Care to shoulder that burden? — creativesoul
Hmm... I get it's a quip, but i'm not quite sure what you mean - your account showed to me (though, I saw this prior) the limb doesn't contain the pain in either the non-, or the phantom case (. Not sure what else could be said here. It might come down to something further on here...
I suppose what I'm trying to get at, is that (this may be askance from Michael/Hanover - if so, please do note it because it seems a bugaboo for you guys) we
can't know for certain what's going on. That's actually the basis for discarding certain positions that require it. We can't positively discriminate based on 'experience' but we can remove what's not possible. We can't even
experience a situation where the pain is
in the toe or the colour is
in the pen because they are not experiences open to us. One would need to be a toe, or a pen, to have such an experience of pain or 'being red'. And that, even if possible, would just further complicate the matter for reasons that are cartoonish and irrelevant. No human has ever had an experience of pain without their mind. No one has ever seen a red pen without their mind. So, it seems either there's an inviolable relationship between the two (experience/mind) which is
read as a single entity qua whatever qualia you're talking about (pain in a toe, eg) or the claim is that there isn't, and the mind merely imports experiences (i.e pain, colour, texture) from elsewhere. I cannot accept that as it doesn't seem open to me to claim on either the grounds above (i.e we cannot make such positive claims) or because it is in clear violation of several types of experience we actually
can have (mental pain mediation is one example). There is no 1:1 when it comes to stimulus v experience. It is
all approximate.
What we
can do in this context is eliminate unsupportable claims (not unsupport
ed - those could well be the case, but are not being presented correctly). The claim that pain is
in the toe is not supportable. We need not be apodictic or even emotionally
certain of this to
know that our position is not supportable. In the cases in front of us, I see that both 'viewing a red pen' and 'pain in the toe' are mental experiences. This does not rely on any form of scientific claim due to 'objective' experiment. It is self-evident, and only needs itself. However, the issue of the scientific understanding of
how pain works certainly presents room for 'us' to do as you describe and that does seem to be happening in other arguments. I don't
think I require this viz. I am uncertain
exactly what is going on, but I am certain it is not red being imported from without, into my mind, and same with the pain. It is not being imported from the toe to my mind - something
else (similar to a radiowave) moves from the triggered area, through my body physically (which does not hurt - important) and arrives in my brain, where my mind is triggered to give me an experience which would
seem to be pain the toe so that I know where to tell the doctor it hurts (or whatever.. just a vessel). I would assume, from previous replies, you're going to label this a redherring/strawman etc.. I cannot understand that, if so. It would be helpful if you can set that account right - so far, the above accords with all you've said. Nevertheless, that reliance on 'objective' measures is certainly an issue (and, If I've inadvertently, or simply prior to due consideraiton)
So I 100% take that objection, and pretty much agree that relying on something like the minutiae of scientific anatomy is not that helpful to make a positive claim if we're saying perception is non-veridical. But, perception is
close enough to get a lot out of it. And, the 'lot', to my mind, is able to show that it
can't be the case (rather than "it is the case that..*insert positive claim*) that pain exists independent of the mind perceiving it. If the argument you're using merely creates a, let's say, inviolable relationship between "actual pain" triggered by an instance of injury, and the purported 'hallucinatory pain' (excepting phantom limb issues, on the grounds you've used to link it to the former "actual" account of pain) then, while I disagree, I can't argue against that. It is a position which cannot be adjudicated on empirical grounds. And, that, is where I think the entire thing lies. Maybe what's going on with the claims positive to a certain mode of perception is that if the institution of 'science' is telling us something like "well, we've never seen X, so we're not saying it's the case" is being taken too far. But, in this way, Leontiskos is laying out a severe red herring. Hanoever is not exempting himself. He's (I think, wrongly) delineating between kinds of expereince of perception. Perceiving 100 experiments that give us the same result, is pretty good, even though digging down Leontiskos is right to say each individual scientist is at the whim of their perception. That is clearly true.
This is on part with the way that our culture treats science as an omnipotent and inscrutable god, such that the word Science may as well always be capitalized. — Leontiskos
I would agree. Yet, you're not able to make the claims you're making on these grounds, so I'm unsure where that would lead... Will let Hanover actually answer instead of my speculation above.