But I am not a Kantian. I do not believe we can know about things that we cannot know (noumena). — Leontiskos

I don't think we can know about things we cannot know either. That's what it means to be noumenal.

But even here your example fails, because just as there are distinguishing properties of red and white pens, so too are there distinguishing properties of red and white images, and also distinguishing properties of the two sets of code that generates those different images. — Leontiskos

The red is what you perceive in your mind. It is that phenomenal state. So, look at an apple and the red you perceive is the red.

The word "red" is what I type, but it is not my fingers moving. It is the letters R - E - D. The input causes the output, but the input isn't the output.

That there is an object X that causes you to see red and an object Y that causes you to see white doesn't mean that X is red and Y is white. It's for that reason we don't say my fingers moving are the word "red."

If you want to say that X and Y are different to the extent one makes you see red and one white, that's fine, but that doesn't mean X is red, where "is" means "to be." X is a bunch of electronic impulses in the computer code example and it doesn't look red. It looks like code, or maybe just computer parts.

Hmm? We could, by analogy, call the code white which causes the white image, but it is the image on the screen that is white, not the code. — Leontiskos

In this analogy, the code is the noumena and the color is the phenomenal. The point being that there is no reason to claim any property on the noumenal. The pen and the perception of the pen need bear no relationship to one another.

Do you think that pens do not really exist, and the mind is just projecting them? That there is no difference between a dream or a hallucination and reality? — Leontiskos

I've not argued idealism, but I do wonder what can be said of the reality that realists speak of.

Consider two pens, a red pen and a white pen. Is it your claim that there is no external difference between these two pens? Or: that the only difference between the two pens is something the mind projects into the pens? (Note that your word "elicits" already tells us that there is an external basis for differing color perceptions.) — Leontiskos

Consider 2 sets of computer code, one that projects an image of a white pen on the screen and a second that projects a red pen on the screen. Which code is white?

Why do we even have words the refer to mental states if something is lost when using them? — Harry Hindu

I don't understand the reasoning behind this question. You're asking why speak at all if our speech isn't 100% accurate and complete in terms of what it conveys? My response would be because knowing something is better than knowing nothing. Why did we have black and white photography before color photography came out? Because something is better than nothing. And, I'd say, I don't labor with the belief that current color photography is 100% accurate in what it depicts. It's 2 dimensional, for example.

As in my example earlier of the air traffic controller looking at blips on his radar screen. No one believes that airplanes are blips, but we can all see the value in having him look at those blips.

If I made it to the grave sight after telling me how to get there nothing was lost in translation. If I say "I understand how you feel" when you tell me how you feel nothing was lost in translation. — Harry Hindu

Genesis 1:2

English Standard Version: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."

New Revised Standard: "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters."

Good News Translation: "the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water."

Septuagine Bible w/Apocrypha: "But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water."

Will the real Genesis 1:2 please stand up? That is, the one where nothing gets lost in translation.

You can only be disappointed in Stalin if he had not achieved his goal, but he clearly did. — Tarskian

Kind of like I should be impressed with Jeffrey Dahmer. He set out to murder and then eat people, and by God he did it. What's not to like?

Feels trollish, but I'll wait and see how things develop. Regardless, it's not interesting enough to keep my attention.

The typical response to critics of Marxism who refer to Stalin is to try to distinguish true Marxism from his brand of mass murder and destruction.

You, on the other hand, accept the criticisms joyfully, embracing its horrors.

Pretty idiotic, but novel.

I truly admire him. — Tarskian

As your eyes met his in deep admiration, he'd have murdered you too.

Was the failure of communism mainly due to pursuing happiness not as a methodology or process; but, as the final goal of the system itself? — Shawn

I think Stalin, for example, failed because he only pursued happiness. That and he killed 40 million people.

Did you have another communist in mind?

If you define bad faith as anything less than open, honest communication, then you're in bad faith by not having the conversation with your wife that you're having with us.

If you define bad faith some other way, where interests are weighed, like believing the preservation of the marriage matters or the intersts of the children (if any) ought be weighed, then it's not necessarily bad faith to withhold information.

But, as others have said, this isn't advice. It's analytic philosophy, working with terms and definitions.

Talk to a therapist. I'd love to tell you that there's a principle that honesty at all costs, damn the torpedoes, is always in order as a matter of obligation. That would then clean up all the messiness of figuring out what your highly particularized situation demands.

Unfortunately though, life is too complicated for an easy answer.

Do you never try to convey how you feel to others? If you do then you must have some degree of certainty that they will at least partially understand what you are saying because they can experience the same feelings but in different but similar contexts (they have lost a love one too, just not your loved one). — Harry Hindu

Heavy emphasis of "partially." Words aren't useless. They are massively important to communicate with one another. Words are an interpretation of mental states into symbols. The mental states stay behind and the symbols do the best they can to project one's thoughts to another. Much is lost in translation.

How can I make it to your loved one's grave with a high chance of success (much more than random) when you are describing your internal states of what it is like being in that location and what it was like to get there yourself? — Harry Hindu

I've not argued that communication is worthless. I've only said that it can't be used to precisely convey my mental state. Whatever is expressed will be significantly limited in content.

Kant described transcdenntal apperception, which is the ability to form a single conscious state from the millions of elementary inputs. That is, as I sit here right now, I have a single conscious state. I could itemize various aspects, like what I see, how I feel, what I'm thinking about, etc., but the entirety of that mental state is singular. It is what I am experiencing in total right now. That cannot be conveyed.

That I might be able to convey to you the directions to the park doesn't suggest that I am able to convey to you my mental state. In fact, the directions I might articulate to you that will get you to the park is not how I conceive of getting to the park. I don't have a silent train of words going through my mind thinking about where I turn and where I go. I just know how to get there, and If you asked me for directions, I would think of the roads and the buildings along the way and then after the fact put that in to words so you'd know where to go. I can't transmit my mind's eye of me visualizing internally how to drive there.

We're way too in love with the notion that we must think in words. That's either a fabrication created by philosophers or I'm super strange in my thought processes. I think it's the former.

You sure are making a lot of knowledge statements about what you know about others' experiences for someone that says
The noumena isn't known. — Harry Hindu

I know that others don't know what I feel when I tell them about it because I don't know what they feel when they tell me about it. I could question the person for hours and still have more questions.

The noumena doesn't refer to subjective experience. It refers to the object. That is, the pen is noumenal. The experience of the pen is phenomenal. The fact that I can't fully know another person's subjective experience isn't because it's noumenal, but it's because I simply can't experience it like I can a first person experience.

So, wouldn't it be more likely that while they may not fully share an experience they do share some experiences, and those reasons for those similarities and differences can be pointed out as similarities and differences in our physiology and prior experiences? — Harry Hindu

I don't think any amount of talking will convey to you the first person experience I have of anything. It will always be a rough estimate. Experiences are not just personal, they are highly contextualized and nuanced. What it feels like to visit a grave, for example, will include thousands of memories, pain, happiness, and maybe even the heat from the sun and pebble in your shoe. A report of an experience is an experience of a report, not a coveyance of an experience.

Why is it useful to report what you see? — Harry Hindu

So that the other person can be informed, more of less, of what I see.

In reporting what you see, you seem to know there are other people with other minds that can perceive what you do, in the way that you do, or else what is the point of reporting what you see? Why use language at all? — Harry Hindu

It's true that I assume the listener understands me, but I don't think he fully understands me. This thread is evidence of that.

You seem to be trying to build an argument with these questions, so I'll keep answering you, but maybe move closer to the point because it's not apparent to me.

It may be the other person doesn't see what I see or know what I know. My expectation is that much of what I do experience I do not fully convey in words and that much of what the listener hears isn't accurate of what I meant. Maybe we have shared experience, maybe not. I'd find it hard to believe that two people would fully share an experience down to the last emotion or perception.

Most of metaphysics is word play. — Banno

I recognize that I'm not going to sway your opinion because it's fully committed to the Wittgensteinian model, but there is perhaps value in pointing out the source of our ongoing disagreement to the extent there's confusion in that regard.

If our focus is only upon words (which is your model), then it follows their meaning must be deciphered from shared use as opposed to the ontologicial constitution of the object because to explore the meaning of an object absent language would violate your foundational principle.

That it to say, to you, the beleagured beetle is not what anchors the word "beetle" to mean beetle, but it is our shared understanding of the use of the term, as opposed to the mystery that lies within our box. An entire system has therefore been created to avoid figuring out what the beetle actually is through language alone. Since you won't break character and you insist upon responding consistent with your language-centric position, we just go in circles arguing within our preferred systems speaking (ironically) from unshared positions.

Hopefully this post will at least point out the competing systems and let the casual reader pick his poison.

You may believe my approach is a form of incoherentism, referencing that which can't be described, but I see yours as a form of avoidism and denialism, refusing to delve into the real question as to what the beetle is and refusing to admit to simple scientific truths about how perception imposes upon reality. The best you can say is that the beetle is something, but since we can't speak of it, we avoid discussing it, and we deny it can be anything but the very beetle we talk about.

This leads to a difficult direct realism that is attenuated by mental gymnastics where we don't actually say the beetle is exactly as it appears, but we instead say the beetle isn't anything other than what the lot of us agree that it is, but, at the same time, that is actually what it is. The term "actually" even causes problems for you because it offers the suggestion there is something other than what the beetle is versus what we agree the beetle is. "Actual" is outmoded Kantian talk according to this model.

The avoidism becomes most apparent in your discussions with @Michael where he begins to offer an explanation of the beetle, as in its color is not a part of it, and that results in your refusal to speak of the beetle as an object versus it being a word. That, I think, forms the substance of his repeated complaint that you can't distinguish between a noun (a thing) and an adjective (a subjective descriptor).

Maybe this summarizes this well, maybe not, but it's a try. I do think the fact that you can't admit to the simple fact that color is imposed on an external object and is a subjective interpretation is a serious difficulty with your position. My position suffers from possibly falling into idealism, or at least an irrelevant form of realism, which too is a problem. Mine at least (I'd argue) has a certain fidelity to truth where it's willing to admit we may get no where in finally explaining things because of limits imposed by the noumena, but yours (I'd argue) is conconcted. Clever, complicated, obscure at many points, but concocted.

Nothing compares to this:

What is the purpose of saying "The pen is red"? Why is that useful to say? — Harry Hindu

You are reporting upon what you see. Maybe you want to be provided the red pen

Does a red apple and red pen have the same constitution? Could we mean more than one thing in saying "the apple is red" vs. "the pen is red"? — Harry Hindu

The noumena isn't known.

- define... so what, setting out essence-of-pen? "Comprised" of redness? Nothing so sophisticated. Just one red pen amongst others, red and not so red. — Banno

You're forever caught up in language games and not metaphysics, and so you ask these sorts of questions. I'll give you props for consistency, but your comments fail to appreciate perhaps my rejection of linguistic analysis as a meaningful way to fully address metaphysics.

So, no, I'm not in search of the essence, suggesting the redness is an accidental property and not a necessary one. I'm saying the pen has no red in it at all. It is not a property of the pen itself

The property of the pen itself is noumenal. The redness is phenomenal.

Then if you also think that there is no such thing as internal red, we might well agree. — Banno

How could there not be internal red? I see red, and it's not even necessary that external stimuli exist for sensations to exist.

In other words, stop trying to be God and be happy with your lot as a tiny human, with limited understanding. — frank

That we can't know everything doesn't mean we can't know anything.

We still landed a man on the moon even if we've not figured out Xeno's paradox.

The human viewpoint is that gravity did it. The view beyond human ideas is not available to me. — frank

Assuming it possible the planets moved differently prior to human perspective, it does not follow they moved differently prior to human language.

I can accept that language offers us a tool to understand the world and that it shapes some of our understanding, but the idea that non-liguistic organisms have no understanding of the world or that all that I touch and all that I feel and all that I know is language mediated is a concocted theory to sustain a Wittgensteinian model that is likely based upon a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein.

I say "likely" because Wittgenstein's communication skills were lacking. Ironically.

He is talking about the field of physics, not the laws of physics. — Lionino

We both know what each other are talking about.

No, you need language for physics, don't you? — frank

How did the planets move before Adam looked up and saw it go from evening to the morning?

Language sets out the whole framework of physics. — frank

Prior to language, was there physics?

But the pen looks red to me, too. And given the right filter we might make the red pen look blue... which pen? The red pen. The red pen looks blue. Not Hanover's "The pen that looks red to me looks blue to me". — Banno

But this ignores my disambiguation.

The constitution of the pen is disputed, not the appearance.

If by "red pen" you mean to define a pen as comprised of redness, whatever that means, then sure, your red pen can look blue if you filter it.

My point is there no such thing as external red, so your hypothesized "red pen" isn't a thing. Yes, the pen looks red. If you want to reclaim the ambiguity and say "yet we say 'the pen is red' and refuse to distinguish between reality and perception, have at it.

Ok. So for Hanover, "the pen is red" is not true. I think it is. — Banno

If "the pen is red" means the pen looks red to me, I agree with that.

If "the pen is red" means the pen contains redness, I don't.

And yet we agree that the pen is red. — Banno

No, that is our disagreement. We agree we perceive the pen as red. Maybe you think the pen is actually red, but I don't.

We agree the pin causes us to perceive pain. Maybe someone thinks the pin is painful. I don't, but that would follow if one insists upon imbuing physical objects with mental interpretations.

There is no external red. At best, there is an external object that elicits a phenomenal state of red. Just like pain. There is no external pain. At best, there is an external object that elicits pain.

Do unto you what was done unto me to determine if my sensation is like yours.

If you want to know if my pain is like your pain, I can stick you with the same pin I stick myself.

Pin | Pain || Apple | Red.

Pin is to pain as apple is to red. There is nothing philosophically special about the sense of touch that distinguishes it from the sense of vision.

I'm guessing you're like me. — frank

And I think I'm guessing I'm like you, which is that if I walk in drenched, with an angry look on my face, and with a broken umbrella, you recognize I got caught in the rain, my umbrella broke, and I'm angry about it. Do you really say all those things internally in words prior to arriving at your conclusion?

I'll trust you if you say you do, but I don't, which is why I find much of this language based metaphysics contrived. You have to buy into facts that are just false, and the facts are non-empirical, but entirely internal, so there's no evidence that can be pointed to to prove these critical facts needed to support the linguistic theory.

Language plays a very important role in everything you experience. — frank

How do you know how I experience?

I'm telling you there are plenty of experiences I have that language plays no role in. How do you know that to be false?

I suppose a point could be made that without an external example, we wouldn't be able to know we're using the term "red" consistently over time (and then only maybe), but the suggestion we couldn't distinguish colors without words is ridiculous.

Thanks for the effort that you put into your post but I can't connect your reply to the example I brought up in my post, I agree that subjective consistency doesn't suggest objective existence but I feel like my example wasn't really addressed. — Lionino

Your question was, as I understood it, that you get how we can doubt the redness of the ball is part of the ball but we can't doubt the roundness is part of the ball.

Is that a correct restatement?

If it is, my response is to ask what you're relying upon other than your senses to distinguish primary qualities (the roundness) from secondary ones (the redness). And the follow up is to then ask why touch is more reliable than sight.

My point being that your brain is what interprets and your mind is where the experience lies. Why must there be a direct link from what is "out there" to what is in your experience when it comes to touch but not vision.

My prior post just pointed out that the extent to which the brain could interpret and translate the data input is unlimited.

However, if someone sees and feels a round object where someone else sees and feels a square one, and the square-person told the round-person to grab the object by the edges, wouldn't the round-person be bewildered? Surely, when a square-person says corner the round-person would think of a round object, but the round-person can't think of anywhere special in that object (any given point on the surface of a sphere is the same). — Lionino

That only points to the consistency among human beings when it comes to detecting gross properties of shape, but subjective consistency doesn't suggest objective existence. That is, if every last human being saw apples as red, you'd still conclude that the color were subjective, but then assume that their being red to human perception satisfied some universal need for humans.

Consider it this way, if we saw the world as an air traffic controller saw airplanes, as little blips on the screen, that wouldn't suggest airplanes were blips, even if every person saw it that way. That would just be our mode of perception designed for us to navigate our existence. The alarm that activates when another plane is approaching too fast is accepted as not being the airplane itself, but only an alert for us to be aware of the danger to our existence. It is as logically possible then to assume the visual we see of the oncoming airplane when it comes up to our face is not the airplane itself either, but is just our alert system activating.

If we accept evolution as true, the expectation would be that our senses would be designed for survival more than direct fidelity to the truth. Offensive smells are offensive not because it says anything at all about the object, but it could just be telling us about ourselves and what is beneficial to us or not.

My analogies do assume an external threat to our existence, but a construct could be created where they don't, but those threats are internal and they are modifying our behaviors as necessary. That is to say, if we're going to question reality, we can go as deep into the Matrix as our imagination allows us.

This is Hume's phenomenalism, and I agree with it. There's nothing in the visual field that says: tree. Tree is an idea. — frank

I was thinking more along the lines that I was describing Kant's transcendental idealism, which, per Google's AI function "is a philosophical position that states that the mind structures the data our senses receive from the world, meaning that the world as we experience it is dependent on the way our minds work."

That would appear a direct response to Locke's suggestion that there are primary qualities that describe true reality, which Kant pushes away into the noumenal.

And the phenomenal state we have of the tree is not just a tree standing in some sort of isolation, but it's of everything we think about the tree and the millions of pieces of data we use to then form it into a conscious state of the tree (i.e. transcendental apperception).

The discussion of the subunits of the tree (the trunk, the limbs, the leaves, and then going all the way down to its most basic atomic substructures) isn't helpful to the question of what is the tree devoid of the mental interpretation. Regardless of where we place our microscope to look, whatever we see remains mediated by the mind.

But you just did with pain? You accept that pain is a mental percept. Presumably you accept that trees are not a mental percept? — Michael

I'm saying if a tree exists I have no idea what a tree is.

A "tree" is noumenal the way you're using it and it's greenness is phenomenal.

When you speak of its atomic level parts you know about, you're still speaking of the phenomenal.

All your talk of color and pain as being mind dependent is true, but you've not found in those properties some special exception. All descriptions of all objects are mind dependent. The speed of the subatomic particles in the tree are mind dependent as are their size and shape.

If your point is that color is mind dependent, mine is that every property you know of (as in truly every last one) is as well. Why focus on color specifically then?

Do you believe that pain is a mental percept or a mind-independent property of distal objects? — Michael

Pain is a mental precept.

Some things, like pain, are in the head. Other things, like trees, are not. — Michael

I'm just not buying into Lockean primary and secondary qualities where some qualities are deemed mind created and others inherent in the object.

Locke would acknowledge color is secondary, or mind dependent but would insist shape, size, motion, solidity, and number were primary, or not mind dependent.

I find that distinction arbitrary and impossible to support. A perceiver has no way of knowing what his mind created and imposed on an object and cannot begin to describe what a unperceived object would be.

All you know of the tree is the bundle of properties you perceive and since no property can be said to be primary, all the tree is as far as you know are those mentally imposed perceptions.

When you say the tree is mind independent, what is the tree? All you refer to are mind dependent aspects when you describe it.

The tree to you is just some vague whatever that makes the secondary properties in your mind appear.

Since you can't know of the existence of the vague whatever by perceiving it, you must have another way of knowing it. How do you know the noumena is there? Faith, necessity to salvage realism, or how?

you have a red pen in your hand, you can pass the red pen to me. If you have a pain in your hand, you cannot pass the pain to me.

The analogy between pain and colour fails because there is a public aspect to colour that it not available for pain. — Banno

This has nothing to do with public and private. It has to do with a category mistake you're making.

We convey matter to our senses in different ways. If I want you to feel the pen, the pen must be put in your hand (or "passed" as you say). I click it for you to hear it. I wave it to spread it's aroma so you can smell it. I put it to your lips to taste it.

All those things can be shared or done privately. We can taste it and feel it together, or I can touch it or see it alone. That the experience of whatever the sensation is is ultimately private is obvious, but because you can't hold a pen up in the front of the room and we not all feel the pain of its point just means we don't experience pain by emitted light, soundwaves, or in an otherwise distant way.

I don't follow how it's more public for me and you to see a red pen simultaneously than for me and you to feel a warm swimming pool simultaneously. I recognize that often pain and direct touch sensations occur privately, but that distinction isn't consistent. I taste my drink privately but you could stick a second straw in the drink as well

You've simply identified that a scream is public and a caress private in the vernacular sense, but that doesn't identify a meaningful philosophical distinction. An important philosophical distinction would arise if I experienced a sensation you couldn't imagine due to an entire lack of consistent experience. In that case, we'd have a true beetle in the box, which is (maybe) what you're getting at.

I'm of the position that the pen is an amalgamation of sensate properties, underwritten by noumena. The phenomenal state is of those senses and it forms the identify of the pen to the perceiver, but this passing of public objects versus feeling of private pain doesn't form an important difference.

That we don't see pain distantly and touch color privately just means the category of pain is transmitted differently than the category of vision.

Now that we're talking philosophy and not strictly science, I'll re-enter:

So to make this simple, here are two sets of claims:

Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.

Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.

I agree with (1) and (4) and disagree with (2) and (3). — Michael

I don't think you can consistently hold 1 and 4 without adopting a non-emprical epistimology. I say that because I don't see where the property of color is ontologically different than any other property such that you can draw a distinction between how you can know micro-structures any better or worse than colors. Both are properties and both are gained through perception, and we have already determined that perception is flawed due to mediation with the mind.

So, if you know that micro-structures are mind independent, your justification for that knowledge must be based upon something other than perceptions. It could be raw faith, it could be just a foundational belief to avoid solopsism, it could be a pragmatism, and it could be something else, but it can't be based upon empirically based information because such information is inherently subjective. From subjective perceptions you are concluding something objective and absolute, and I don't see how that can be done.

.

I didn't enter this discussion to question scientific realism and argue for idealism or solipsism or nihilism. I am simply explaining what the science shows. I trust the science. — Michael

Fair enough, but that sound less like philosophy and more just basic neuroscience and physics. I trust science as well for daily living, but I don't think it addresses the metaphysical questions except to the extent it admits to the corruption between the perception and the reality.

Your argument seems to be that if I claim that colours are mind-dependent then to be consistent I must claim that everything is mind-dependent. This is nonsensical reasoning. You might as well argue that if I claim that pain is mind-dependent then to be consistent I must claim that everything is mind-dependent. — Michael

What I'm saying is that all that you know is mediated by the mind. There is no science that suggests otherwise. What that means is that you cannot trust your perceptions to be accurate reflections of reality because you don't know what your mind did to the incoming objects.

For example, an apple might be represented by some as sweetness, others as red, others as round, and others as a bound up mass of atoms. The reason we perceive it as we do might have nothing to do with truth, but perhaps just what maximizes our chances of survival or even something else.

Fire is experienced as red and as pain, both of which you know not to be properties of the fire. At some level you stop acknowledging that the perception isn't correlated to the object, but you declare it an inherent property. That seems to occur at the atomic level as you've presented it, where you just throw down and say I know there are atomic properties and they present as X,Y, and Z and they behave in a, b, c ways.

My question is why can you say you just know the subatomic particles move at certain speeds (for example) or that photons behave in certain ways if you're relying upon your mind mediated perceptions?

If we've established an unreliability of the mind as to how it correlates with reality, I just don't see how you can call an end to that unreliability at a certain level and then feel safe to claim that what you know about your perceptions are accurate and not blurred, manipulated, altered, and corrupted by the mind.

↪Michael I'll have to think about this for a while.
12 minutes ago — frank

It's been 12 minutes for God's sake. How much time do you need?