It does not seem to me that having a No Self doctrine makes for better people or a better society. I use Japan in World War Two as an example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War

"The book meticulously documents Zen Buddhism's support of Japanese militarism from the time of the Meiji Restoration through the World War II and the post-War period"

"Hakugen points to twelve characteristics of Japanese Zen which have contributed to its support for Japanese militarism:[6]

4. Emphasis on śūnyatā and selflessness, "leaving no room for the independence of the individual".[8]

7. The belief in mutual dependency, which "led in modern Japan to an organic view of the state coupled with a feeling of intimacy towards it"

Almost all Japanese Buddhists temples strongly supported Japan's militarization

I also think it starts pretty simple, maybe with worldly objects, but then we can make lots of metaphors which drift into literal concepts as we use them enough. — plaque flag

Can you give examples?

My idea of reification is when things like moral and social terms and norms get treated as law like or given.

When they are just possibly inventions to justify actions and societal trends and I would apply this to ideas like "It is wrong to kill" which either I think states a preference or does not refer to a natural law.

So I am nihilistic about those kind of meanings but I think words do tend to refer to things. I people need to agree on what the self is referring to in these kind of discussions.

Who has the power to have the final say in what words mean or refer to? We could become nihilistic and see no foundation for meaning or solipsistic and resort to the individual as final arbiter of meaning.

Before long we think that nothing is more real than this convention — plaque flag

I thought you were saying we bring something into existence (or you might say reify it) with language.

I was also referring to comments like this:

I agree. I think I was not right to call it a metaphor. I like the idea that language discloses or unveils phenomena. Adorno did that. — plaque flag

I may have been conflating you with this:

I suspect that language – word-fetishizing – is why "the myth of self endures". — 180 Proof

I am not sure what your theory of language is but I don't think we can talk about things that don't exist.

So for example I don't think we could talk about gods if they don't have characteristics of things that exist to attach the definition to. I think experience is so rich we can make robust concepts from experience.

I suppose my theory of language is that is must start by referring to things before we can abstract to concepts. It is hard to describe mental entities but we can use analogy and metaphor I suppose. Or we can assume mentalistic terms are being used in a similar way by most people.

This was my issue in a previous thread about the subjective. We can't actually compare what we are referring to with subjective mentalistic terms. So we may just be stuck in our inner world in one sense immune to other peoples skepticism about our mental states..

You seem to saying language is necessary for somethings existence.

I didn't start thinking about consciousness until my twenties. And I don't remember anyone using the term or discussing it with me before then.

But I was clearly conscious before then. A word makes sense to me when it matches or describes my experiences. As someone who left religion which saturated my childhood I have experience of rejecting ideas that don't make sense or have no evidence.

I am not sure what you are referring to by software and hardware. There are lots of continuous things in our life to reinforce our identity. But what ties them together is memory. Memory seems to play a role in self and is part of the reason we can attribute an array of events and sensations to ourselves.

But other people can also witness we are the same person through time. Like you can differentiate your cat from the neighbours.

I am not sure what people are saying doesn't exist.

And I can talk to myself via my thoughts.

I don't think talking to people proves that they have minds like some kind of Turing test. But I find that my language relates to my experiences.

So pain refers to my experience of pain sensations and self refers to my unique personal identity and when other people use the same language I assume by analogy that they have experiences and minds that are similar.

I have never been in a situation where I have felt I have lost my sense of self and become more at one with others or just without self.
I have been in a few situations where verbal interactions with others have made me feel weakened because their language was tailored to control my self identity and self worth or projected something on me.

This is all a bit vague though. We have sophisticated interactions with others on which copious amounts has been written, to try and analyse them from psychoanalysis to social psychology. We may even be described as always working on our self and self perception. Running from our self, finding our self, losing our self and so on

But one thing I believe is we should be true to our self not led by others. Not to feel pushed and pulled but with some kind of self contained integrity.

I think the idea of "looking" for the self (Which is what Hume did) is a mistake.

Because we can't see everything. Life is not just a visual experience. The world does not seem to disappear when you close your eyes. You "feel" pain and "hear" music have ideas and "understand" the meaning of words.

The issue of qualia seems arise from the idea that everything has to be described as physical objects.Spatial dimensions seem inappropriate for things like thoughts, dreams, sounds, colours and word meaning.

It do not know to what extent we can liberate ourselves from how we experience the world or if new language and perspectives could change how we experience things.

It seems you have to address someone's self in order to get them to reassess the issue of self otherwise who is being addressed? So we seem to be talking about degrees of self.

It does seem that too much or to little focus on the self could be harmful.

I don't mind my own company so I can be fine on my own in the middle of nowhere and not feel lonely. I don't see the chronic need for other people as desirable. But then I have had bad experiences with other people from childhood and am on the autism spectrum.

Dysfunctional relationships, neurodiversity and dysfunctional societies are all going to have some input into our self analysis I suppose.

I can't imagine being anyone else so we may all be fundamentally different.

I raised this issue in my last thread about how can we compare mental states and what are we referring to.

To this I must object, for how did the clever blokes figure out they were illusions in the first place if they weren't so curious about themselves ? — plaque flag

I read somewhere that the idea of the illusory self was designed as a coping strategy for societies where the individual had little control.

And that seems to still apply today because people who are in touch with themselves are skeptical of society and more likely to protest.

I distrust the motive for claiming the self is illusory.

Nothing makes sense without the self really.

Who is experiencing pain? Who is hearing a tune? Who is having a memory?

Even if you think the self is just the brain. The brain has the necessary unity for a self identity and receives input from one individuals sensory organs and perceptual mechanisms.

As I see it, you are forced to understand me using the very system of concepts I'm trying to put in question. But I'm not at all trying to reduce you to some skepticism. It's just about looking at familiar things in a new way. — plaque flag

I studied Philosophy at degree level myself and the Linguistic turn in philosophy. To me the Linguistic turn was sycophantic to science and destructive. It defeated itself because it could justify its foundations by its own philosophy.

It tried to put mental and conceptual entities on the same footing as the physical objects described in science which obviously meant they would not longer exist because they are nothing like physical objects nor perceptible in the same way.

I also believe academic trends have had a destructive effect on society. When they are not criticised and if they become the overarching paradigm and silence critiques.

I think if philosophy is just being done for fun or entertainment that should be stated clearly at the outset but if a philosopher attempts to influence fields like psychology, science, politics or social development I think they then have a social responsibility.

. "Broadly Cartesian foundationalism depends on there being a semantically autonomous stratum of thought" — plaque flag

According to this: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sberker/files/phil159-2018-lec15-cart-found.pdf

"We can define foundationalism as follows:
foundationalism:
a. There are immediately justified beliefs.
b. All other justified beliefs are justified in virtue of their relation to immediately justified beliefs."

I disagree with experiences being characterised as beliefs. My beliefs are justified by my experiences but my experiences just are.

Nothing would have a foundation if it were all described as beliefs. I don't think there anything semantic about my perception of sunlight which I may then attempt to explain. I attempt to explain The sunlight not my beliefs about it.

My overriding point here then is that to be skeptical about your very experiences and language meaning doesn't do anything but destroy your ability to explore your reality and communicate things about it.

It is a dead end. If you believe we can understand each other and communicate facts about experiences you have abandoned skepticism or even pragmatism. Then what we are trying to discover is what is causing our experiences and thoughts.

The answer to that could be anything but we cannot doubt we are having experiences it makes no sense and doubting itself requires an experience.

How ? Why ? Says who ? — plaque flag

I explained earlier. Make sense of a sentence where the words are distributed between several different perceivers in different bodies and time frames.?

Your stance of not understanding just illustrates the point of this thread it seems. I allegedly cannot transmit my knowledge or experiences to you and vice versa, which rather than creating a societal, community based group understanding has degenerated into solipsism.

The unity of perception is an immediacy Now it's hard to imagine this is anything like: pass me that screwdriver. So it's fair to ask what exactly or at least more exactly that's supposed to mean. — plaque flag

I have posited that the unity of perception is why we understand a whole sentence and see a whole object. Do you have a competing theory of how this is possible? And possible without a perceiver. Who is having experiences?

We obviously have some kind of average blurry understanding of what words mean. — plaque flag

I don't know where you are getting the "blurry" bit from. Language successfully transmits veridical information. "I am a male of 46 yrs" It this initial ability of language to transmit facts that allows us to then extend it to trickier concepts.

If language is not initially fact based then it would have no meaning but it clearly does. From the fact of "horse" and "wings" we can create the imaginary Pegasus.

We are not travelling from the Mythical Pegasus and then discovering the concepts wings and horses. All we need to do is to attach a sound/word/symbol to something in the external world to establish a relationship of fact. So I could start calling a Dog a "Quaggle" but the real existence of dogs can make this refer.

There is enough going on in perception and time and space to allow concepts to form. It is not as thought we exist in a sparse environment with nothing to form a language from. The huge diversity of reality is enough to explain the initially diversity. To me semantic skepticism is somewhat ridiculous if it requires us not believing in the huge amount of perceptual information we receive and acting like we are blindly clutching in the dark when we aren't

It's about whether we know what the flunk we are talking about when we say P. — plaque flag

I thought you weren't a skeptic because this appears to be skepticism.

Do you know what I mean when I refer to a "dog"? I certainly do. I see dogs every day.

I am aware of my self and mental states everyday. You don't have access to this because of the privacy I am talking about in this thread. You can be skeptical about other people's mental states because they are invisible to you and I can't comment on your mental states because they are invisible to me.

But your skepticism about my mental states has no bearing on their validity and may have no relevance whatsoever because I have no requirement to prove my mental states to you only to myself.

If we cannot agree on the nature of self that does not undermine my viewpoint because neither of us accessed each others private mental states to settle disputes.

Say I was sexually abused as a child. Only me and the abuser were there and the abuser dies and I am the only witness and my memories, that this ever happened. I cannot prove this to you so should my failure to produce shareable evidence mean it didn't happen?
It is illogical to rule out people's testimony on the grounds that you choose not to believe them and that there evidence is not publically available. Things don't cease to be true when you are on your own and not sharing your experiences.

I think this is an angle. But what is the unity of perception ? Is this linguistic ? Is it part of our convention or habit of thinking about ourselves as a single ghost trapped in a single skull ? Why can't two fit in there ? Or four and twenty ? — plaque flag

As I have suggested if you don't believe in the validity of conscious states and language meaning you can't have a meaningful conversation. It is self defeating skepticism. I am at the juncture where I am not sure what you believe is true or communicable or why.

The reality of a perception is not a theory. Consciousness and self and language are not theories they are immediacies. Pain is an immediacy. We don't believe we are in pain we just have a state of pain.

The unity of perception is an immediacy.

We know the world consists of parts, trees have leaves and branches, we have eyes and ears but we perceive wholes not just parts and can only communicate because of whole's.

Like I said about language each individual part of sentence only makes sense as a whole not on it's own. Consciousness allows for unified perceptions. This logically requires one perceiver which is my self.

We don't even need to posit a homunculus or ghost in the skull because we have one unified brain and body. We don't need someone elses heart to pump blood around our body. We are very well self contained so it is no surprise our visual system should present unified perceptions. You do seem to be supporting a position of extreme skepticism not warranted by anything we know.

Language works. Someone says "The building is on fire" I leave the building and save my life. Only in philosophy does such an extreme level of meaning skepticism exist that nobody applies to real life. And then we have to clarify which sense of meaning we mean pointless. Semantic meaning is the ability of language to carry accurate information. Language is not a game it works.

What the fuck is a self ? Who decided on one ghost per machine ? — plaque flag

This is a strange line of questioning.

For the most of human history we didn't know about lymph nodes, neurons and the pancreas. But they didn't cease to exist and didn't stop being essential.

Why can you not believe in the self before someone gives a causal/material explanation for it?

A good reason a for a self is the unity of perception.

In order to understand a sentence one person must hold it before his or her mind.

For example take the sentence " This dog is big, black and loud" If three separate people or 3 souls in one body each processed one part of the sentence it would be meaningless so we need one conscious perspective to hold before it a sentence meaning or perception.

I don't believe each cell in our body is aware of forming one human and many are replaceable but we have unity of perception to know we are an independent entity and can differentiate between unified objects and concepts

I feel like skeptics of the self put in almost no effort to characterise it sensibly before dismissing it and as with most of mental content they do not feel under the same obligation as a biologist for example to present something that is solid, testable and can be manipulated.

I linked my post you but it is just a general critique
and I am referring to the general tenor of skepticism around this issue and semantic skepticism as quoted via you from Robert Brandom.

This is just a general comment now.

"From Wikipedia"

"Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma"

I think that Skepticism can simply be a value judgement about someone else's claims. Not an analysis of those claims but a dismissal based on one's own attitudes and beliefs.

I think a lot of skepticism in philosophy is hypothetical and tool for thought but it becomes made concrete/reified.

So for example I think the question of whether we are a brain in a vat is useful to explore the nature of perception.

But there is no evidence we are a brain in a vat but there is huge amounts of evidence for our mental lives that we have all days of our lives that we have no reason to doubt and that allows us to negotiate life.

So my idea now in this thread is like that of Descartes, that our selves and experiences are immune from doubt but external reality is not immune from doubt. In this sense rather than rely on academics to tell us what our mental life is we have reason to trust our own intuitions and explore our own experiences.

I grew up in a religious cult myself and along with other experiences I have been in a position for long periods where people try to insert ideas/beliefs in you and override your intuitions. Maybe that is why I am passionate about this? I can cite several philosophers trying to cast aspersions on peoples solid experiences that they have no reason to doubt and peoples thoughts and experiences are valuable to them.

I am not aiming this at you in particular Plaque.

I think that skepticism about mental states and language meaning is self defeating.

There is no way to talk about the existence of ANYTHING (I feel compelled to capitalise this.) if you are not conscious and don't have language.

Everything we describe as reality and the physical can only be perceived and known through consciousness.

So if my mental states are illusory why would my belief in a physical external world be reliable and the existence of planets and atoms be reliable?

So if I can reliably assert that the moon exists because I believe A) I have veridical experiences and B) can use language I think that then that skepticism is greatly undermined.

People can have illusory perceptions but then science has produced many false theories but we don't throw science out because of mistakes yet people like eliminative materialists are trying to discredit all mental states and I actually view it as a form of bullying because undermining people's mental states is a personal attack.

Robert Brandom like Daniel Dennett and Gilbert Ryle seem to be behaviourists in any other name. The external manifestation of thought in behaviour is not equivalent to the thought. Thought can take place without observable behaviour.

Kant worries about responding to the threat of a deeper and more radical semantic skepticism. This is the claim that the very idea of our mental states purporting to specify how things are is unintelligible — plaque flag

I think that Descartes showed that by thinking one proved to oneself that one exists in some form.
Now I come to think of it seems to me that Descartes proves that Language works.

In order to understand a sentence language must work (successfully carry meaning).
We could never communicate if language didn't refer to anything at all. Or didn't work in some form. We can be skeptical that the object of language is represented successfully but not dispute that something is being communicated to us.

Some language like "pain" we understand with reference to our own transparent experiences. The experience does not require language in any way but it becomes transmittable as an idea somehow through as yet unexplained features of language.

But anyway essentially you can't doubt that language transmits meaning and understand a sentence.

I think that language can refer by referring to likeness. For example "Dog" can just mean things that share attributes pertaining to dogs" or "Doglike"

So a cake can look like a dog, a bush at night maybe be mistaken for a dog, a fox maybe mistaken for a dog because they share traits or likeness. One is not commented to veridical representation or total truth. maybe it is a form of pragmatism. Such as "Pain" "successfully refers to a set of experiences with some shared features". And also language can evolve to more accurately and subtly represent discovered features.

I think Wittgenstein's apparent position was unreasonable and self defeating

He is apparently saying you should not talk about things that you are not certain about. Which rules out everything.

In the film "Caro diario" by Nanni Moretti it is partly about how he had an undiagnosed cancer

"He visits many doctors and specialists, but they all dismiss him with different diagnosis, prescribing to him a lot of costly drugs and prohibiting him to eat most of his favorite food. Seeing no improvements, Moretti unsuccessfully tries alternative cures like reflexology and acupuncture."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caro_diario

"After almost a year, a doctor notices his developing cough during a visit and suggests him an X-ray. That reveals a mass on his lung, which after a biopsy is discovered to be a still-curable Hodgkin's lymphoma. "

This is a fairly common experience. People can feel ill but fail to get a quick diagnosis. They have to rely on there private subjective symptoms. If we dismiss people at this stage by saying:

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

We are needlessly shutting down investigations and condemning people to harm. The value of language is that we can start an investigation that may lead somewhere it never needs suppressing.

Take the example of music.

We both hear a piece of music. I dislike it you like it.

But it is the same input to both of us. So what is happening when we perceive the same input as good or bad? We do not seem to be having the same experience of the same thing.

But we could both put a name to it such as "Beethoven's 5th"

The phenomena I am concerned with here are not sensations received from the outside world but mental states like memories and beliefs and dreams that we need to define but only we are having the experience.

No one else can have my dream or share my dream. Part of what seems to make them, irreducibly private is that language is not adequate to represent them.

But I may be wrong and we may, with adequate phenomenological analysis and finer language, be able to describe them such that a correlation between them and physical mechanisms can be made.

The private language argument suggests that you might not be able to remember this sensation for lack of any external foundation for naming it. — frank

Yes I remember that part of the argument.

It seems clear that we are able to remember a lot of sensations without words attached such as different tastes and smells and the feel of different textiles.

But that part of the argument has led to people including I believe Daniel Dennett influenced by Higher Order theory advocates (David Rosenthal) of going to the extent of arguing that animals without language aren't conscious.

Keep reading and thinking. You haven't got there yet. See especially "What a private Language is" in the Wiki article. — Banno

What I have noticed is that there are many interpretations of what the private language argument is and that Wittgenstein does not present formal arguments.

He didn't have to use a private language to express his ideas. It appears that language use requires some sort of stable, external grounding to keep the rules straight. That's the intuition behind the private language argument. — frank

The language became private when only he understood it. People can combine words from the current languages to create new meaning. That meaning may only resonate with them.

So Taushiro is understood by only one man, but might be understood by others. But the private language argument concerns a language that could not in principle be understood by another person - a language about private sensations. — Banno

Do you think quantum physics is in principle understandable by everyone?

Are there not things that are only understood by very few people?

I gave the example of Einstein earlier. He formulated private ideas about physics/time/light and he didn't need to share them so they could have stayed unique to his own mind.

I don't see in principle why an idea and experience might not only be accessible to one person. For example someone's visual system may make them see the world different with more colours, less colours and all sorts of subtle or big differences in perception that crop up in neurology with brain abnormalities. Taushiro may have words for phenomena in this sense for experiences living in that community. (See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)

"a hypothesis, first advanced by Edward Sapir in 1929 and subsequently developed by Benjamin Whorf, that the structure of a language determines a native speaker's perception and categorization of experience."

I didn't think the issue was about hypothetical privacy though. Everything could hypothetically be shared but as is the case with Taushiro that possibility just doesn't exist anymore.

-but then if we didn't have language we wouldn't be the kind of creatures who worried about being closed off. Maybe it follows that the conditions that lead us to think we are closed off--a rich inner life that owes its existence to the essentially social fact of language--are precisely those that allow us not to be. — Jamal

But most animals if not all of them don't have language and can form bonds without out it. They certainly don't seem to have a form of communication to express complex internal states.

My feeling of being closed off is knowing that others have a rich inner life inaccessible to me and knowing I have a rich inner life I can't share.

Or something like that.

One can feel lonely around other people it seems maybe because one's internal world is not compatible with what others are expressing externally.

Wikipedia says:

"The private language argument argues that a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent"

Well, it clearly is possible for only one person to understand language because dying and dead languages tend to have one last speaker left alive.

But doesn't the fact that the bornblind can talk about color support the thesis that meaning is public ? They don't need an 'internal' referent for 'red.' Meaning looks to be 'out there' with stopsigns and handshakes. — plaque flag

I don't know how often blind people use colour terms.

If they have never seen colour I can't think of a context they would use them in unless someone has told them how to use a colour term contextually. "They have probably heard people say thing like red means stop and green means go".

So they may understand the context in which colour terms are applied.

When we are using a term we might not be referring to anything concrete but referring to a concept Like "gods and ghosts" or The Afterlife.
I think the network of meaning could all be derived from within our head in conjunction with experiences.

The public aspect of language may be the rules of application but whether what is being said refers to something is an open question. But my issue is whether mental terms like memory and beliefs etc refer to the same thing between individuals.

Eliminative materialists go to the extreme of saying that don't refer to anything or only refer to brain activity. Such as "love" just mean Oxytocin levels.

So my green could be your blue, and yet you still manage to hand me the green cup when asked. So something more is going on here. — Banno

That suggests we have shared concepts.I think our concepts about our internal world are less shared.

I am certainly not arguing it is impossible to communicate them but it is difficult. The examples I have given is a sighted person who doesn't dream in images like me and My mother who hasn't had a headache. They can use the words "dream" and "headache" without referring to the same thing.

That said yes we appear to communicate successfully in various scenarios. But I think language in itself is a profound mystery. How do symbols and sounds represent and carry meaning?

People used to believe gods created language and imbued meaning into things/symbols.
Theories of language I have seen try to root themself onto some very basic primary sensations like colours or basic concepts. The theory is we might build language up from some basic universal concepts and then meaning escalates to more complex concepts.

But what these basic perceptions might be is controversial and as has been said congenital blind people use language effortlessly without being able to refer to basic visual properties.

I think we actually rule out or disbelieve a lot of what people tell us. (On a more light hearted note)

I have had people tell me about speaking to God, seeing ghosts and witnessing miracles. Conspiracy theories. Implausible life stories. Crazy moral beliefs.

So I don't think we take language as true and literal and accurate. And other people don't take us or me seriously.

That is interesting because it suggests we don't treat language as just truth bearing and serious and literal.

That person who thinks he is being stalked by aliens may be telling the truth!!

Tell me what there is that you cannot put into words? . — Banno

Everything.

I am using words to transmit ideas and concepts not to transmit my veridical experiences.

As I mentioned with Blue versus Green. My green could be your blue the word doesn't transmit the sensation or qualia of seeing the colour. It is a concept. With words we are always struggling to communicate and make sense of life. (I am anyway)

That said I do believe that there may be some naive realism transmitted through language. We may be referring to the same thing in the external world but based on our own perceptions and network of beliefs.

Sciences model of a tree is far more detailed and sophisticated then what we consider a shared perception.

My issue is that we can't describe things that are mental.
— Andrew4Handel

Again, and yet we do. — Banno

That is what I am questioning here. I am suggesting we are giving a superficial unsophisticated accounts of complex mental states.

I gave the example of memory earlier and how it turns out to refer to a diverse range of things.

When we ask people. "What do you remember" We tend to be referring to autobiographical memories.

But people remember how to ride a bike, play the piano, what words mean and where the kettle is. When you see how many diverse things actually include memory it becomes unclear what memory is referring to. (Images? Words? Motions? Emotions? The lexicon?)

Neuroscience theories of memories rely on fairly naive analyses of memories to be mapped onto neuronal spikes with the slogan "neurons that fire together wire together" But when the complexity of defining a mental state is revealed that mapping becomes somewhat meaningless. My memories of my grandmother are complex multifaceted, temporal/chronological, emotional etc not suitable to be mapped onto the hypothetical "Grandmother neuron". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_cell

So I think we need to have a meaning for something like memory that truly maps a detailed and accurate but private) mental state onto the brain. The problem I have is with how accurate a mental definition can be and how it can be validated and compared.

I think the reason we have a shared concept of memory is because humans have a complex society and we have a lot of analogies to create words for mental states. Memory (etymologically) derives from a concept of history. Humans record events chronologically and we apply that to the mind in some way it seems. So I think we are using external analogies for internal events.

(apologies if I am being long winded).

But we do talk about red and pain, so they are not private. — Banno

Red and pain are somewhat mysterious because they are qualia.

Descriptions of the nervous system and electromagnetic spectrum do not allow us to know what pain and colour are if we haven't experienced them.

I don't know what conclusion to draw from this but it is hard to imagine how colour and pain could exist without consciousness.

In this sense when we are talking with others about something, we may just be talking about an experience or idea/concept and not referring to something in the external world. These ideas can be grasped by reference to one's internal states.

What is private is the sensation like redness or pain that is not captured in the physical description of body parts.

My issue is that we can't describe things that are mental.

We do not have the language to accurately describe everything we experience.

This doesn't matter in the case of something like human anatomy where we can see body parts without needing to describe them and we can see causal relations occurring.

The problem is that we do have a box with contents hidden to other people and then we try and describe to some extent what is happening inside us.

Language may continuously mislead us because we are using the wrong words and definitions and language is a tool to manipulate and deceive not to just transmit accurate information.

My primary concern is that there are mental states that only we experience that can never be compared to any kind of model or to other peoples also private mental states.

Language is very flexible. People like Einstein developed new revolutionary ideas be manipulating pre-existing words ann forms. In that sense his language initially referred only to his self generated private ideas. I don't think language is all private or all public. It can start off publicly than become solely private with private mediation of a solitary walk.

But that's not right...

Migraine

pounding
pulsating
“sick” headaches (due to associated nausea)
throbbing sensation
Tension headache — Banno

In my experience a lot of illnesses can be hard to describe and detect.
People have died of cancer a few month after diagnosis with moderate symptoms like a persistent stomache ache.

I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in my early 40's after years of problems. People do not seem to come with a prepackaged set of tools or rules for assessing other peoples maladies etc.

Medicine would it seem be much easier if you could diagnose or your own illnesses by introspecting on the symptoms.

Most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, according to a 2015 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

That's the problem with Andrew4Handel's proposal that "the experience is private and only accessible first-person" - it implies that only he can talk about such an experience. — Banno

Let's take the example of colour. My blue could look exactly like your green. When I say "the sky is blue it actually looks green to me. But we can never know this because all that matters is that blue and green are different. The words do not capture the essence of what we are seeing despite dividing up the world.

How would you prove that my blue and your blue were the same colour?

Language gives us limited access. For example we might both say "I have a dog" but my dog could be a tiny chihuahua and your dog a large deer hound. The word dog can refer to a wide array of dog types. I don't see one word having the power only to refer to one thing which is identical to everyone.

In the case of words relating to mental states what they are referring to are entities we have yet to have an agreed upon definition for like intelligence, emotion, beliefs and so on.

My mother has never had a headache so what is she referring to with that word? Blind people and deaf people can use a lot of words that relate to things they haven't experienced.

I feel that when it comes to the mind people are willing to accept less than rigorous explanations than would count in the rest of science.

It is easy just to say all of the mind is in the brain and leave it at that. A bit like using a computer. You don't know how it works but are happy to use it and assume it all takes place in the circuitry.

It is inducing apathy. I think we need an actual causal explanation with the phenomena clearly described and given a causal pathway with no explanatory gaps.

What I meant by comparing is placing side by side like to apples or two cars or fish. Not comparing by metaphor and analogy.

I don't think that list of symptoms proves a point.

In order to know what a pulsating headache is like you have to have had one. My mum has never had a headache and doesn't know what they are like.

Likewise if I read a list of pregnancy and menstruation symptoms I would still not know what the experience was like because I am male bodied. I can't experience having a uterus.

As I said in my last post I think imagining someone else's experience may just be revisiting your own.

I am not saying there are no accessible aspects to mental states but that we cannot truly compare two peoples. And then defining conceptual, abstract mental states requires some way of knowing what we are actual referring to and if it is even something physical.