Okay, so I'll step back and explain because I really don't mean to be obscure or confusing.

I say, "I see an apple." There are two questions that can be asked: (1) what is the apple, and (2) what does it mean to say "I see an apple." The problem arises when these two questions get conflated. They get conflated when someone says "Apple means having an experience of an apple." That ties meaning either to (a) the apple itself or (b) the experience you have of the apple. Considering you cannot tell me (a) what the apple itself is without referring to some sort of perceptual state (i.e. it is round, weighs 3 ounces, is red, etc.), and (b) you cannot open your mind and show me your perception, telling me the "apple" is (a) or (b) offers me nothing. You'll also note that (a) and (b) are metaphysical questions, not physical questions. As in, I want to know what the apple itself is if that's what you're using to tie it to meaning.

What I have is use and a community of users of the word apple, and from that we speak of apples. Meaning is use, not meaning is the thing or the experience. How do we use the term "apple"? Through
correction (“no, that’s not an apple”), mistake, teaching, rule-following. That's what I mean by "apple."

This does not deny (1) that there are real apples in the world, (2) that you don't have an experience of an apple, (3) that photons and neurons don't act certain ways. It doesn't speak of that at all. My discussion is about grammar, meaning how words are used, not metaphysics or private sensations.

When you say "I saw an apple" if you start to delve into what is the apple "really" and what part of your sensation was the apple and what wasn't, or if there even was an apple "out there," you've lost your way. You're talking in unanswerable and incohrent circles.

As in, tell me what the apple looks like without telling me how things look because subjective qualities aren't part of the apple. That makes no sense. So, what do I see? I see an apple, but I mean "apple" like we use the term "apple," not by assigning it meaning from metaphysics.

So, you're an indirect realist, then tell me which part of the apple you see if part of the apple really. If none, for fear of being labeled an direct realist as to that part of the apple, then why posit the apple "out there" at all. What explanatory power does it have to say it is the stuff that causes stuff when we can't know anything about the stuff.

You have fallen back onto the semantic argument, entirely missing the one being made here. What words we use are irrelevant to the question at hand, although it is quite important we at least think we're talking about hte same thing - and we aren't here. — AmadeusD

Semantics references meaning. The words chosen, syntax. Are we not asking what I mean when I say "apple"? You say no. I say yes.

You ask "what causes the sense data that causes my brain to swirl so I end up with an apple qualia."

You want to know what the stuff is, but you can't provide it any attribute because attributes are qualia. So you just say stuff is what causes stuff. The photon can't be brightness per your view, nor can the molecule have scent. That would be direct realism.

Because we're trying not to idealize. I have been over this. I am beginning to think that this argument is so thin that two of the better posters can't quite wrap themselves around it adequately. — AmadeusD

No, that's not it at all. The emperor wears clothes.

Which has precisely nothing to do with whether we are directly aware of objects or not. — AmadeusD

It has to do with your misunderstanding of what is meant by direct realism and the philosophical irrelevance of the indirect realism you propose.

You act as if science answers metaphysics. Then is physics and metaphysics the same thing?

Your desire to subtract semantics from "apple" literally makes the term meaningless. How do we proceed from there? How can I see an apple if it means nothing to ask that question?

The light itself is not sense data - the electrical impulses your eyes send to your brain is. This explains why light does not need a medium. It literally, physically, enters the eye. There is where the 'magic' happens. — AmadeusD

What is the light? Brightness?

What is smell? Molecules in your nose receptors? Does the scent of the flower live in the molecule?

Does it make sense to speak of anything that causes the magic except to say it causes the magic?

So, what is the flower, the light, or the molecule I speak of? Let's say it's "really" a cat. Does that mean a flower is a cat? How can we know it's "really" a cat if I see flower, and how can I know you see a cat when I see a flower?

How is it that we in fact speak easily of flowers all the time yet I have no idea what we're talking about here.

The point here is that meaning isn't dictated by cause. It's by use.

That's exactly what it implies: that the Light is a data medium between the object and your eyes. — AmadeusD

Why isn't the light an object that requires a data medium between it and your eyes?

Very well, then how do we falsify indirect realism as you've defined it?
— Hanover

I don't know, and it's not how I've defined it. — Michael

The physical question of how we see things isn't metaphysics. You're just telling me how scientists say we see things. That's not in dispute.

The metaphysical question deals with the fundamental ontological composition of the entity. Your post makes no reference to that.

To the question, "what is an apple," you tell me that there is a distal X that comes through my retina, into my brain, etc. I want to know what X is. I don't need to know the various points in the road where X traveled. I want to know what X is if I'm asking the metaphysical question.

Someone else says that direct realism is the case and that X appears suddenly just as X as a phenomenal state. You deny that is the case, but you have no idea what X is, so it's not clear how you deny it. You then admit you can't falsify indirect realism, which makes it non-scientific. If you don't know what X is, the scientific inquiry only tells us there is an unknown X going about the unknown world and that it appears as a phenomenal state at some point. Your conversation is physics, not metaphysics.

You assume some direct knowledge of the real, which makes you a direct realist, but you just want to explain intermediate steps as directly known and not the distal X.

That is, this conversation about what is X (i.e. the metaphysical question) is unanswerable. That you can tell me about apples, lights bouncing off apples, neurons firing is all part of the same scientific, physical conversation. You are no closer to proving what an apple is by describing the various noumenal events, which includes not just the apple, but the photons, the neurons, and all else.

So, what is an apple? We know what an apple is because we talk about it. That's what the apple is. What the X is is unknowable. It's why we needn't mention it in our conversations about apples.

And this doesn't deny a metaphysical reality or that there is a great big mystery of the unknown or that we don't have phenomenal states. It just denies that the meaning of "apple" is underwritten by the X, even if it is the X that is the hypothosized cause of the apple.

So, three distinct questions when asking what is an apple: (1) metaphysical, (2) physical, and (3) linguistic.

As to each:

(1) Kant convincingly tells us we can't know.
(2) scientists offer us all sorts of explanations
(3) philosophers tell us how meaning is assigned to terms.

We seem stuck on discussing #2, which is non-responsive to 1 or 3. We remain in a category slide.

The philosophical question is not of the physical, but of the metaphysical. How the light bends and the mind processes is whatever it is, and I'm sure a neuro-opthamologist could dazzle us with the details.

If indirect realism is a scientific theory, then it must be falsifiable. It"s obviously not. You can't describe which part of your perception is not modified by the processes you claim modifies all your perceptions. That is, if indirect realism is meta (an underlying axiom) to physical explanation, why am I being educated in neurobiology as an attempt to prove your meta theory?

That is to say, none of this discussion is responsive to the metaphysical question of what the fundamental constitution of reality is. As in, what is the apple in the noumena?

Since that question is fundamentally unanswerable (in fact, the noumena describes the limits of what we can know), we turn to the question of what is an apple, and we realize (1) we have no idea what an apple is via metaphysical analysis, yet (2) we amazingly are capable of speaking fully coherently about apples.

This ought lead us to the conclusion that it must not be metaphysics that underwrites what we mean by "apple."

That's not how it's defined — Michael

That's a tangent. The central question was:

Very well, then how do we falsify indirect realism as you've defined it? — Hanover

Same question.

I have no idea. Science primarily relies on falsification, not verification. If direct realism claims that ordinary objects are "constituents" of experience (see here), and if science has falsified this claim — as I believe it has — then science has refuted direct realism. — Michael

Very well, then how do we falsify indirect realism as you've defined it?

If direct realism (as it is absurdly defined here) requires a part of the apple perceived actually be in your head, even if we found that constituent part in your head, indirect realism wouldn't be falsified because you'd have to say the constituent part you found may not be the apple itself because it is but a mediated perception.

As in, if all you see are shadows, you can't ever know if you have the real thing.

If your position is unfalsifiable, it is not scientific.

It would have to show that the world is actually a dream. You directly perceive the world because there's no interface. The world is created by you, from the contents of you. It would have to show that you're God. — frank

I mean lay out the methodology of this experiment, show me what we're measuring, and show me the results we have to arrive at to prove direct realism is true.

My point just being that the question is nonsense. It can't be proved in principle. It's unverifiable, just as is indirect realism is unfalsifiable. You would have to assume indirect realism to even perform an empirical analysis, considering empirical measurement relies upon perception.

For some reason this thread conflates "physical" with "metaphysical." Telling me we describe apples in the physical world as X doesn't tell me the fundamental nature of things. It can't.

It doesn't beg the question because it doesn't assume that the apple is not the direct object of perception; it only asserts that something can be the object of perception but not the direct object of perception, e.g. if I'm watching something on CCTV then the thing I'm watching is the object (or "event" if you prefer) of perception but not the direct object of perception. It's important that we don't conflate "object of perception" and "direct object of perception" so as not to equivocate. — Michael

What experiment would prove the validity of direct realism as you define direct realism?

BaShana, BaShana, BaShana — frank

Yes! Always the hopeful BaShana, never the resigned mañana.

Trust the design.

and you respond by saying such things as "[internal states don't] offer explanatory power". What is this response saying if not that the indirect realist's account of perception is false? — Michael

They don't explain our use of words. That's what I'm saying. If you say that photons bounce off the ship and enter your retina, why would I debate the validity of that in the context of what "ship" means?

And why would I enter into a debate as to what your phenomenal state is or isn't when I have no access to it? How does it help me to track back all the physical and biological processes as physical substance meanders about until it finally provides you a private state I have no ability to know? How does it help me know what ship means from your telling me all the steps that preceed the magic of experience?

And even more important, since I have at my disposal knowledge of the use of the word, and from that I can obtain meaning, why involve myself in your mission? Particularly when you acknowledge reference doesn't impart meaning? You admit your inquiry doesn't tell us what "ship" means.

Suppose you want to know meaning, do you rely on use?

I know I would rely upon an optometrist if I saw double.

The point here is that the person you need to be discussing this with is the neuro-scientist who can better correct all your claims about neural processing and vision, not a philosopher.

This is just to say your argument of indirect realism is orthogonal to the question of meaning, which is why I needn't comment on its validity, and why you're incorrect to assume I've rejected explicitly or implicitly your metaphysical claims. I've said all along, yours is a category error, and I'm being consistent to avoid engaging in it too.

If I can talk about my headaches, and ChatGpt cannot, there seems to be something I have that I am talking about, that ChatGpt will always lack. If that something can be discussed, and it is mine alone, this seems enough to talk of this something as an entity, if not a physical "object". — hypericin

That we can talk about your headaches doesn't suggest the meaning of "your headaches" is underwritten by those headaches, nor does it mean your head doesn't hurt nor that ChatGpt has an ache in the head it doesn't have.

The very fact I can talk about your headache is proof I am not talking about something available only to you.

It is you and Banno and others that are using semantic direct realism or something like it to argue that indirect realism is false. — Michael

Point out where I argued indirect realism is false. I've consistently taken an a-metaphysical stance. I've argued it's irrelevant from a perspective of meaning.

That conclusion doesn't follow. If indirect realism is true then indirect realism is true and direct realism is false. Two competing philosophical accounts of perception have been tested, with one shown to be correct and the other incorrect. — Michael

That doesn't follow because it assumes a grammatical theory of direct realism speaks at all to the a scientific view of indirect realism. They operate in seperate categories.

The strawman naive realism isn't argued anywhere. To the extent you've proved indirect realism, it was never challenged. The question was philosophical (or so I thought) as to what statements, like "I see a boat" meant. You're just telling me how retinas bend light.

This matter is a matter for physicists and physiologists and neuroscientists and psychologists to resolve, not linguists. — Michael

Of course, so what is your thesis here, that philosophy is science? Mine is that science is not philosophy.

You can't refute indirect realism or the claim that colours and smells and tastes and headaches are private sensations by saying "nuh-uh, meaning is use and so words like 'red' and 'pain' can't refer to private sensations". — Michael

That's so not the argument.

You can't refute indirect realism — Michael

That wasn't suggested. It was that whether it's true or not leaves meaning unaffected and so it has no philosophical role.

Where have I ever used the word "means"? You keep bringing it up, despite me repeatedly saying that I am only arguing that the word "headache" refers to a private sensation. — Michael

Then the disconnect is clear. You are not addressing the claim that meaning is use at all.

You are not offering a theory of meaning. YOu are offering a causal or scientific point about the origins of sensations. No one in this discussion has denied that internal states exist or have causes.

The issue was never whether headaches have an internal basis. The issue was whether appeal to a private sensation contributes anything to meaning. It doesn’t.

So if you’re explicitly disavowing any claim about what words mean, then we’re simply not having the same argument.

The word "rain" refers to the water falling from the clouds, and the word "headache" refers to the sensation I feel having to belabour this very obvious truth. — Michael

Still in a category mistake. You're not talking about meaning.

I'll repeat what I said to Hanover.

P1. Headaches are private sensations
P2. The word "headaches" refers to headaches
C1. Therefore, the word "headaches" refers to private sensations — Michael

Again, where is this word "means' in your proof?

There are no headaches without the private sensation. — Michael

Just an obvious category mistake at this point, refusing to distinguish ontological cause from grammatical meaning. That a given X owes its existence to Y doesn't implicate Y as the definition of X.

It's about to rain here, and rain means what rain does, without regard to it being caused by a pressure differential. To say this rain is that does not mean rain means that. To conflate meaning with cause at this point seems to ignore all that has been said.

Headache can mean the pain in one's head even while there is no pain in the head. Headache cannot mean the pain in one's foot if it is used to mean pain in one's head.

See above. — Michael

Where am i looking?

If just one word refers to private sensations then this argument that you and Hanover keep pushing that meaning is just public use, that private sensations must drop out of consideration because we can't know each other's experiences, etc. is shown to fail. Clearly you understand what the word "headache" means even though it does refer to a private sensation. You might want to argue that colours aren't like headaches, e.g. take the naive colour realist approach, but no deference to Austin or Wittgenstein (or language) suffices to prove this. — Michael

Can you give me an instance where use does not suffice to provide meaning?

What is it?

My objection is to your objection to my claim that the words "red", "pain", "cold", etc. refer to the phenomenal character of first-person experiences. — Michael

That's not my argument. My argument is that I don't know anything about your beetle and I don't speak about it. It's entirely agnositc as it relates to your first person experience and what it might be.

You can speak about it, but you might not understand it. — Michael

Well, of course. I might not understand anything you say because it's as impossible to know what your beetle looks like or for you to know what mines does. Do I know what you mean when you say "red"? Sure, based upon the way it is used. Do I have any ability to see your red and compare it to mine? Of course not.

But this is beside the main point I'm making here. If we can all communicate as well as we do without reference to the phenomenal state, it drops out as an irrelevant epiphenomenon of meaning. That is, if we say that meaning is fully derivable by usage and public correction and I agree with you that for each and every usage there is a private referent that also fully provides meaning for that term, then what follows is that we can derive the meaning from either of the two independently. Since that follows, and the private referent is a hidden and inaccessible entity that cannot be shown or known to the person receiving the communication, then if we wish to derive meaning, we must turn to usage.

I'm talking about reference. The word "headache" refers to the sensation we tend to feel after a heavy night of drinking, the word "cold" refers to the sensation we tend to feel in low temperatures, the word "hot" refers to the sensation we tend to feel in high temperatures, and the word "pain" refers to the sensation we tend to feel if stabbed. This is so obvious that I don't get why there is so much objection. It's really not difficult to understand. You don't need to have access to another person's first-person phenomenal experiences to accept this. It's common sense, and in this case common sense is correct.

Sensations exist, and our words can refer to them — with the word "sensations" being the most obvious. — Michael

Alright, 25 pages in and there's no question we both know what one another are saying. You are talking about reference.

Do you acknowledge that I can speak with you fully coherently by relying entirely upon the usage of the terms without having any idea what the consitution of the internal referent is? That is, can I understand "red" without reference to the referent, but instead just to usage?

I'm not clear on what your objection is. Is it (1) you don't think "meaning as use" works because if we rely upon use entirely , we'll be hopelessly confused or (2) you acknowledge "meaning as use" fully works, but it is dishonest and incomplete because it fails to consider the underlying nature of reality.

I’m not asserting (2). I’m asserting (1) and that the word “hot” in John’s utterance “I feel hot” refers to the sensation he feels. — Michael

I know, and (1) doesn't have the word "mean" in it, and I was trying to figure out what words meant, not what caused certain things.

My private state isn’t invisible to me. I am intimately familiar with the sensations of feeling hot and cold. I can recognize and name which one I am feeling in any given environment — and even if I’m alone. — Michael

And that's the problem. You're talking about your private langauge by reference to things I have no exposure to. I'm not questioning whether you can introspect. I'm saying your introspection can't ground meaning.

The sensation he has makes the use of the word “hot” true because it refers to the sensation he has, and the sensation he has makes the use of the word “cold” false because it refers to the sensation he doesn’t have. — Michael

This nails your mistake exactly.

1. John says "I feel hot" because John is hot
is not equivalent to
2. John says 'I feel hot' means John is hot.

I feel hot because I have a fever <> "I feel hot" means I have a fever
I feel hot because I have a sensation of heat within me <> "I feel hot" means I have a sensation of heat within me.

Note the quotes to make clear I'm referring to the grammar of the sentence.

How could we know we've used the sentence "I feel hot" correctly if we have to rely upon an invisible private state?

Sensations play a causal and evidential role in our evaluative practices, but meaning is fixed by public, world-directed norms of application, not by private feelings. — Esse Quam Videri

This seems the crux of the problem, where cause is summoned to determine meaning. Cause can be admitted without attaching it to meaning.

There are things we do, and then there are the actual things. Calling the voice on the phone "my wife's voice" is what's known as an **idealization (ironically). You are hearing something different to your wife's voice. You can just shift this to be listening to a recording of your wife's voice. There isn't even a tenuous connection, at the time, to your wife uttering anything. Your wife's voice is the vibrations in the surrounding air upon her larynx engaging and producing sounds.

The recording cannot be your wife's voice. It can be a recording of it. But that's unweildy, so we idealize to get through conversations more efficiently.

This is why philosophers routinely use different meanings for words - to make them more consistent and accurate. You don't have to accept my position, I'm just explaining why the move to forego sorting this out isn't attractive to me. — AmadeusD

I don't have a problem with your using the modifier "real" to describe certain voices and "fake" other voices, but those words, like all others, gain their meaning through use, not by imposing some special metaphysical status to it. That is, if I speak falsetto, you can say that is not my "real" voice. If you want to say that my real voice is what you hear when we're next to each other talking, but a recording of my voice isn't my real voice, that's fine. But none of that suggests there is this metaphysically true voice that can be meaningfully (and by "meaningfully" I mean that can be identified and discussed coherently) identfied.

Identifying that "real" voice is impossible. Is it the vibrations, the way you hear it, the way your ear drum vibrates? Is it still "real" if through helium?

That doesn't follow. The sensory data of the ship is (repeat oneself). Entering a new form into a straight descriptor doesn't really work. If you're talking about the sensory data derived from "an object, we know not what, but call a ship" then that's what you're talking about. Not the ship. This is the key problem for any version of this game which supposes we have access to the ship itself. We simply label our representations. This doesn't seem amenable to disagreement, really. The disagreement comes in when you try to get around this by just shifting the epistemic benchmark. I'd prefer not to. The assumption is there's an actual object out there. Our perceptual system surely puts us in direct contact with the objects in order to derive stimulus (and, I take it, to avoid Idealism) - but that does not carry through to the images we receive. Nor could it. Banno makes this mistake talking about his wife on the phone.
That you hear your wife through the phone (and are directly in touch with that voice you know to be your wife's voice) does not mean that hte audible sensation you receive is her voice. Nor could it. — AmadeusD

And so you've not pointed out anything that has to do with what it means to say "ship." You've just told me about the hopeless difficulty in distinguishing the noumenal from the phenomenal. When I ask "what is the ship" my very point was to avoid the conversation you just had about how metaphyics gets us no where. I'm not suggesting you can't amuse yourself with those conversations, but I am saying that we don't have to reach any metaphysical conclusion as to whether @Banno's wife's voice is the vibration in her larynx, the sound waves as they leave her mouth, the electronic goings on in the phone, the vibration of the ear drum, the nerves doing whatever they do in the brain, or the magical presentation of phenomenal state. It's all good stuff, but it has nothing to do with what "voice" means.

If "voice" meant all the complex underwriting that causes voices to exist, do you suggest we use the term that way? Isn't it problematic that the word means something entirely different from the way we all use it? The issue here is not (to be very clear) that the voice as science might describe it might be entirely correct. I am not, nor have I ever made a metaphysical claim here. My point is that it is irrelevant. Meaning is a grammatical term regarding how we speak and it based upon use.

Alright, consider this statement, "One should eat his vegetables should he wish to stay healthy."

I would expect you would reject naive referentialism, appreciating that there is no referent for "one," for the generic "vegetables" I mention, and surely not purely phenomenal states like "wish" (even though this mention of "wish" refers to no particular wish in any particular person, so it's not actually a phenomenal state).

Does it therefore not follow that the statement "Michael is from England" logically could also have meaning in the very same way without reliance upon reference? That is, sure, there is a Michael and there is an England, both of which have referents, but the meaning of that sentence needn't be reliant upon those referents. The sentence "Bjanglo is from Habversam" also has meaning, despite there being no referent. We know what could count as it being true or false and what sort of claim it is, even though it is in fact false.

What this means is that sentences of the same logical form can have meaning with or without referents.

And the point of that is to show that meaning is not dependent upon referent, which means there is something else underwriting meaning that is always there, even where there are also referents available.

If usage is that always present as a non-referent that supplies meaning, can I not then ignore the referrent and still obtain meaning?

I'm very confused. — Michael

I was just running through the consequences of your position, not offering mine.

But then at the same time Banno appears to agree with you, although my understanding of him is that the word "bird" refers to the mind-independent object and the word "red" refers to one of its mind-independent properties (e.g. a surface that reflects 700nm light?), and so you and him are arguing the exact opposite, whereas I'm arguing for a middle ground. — Michael

I'm pretty sure I've not attached meaning to either the phenomenal state or the noumenal state, but that I've consistently attached it to use.

So, we have the ship picture I sent. You told me it was composed of pixels. You told me the pixels didn't look like anything unless it was being looked at. You deny idealism. You say the pixels are actually there, but all we can say about them is what we can't perceive about them because what we perceive about them is dependent upon their perception. So is the ship I uploaded the ship I see when I look at my screen, or is it the pixels? If it's the pixels, why are we assigning word meaning to something we know nothing about? Why can't I say the ship picture came from certain underlying things without having to ascribe the cause to the word?

There's no such thing as what pixels "really" look like, if this is supposed to mean how they look when nobody is looking (which is why naive realism is false). But they exist (which is why idealism is false), and their behaviour is causally responsible for the mental phenomena that is brought into existence by neural activity in my brain; mental phenomena with characteristics and qualities that I refer to using such words as "red" and "circle", and in non-pixel related situations as "loud" and "hot" and "sour" and "painful" (which is why your suggestion that there's nothing more to meaning than public use is false). — Michael

So we have sensory data that is defined with the single quality as having the ability to create a qualitative state, which is the phenomenal state. So you have a perception that is created by your mind, with all sorts of internally created properties in addition to the stimulus because a bee sees the ship differently from the way I see it, for example. That's to say different minds impose different properties on this sensory data when it's perceived.

So then the ship in my mind's eye is a product of the external stimuli plus whatever is added by the measuring device (i.e. my eye, my nerves, my brain). There are certain stimuli that my internal components are not capable of interpreting, so we use external devices, like glasses, hearing aids, and even a Geiger counter. We can't see or feel radiation (unless in high enough amounts), so we hear the clicks of the Geiger counter, but do we say the clicks are the radiation? That seems strange that we would, considering the radiation has been translated. So maybe the unseen radiation is the radiation, but all our measurements and perceptions are just something else.

So, applying this reasoning, the sensory data of the ship is the ship and what we see is just our interpretation, modified in various ways to make it perceivable by us. The bird may or may not be red, may or may not be whatever shape it is (and it varies in flight as well), but the bird is that unprocessed data. We now know the bird for what it's not (as in not having any identifiable quality), but it's just an underlying causative substratum. I will call that bird "Polly", the underlying causative substratum that wants a cracker.

What this means is that I feel like the bird I see in my head is what I'm calling the bird, so now I'm confused as to what is the actual bird (the external sensory data) or the bird in my head (the one with the beak and all that). Are they both the bird?

So now I'll shift gears and change my mind. The bird is not the underying substratum, but is just my phenomenal state. But if that's the case, then the noumenal element does no semantic work and doesn't fix any standard of correctness, so in what sense is it relevant to a discussion of meaning at all rather than just a background causal hypothesis? That is, my dictionary doesn't seem to say anything about causative substratum when I look up "bird," so why are we talking about that when seeking meaning. That is, how does this answer the grammar question in how we use words? Why are we even talking about metaphysics for this inquiry?

That is, the exploration was is in finding out how to find the meaning to words (grammar), which you're changing into a search for understanding how things exist (metaphysics). And to be clear, I've not suggested any of the in and outs of how our brain sees objects I've set up above are false. I'm just saying they play no role in this inquiry for how we assign meaning to words.

People use the PLA to conclude that meaning is dependent on public verification in the form of successful social interaction. I learn a rule about the use of the word "salt" and I verify that I'm using the right rule because you pass me the salt when I ask for it. — frank

I'd cite to PI 1 to I don't know 20 or so for that not being right.

The PLA is not a grammar theory, and philosophy and science intimately relate and temper one another. There is no category error. — frank

Grammar means something different to Wittgenstein. Under that definition, it is a grammar theory.

More to that, I'd say the various ways to describe the ship are all correct, with none getting priority as more accurate than the other, just using different descriptions for different purposes.

But I also think it's entirely a category error to equate root causes to description. If I stimulate the image of a goat through electrical brain stimulation, I'm not going to commit to the electricity being a goat.

So if @Michael argues the pixels are one way to perceive the ship, I can agree, but reject it's the only way. If he argues, and he can clarify if he's not, that raw sense data is the veridical ship modified into a delusive perception, I'd say he's committing a category error.

In either event, pressing for the delusive elements in the perception that don't exist in the veridical version should make the point that what is the really real version of the ship is just not a meaningful question.

Both Chomsky and Kripke offer good reasons to doubt that you learn language purely by watching others use the terms — frank

These issues are actually specifically addressed by Wittgenstein.

Innate syntactical limitations and even an innate semantical recognition would not challenge Wittgenstein. As in, hiding when there is thunder, running from snakes, all based upon a priori programming doesn't respond to him.

He offers no description of and makes no assumptions regarding language acquisition. A reflexive response incapable of being corrected upon private practice and a lack of contextual variation removes it from Wittgensteinian langauge.

A scientist wouldn't just assume that there's only one way that meaning can work. Why would the philosopher do that? — frank

I'm open to alternative theories, but I'll consistently reject scientific alternatives because they it's a category error to argue how a scientific theory of reality can replace a grammar theory.

That's X and Y, but you didn't tell me what Z was.

I need to know what the pixels really look like so I compare them to how they look to you, so I can measure your delusion.

I disagree. Philosophy is us trying to reason about the nature of the world and its workings. I think you're thinking of therapy. — Michael

Then let's reason, using indirect realism, about the world.

X is the veridical ship.
Y is the phenomenal perception of the ship.
Z is X minus Y, the delusive ship

Using this picture, itemize X, Y, and Z so we can reason about the world:

So if you don't deny that words like "headache" and "colour" are referring to the phenomenal character of subjective experiences then why do you keep bringing up Wittgenstein and Austin when I am clearly talking about perception and indirect realism? — Michael

I'm saying their meaning, insofar as the terms are usable in public discourse (and do understand that you can have an internal language that does not violate the PLA so long as the language was created through public criteria) are entirely derivable by use. I'm not saying anything else, so you cannot equate this to me suggesting you don't actually have a headache. What your headache is certainly nothing I can see or verify. I learn usage from living in the world of users and seeing how things are used and that is what I rely upon. I gain nothing from reference to the invisible referent. So when you say "my headache" and you mean the actual pounding you're feeling right now, how am I to know what you're talking about other than how you use the term consistently with others who I have seen use the term, which must be related to behaviors and the use of other terms I am already familiar with.

That is, when you tell me that your headache is the pain in your head, I understand how we use pain and head, but I surely don't see the pain. If you tell me the boat is out at sea, even you have no idea what that boat is because you've already told me the color is imposed by the perceiver and maybe the shape isn't really its shape. So, what do you add by telling me the ship or the pain is the referrent if you can't tell me what those things are? My assertion that meaning is use is NOT some discovery about the world. I'm not telling you what I've uncovered. I'm telling you that philosophy is therapuetic, not a statement about the world. It tells you how you can have clarity about your statement and terms and how grammar is to be used. So, (1) I don't need your reference to know what "really" is because I can rely upon how terms are used, and (2) I don't know what "really is" means.

Consider this conversation:

Michael: "I saw a boat at sea."
Me: "Oh, you ate a rabbit?"

Michael: "No, I saw a boat."
Me: "Right, a hat was on backwards?"

Michael: "I'm talking about a boat"
Me: "Thanks, but the cat jumped there, so you know."

Michael: "What's this got to do with the boat?"
Me: "That's what I said, there is vessel out at sea."

Michael: "What?"
Me: "Mastedon!"

Michael: "We're talking about a boat."
Me: "That's what I saidn't."

What just happened is that we had a coversation in which I followed no rules. What I said did not match any known usage. We do not refer to this as a private langauge I was having in my head because there are no such things as private language. We call this not language at all.

If you do obtain meaning from my use, you would contextualize it, including what we're talking about, what you know about me, and the entirety of the context, and you might well say, "I know exactly what Hanover means. He means to make a joke. He means to be annoying. He means to make some obscure point only he follows." That might be true, but there no referents there, and no what I "really" mean that comes into play. You are just interpreting meaning from use.

Then you say, but it was the meaning that I knew privately that determines what I meant, and that claim is empty because a privately known meaning cannot determine correctness unless there already exists a public standard for using the term correctly. Without that public standard, "what I really meant" collapses into whatever seems right to me, which is exactly what Wittgenstein shows cannot count as meaning at all. If that gibberish can mean "I had chicken for lunch" when I want it to and "I saw a movie" when I want it to, and I can use words however the moment hits me to mean what I'm thinking, how do those words hold any meaning at all? How is a language only I speak, not translatable into a language anyone speaks, language?

Why all this blather? It's to make the point that tying meaning to the mental state as you want to doesn't work. But again, I'm not saying anything about what goes on in your mind.