

Well, possibly. I don't know. I don't know enough to make a judgement about this or what I think it even means in order to disagree.

Most likely, yes. How do you define information? For me, quintessentially, information is to be defined by that which informs, or else "gives form to" ("form" in the Aristotelian sense). In so holding, I then take awareness to be informed by its percepts but to not of itself be information — javra

I will be lazy and quote myself from my most recent post:

"but it all boils down to making distinctions. Nothing technical about that concept... just the primitive concept of a distinction... a difference... any symonym you like that is sufficiently general."

I think here we have different fundamental understandings of mind because I don't really take awareness to be like a thing independent of percepts. For instance, some have said they believe in something like pure awareness. I don't believe in something like that.

I can provide information which describes it, but remember the point at issue was your claim that — Wayfarer

So you don't think the act or event of distinction itself is information? That just hearing something and knowing it is not information? As far as I am concerned, what I am reading, what I am experiencing right in front of me is information. Because I am distinguishing, recognizing, having immediate awareness of something. Sure, I can describe it in terms of something like pixels and that is information.

I am making the point, there is something other than 'information transmission' at work when you hear music, — Wayfarer

Well I think its just question begging here either side because I am just making the claim that information could be simply what its like to be information. And you just disagree.

It makes sense for me that experiences are what its like to make distinctions because effectively thats what brains are doing... making distinctions. We can talk about it in a formal sense of information theoretic descriptions of neuronal activity, or just in simple sense of organisms perceiving distinctions in their environment, but it all boils down to making distinctions. Nothing technical about that concept... just the primitive concept of a distinction... a difference... any symonym you like that is sufficiently general. That seems to be what our perceptions do and so if our perceptions are experiences, then it seems to me that they are experiences of those distinctions brains make... what it is like to be those distinctions being made. Its almost tautological to me because experiences themselves are obviously distinctions so ofcourse, experiences are what its like to make those experiential distinctions. The question is then: are experiences just what it is like to make any distinction at all? And given that my intuition wants me to think there is no limit on the possible experiences that could exist, then couldn't they encompass all possible distinctions that could possibly be made, and so would be what it was like to make those distinctions?

Note: I have not been stating an identity between experiences = distinctions or experiences = information per se (though as I have said, I do think experiences trivially are information [e.g. like saying Mary has learned or even sees some new information when she experiences green for yhe first time]).


Rather I have been making an identity between experience and what it is like to be information. There should be no hard problem issue here because I am not making an equivalence between experiences and some technical definition, but experiences and what it is like to be a kind of thing. If experiences can be defined as what it is like then I am clearly equating experiences with experiences. Just like saying that my experiences are what it is like to be a brain is slightly different to saying experiences are brains, or experiences are atoms.

Information that goes past a black hole's threshold toward the singularity within the black hole cannot be experienced - at least not when at the singularity itself — javra

Why is that?

instead, is a mere direct awareness — javra

To me, this is having information. Though I think we are getting into the territory where we will have disagreements about the contents of experience or philosophy of mind generally, which would hinder agreement.

Another example: what you're reading right now may be described in terms of 'pixels on a screen' but what it means is something else again. — Wayfarer

But is there ever a way to describe it in which it is not information?

because there are factors such as judgement, context, interpretation, and so on. — Wayfarer

Yes, sure: what is more information in the mind.

so any kind of mapping is hardly a simple 1:1 operation[/q]

Maybe not a mapping to physically unique neurons, but surely a mapping to ongoing activity.
— Wayfarer

Speaking of mapping, that doesn't map! The expressions 'what it is like to be a bat' or 'to experience music' or 'see the deep blue of the sea' draw attention to the fact that states of experience are qualities of being. — Wayfarer

Well so is the phrase 'what its like to be information' and in fact. When we hear music, that is information transmitted into our heads. Distinctions we make about sound regarding things like pitch or timbre etc etc. The question is what information cannot be experienced and what experiences are not information? I think its quite hard to give examples for any of those things.

I was alluding to something along the lines of the extended mind idea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis

I see. I think I understand what you mean. It seems rather arbitrary though: where does the extension end? At the actual physical objects we perceive?

Ah, fair enough! I think I would agree.

Humans and other animals perceive, and are therefor perceivers. This is what I mean when I use the term “perceiver”: a thing that perceives. It can be said these things perceive. The same cannot be said of nervous systems. — NOS4A2

What do you mean here that it can be said for animals but not nervous systems?

I wasn't trying to imply anything to do with capacity in the definition I said. I am just making the point that experiences are clearly information for us in a very trivial way. I see something, I am distinguishing something: that is information.

And I am not trying to make an account of experience because information is about as difficult to describe and account for as experience, so saying that experience is information doesn't really explain anything.

So this is not an attempt to explain away, but making a plausible equivalence between two concepts which are equally difficult, or at least primitive, in their characterization.

Again, I think the experiences we have seem to map to information in the brain. You don't need to say that brains explain information in any deep metaphysical way to say this is the case I think. I would be interested to hear why you would think this mapping does not hold up, if you did believe that it did not.

The remaining question is then: where do you draw the line on what information can and cannot be mapped to experiences.

If I cannot draw the line, who's to say that experience is not just what it is like to be information?

Is an abacus falling through the air, the beads moving this way and that, processing information? Does it have experiences? — RogueAI

Arguably, it could be. I mean, obviously it is a complicated system that we cannot predict easily, but presumably it is actually behaving according to the kinds of regularities that underlie the laws of physics where particular inputs have outputs which are computable. Doesn't seem an inherent difference from what neurons do. Could a system of chaotically behaving abacuses not self-organize into a brain under the right circumstances? Where is the dividing line?

(from here.)

Well I say this for several reasons:

1. You say information is about sending and receiving, about behaviour of systems. I agree with this. Moreso, neuronal transmission and brains satisfy this: so we can call them information processing systems. We know brains support experience.

2. I think information in the way we normally use it boils down to distinctions - the ability to learn or make distinctions. I think that is a very primitive concept and you cannot really boil it down to anything more basic than that.

3. What are experiences? At its most primitive, isnt this concept just about immediate distinctions we can make as observers - experiences are or have information in the sense that we distinguish or recognize or can differentiate them. When I see something, experience something, it is a subjective distinction I have made.

4. So what is the relationship between distinctions brains make and distinctions of my subjective experiences? Well they are inextricable. I experience red because of the distinctions my brain can make with regard to its sensory inputs. Its hard to say that I am not in some sense my brain.

Aren't experiences just the what its like to be the information in my brain? If thats the case, isn't it plausible that other information processing structures have experiences of that information which are completely different to our experiences? Where exactly is the limit on this? What exactly doesn't count as an experience?

Seems hard for me to rule out that there could be a mapping between experiences and all possible forms of information.

I was under the impression you were saying this would be a benefit even if moral realism were not true.

Don't you think, in a way, that qualia is just what it is like to be information?

Yes, the link between the semantics of words like "information" and the shannon formalism is vague at best. I think entropy is best characterized as uncertainty, not information. Maybe you can think of it as quantifying the capacity of an information source to send different messages. But to me, the concept of information makes sense best as the reduction of uncertainty i.e. reduction of entropy based on an observation, not dissimilar to the formal concept of mutual information. The concept of surprisal/self-information seems even more messy imo.

I think a more general way of seeing use is in terms of state transitions. The way you use a cup is a special case since how I use a cup is a sequence of percptual states (and transitions between them): e.g. how I fill a cup with water, bring it to my mouth and drink. My knowledge of this use might be seen, broadly, in terms of predicting what the next states are (or what they plausibly could be) from any part of the sequence and knowing what came before (or what could have come before, plausibly).

But then state transitions also include things that seem a bit more basic and probably totally unconscious; for instance, predicting what I will see next if I twist the cup a certain way, or how the percept changes when I myself moves. Perhaps, predicting the type of sound when I tap it or the way it feels if I touch. That is quite implicit knowledge since no one is really explicitly predicting or paying attention to what they will see next as they twist a cup, or the sound it will make when they set it down on the table - yet we would all know very well if something unexpected happened in these contexts.

If you think about it, even though your using a cup to trap a spider (or some other trick) might be a totally novel use of the cup, it relies entirely on knowledge of such state transitions like I just mentioned - known regularities in cup-related percepts. I would not be able to use the cup to trap the spider if I could not predict / have knowledge of the next sensory percepts that would occur in trapping the spider. I probably must, at least implicitly, know the cup has certain predictable properties to even come up with the idea.

I disagree with that post though that this has anything to do with seeing in the conventional sense. I think what we see when we see the cup is just the specific, immediate, individually unique image / percept of whatever is infront of us, which in fact is probably rarely ever exactly the same between two moments and is almost inevitably in constant flux as we move in the world, and the world itself moves.

There are therefore just transitions to the next perceptual state and the next state after that, in real time. Much of these transitions might just be what we passively observe, but there is always some control we have in some sense, which requires knowledge of state transitions.

- for instance, the way I move my head changes the way the cup looks. I can move my hand to manipulate it directly. I can move my jaws and speak the word "cup" or perhaps utter a selection of words that evoke a response in someone else. Maybe the sounds of those words will just appear before me, disembodied (like internal monologue); disembodied images likewise. I can shift my eyes to an area of the visual field where the next cup-related event miraculously occurs (e.g. water pouring from a spout; such a coincidence I happen to look there: why did I do that?). Perhaps I have other changes in attention and even internal states (like maybe heartbeat) if that miraculous event were not to occur. Notice these controllable acts are all coupled to my knowledge of state transitions in the sense they are all re-actions or pre-actions to what could come next (or perhaps what could have happened in the past even - any type of cup-related association).

Totally passive observation of changes of perception in real time is meaningless because without any of these controllable actions / reactions, I cannot even express or enact my knowledge of those passive observation sequences (e.g. our eyes following around these passive observations, words uttering the next passive observation, the shock and heartbeat change when some unexpected passive observation happens, an imagine picture popping into my head). Without those controllable actions I am probably no different to a wall which a film is being projected onto - the wall is receiving the image without any reaction, no meaning for the wall, even though it has these images projected on to it!

Knowledge is nothing more than these controllable actions which themselves are still just special cases of state transitions in our perception in real time, but nonetheless characterize my expertise about things like cupness through raw, individually unique percepts that change over time with some regularity / pattern to those transitions. So there is no sense in seeing the use of a cup. The use or knowledge of a cup unfolds in real time as it is being used, as we are reacting to it, as some sequence of unique percepts over which we have varying amounts of control.

There is no explicitly stored catalogue of knowledge unless you perhaps think it is appropriate to use that term to refer to latent biochemical states in our neurons (I don't). What we know is generated and enacted on the fly in our controllable perceptual states in contextually sensitive ways, embodied in neuronal action potentials.

To be honest, I'm not sure I see why belief in moral realism is required for any kinds of benefits you allude to

Given that some neural processes experience qualia, and even knowing that neural networks are exquisitely correlated with a world around, how are qualia inside the brain about that world rather than just the inside of a brain?

very simply, "aboutness" is an illusion

I think there are ways around this. Lack of a single joint probability distribution doesn't mean that same information cannot be represented in multiple separate ones. In a Bell experiment, there may be no single joint probability distribution, but you can construct ones for each underlying context of compatible pairs of observables. There is no joint probability for incompatible pairs but perhaps we can do the same with these - represent them in terms of multiple underlying contexts. Work by Andrei Khrennikov has suggested that, starting from classical descriptions of different underlying contexts, when assuming different contexts cannot be combined / co-occur (like heisenberg uncertainty) then various features occurring in quantum mechanics seem to be consequences e.g. interference, violation total probability, complex amplitude, non-commutativity: e.g.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=9998752293294842918&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

Importantly everything is still coming from normal classical probability spaces in principal. So this is partly what gives me the motivation for believing that quantum mechanics just essentially describing the random behaviour of particles (which common sensically would always have definite properties) through probability distributions. From the kind of view I just cited, quantum contextuality in effect is about classical context dependent joint probability distributions which cannot be integrated into a single joint distribution. The strange extended wigner "quantum mechanics cannot describe itself" thing also would also come down to this, not strange subjective epistemic differences in agent perspectives. Bell violations are also just a necessary formal consequence of the context dependence, as stipulated by Fine's theorem - not requiring some spooky force.

maybe what is fundamental in the universe isn't some kind of fixed set of objects at any particular scale but generally things like invariances, structures, patterns. after all physics seems to be centered around symmetries that seem in some sense emergent (e.g. splitting up of the different forces, emergence of mass during evolution of universe, also look at things like elementary particle decay, popping of particles in and out of existence - there seems no fixed set of things in universe).

maybe then consciousness is just what it is like to be these patterns, structures, invariances. not the fundamental physics ones specifically.. patterns, symmetries, invariances exist at all scales in nature, from small to large. seems to me my consciousness, my perceptions must be higher order structure, invariances, patterns, correlation, whatever you want to call them, in the brain.

The wave analogy in quantum mechanics is a very unfortunate and misleading coincidence. Schrodinger equation is more closely related to a diffusion equation than wave equation. Interference and superposition can also be described in the framework of stochastic processes. Importantly, diffusion equations and stochastic processes can describe behavior and probability distributions for the random movement of single particles. "Wave functions" are not physical objects.

Once one sees that quantum mechanics is actually just describing the random behavior of particles (without the need for collapse), almost all of the quantum strangeness dissipates.

Phenomenal consciousness as traditionally depicted obviously cannot have evolved because evolution is a physical process involving things like DNA. If consciousness cannot be reduced to that stuff then the idea of its evolution is just incoherent.

Genuinely surprised that "no first-person experience" is leading.

Ok. And how is this relevant? — Echarmion

I think you are looking for something that doesn't really exist. I don't think the mind consists of like substantive thoughts as objects which can be converted into words and back again.

I find it funny some people are obsessed with some standard upon which people *should* agree on things (i.e. truth, realism). Yet, in practise, they know this is never the case or else they would never be having these debates about truth or realism. The motivation for realism is almost more like an insecurity or nagging anxiety. Perhaps stranger realists (including, perhaps most notable, karl popper) are those that accept many of the arguments for anti-realist views yet seem to find themselves unable to get over their intuition for realism and enforce it no matter the cost, essentially question begging. Given that anti-realism or realism doesn't really matter, I guess the whole debate about whether science yields truth is essentially a personality contest between different people who's different personality traits and intuitions draw them to different dpgmatic assumptions and question begging foundations.



If truth is a language tool then I think mental concept is equally a language tool. Science is just a biological activity, a special case of the same biological activity that allows the use of words like "truth" and "mental concept".

It's when the government monopolizes the right to weapons or otherwise regulates and restricts it that a characteristic sense of oppression and inequality emerges. — baker

I will never understand this obsession which only seems to exist in America.

Nothing at work is going to fulfill you like your family will — ButyDude

I don't think this is true for everyone.

So, I believe that a good change could be more support for mothers to have children, maybe paid maternal leave or something like that. — ButyDude

I mean, it should be regardless of sex I think.

I am kind of skeptical of the difference that a nuclear family makes here. Kids can thrive I think with any person as caregiver and it is possible yo be be supported with 4 caregivers or even only 1 if that caregiver can handle it. They can equally be supported with caregivers whp are not together and co-parent. The personal and economic hardships of people will endure whether people stay in a nuclear family or they are not; these issues are much deeper.

There are far more pressing and less banal issues in this world than resurrecting the nuclear family. For me, moving the world back toward that kind of conservativism is not the right step.

Thanks for the reply, and some nice insights! To be honest I deeply respect the idea of someone who is uncompromising to put their stamp on a goal or vision they want to communicate and explore. Those kind of things really are what stick with me in stories or films. Even if a film or story isn't particularly exciting or enjoyable, if I perceive of it as projecting some kind of well-built underlying concept or vision, I often find myelf returning to it again and again, at least in thought, over more enjoyable alternatives. Sometimes though it takes time for those things to click. There have definitely been examples, in particular of films, where my first viewings I didn't find good at all, but once I can construct a picture I find interesting, whatever I found boring or uninteresting or disagreeable with it doesn't really matter anymore, or even accentuates the new way I am viewing it.

endless description of the mergings and juxtapositions of mutilated bodies and broken car parts in purely aesthetic terms, repeating ad nauseum words like “stylized,” “formalized,” “junction,” and of course, “engine coolant.” — Jamal

Reminds me of the Atrocity Exhibition. I think these two works are probably deeply related on a conceptual level. Might have to take a lok again.

The collection I have is just like his whole collection of short stories I believe so I don't know really know which stories group together in original books. I don't think they are ordered that way, if I am not mistaken.

The wikipedia synopsis of Unlimited Dream Company sounds quite interesting actually.

I have question, apologies if already has been answered somewhere, but:

Do you think it needed to be unenjoyable to be the art it is, in your view?

I haven't read any of it; I only watched the film a long time ago which left very little impression on me - all I remember is a scene I found very dirty.

I do, however, own a collection of Ballard's short stories and find that he is a great short story writer, both very enjoyable as well as insightful and intelligent. So I wonder if you think Crash needs to be unenjoyable to be its art.

Just as an aside, I haven't really read any other of his works, with the exception of an attempt at Atrocity Exhibition which doesn't really seem like something you would read in a traditional way. Some of the imagery in that book has stayed with me though it hasn't really evoked enough of exploration and thought about the book for me to have an opinion on its merit.

My response would be that then, the person not being able to self-correct their private language would be no worse (or better) off. — schopenhauer1

This is precisely to point of the private language argument.

Any term can only be defined in other terms, so how does any term help? :roll: You know as well as I do what 'forever' in the context of 'addition can go on in principle forever'. You also know what 'no limit' means in the context of 'there is no reason to think there is, in principle, any limit to addition'. — Janus

Well this is the point, nothing helps. You may say that "you know as well as I do" but if I interpret "forever" in a non-standard way that is consistent with your past usage of the word forever then whats not to say that you mean something else other than "forever".

Kripke says -

"Here of course I am expounding Wittgenstein's wellknown remarks about "a rule for interpreting a rule". It is tempting to answer the sceptic by appealing from one rule to another more 'basic' rule. But the sceptical move can be repeated at the more 'basic' level also. Eventually the process
must stop - "justifications come to an end somewhere" - and I am left with a rule which is completely unreduced to any other. How can I justify my present application ofsuch a rule,
when a sceptic could easily interpret it so as to yield any of an indefinite number of other results? It seems that my application of it is an unjustified stab in the dark. I apply the rule blindly."

No, the point is the rule can never be determined, If he says 5, someone will just ask him to show he was using phlog-ddition!

Forever means there is no limit in priniciple. What does "qu-orever" mean — Janus

You've just repeated a synonym for "forever" so how does that help? What does "no limit" mean and does any of this really help without specifying what exactly has "no limit"? That would be "adding" presumably so you're back to where you started and probably should characterize that to me first.

"Quo-rever" is just an analogous concept for forever, exactly like quus where all your uses of forever so far are consistent with it but it differs in some way. But tbh, forever or infinite seems so abstract it seems difficult to point to what you mean anyway: how exactly can someone show they are referring to the infinite? hence why when I asked what forever meant, you just replied with a synonym effectively. But again, the target here isn't really forever but addition. This explanation youve given is essentially "I am adding forever" but "adding" was what was in question in the first place so how is saying " I am adding forever" resolving the issue?

You could have meant " I am quusing forever"

Tell me that and I'll tell you whether I meant that. — Janus

Well I already told you that is irrelevant. This is just like the Newtonian vs Special relativity example I already gave. Its not about what you think you mean, its whether you can prove a fact of the matter about what you think you mean.

I don't even know what you want me to give, since you apparently are unable to articulate it clearly. — Janus

Whats so hard? Prove that when you use "addition" at any given time you don't mean quus or some other quus-like word. A fact that unambiguously shows that every time you say "addition" you cannot be meaning any of these other alternative phrases.

C'mon man, this is total bullshit. I know what adding consists in, and if you could tell me precisely what quadding consists in then I could point to how it is different than adding. — Janus

I think I will jist have to leave a quotation from Kripke:

"Let us return to the example of 'plus' and 'quus'. We have just summarized the problem in terms of the basis of my present particular response: what tells me that I should say '125' and not '5'? Of course the problem can be put equivalently in terms of the sceptical query regardIng my
present intent: nothing in my mental hIstory establishes whether I meant plus or quus. So formulated, the problem may appear to be epistemological - how can anyone know which of these I meant? Given, however, that everythIng In
my mental history is compatible both with the conclusion that I meant plus and with the conclusion that I meant quus, It is clear that the sceptical challenge is not really an epIstemological one. It purports to show that nothing in the mental history of past behavior - not even what an omniscient God would know - could establish whether I meant plus or quus.
But then it appears to follow that there was no fact about me that constituted my having meant plus rather than quus. How could there be, if nothing in my internal mental history or external behavior will answer the sceptic who supposes that in fact I meant quus? If there was no such thing as my meaning plus rather than quus in the past, neither can there be any such a thing in the present. When we initially presented the paradox,
we perforce used language, taking present meanings for granted. Now we see, as we expected, that this provisional concession was indeed fictive. There can be no fact as to what I
mean by 'plus', or any other word at any time. The ladder must finally be kicked away.

This, then, is the sceptical paradox. When I respond in one way rather than another to such a problem as '68+57', I can have no justification for one response rather than another. Since the sceptic who supposes that I meant quus cannot be answered, there is no fact about me that distinguishes between my meaning plus and my meaning quus. Indeed, there is no
fact about me that distinguishes between my meaning a definite function by 'plus' (which determines my responses in new cases) and my meaning nothing at all.

Sometimes when I have contemplated the situation, I have had something of an eerie feeling. Even now as I write, I feel confident that there is something in my mind - the meaning I attach to the 'plus' sign - that instructs me what I ought to do in all future cases. I do not predict what I will do - see the discussion immediately below - but instruct myself what I ought to do to conform to the meaning. (Were I now to make a prediction of my future behavior, it would have substantive content only because it already makes sense, in terms of the instructions I give myself, to ask whether my intentions will be conformed to or not.) But when I concentrate on what is now in my mind, what instructions can be found there? How can I be said to be acting on the basis of these instructions when I act in the future? The infinitely many cases of the table are not in my mind for my future self to consult. To say that there is a general rule in my mind that tells me how to add in the future is only to throw the problem back on to other rules that also seem to be given only in terms of finitely many cases. What can there be in my mind that I make use of when I act in the future? It seems that the entire idea of meaning vanishes into thin air."

I have already said that the logic of addition is unlimited iteration; in principle we can keep adding forever. — Janus

But what do you mean when you say "adding" or "forever". How am I sure you don't actually mean "qu-orever" instead of "forever"?

The logic of quaddition like rules diverges from this when it stipulates some hiatus or terminus at whatever arbitrary point. — Janus

So what, this doesn't stop anyone using quaddition. It is both logically and literally possible to use the rule quaddition.

As long as such a quaddition-like rule does not diverge from the normal logic of addition, then there is no discernible difference and hence no need to use a different name to signify that procedure. — Janus

Yes, but equally someone could use that logic to say that quus should be preferred and there is no reason to use a different name of "addition" to signify it.

Two is always two regardless of what word you use to signify the concept. — Janus

How is this any different from saying that the image of the world I see is the same regardless of the boundaries I wish to draw on it and the way I wish to partition my concepts that describe it?

In contrast the concepts /tree/ or /animal/ are not so determinate. — Janus

But the image of a tree or an animal you see is determinate. Is the way you group different things as "trees" or "animals" much different from say describing things as prime numbers or odd and even or any other kind of mathematical concept? Can't addition, multiplication and subtraction all be grouped as operators?

So, introducing questions about ordinary language into a discussion of counting and addition is only going to confuse the issue. — Janus

No, because this whole issue is meant to be a generic property of all language. Quus was only given as a single example.

I don't need to do that; I don't need to define some essence in order to know that I am counting or adding — Janus

Okay, you know you're adding. But how do you know that what you are adding is not infact quadding, and how can you demonstrate that?

I don't even need to define the rule because the logic of counting and adding accords with the logic inherent in the cognition of mutlitudinous things. — Janus

How can you say it accords with anything if you can't define it, meaning how do you know that other rules don't also accord with the logic inherent with cognition.

Nothing new regarding this is emerging from you, so I think we are done. — Janus

I wouldn't be still saying anything if you would just give me what I want, but you can't. If you could, you would have done it literally days ago. You cannot actually resolve the underdetermination inherent in the problem. There is no way you can rule out using various different rules instead of addition without being dogmatic i.e. declaring that it is addition for no evidence or reason other than "you feel it", and because you can't even demonstrate you're actually adding, you cannot even demonstrate that what you feel is actually truly addition and not quaddition. And with your choice of dogmatism, equally someone else could be equally dogmatic and just declaring that they are using quus just because thats what "feels right". You can say they're wrong. But they could say you're just wrong, and there's no way to resolve it... which is I guess where we are at!

I have addressed the thing you asked me to demonstrate, now I think you should try and address what I asked you to demonstrate.

You say you unddrstand the logic of addition; lay out for me that logic then and give me the facts that rule out that you will give a quus-type answer in future uses of addition.

all I've been saying is that addition seems to me to be a natural development of cognition-based counting — Janus

And why can't I just question whether you have been quonting all along instead of counting?

There is no cognition-based logic to justify such an arbitrary stipulation — Janus

There is nothing that logically forbids someone from just using quaddition either.

There is no cognition-based logic to justify such an arbitrary stipulation

You don't have a cognition based logic to justify it other than you are used to addition. Not really a justification imo... "it just is because it is and anything I am not familiar with is wrong"... That's how it sounds.

At the end of the day, in the thought experiment, the data so far is just as consistent with the use of quus as plus.

I deem the whole thing a lame non-issue; I see no significance in it. — Janus

Well the significance is that you can't seem to refute it. Its very simple to refute Newtonian mechanics - for instance: under such and such conditions, time dilation occur; time dilation is impossible in Newtonian mechanics; Newtonian mechanics refuted. You don't seem to be able to use logic to justify addition at all.

This whole thing deep down is about the relationship between words and the world. The question is something like: do words have a fixed one-to-one relationship with the things that exist in the world in a way that they are intrinsically related? Does our behavior and thoughts prescribed in a rigidly defined, top-down manner by words and definitions, as if meaning has some kind of essence to it?

The alternative is: no, there is not a one-to-one fixed relationship between words and the world. Instead, we make labels and place them where we please and there are no fixed boundaries that force us to label things one way or another. We can, in principle, place the boundaries any way we like. Meaning is not essential in definitions but inferred from our behavior and how we use words in a bottom up manner. Our intractably, complicated behavior comes first.

If you think about it in this sense, what is in question is not whether we use quus or plus... we have a certain kind of mathematical behavior that we use very well for our own ends, but there is no single way to characterize it or label it or put boundaries around it. This underdeterminism has no consequence for our behavior because as I said just now, the behavior comes first, directly caused by the intractably complicated mechanistic behavior of our brains. And as our brains are just neurons communicating, there is nothing inherently semantically characterizable in what the brain is doing because its just mechanistic physics and there is probably not even a single way for brains to do any given task it is capable of.

Personally, I believe associative learning is at the foundation of language. In other words, Hume's theory of constant conjunction. This is the relationship between two events, where one event is invariably followed by the other: if the occurrence of A is always followed by B, A and B are said to be constantly conjoined. — RussellA

What is also interesting i find, is that the kind of very very very basic description of hebbian learning / spike timing dependent plasticity in the brain actually mirrors Hume's talk about causality quite well in terms of learning due to conjunctions and one event having to precede the other, things like that.

The connection is that: it is only in the context of public language as we use everyday, in a way that must be consistent with other people's language usage, that we find notions of rules and definitions determined - because we are checked by public consensus.

The point of the private language argument is that: without these checks, language seems redundant and there does not seem to be an inherent need for people to characterize the things they see in the world, or rules they apply, in one specific way or another (as illustrated by Kripke's quus rule-following paradox). Wittgenstein seems to suggest that giving things determinate labels via a private language seems to have no contribution on people's behavior and cognizance of the world.

it would be of no use. — Janus

It has been of use though because all of the examples of addition you have used so far in your life have been consistent with some quus-like rule. If you could have used that rule so far, then clearly it could have been of use.

It isn't really about intentional use anyway. The premise is that you have been using the addition rule for the whole of your life and you know it intimately. Then someone comes a long and questions: "How do you know you are not actually using quadditon? give me a justification of this."

Use is not so much relevant in that you would have to demonstrate that you are in fact using the "useful" rule, and that somewhere a long the line the future you are not going to give an answer that other people might find totally inconsistent with addition (but consistent with the "useless" rule). How can you demonstrate that you are not going to do that and you are in fact using the "useful" rule?

It's not dogmatism: I'll change my mind — Janus

I don't mean dogmatism in the sense of you not changing your mind, I mean dogmatism more in how it is used here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma

You are defending the use of addition over other rules without demonstrating it. Your main justification so far seems to be that anything other than addition is arbitrary, but that in itself seems dogmatic. What do you mean by arbitrary other than that is just what you are used to, what seems natural... just what feels right? That seems to be dogmatism in the sense of the above wikipedia article.

If you can demonstrate that some rule could always yield the same result as addition and yet differs from it in the very part of it that does so. So, for example quaddition is exactly the same as addition up to any sum that does not exceed 57. — Janus

Again, its not about the difference between the two rules - we know they are different. It is about whether you can justify that a single rule you have been using is addition and not quaddition.

It may be easier to think about it analogous to how theories compete in science. For instance, Special relativity and Newtonian mechanics are very obviously different. But from our perspective on earth right now it may not be apparent which one is correct because they yield more or less the same results in our everyday context. We need an experiment to demonstrate one is the case and not the other.

I am therefore asking for your experiment about this. Asking me to demonstrate that quus always yields the same result as plus yet is also somehow different is an impossible contradition. They are just different. Yet, in our difficulty in figuring out whether the laws of nature are obeying Special relativity or Newtonian mechanics, would you also ask me to demonstrate that Newtonian mechanics gives different results yet is also the same as Special relativity? No, because that isn't relevant. We know they are different models; the question is which one is being instantiated right now on earth, which has to be demonstrated by experiment.

For the quus example, where is the experimental demonstration that you have been using addition and not quus (and then not any other type of quus-like overlapping rule)?

Edit: I hope this last part has addressed your arguments in the sense of saying that your arguments are erroneous and not relevant to the problem just like how trying to demonstrate that Special relativity is both somehow the same and different to Newtonian mechanics is not relevant to the question of whether Newtonian or Special relativity is actually the case on earth. Only an experiment can differentiate the two, which is also what you have to analogously/metaphorically provide to differentiate quus and plus.