That sort of attitude is just not going to get your thread past eight pages.

now we bring in Hegel — plaque flag

Only if you follow the recent obsession with centenarian German existentialism. I had Davidson's more recent jokes in mind.

Another reason definitions have no place in philosophy is that choosing to adhere or flout a definition is a part of the very philosophical discussion...

Recursive how? — Jamal

Like that, for a start. Setting out a definition in order to ground an argument is already taking a stance, which may itself be brought into question.

Moreover, we might think in terms of Searle's status functions and institutional facts. Language builds on itself, so that saying it is so makes it so, or counts as its being so.

Not just Christians.

Even jellyfish want light.

paintings exist to teach us how to see the world in a new way. — plaque flag

And as soon as you stipulate that, I want an artwork that doesn't teach you to see the world anew.

The very act of stipulating the rule enables its breaking.

My only complaint here would be if Adorno - and i am happy to have him copying my ideas - were to restrict magic to art.

Here's some more magic. I go to the local and hand over a piece of paper and they give me a long black. Or I and a few hundred others all turn up at the same time at the Corner Hotel, walk into a room with a sticky floor, and Larkin Poe play us some music - their just happening to turn up here and now, having come from the other side of the world. Or that I get to plant whatever flowers I like in my front garden, but you do not.

There doesn't seem to be any etymological relation between spelling and casting spells, but there ought be.

Certain sounds and certain marks on paper structure the world around us; and I do not mean that in the bland way of idealism. This piece of paper counts as money, this coordination of behaviours is a concert, this piece of ground is my property. These all happen because we take recursive stipulation seriously.

A rough thought experiment: I grow a blob of suitable cells in a petri dish so that a muscle twitches if and only if a red blotch is place over it.

Are you going to claim that the blob is conscious of red?

if not, then there is more to consciousness than "phenomenal consciousness".

Just on a quick glance, there do seem to be multiple problems being left undressed hereabouts.

Like "How do we tell if someone is conscious?" Basic first aid: they are alert and oriented to place and time. There's an occasional pretence that the "consciousness" being dealt with by philosophers is somehow different to this, extreme examples are trotted out as if they showed that such simple descriptions of consciousness were somehow wrong. The evidence might be, given the listed first three types of decreased consciousness, that many contributors here are victims, unawares.

One hopes that folk do not think those around them are unconscious. is of course correct.

There's also the odd error of mistaking mere awareness for consciousness. I blame talk of qualia for this; as if being aware of red splotches were all that is required. To be considered conscious, it's not enough to just be aware of the stuff around you; you also have to be able to interact with it. The concentration on qualia, with the implicit pseudo-phenomenological narrative, seems to me to be very unhelpful.

And now it's proposed that "Bert is conscious" is not a proposition.

Ah, so "lost" as in lost interested, not "lost" as in lost track.


If I have it right, McGuiggan claims that Collingwood differentiates the language of poetry from that of science with the claim that scientific words have nice clean edges whereas poets use words that are fuzzy or pliable around the edges; but despite this a poet still aims at clarity.

This all smells a bit of the semiotic notion that words stand for things; or at least that clarity is obtained in terms of "species" and "genus". So "For Collingwood, the reason for this difference is not skin-deep: it’s because concepts in poetry have soft, porous edges. They bleed into one another: when you talk about death, you are always also, even if to a minimal extent, talking about countless other things."

I suspect a different account might be had. The poem is a showing, not a saying.

But even that can be undermined, and so might be wrong:

What are you trying to say? When you asked
me that I closed my laptop, offended. Why? It never mattered what
I said. — Will Harris

It never mattered what I said. and we are back to the Derangement of Epitaphs.

Gotta beat Banno’s 8 page discussion on definitions from three years ago. — Jamal

I'll try to help.

The point of the OP of that thread was a fairly simple one, that definitions do not, in a very important sense, give us meaning.

Look up the definition of a word in the dictionary.

Then look up the definition of each of the words in that definition.

Iterate.

Given that there are a finite number of words in the dictionary, the process will eventually lead to repetition.

If one's goal were to understand a word, one might suppose that one must first understand the words in its definition. But this process is circular.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms". — Banno

There was also @Mikie's thread, to which I contributed this:

I have a friend who refuses to eat kale because of the bullshit surrounding the supposed superfood. I have explained to him that just as the bullshit is not a reason to eat kale, it is not a reason not to eat kale. It's irrelevant to the decision to eat kale. — Banno

Like kale, definitions might have a place on the plate, with the right accompaniments and in the right quantity.

That lost me... — T Clark

May I ask, why do you think it lost you? I surmise that you didn't think it wrong, as such.

The notion of core meanings with vast penumbras, and of poetry providing knowledge, I think are both problematic.

...the Banno approach--semi-pointless trouble making. — Baden

I'm so pleased that you noticed.

I am wondering, , what you made of the article linked.

It was Ayn Rand and Wittgenstein who pointed out (I paraphrase) don't attempt anything before your definitions become clear . — Nickolasgaspar

That quote alone earns a banning.

-

Meh. It's political.

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

a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent" — Andrew4Handel

When I wrote that, I chose the wording with care. I had in mind the very misinterpretation you make, and hence chose "a language understandable by only a single individual" against "a language understood by only a single individual". Subtle stuff.

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.

There's a bit more to it.

The broader issue of language models being misused, intentionally or not, by their users to spread misinformation remains a concern. — Pierre-Normand

It seems unlikely to me that OpenAI will get off the hook if this kind of thing continues. — T Clark

Yeah, they are not useful. This reinforces the view that, for all the "clever", they are bullshit generators - they do not care about truth.

This...

An Australian mayor is threatening to sue OpenAI for defamation over false claims made by its artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT saying he was jailed for his criminal participation in a foreign bribery scandal he blew the whistle on. — Crikey Daily

That's right. The idea that science give a view from everywhere is wrong. The scientific view is from anywhere.

One presumes that meaning divorced from use is... useless?


The Principle of Relativity doesn't say that accounts can be true from everywhere. It says that accounts can be true from anywhere. A good account can be put into the third person.

So sure, there's an observer, but that observe does not have to be oneself.

Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving it from every possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine seeing it from every possible scale: as if you were seeing it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then also, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from every possible vantage point. — Wayfarer

Instead, imagine that you are giving an account from any possible point within it and around it. Furthermore, imagine giving an account from any possible scale: as if you were giving it as a mite on a blade of grass, in every location, and then, as a creature of various sizes, up to a creature the size of the mountain peak, and from any possible vantage point.

If you can give an account like that, you will have done good science.

Cheers, noticed your mention a couple of times.

I haven't been following this thread, although I probably should be. It's a good OP. I think I agree with your title, but probably for reasons you might not like: I don't think "phenomenal consciousness" makes a lot of sense. It has the smell of ineffable qualia and such other nasties.

You've met @Janus.

Might put on some popcorn...

I think my point might not have been clear enough. I don't think we share concepts, because a concept is just the way we use a word, and not a thing that can be shared.

Again, there is a model of communication, ubiquitous outside of philosophy, that holds that words stand for things. It's wrong.

But I think you are using it.

And I think it has led you to the problems you are addressing.

Wait. What's the topic? — Fooloso4

Well, given some of the other posts here...

Funny you mention being in a slump. I've a couple of really nice Gretsch guitars, a resonator and a G5420T, which I mostly fingerpick; not all that well. I procured a rather beautiful black Epiphone Les Paul a few months back, with the explicit aim of making myself more fasterer and competenter in using a pick. I wasn't happy with the results, and so haven't played much for a month or so. I can't blame the equipment - All the gear and no idea.

Kit amps. Good? maybe if I spend more money...

Now, where were we...

...refer... — Andrew4Handel

...referring... — Andrew4Handel

...referring... — Andrew4Handel

You are using that terms a lot. I'm sugesting that it might be misleading.

I am using words to transmit ideas and concepts not to transmit my veridical experiences. — Andrew4Handel

I don't think you are. As it, transmitting ideas and concepts is not the whole of what words do. Rather, we do things with words. 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.

It seems you are working with a theory of meaning that says words stand for things. The suggestion is that this theory is the source of the problems before you.

Everything. — Andrew4Handel

Sure, you cannot say everything. But that does not mean you cannot say something.

I dug it out - a bit embarrassing that I still have it - Through Space and TIme, a 1963 reprint of his 1933 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.

$346 according to Amazon :rofl:

I'll see if I can dig it up. — Wayfarer

I'd like that.

What is private is the sensation like redness or pain that is not captured in the physical description of body parts. — Andrew4Handel

But that's not peculiar to mental phenomena. My use of "Andrew" does not "captured in the physical description of body parts". Your use of "Paris" does not include an account of the sewage system. Words do not haver to show everything in order to show something.

So while one might not be able to say everything, it would be wrong to conclude that one can therefore say nothing...

Think on this for a bit: Tell me what there is that you cannot put into words? And notice that even as you tell me, you are putting it into words.

The world is all that is the case.

...James Jeans... — Wayfarer

Goodness, that brings back memories - of a well-thumbed paperback full of fuzzy black-and-white images that as a child I found awesome – in the real meaning of that word; now we have the James Web.

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

Again, and yet we do.

We do not have the language to accurately describe everything we experience. — Andrew4Handel

And that is not the same as not being able to describe anything we experience. Again, we do describe things.

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. — Andrew4Handel

The beetle argument shows this to be a poor analogy. It works on the assumption that words are all labels for things; they are not.

This is the basis of the criticism of our assumptions about language found in the latter Wittgenstein, who advocated not looking for what our words refer to, but instead examining how they are used.

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. — Andrew4Handel

I think Wittgenstein's analysis can help you untie this knot.

Such inversion problems might be more complex than you suppose.

I would go with their being behaviourally undetectable, after Wittgenstein. That is, if your red is my blue, and yet we use the same words in the same situation, the difference is irrelevant.

Here's the rub: colour words do not stand for our subjective sensations. If what I see as red is what you see as blue, and yet we both use the words "red" for red things and "blue" for blue things, then "red" and "blue" cannot be referring to our sensations, since our sensations are not the same.

And yet we do talk about our symptoms. They are not private.

Thanks.

More generally, it looks like the rhetorical crowbar of fancy math is used against the boundary of science and metaphysics / religion. — plaque flag

yeah, it does. There are papers I came across where he and his students claim to be clarifying more empirical stuff, like vision, and he gives some account of his solution to the combination problem, and a rough account of how a wave function is supposedly identical to a Markov chain, although in my limited understanding it appears to happen by saying it is so rather than demonstrating that it is so.

The reply to the objection that his account applies equally to non-conscious entities, "Even if the definition could apply to unconscious agents, that would not preclude it from applying to consciousness, any more than using the integers to count apples would preclude using them to count oranges" seems to me to beg the question. As I said earlier, his claim that what is described by his mathematics is the very same as what we call consciousness remains conjectural; a long bow to pull.

To say nothing of qualia as probability spaces. Your red, here, now as an equation...

But there might be something here that is usable. Who knows.

I play a bit of guitar. I don't read sheet music. You know the old joke, "How do you stop a piano player? Take away the sheet music. How do you stop a guitar player? Put sheet music in front of them."

*5. Punted: To Give Up
But as an idiom, “to punt” means to give up, to defer action, or to pass responsibility off to someone else. — Gnomon

Telling an Australian how to punt? :lol:

In the post in which this discussion started, you claimed that one could accept idealism and realism simultaneously, that this was an acceptable paradox, analogous to other supposed paradoxes.

It isn't. It's more a failure on your part to understand what is involved in realism and idealism, commensurate with your general naive understanding of other philosophical issues.

Philosophy consists in attempting to say things clearly. Concatenating diverse ideas is poor philosophising.

Yeah, I'll get pilloried for being too direct. Philosophy is hard. I'm not claiming to have all the answers, I might be wrong, yours might be a brilliant and correct approach. But I'm not seeing it.

Might leave it at that.

Good point.

I'll leave you to it. Not much more I can offer you. Maybe more tomorrow.