If colours are only a type of "mental phenomena" (think about that term...), then since your "mental phenomena" are quite distinct from mine, your red is quite different to mine.

Yet you can ask for the red pen and e happy with the result.

Red is therefore not a private experience.

What draws that line? — Mp202020

Not "what", but "who", surely?

Any color, not matter the shade, how can we know it’s experience is as shared as the cause of its experience? — Mp202020

The experience of your companion doesn't matter, so long as they hand you the red pen. That's why we know about colour blindness - there is a difference that can be examined and explained.

I can ask someone to recommend a funny movie, and they can deliver, but I don't think it makes much sense to treat being funny as some mind-independent property of movies. — Michael

Nor does it make sene to say that red is mind- independent. But it also makes no sense, for the reasons given, to say that red is no more than my-perception-of red.

red must represent some state of external reality that when manifesting visually becomes “red.” — Mp202020

Well, that's not right, either, it seems. The red of a sunset is very different to the red of a sports car, or the red of a sore eye.

Indeed, the presumption is that there is something that all red things have in common - but why should that be so? We seem to use the word "red" for a range of different things. And why shouldn't a word be used in this way?

So red need not be "a verbal pointer to that specific external state (whatever it may be) that is experienced as red"...

And we've already agreed that red cannot be only an experience...

But if red refers to the experience, then when you say “red” it refers to your experience, but when I say it it refers to my experience. If we are going to be talking about the same thing then we need something that we both have access to. — Banno

OK, so what reason is there to think that red is more than a word we use for certain purposes? Or is the meaning of "red" pretty much what we do with the word? What more is needed?

What is red but a word we’ve agreed to call something that looks red? — Mp202020

Bang. What reason is there to think that red is more than a word we use for certain purposes?

From a materialistic perspective, red is a specific light wavelength. This is universal. — Mp202020

Even if this is so, "red" can't mean "Light with a frequency of around 430 terahertz"...

After all, folk who do not know this use the word quite adequately. And we don't see light, we see with light. It's the pen that is red, not the light. (Some folk have quite a bit of trouble with this simple observation.)

cheers.

But if red refers to the experience, then when you say “red” it refers to your experience, but when I say it it refers to my experience. If we are going to be talking about the same thing then we need something that we both have access to.

ok. So we agree that red and the experience of red differ. And that there are red things in the world around us.

So red does not seem to be something only in the mind.

does that help? We can hardly call red an experience if you have a completely different experience to me.

But what are the implications for the nature of red? We can hardly claim it is a “perception” if seeing something completely different doesn’t matter.

Some folk say red is a particular wavelength of light as if that answered your question. Folk managed to make use of the word well before we understood what wave length is.

But it seems we agree there are red things around in the world.

So if what you see as red were different to what I see, how would that make itself apparent? What would that mean for the notion of red? Which pen would you hand me?

I’d have you go a step further by considering how you use “red”.. it’s more than “the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red”.

So how could that conditioning work were there not already red things in the world?

And how could someone hand you the red pen unless they understood much the same thing as you about the world?

...you gaslit Gemini, given it said "You are right...". — Lionino

If I can gaslight it, it's not all that good.

But actually what it is referring to was it's first go at the question, in which it did not even attempt to provide a proof of RAA but instead simply explained what RAA was.

Yawn yawn — Lionino

Indeed.

I'm not familiar with Gemini. Not a fan of Google.

A Challenge in Proving RAA
RAA stands for Reductio ad Absurdum, which is a proof method rather than a theorem itself. It's a rule of inference, a logical principle that allows us to deduce conclusions from premises.
As such, it cannot be proven within the same logical system in which it is a rule.
To prove RAA, we would need a meta-logical system, a system that talks about the logical system itself. This is a level of abstraction beyond what is typically considered in standard logic courses.
Analogy
Imagine trying to prove the rule of addition within arithmetic. It's inherently circular; addition is a fundamental operation used to establish other arithmetic truths, but it cannot itself be proven within the arithmetic system.
Alternative Approaches
While we can't prove RAA within the system, we can:
Justify its use: Explain why it's a valid inference rule based on intuition or other accepted logical principles.
Show its consistency: Demonstrate that using RAA doesn't lead to contradictions.
Explore its relationship to other logical principles: Analyze how RAA interacts with other inference rules.
Would you like to explore one of these approaches? Or perhaps you have a specific context in mind where you're questioning the validity of RAA?

Notice how it confabulates an inability to prove RAA within any system.

The Gemini that produced this?

In an axiomatic propositional logic, prove RAA

Show drafts
A Challenge in Proving RAA within an Axiomatic System

You're absolutely right. Proving RAA (Reductio ad Absurdum) within the axiomatic framework of propositional logic is not possible.

Why?

RAA is a meta-logical principle: It's a rule about how we reason within the logic, rather than a theorem of the logic itself.
Axiomatic systems are object-level: They deal with propositions and their relationships, not the rules of inference governing those propositions.
Analogy

Think of an axiomatic system as a game. The rules of the game are fixed. You can't prove one of the rules by playing the game itself. You need to step outside the game to analyze its rules.

What Can We Do?

While we can't prove RAA within the system, we can:

Justify its use: Explain why it's a valid inference rule based on intuition or other accepted logical principles.
Show its consistency: Demonstrate that using RAA doesn't lead to contradictions.
Explore its relationship to other logical principles: Analyze how RAA interacts with other inference rules.
Would you like to explore one of these options?

Perhaps we could discuss how RAA is typically justified in logic textbooks or explore its role in proof systems like natural deduction.

ChatGPT just went ahead and did it:

Reductio ad absurdum (RAA), also known as proof by contradiction, is a fundamental technique in propositional logic. To prove RAA in an axiomatic system, we typically use a set of axioms and inference rules such as those found in Hilbert-style systems. Let's outline a proof of RAA within such a system.
Axioms and Inference Rules:
Axioms:
A1: α→(β→α)
A2: (α→(β→γ))→((α→β)→(α→γ))
(α→(β→γ))→((α→β)→(α→γ))
A3: (¬α→¬β)→(β→α)
Modus Ponens (MP):
From α and α→β, infer β.
Goal:
To prove RAA, we need to show that if α→¬α leads to a contradiction, then ¬α must be true.
Proof:
Assume α→¬α. (Assumption)
From α→¬α, derive ¬α→¬α using A1.
By Axiom A1: ¬α→(α→¬α)
Since α→¬α is assumed, we have: ¬α→(¬α)

To derive a contradiction, we need to introduce α.

By Modus Ponens on α and α→¬α:
¬α
Since ¬α is derived under the assumption that
α
α leads to ¬α, we can conclude ¬α.

Thus, we've shown that α→¬α leads to ¬α, which concludes the proof by contradiction (RAA).
This establishes that if assuming α leads to a contradiction, then ¬α must be true, thereby proving RAA within our axiomatic propositional logic system.

But not all that well.

These supposed AI's are just stringing words together based on probability. What those words do is not part of the calculation. They sometimes string word together that are significant statistically but which do not match what is happening in the world.

They make shit up.

Their confabulation makes them useless as an authority. One has to check that what they claim is actually the case.

But since so many posters hereabouts seem to do much the same thing, what the hell.

An aspect of form of life that is important here is that it is not just language.

Some folk mistakenly understand "language game" as referring to games played only with words. The examples - the builder, the grocer - show that language games inherently involve interaction with the things in the world, with blocks and slabs and apples and charts.

Also, the argument in the quote from Grayling in the OP is pretty much the argument Davidson presented in "On the very idea of a conceptual scheme". Davidson's triangulation of speaker, interpreter and truth comes in to play here, at least as a first approximation.

Forms of life cannot be incommensurable because they must all occur embedded in our activities in the world. So despite not being able to speak Chinese (an increasingly inappropriate example for all sorts of reasons) we will recognise a Chinese builder or grocer by their activities.

That someone is following a rule is shown by what they do. Indeed, there is in a strong sense nothing more to the rule than what one does in a particular circumstance. There is no "understand rules as we do... following the same rules, etc." apart from what we do in particular case. The rule is not understood by setting it out in words, but by enacting it.

What one says has less import than what one does. And what is meant by "this form of life" is displayed by what one does - don't look for a form of life just in language, look at what is being done.

Folk are following the same rule as you if they do what you would do.

The words of a "metaphysician" are not so much nonsense as irrelevant. It's what they do that counts. To take a hackneyed example, an extreme metaphysics might hold that we can say nothing about things outside of our perception. So they can say nothing about the cup when it is put in the cupboard - not even that the cup is in the cupboard. But if, when you ask them for the cup, they open the cupboard and retrieve it, they put the lie to their metaphysics by their acts.

Forms of life are fastened together by all of them occurring in the world.

And you proposed

isPhilosophical(#S) IFF S is about another statement.

And I gave examples of statements that were about other statements, but not philosophical, and statements that are philosophical, but not about other statements.

So your definition is void.

So you agree it is philosophical, but it is not a statement about another statement, and so doesn't meet your definition.

Your definition of "philosophy" seems to include things unnecessary and insufficient to philosophy.

So are you claiming that these sentences, each famously part of important philosophical discussions, are actually not philosophical?

You sure you want to do that?

Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?”
— Mp202020


If "red" is just in your mind, when you ask for a red pen, how is it that the person you are asking hands you what you want? — Banno

You didn't respond to this, so I'll fill in the argument a bit.

If you ask for a red pen and are indeed usually handed a red pen, then red is not just in your mind; at the least it is also in the mind of the other person.

But also, the red pen satisfies both you and your helper. We agree that the pen is red, so "red" belongs to pens as well as to minds.

So there is something odd about claiming red is no more than a perception.

If this is a problem, then how can we exclude it from the definition? — Tarskian

You missed the point of my post. Any definition will be contradicted by some philosophy.

...find a statement that is philosophical but that does not satisfy the definition — Tarskian

"Know thyself".

"Here is a hand".

"I think, therefore I am".

"The world is all that is the case".

One goal of metaphilosophy is to finally discover a usable definition for philosophy. — Tarskian

No sooner would that be done than philosophy will then be about undermining that very definition.

A statement is philosophical, if it is a statement about another statement. — Tarskian

Anyway, the definition you offer is trivially too broad. "John said it is raining" is about a statement, but not philosophy.

We know that the assumptions are inconsistent — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yep. Good point.

This is for classical logic. I am puzzling, as a sideline, with how conjunction plays out in paraconsistent logics - Non-Adjunctive systems in which {A,B}⊭A∧B). Jaśkowski's discursive logic, by way of example.

I wonder if, and how, RAA would function in such a case. Is it that two folk in discourse could agree that A∧B imply C, yet not agree that ~C implies ~(A∧B)...

Anyway, that's a whole different minefield.

Part of this is the difference between RAA in a consistent formal system and in other areas. In a consistent formal system if we reach a contradiction we know there is a false assumption. In informal, incomplete, or inconsistent systems it is not so easy. @Leontiskos tries to bring that ambiguity into the formal system, and it doesn't go.

I revised your quote — Fire Ologist

...back to the original, from Anscombe, in Intentionality, and as used by Searle and many others. Cheers.

Your problem is that I win national awards for my writings on these issues. I publish books. I speak at conferences. — apokrisis

That's your problem, not mine. If you can't even address the simple concerns of an aged retiree, then all that is irrelevant. An appeal to your own authority is still invalid. And if you don't give a shit, don't reply.

More spit.

You might try acting on your claim to be rational, and actually address the argument I presented above. Your refusal to address that or the is/ought problem shows a shallowness unbecoming. You are a clever fellow, unable to accept and work with criticism; the engineer who thought he would enlighten the poor benighted philosophers, only to discover that he had no idea what philosophy was about. When faced with a philosophical problem you refer to obtuse and irrelevant research papers, or try to befuddle with extended posts not pertinent to the point, and when held to account for these you spit.

Read the story of the Emperor's New Cloths.

Anyway, that's my bit. I've put up with your spit for page after page. If you can't offer something more, there's a point where one shrugs and walks away.

But as I've pointed out, you haven't inquired deeply enough into how indigenous lives are actually structured, both as biology and sociology.

My own position here is based on a deep knowledge of all that. — apokrisis

Presumptuous.

That account depends on the just-so stories provided by dialectic. It contrasts cooperation and competition, for instance, without any indication of how much of each ought be present. And in doing so it fails to tell us what to do. Yet again.

So back to the critique of Hegel and dialectic.

Reiterating, there are two bits of logic in my post, not unrelated but also not the same. The first is the classic Popperian argument that historicism is generally unfalsifiable, which we can to some extent extend to dialectic arguments generally. The second is the lack of fixity as to the third moment, the synthesis.

This latter is shown explicitly in classical logic by the explosion ρ^~ρ⊃ψ, that from a contradiction anything follows....

My suggestion is that in most cases the synthesis is fixed by other factors external to the dialectic, and the dialectic then used to justify that fixing. Which is an invalid move. — Banno

Given a thesis and a synthesis, anything goes. The juxtaposition of cooperation and competition does not lead of necessity to either Model A or Model B; they are not inevitable.

So I think he acknowledges this would have been the way to go, but now the best we can do is maintain since reversing is out of the question — schopenhauer1

Perhaps he did. Hard to tell. I wouldn't presume to represent indigenous cultures.

Your presence here augments the point made above, antinatalism being another extreme option outside of the supposedly defining dialectic.

At its core, dialectic is capable of explaining anything, and so ends up explaining nothing.

And the physical "constraints" of our world do not fix what we can and cannot do.

Sure, disparate views. We can answer each, in different ways. So we say tot he utilitarian that while the fishermen will gain short-term satisfaction, the undermining of the institution of a commonwealth that includes public bridges will bring about an overall decrease in satisfaction; to the egoist we point out that their self-interest will not be served by getting in a fist fight ; and so on. In each case we can pursue the discussion where it leads. And what ought happen is embedded in these discussions. Even a simple issue such as this is intractable. Ethics is difficult.

Isn't this sort of apokrisis Model B steady state notion? — schopenhauer1

Perhaps, but I wouldn't have thought so - his Mad Max Model B involves "bug-out survivalist with guns", and no home garden will feed a family. Indigenous ethics appear to depend on a level of cooperation absent from Model B. But the point I would contend is not just that the only options are Model A or Model B, but that a better response to your question of "what would be an ethical stance" is not various ethical theories so much as whole ways of living. This by way of bringing us back to ethics as about what we should do, not what is the case.

That humans and other sentient beings are subjects of experience is both obvious and central to any philosophy, but somehow you still manage to obfuscate it. — Wayfarer

If what this says is that people have experiences, then we agree, and I don't think it's me doing the obfuscating.

...what would be an ethical stance and what would be its justification towards resource management? What should we do? — schopenhauer1

One does not have to look far to find ethical stances quite divergent from those suggested in the OP. Indigenous ethics for example might involve circular time, self-control, self-reliance, courage, kinship and friendship, empathy, a holistic sense of oneness and interdependence, reverence for land and Country and a responsibility for others. The actions implicit in such a view are very different to those in either of options A or B in the OP. Yet such an approach might be quite conducive towards long-term stability.

Which might serve to show how ethical stances are embedded in what is loosely called a "form of life".

@schopenhauer1, I haven't yet answered your fishing example.

If the bridge is private, then the ownership comes it to play. If the owner is fishing, then best find another crossing. If the owner is you, evict the trespassing fishermen.

If the bridge is public, then the fishermen blocking your way is inconsistent with the purpose of the bridge, and they ought let you cross.

If the bridge is public, but the fishermen are participating in the endorsed annual fishing competition that has been well advertised and sign posted, and you ought not have parked your car in an area that was closed off for the purposes of the competition, then your negative right is forfeit.

The force of moral quandaries often depends on their being removed from their context. With more background the difficulties are often resolved.

Ethical problems are embedded in our desires and values, and are often more intractable than physical problems that can be solved simply by looking around.

..."is" and "ought" exists as a two-way feedback relationship that couples the organism to its environment in a... loop — apokrisis

Yep.

Yes, there is a difference between a physical account and an intentional one. I'd explain this in terms of direction of fit - a physical account is produced by making our words fit the world, while an intentional account supposes that we can change the world to fit our "fears, wants, desires, and values".

...disparagement of "mere speculation"... — Gnomon

Oh, go ahead and speculate. Just don't mistake speculation for fact.

I avoid those words if possible because of their ambiguity and the philosophical baggage they drag along behind them. Usually it is better to use the clearer notions of direction of fit.

"The mind is the subject of experience" is inept or even deceptive. Experiences are had only by minds, so what might seem profound is little more than tautology.

I guess, this might be the question here. Not what is happening, but what ought to happen. — schopenhauer1

Yes. We have the capacity to make things other than they are. So we must ask how things ought be. That question is not answered by physics.

Do (A implies B) and (A implies notB) contradict each other? — flannel jesus

So what do you think now?

Surely that would be the object of your experience? — bert1

Anscombe points out that the terms swapped roles some time around the 1950's

Well, what is one supposed to do with

‘the mind’... (is) ‘the subject of experience’. — Wayfarer

The subject of my present experience is the laptop screen and text...

Language on holidays.