Interesting how this connects to the previous considerations about "reality." Like "reality," the term "the world" is capable of being used in many ways. Wittgenstein's insight is valuable whether or not we want to use "the world" the way he uses it. His point is that, apart from objects, there are states of affairs, facts, construals, propositions, ways of thinking and speaking -- and when we ask "What is the case?" it is those items we're asking about, not the objects.

ADDED But propositions are made true by whether the arrangements of objects (crudely) are that way. We need the objects to help make a Wittgensteinian world.

what is denoted by the symbol is an intellectual act, not a phenomenal existent. And I say that is a real, vital, and largely neglected distinction. — Wayfarer

If I may . . . This is right, and perhaps not so neglected if we see the connection with the many discussions we've had about the status of propositions. The whole point of trying to separate out something called a proposition is to preserve that very distinction. Sentences denote propositions (when they have the appropriate form), not objects or even individual thoughts. Nor are propositions objects in the world, though they may be about objects in the world. At least, that's the standard account. See Rodl though . . .

definitions like that are contextualized in a specialized field where the definition is a stipulation rather than a codification of an existing practice. — Ludwig V

Yes. As you say, very few philosophical terms could undergo such an evolution. It's for that reason, as I've said so often on TPF, that I'd like to see philosophers avoid terms like "reality" whenever possible. Or else put it in Peirce-marks or Kant-marks or Carnap-marks etc. if that's what you mean. :smile:

Yes, I also think I can have a self-aware experience, without running into the "eye seeing itself" problem. What I experience, in such a case, is not a "pure" experience without an object, but rather "what it's like to experience X" (warmth, in this example). In my phenomenological world, there is a difference. Being warm is certainly an experience, but not the same one as "experiencing warmth."

The threat of the infinite regress is hollow, I'm pretty sure: How many iterations can a mind really retain?

What is binomial nomenclature? — Ludwig V

The system, begun by Linnaeus, of identifying creatures by genus and species, e.g., Homo sapiens. I offered it as an example of a single, useful definition that can save everyone a lot of trouble. It has to be agreed to, of course.

What are you wanting to know? — creativesoul

As above:

what [do] such thoughts or beliefs consist of, if not words? Does the cat perhaps think in images? Can she believe using images? — J

All thought and belief reduce to correlations drawn between different things. — creativesoul

But what is a correlation? In what mental process does it happen? If animals can do it, then a correlation doesn't use words. What correlates with what? -- again, perhaps you're thinking of images and sensations. OK, is holding two images in some relation the same thing as having a belief about them?

It sounds to me, if I can say this without giving offense, that you've grown used to your own views in this area (and that happens to us all, of course) and you may not realize how un-obvious they are without further explanation. It's a topic that interests me, and I'm genuinely curious to see if we can put together a picture of how non-linguistic creatures may or may not engage in a rudimentary form of reasoning. But you have re-interrogate each of the terms you're using and try to say exactly what they mean. Perhaps start with "non-linguistic belief"? That's the one I find most puzzling.

A cat can think/believe that a mouse is on the mat . . . . [these are] elemental constituents of the cat's thought/belief. . . The cat is a language less animal capable of forming thought/belief that consists of elemental constituents — creativesoul

But you're just re-asserting all this. I'm asking why you believe it's true, and what such thoughts or beliefs consist of, if not words? Does the cat perhaps think in images? Can she believe using images? I'm not trying to be difficult, or imply that there are no good answers to my questions, but we need a lot more clarity on what's being proposed. What is the "stuff" that allows this account to go forward?

There is no such thing as unarticulated proposition. — creativesoul

But at this very moment (or so goes the usual story) there are propositions about all sorts of things, which are either true or false, yet unarticulated. Your objections are very much in line with Rödl's concerns. He's a tough read, but Self-Consciousness and Objectivity has a lot to recommend it. There was also a long thread jumping off from his re-evaluation of what a proposition is; I believe it's the thread called "p and 'I think p'".

OK, I see what you're saying. Yes, a physicalist would probably agree there are things that humans can't know, but fortunately you don't have to be a physicalist to reach that conclusion!

The idealism question is a little harder. A hardcore Wittgensteinian/Davidsonian position on what we can talk about meaningfully isn't idealist, by my definition. That position raises doubts about going beyond human experience on what I'd call methodological grounds, rather than a skepticism based on some interpretation of Kantian idealism, say.

there are uses of "real" and of "reality" that are not problematic in the way that this peculiar, specifically philosophical, use, is. — Ludwig V

Maybe. Even in ordinary conversation, it can get vague really quickly. I guess I'd agree that we know how to use "real" in the context of "Simone de Beauvoir was real" vs. "Santa Claus is not real".

"P-real" could become a (real) word. There would be a swarm of other, similar, words. It would be interesting to see which of them would survive for, say, ten years. — Ludwig V

Yes, it would! Have there been other philosophical definitions which had to compete for survival against competitors using the same term? I feel there must have been, but I can't think of one at the moment. Maybe "logic"?

I'm also deeply suspicious of any definition that sets out to define a single word. — Ludwig V

In philosophy, yes, since we lack a reliable means to go and check whether we've got it right. Binomial nomenclature, in contrast, seems a noble and successful task.

Because what 'is' for us is all there is for us. Anything beyond is not anything. — I like sushi

I'm not being stubborn, but I just don't see how it follows. If you said, "Anything beyond is not anything for us," I'd see your point. But why would you assert that "for us" encompasses all there is?

These guys are idealists masquerading as physicalists. — Punshhh

Who are "these guys"?

I think everything is an object of experience. But I don't think the experience is an object that, itself, can be experienced. . . . A bacterium experiences greater or lesser warmth, just as we do. But it doesn't think about it, or comment on it. — Patterner

This gets at the gnarly, self-reflexive quality of the con* problem. Can my experiencing of, say, warmth also itself be an object of experience? Rather than give my answer, I'd toss it back and ask, What do your observations of your own mentality in this regard tell you? How does it seem? -- let's start there.

As for the bacterium, yes, it has no self-con, no self-awareness. Once again, this raises the question of how "experiencing experience" may relate to human con. I'm not saying we're the only animals who can do this -- I'm sure many others are to some degree self-aware -- but it characterizes so much of our sense of what it means to be conscious, of "what it's like to be a human." And let's not forget that the practice of meditation can show us the opposite: what it means to experience non-experience, if I can put it that way. Or at least it may do; some doubt this.

*consciousness

Right, that's the question.

OK, but I still wish I understood what the "stuff" was.

"Reality" is an example of the common philosophical mistake of over-generalizing, or perhaps better, of decontextualizing a perfectly useful word, which then becomes virtually useless. What counts as "real" and "unreal" depends on the context, which is specified when you complete a sentence and specify what the context is. The idea that you can lump everything real into one group and everything unreal into another group is just wrong. Things are often unreal under one description and perfectly real under another. Similarly, what existence depends on what kind of thing you are thinking of. Superman exists - as a character in comic books, but not as someone you might meet at a bus stop. — Ludwig V

Nicely summarized. I might question whether the word was ever "perfectly useful," but other than that, you've said it well.

Nabokov said, "'Reality' is the one word that should always appear in quotation marks." He meant pretty much what you mean here. We could, for instance, create "Peirce-marks" to indicate when the word is being used as Peirce defined it.

I reject phenomenology. — creativesoul

OK.

Propositions are existentially dependent upon language. Where there has never been language, there could have never been propositions. I'm not sure if I rightly understand what the W3 sense is. — creativesoul

Popper agrees that all W3 objects, such as propositions, are human-made. The reason he puts them in a separate "world" (and of course that is metaphorical) is that propositions have the peculiar property of being true or false (for example) regardless of whether anyone asserts them -- at least, that's the usual construal, though Kimhi and Rödl are both raising questions about that. So in that sense they don't seem to depend on being instantiated in particular minds.

the linguistic/nonlinguistic dichotomy is incapable of taking proper account of language less thought and belief, particularly in terms of the content thereof. — creativesoul

Say more about that? Do you mean, the dichotomy is too rigid?

what you mentioned about it only being an extension of reality, rather than it being outside of reality, I find very valid. — javra

Indeed - notice that my objection is to the way the issue is phrased. As "there is stuff beyond our reality" when it should be "there is stuff that is true but unknown" — Banno

Yes, I think we're all in accord that the culprit here is the word "reality," no surprise. "Stuff we can know as humans" and "all the stuff that can be known" are fine with me instead, as long as the two aren't supposed to mean the same thing.

A non-linguistic inference/conclusion is one that is arrived at via a language less creature. — creativesoul

Well, yes, it would be. But I'm trying to puzzle out whether that's a category mistake. You may well be onto something, but help me understand: What is a conclusion that is not put into words? Do you mean a behavior? Probably not, so it must be some mental event that is the equivalent of a conclusion we would express in language. Can you say more about what that would be, phenomenologically? Taking the bear's point of view, so to speak. :smile:

On my view, thought and/or belief cannot be reduced in/to purely physical terms or mental terms. That is because thought and belief consist in part of both and are thus not properly accounted for by either a purely physical or a purely 'mental'(non-physical) framework. — creativesoul

So you wouldn't allow that there could be a "thought" in the World 3 sense. All propositions must appear as items in the physical world? Interesting.

I think you made a mistake there. — I like sushi

I meant all of the "therefores" to be mistakes, trying to show that they don't follow from the initial statements. For this one, the idea is that we can't speculate about anything we can't comprehend, which is quite true. But why would that mean that what we can speculate about and comprehend is all there is?

I wasn't really trying to imagine an alien encounter. I agree that would certainly pose all sorts of conceptual problems. It's more a logical or intuitive idea: Why should we think that humans represent some sort of pinnacle of what can be thought or said? The only way to get that, it seems to me, would be by defining "what can be thought or said" in human terms. But is that realistic?

Because we can only experience what we experience. We can discover only what is availble to us via experience-- because that is all there is for us.

We cannot even speculate about what we cannot ever comprehend. — I like sushi

Even if that's (more or less) true, how do these follow?:

We can only experience what we experience; therefore there is nothing else.

We can discover only what is available to us via experience; therefore there is nothing else to discover.

That is all there is for us; therefore that is all there is.

We cannot even speculate about what we cannot ever comprehend; therefore, there is nothing we cannot speculate about or comprehend.

Can you explain what you mean by "experience being conscious"? we come at consciousness from different directions. I'm happy to explore your idea, but not necessarily sure what it is. — Patterner

Fair enough. We'd have to start by agreeing on what can be an object of experience. As you know, many philosophers believe that con* can never be an object for itself, that it is properly a transcendental ego of some sort. To "experience consciousness," for these philosophers, would be like saying that the eye can see itself.

I don't find that persuasive, but let's say we agreed that it was a good description. In that case, we need a different term -- not "experience" or "be conscious of" or "be aware of" -- for what happens when con reflects on itself. Whatever term we decide to use, that's what I'd be referring to when I spoke about experiencing being conscious.

Or, we can allow, as I do, that self-con or the awareness of one's con is an experience on par with any other mental event. In that case, when I talk about the experience of being conscious, I mean the experience I have when I merely look at my looking (doing meditation is an excellent way to get there). It's separate from any content, whether perceptual or internal.

But I don't think we even need anything this esoteric to answer the question, "Do you experience con?" We can just reply, "Is experiencing con the same or different from being conscious?" If it's the same, then we all agree that we have that experience. If it's different, then we return to the Sartrean exegesis I began with. But in neither case is the phenomenon -- call it what you will, "experience" or not -- in doubt.

*consciousness. I'm tired of typing that word incorrectly!

I reject the idea that language-less animals' belief(s) have propositional content. — creativesoul

I agree. I chose the expression "shadow of propositional content" to try to express something closer to what's going on.

Feeling pain after touching fire causes an animal to infer/conclude that touching fire caused the pain — creativesoul

But if we agree that this does not occur in the space of propositions, then what do you mean by "infer" or "conclude"? What is a nonlinguistic conclusion?

That's the problem I want to home in on. If it's only a matter of one neuron-firing pattern causing another, then we shouldn't call it inference or conclusion at all.

physicalists really do say that. — Wayfarer

They certainly do.

It's important to get clear on the fault lines between the tectonic plates, so to speak. Which, from what you're saying, I'm not sure that you're seeing. — Wayfarer

I think I see some of them, but always happy to learn more. Appreciate all the thought you've given this.

Well, two thoughts: First, to establish my point, I don't need a reason to think it could be said by a non-human, I only have to note that there is no reason why not. But, second, I think there is a pretty good reason to imagine sayable things that humans can't grasp. Consider the ant. Are there thoughts and experiences it cannot, in principle, have? Yes. And the badger? Yes. And the chimp? Yes. So why would this chain stop with humans? What makes us think we have access to all thinkable or sayable thoughts?

:lol: Yeah, I guess I walked into that one.

But the fact that we don't know of it could hardly demonstrate that it's impossible.

The set of true sentences is never complete, if that helps. I suspect that is what ↪an-salad and ↪J are trying to capture - that there is always more to be said. — Banno

I think this is true, and I'd go further: We have no warrant for believing that "what can be said" is a perfect match for "what can be said by humans." It's a big universe out there . . .

Indeed, we are miles apart on this. — Patterner

No, I don't think so. I agree that the feeling of warmth is an example of a conscious experience. We also agree, I suppose, that being conscious as such is a conscious experience -- sounds awkward, but how else could we put it? I certainly experience being conscious, and so do you. So I'm hypothesizing that, as with warmth, there's a compatible story to be told about the "outside" of our conscious experience.

How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?

Because reality is what there is. — Banno

I know what you mean, but I don't think @an-salad is defining it that way. They're making a distinction between "our reality" and "reality = our reality + whatever else there might be". The last thing we need is a debate on how to use the term "reality"! :smile: Using the word in the way an-salad uses it, wouldn't you agree that the question is a sensible one? And if you'd rather not use "reality" in the more restricted way an-salad means, we can come up with a different term, it doesn't matter.

Maybe put the question this way: Could there be anything that humans will never be able to know or experience?

Good description, thanks, very clearly explained. I'd like Bitbol better if he just told it straight, though, and stopped trying to scare his readers with phrases like "pushed aside and locked up." Come on, no one has forgotten what heat feels like! What would he have the scientists do, insist on a reference to tactile experience every time a measurement is taken?

The danger you and I both recognize comes not from the story Bitbol tells here, but from the further story which physicalists try to tell, in which heat is "really" or "actually" or "reduced to" its objectively measurable components.

What's two different things is our interaction with heat. The first thing is the physical events, beginning with thermoreceptors in the skin releasing ions, which depolarize the neuron, which generates an electric signal, which...

The second thing is our subjective experience of all that as heat. — Patterner

Yes, that's what I'm suggesting. But I would change the terminology in a small but crucial way: Both in ordinary language and from a phenomenological perspective, "heat" is the subjective experience. Everyone knew what "heat" meant long before chemistry. So I don't think we ought to talk about "our interaction with heat." The only "heat" out there with which we can interact is "heat" in the first sense, molecular motion, etc. The "two different things" are the results of the two perspectives -- and again, I'm not arguing that the same thing/different thing question has to be settled firmly. After all, what makes a "thing"? Rather, what we should be clear about is that the situation is a peculiar one: We have two uses of the term "heat," both widely accepted by their communities of users. They refer to different events, phenomenologically and perhaps extensionally. Yet they also refer to one single event, seen objectively. No one, I think, will deny that the 1st and the 2nd ways of understanding heat are intimately connected, such that you can't get 2 without 1. (Can you get 1 without 2? . . . interesting.)

The Hard Problem is that nothing about the first suggests the second. — Patterner

So, you're asking whether this is a good analogy for consciousness. But is there anything about the molecular-motion description of heat that would suggest the subjective experience of warmth? We started, pre-science, with our experience of heat, and went on to discover the physical conditions upon which it supervenes, which are utterly unlike feeling warmth. Why couldn't this happen for consciousness as well? It seems like a good analogy to me, but maybe I'm missing something you have in mind.

Nowhere in any of that is there a hint of our subjective experience of heat. — Patterner

Quite right. And yet, if a child asks for an explanation of what heat is, you're going to tell the story about the molecular motion. We can finesse this by simply pointing out that "what heat is" is equivocal: it can mean "what does it feel like" or "what causes it". But I think the issue goes deeper than language. It's that "doubleness" that I referred to before. Heat really is two different things at the same time, from different perspectives -- maybe that's a better way to put it than calling it "the same thing."

"Experientially"? Whose experience do you mean by that? — Patterner

I'm contrasting the subjective experience of heat with the objective explanation of it. Perhaps "experiential" isn't the right term for how a scientist observes molecular motion. What I meant was, the feeling of heat doesn't at all resemble the picture described by the scientist. But again, as above: any description of what heat is would be incomplete without the 3rd person perspective as well.

If you ask any more questions, I’m going to give you my prerecorded RG Collingwood metaphysics lecture, which you’ve probably heard before. — T Clark

Aaaaaa! :wink:

If there is no way of knowing whether a statement is true or false, even in theory, then it’s either metaphysics or meaningless. — T Clark

OK, no more questions, just pointing out that your motto, while no doubt useful, isn't likely to convince someone who hasn't already adopted it as a motto. (The question I would have asked is, Why does the lack of a definitive answer drain the meaning from a question? But I won't!) (Also, if I understand you, it's not really a matter of "either metaphysics or meaningless." You're saying that metaphysics doesn't have to be true or false. But the statement in question does have to be. Ergo, it's not metaphysics. Ergo, it's meaningless. But see my [unasked!] previous question -- where did the meaning go away to? It seemed perfectly meaningful when it was posed.)

Metaphysics doesn’t have to be true or false. — T Clark

But surely the statement, "There is a reality that humans can't experience" is either true or false, isn't it? I still don't see the leap from "unanswerable" to either "meaningless" or "neither true nor false."

If, instead, you were talking about aspects of reality that we will never have access to, even in theory, then the question is meaningless — T Clark

OK, pretend I'm a well-meaning philosophical novice, and explain to me, as simply as you can, why the question is meaningless. It looks to me as if it's referring to aspects of reality that humans can't access; there may be none we can ever know of, making the question unanswerable, but why is it meaningless?

We don't. Can you say why that seems like a quandary to you?

we don't have any clue how physical properties and processes can produce something so different from them — Patterner

Everything you say in your post is true, including the above. Once again, I'm speculating, but perhaps the conclusion we ought to draw is that physical processes don't produce consciousness; i.e., it is not a cause/effect relation, occurring in a temporal order. This is the essential premise of supervenience, as I understand it. Put crudely, consciousness is the same thing as its physical substrate, but experienced from the inside, the 1st person. This is not reductionism, because we could just as well say that the physical substrate is the same thing as consciousness, viewed from the outside. Neither reduces to the other. Of course, this stretches the use of "same thing," perhaps unacceptably. Phenomenologically, they are very far from the same thing. And yet, heat is the "same thing" as molecular motion, in one important sense of "same". They don't remotely resemble each other, experientially, but nevertheless . . .

But suppose this speculation is correct. We still don't know how to talk about this sameness or doubleness, because we don't (yet) have a scientific conception of what philosophers call the 1st and 3rd persons. So I agree with your cluelessness on the whole question; I'm just more optimistic that a path will open.

entailment are 'logical rules', which could only be said to 'cause'(scarequotes intentional) someone to infer certain conclusions, if they know and follow the rules. — creativesoul

Sure. "Knowing the rules" is a background condition, just like "all things being equal at room temperature and normal gravity etc." is a background condition for many statements of physical causation. My questions was/is, Given that the mind in question does know the rules, do they actually have a choice about following them? (This is similar to the perennial question in epistemology about whether I can choose what to believe, given a set of facts.) (And yes, the links with JTB issues are obvious as well.)

I'd like to understand this thought better. I think you're saying that I can have a belief without also having a propositional expression or equivalent of that belief? Thus, a non-linguistic animal can form a belief about, say, pain and fire, without entertaining any propositions about it?

If I've got that right, I don't think it's tangential at all. It raises the extremely interesting question of what to do with beliefs, in the taxonomy of Worlds 2 and 3. If we're going to use causal language, as I'm suggesting we might do, what causes a bear to believe that fire will cause pain, and how does that belief in turn cause whatever mental process results in the bear's steering clear of smoke? Is all this happening in the world of psychological events, local to the bear, and explainable in terms of brain processes? Or is there a shadow, so to speak, of propositional content, such that the bear might be said to conclude that smoke is to be avoided?

I think we can get some insight by consulting our own mental behavior when beliefs arise, but I'll stop here.

I get what you mean, and that particular line is pretty clear, I agree. But what about the human sciences -- psychology, economics, history, textual hermeneutics, etc.? I'm fine with the first two, at any rate, being a science, aren't you?

you cannot find or point to consciousness in any sense meaningful to the natural sciences. You can only infer it. — Wayfarer

Let's say it's true that, at the moment, the natural sciences can only infer consciousness. (I think we can do a little better, but no matter.) This was also true of electromagnetic forces, before the 19th century. Everyone knew something was there, but not what or why. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that, in time, we'll have positive tests for the presence of consciousness, and be able to describe its degrees and characteristics? This isn't to say that consciousness is a force like electromagnetism -- I doubt it -- but only that science often starts with phenomena that are widely acknowledged but badly understood.

I think there's a real distinction that is not being acknowledged. — Wayfarer

I do too, and it's captured in Nagel's question about whether "I am J," said by me, is a fact about the world (just to pick one example). We need to preserve the distinction between 1st and 3rd person perspectives, but . . . does that necessarily put science on one side of an impermeable line? I think that's what we're discussing here. If you interpret Chalmers et al. as explaining why physicalism doesn't work, we have no issue. But I took you to be offering a much broader characterization, going back centuries, about what the scientific project amounts to, and what is and isn't permissible within it. That's where I think we have to be careful. The fact that physicalism can't inquire into subjectivity doesn't mean that science can't -- because physicalism doesn't get to draw the line about what counts as science. (That's up to us philosophers! :wink: )

Yes. That's why physicalism is untenable. Science is broader than that. Do you read Nagel as arguing against physicalism alone, for the most part? I do.

Thanks, good quotes. Nagel, as I read him, seems to veer between "science" and "physical sciences."

The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms. — Thomas Nagel, the Core of Mind and Cosmos

So, two questions: 1) Why is an objective description of subjective experience necessary to explain subjective experience? This goes back once again to the difference between accepting and inquiring into consciousness, versus also having to claim an impossible 3rd-person experience while doing so. 2) Do we want to conclude that Nagel thinks psychology isn't a science? I doubt it. I think he would say that it isn't a physical science.

To summarize: Are there not objective inquiries into subjective experiences? I guess you could say that any such inquiry is, by definition, not a scientific one, but that seems awfully inflexible.

the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role. — Routledge Intro to Phenomenology

I want us to agree wholeheartedly with the first two sentences, but take issue with the third. Suppose we altered that final sentence to read: "Treating consciousness as part of the world is precisely the enormous challenge that philosophy is presented with -- how do we give full weight to consciousness' foundational, disclosive role while equally acknowledging that somehow there is a necessary act of self-reflection that also places it, and us, in the world? How can I, a subject, be both in, and constitutive of, the world?"

In other words, this application of phenomenology is trying to solve the difficult problem by flatly denying that consciousness is part of the world. That seems both too simple and too unlikely. The truth will turn out to be more bizarre, and more wonderful, than that.



Yes, here Nagel hits it on the head. It's both/and, not either/or.

There's a potential theodicy I quite like, but whether you'd buy it depends on how you'd answer this question:

If it could be proved to you, right now, that at one point in the past you'd suffered terrible hardship but a) had completely forgotten it, and b) suffered no ongoing ill effects, would you regard that situation as in any way a misfortune? Would there be anything there to regret or deplore?

we might want to explore other ideas. — Patterner

For sure. I'd love to pursue the other ideas. I can imagine people saying, in 2125, "They used to think consciousness might be a physical property! How weird."

We can't weigh, or measure in any way, consciousness with the tools of the physical sciences. — Patterner

I can only reply: not yet. But virtually none of the physical forces we now recognize as objects of scientific knowledge were weighable or measurable a few hundred years ago. I know I can be monotonous about this, but we simply can't say what will be possible once we actually start to understand what consciousness is. Way too early to say what we can or can't know.