This doesn't follow. A belief that the distinction of another mind is just a model is not the same as saying that only I exist. I'm quite convinced the external world exists (I actually think it is impossible to genuinely doubt that), I just don't agree that the distinctions we draw are real outside of our minds. — Isaac

So what you're saying is that other people exist, it's just that our talk of other minds is itself a model, and the model can be disputed. You're disputing the model that the experiences of other minds is inaccessible. That subjectivity is fundamentally different from objectivity. And thus you disagree with the hard problem of consciousness, that it's a "hard" problem.

Alright, fair enough. I think there's some room there for debate over exactly how "hard" the distinction is between subjective and objective. It could be that the distinction is only a human one due to a limitation of how we think, or based on how philosophy and language has developed into the current debate, or just that science hasn't quite caught up yet.

What I'm noting is that this distinction goes all the way back to the beginning of philosophical inquiry, so there's something fundamental at least in terms of human knowledge. The distinction being one between the appearance of the world to us, and how the world actually is. The current consciousness debate is just the most recent development of the long argued problem of perception and skepticism that arose a long time ago when people started asking questions about sticks looking bent in water and people having different experiences of sensation (perceptual relativity), and how animal sensory capabilities can differ from our own.

If I recall correctly, Parmaneides argued that since nothing does not exist, change is impossible, because otherwise things like the past would cease to exist (become nothing which is impossible).

Lucretius used nothing to argue that something cannot come from it, otherwise anything would come into existence, which we don't observe. Therefore atoms must have always existed.

Note: the dichotic utterance of ‘inner’ and ‘external’ has always been a hazardous field of play - hence dualistic notions and no logical means to claw our way around such attitudes and keep a reasonable dialogue flowing. — I like sushi

Right, but we could reframe the debate to be how I experience the rock and how the rock is, assuming they are not the same thing. If we have good reason to suppose that rocks are more than our experience of them, then that raises the possibility that rocks differ in some way from how we experience them. And so on for the rest of the world, including our own bodies and other people.

So we end up with some kind of dichotomy, however we want to define that. And it's as old as philosophy itself, even if the terms and nature of the debate have changed over time. And there are many reasons for supposing this dichotomy exists, or at least appears to exist.

If so, I guess he's arguing with himself to sharpen up the model? I didn't get to read through the entire thread so I'm not sure where that part of the arguments took place.

I'm just happy to be part of someone's world.

Right, and I'm obviously not disputing that fact. I'm disputing the implication drawn earlier in the argument that this means we should accept 'experiences like pain as being subjective, inaccessible to third parties. — Isaac

The experience itself is inaccessible, because you don't have someone else's pain. But you might very well find out someone is or was in pain, and have empathy or recall a similar painful experience. So yes, the mental phenomena has related effects. But we can't always know what they are, or infer the correct mental states.

Luckily we share a similar biology with other humans, so often enough we can understand other people's mental states. But not always. Men can't know exactly what it's like to give birth. And we never know fully what it is to be someone else. Everyone has their own subjective experience of themselves and the world.

This goes back to a dispute over meaning. You seemed to be arguing for a behavioral view that pain is understood as something objective and not the experience of pain itself, because otherwise how could have learned to identify pain? To which I say hogwash, pain without the experience is meaningless.

Therefore, we understood pain to be something experienced that often but not always has observable effects, like hopping around and yelling. And it's something that can be faked.

What reason have you got to think this? — Isaac

Because it would be used by courts and doctors.

Even if we were to simply assume the two sensations were similar enough, you'd be positing a mental sensation which had absolutely no effect on you whatsoever.

I didn't say there was no effect, just that we can't always know what it is in other people. Of course at minimum there is neural activity. But it's not like we have super accurate brain scanners. We don't have anything that's good enough for court to determine truthfulness. Lie detector tests aren't terribly accurate, and neither are juries, police or even shrinks when it comes to reading people.

Also, you haven't tried to answer my questions. How would you know that what you're experiencing is called 'pain'? How do you know you're using the word correctly? — Isaac

The sensation correlates with other human behavior enough of the time in situations that are often painful to use that word for it. There's probably edge cases where I wouldn't be sure whether to call it pain.

Yes. My not noticing the signs and there not being any signs to notice are two different things. — Isaac

Yes, but we also don't have any method that will allow us to always read the signs.

It's a fact I dispute, a fact I'm asking for your support of, your empirical evidence for. — Isaac

Alright, so have you ever found out someone was feeling discomfort when you didn't realize it, or vice versa?

I'm talking about the time when you claim it is hidden. Again, it is not a 'fact' simply by your declaring it to be one. — Isaac

I drink too much the night before and wake up with a mild hangover. At the office I talk to coworker and do my work without saying anything. Nobody asks me about my hangover or offers some aspirin.

I don't know what more to say other than it's a basic aspect of our experience that we don't always know what our fellow humans are feeling, including pain, nor can they always tell what we feel. It's part of of our daily interactions, it's in our language, it's all over fiction.

You seem to be arguing that we should always be able to tell whether someone is in pain.

Again, I'll ask, how would you possibly know what 'pain' is (which of your many feelings is the one correctly called 'pain') if you could not identify it at all times in others? — Isaac

But we don't and we can't always identify what someone else is experiencing. That's just a fact of our existence. We only have partial access to other people's minds though their behavior and what they choose to tell us. We simply don't always know whether someone else in pain.

Pain always results in some behaviour to the effect of demonstrating the pain, — Isaac

But it doesn't. People can choose to ignore minor pains. I have a headache, but if it's not severe, I don't have to say anything or hold my head. I can just ignore it and focus on something else. How much pain one can endure without reacting in pain depends on the individual.

If there was even one circumstance where the correct feeling to call 'pain' was hidden from you completely, how would you know that some other feeling you're having is actually also called 'pain', afterall, it might be the one that's been hidden from you? — Isaac

It's not hidden from me because pain is a subjective experience that can be accompanied by behavior, but not always. And if that fact doesn't square with a certain view of meaning acquisition, the so much the worse for that view.

I don't think there's any reason to think supernagic is real, but it's meaningful. That's why we can create fictional stories with supernagic in it.

The show Supernatural has the more powerful beings just snapping their fingers. Interesting that Q on Star Trek would do the same thing, but his race wasn't considered supernagical.

The polling questions aren’t very well done. How can you answer yes or no to a binary choice between two options that aren’t yes or no? Why can’t Both be an answer? — Mark Dennis

Sounds rather continental.

That was informative. I agree that subjectivity is not measurable. but it's the way we experience the world.

However, that still leaves related ontological and epistemological questions unanswered.

Right, so actions in one context=pain, actions in some other context=pretending. This is still all externally identifiable. — Isaac

But it isn't, or we'd always know whether someone was in pain. There's even medical situations where a patient will complain about a condition their doctor can't see a symptom for, resulting in the suspicion that it's psychological. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it turns out the patient was right.

But in either case, the point is the patient experiences some form of discomfort that isn't objectively identified.

No, that's not how mirror neurons work, they only mirror intentions related to behaviours, they can't magically distinguish different intentions from identical behaviours. — Isaac

But some animals, humans in particular, do develop a theory of mind where we can look at the context of someone's identical actions and infer their intentions. But yeah, we do have to learn that, which partly comes from other humans like parents or older kids teaching us, and in part from just interacting.

I'm not really sure where this is going. You're not defending behaviorism, right? You're defending a Wittgenstenian understanding of the term pain.

How did the people who told you they were pretending find that out? — Isaac

Ultimately because at some point primate/monkey ancestors developed mirror neurons and were able to formulate some theory of mind to understand other people's actions. And one of those kind of actions would be deception.

By watching people pretend and being told they were pretending, then doing the same thing myself.

How would you know? — Isaac

How would I know that people can pretend to be in pain, like actors or liars? Is that really going to be your argument?

Instead a see the same old repetition where people get bogged down in arguments about dualism, reality, and naive realism. — I like sushi

So how does phenomenology help avoid those topics? So we start with our experiences of being in the world. But at some point don't those old questions rear their heads?

Yes, but why does it have to be a subjective experience for this to be the case? 'Pain' we all learn, is the word we use to indicate whatever it is that motivates us to those particular sorts of actions. — Isaac

That's not why I use the word pain, but okay, maybe the rest of you zombies use it that way. I use it to refer to feeling pain, not my resulting actions.

I could be a robot and still learn to label the tweaking of my diodes which causes me to writhe about and cry 'pain'. — Isaac

But only because humans who do feel pain first coined the word. But okay, let's go with the p-zombie robot world with no humans. They coin a word pain-z which means writhing about and crying when diodes are tweaked. That isn't what we mean by pain.

Why not? Because I can writhe around pretending to be in pain, or maybe for some other reason like a seizure. Or I might be stoical about it. Not all pain manifests in some observable action. Behavior itself is not enough.

No, we don't, otherwise the word wouldn't mean anything. If any subjective experience counted as pain without any objective measures, then how would we ever learn what the word meant? — Isaac

Turn that around and you have the same problem. If there were no subjective experiences of pain how would we ever learn the word? We wouldn't, because it wouldn't be an experience for us.

Yes, pain and other sensations are accompanied by objective measures, which helps us know when people are in pain. But not always.

What good is that notion of subjective? — creativesoul

To denote that our experiences are not mirrors of reality, and thus when we create explanations of reality, we have to take that into account. A physicalist is going to miss out on something if they don't include our experiences, since we are part of the world.

Also, because it raises the possibility of skeptical scenarios we have to deal with in philosophical discussions. And along with that the possibility of some sort of idealism as a response to skepticism. But that can also be motivated by cognitive concerns as well as experiential ones.

No. — creativesoul

So you're a color realist. Alright, fine. But at least with pain we have something clearly subjective.

I know that there can be no hallucination, dream, and/or illusion of red if there is no red. — creativesoul

Would you say the same thing about pain?

No it doesn't. It demonstrates that red experiences require both, red things and the ability to see them as such. It also demonstrates that the internal/external and objective/subjective dichotomies are inadequate for taking proper account of experience. — creativesoul

So you think that the colors we experience are out there in the world? Are they attached to photons or molecules? How do they get into our brains?

Does this also apply to sound, taste, feels? Does 2 degrees celsius air molecules feel objectively cold? How do you reconcile different sensations among animals or even humans? Maybe I'm from a cold climate and find that warm.

But I am honestly amused - like it makes me smile irl - to think people look out at the world around them and honestly believe in their heart of hearts that what they see are 'properties'.
— StreetlightX

I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on.
— StreetlightX

! — bert1

Scratch a Wittgensteinian and you get a Humean.

I would say it is akin to visualization; when I imagine the house of my childhood, it is not as though I am looking at it, or at a photograph of it; it's not as if I can look at my visualization and count the bricks, compare their colours and so on; yet I call it visualization nonetheless. — Janus

Some people can visualize to that level of detail. I like you, have never been able to do that. But i do hear my thoughts as if they were spoken.

hat our sensory input does not reflect true reality is separate problem from ontology of the subjectiveness of experience. — Zelebg

Right, but noting this distinction is a rebuttal to the those who want to dissolve the issue by saying that being part of reality means the internal/external distinction is misguided. That our subjective experience of being in the world is different from the world is meaningful and raises an ontological question of subjectivity.

If there was no meaningful subjective/objective distinction to be made, then the problem of perception would have never been an issue, science would mostly back what our senses tell us, and movies like the Matrix and Inception would have never been made. Also, no p-zombies.

But that's not the case, and the issue of subjectivity keeps coming up in its various forms, because it's fundamental to our experience of the world.

Just the very fact that we can dream of interacting with the world without actually doing so is sufficient.

Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)? — "Janus

If they weren’t separable, then physics would be very much like our naive perception, and the ancient skeptics would have had little material to start with. Bit that’s not the case.

So the colour quales and shape quales are distinguished in our experience by something which is not reflected in our experience. — fdrake

Basically. We don’t see photons or molecular surfaces. Rather we see chairs and apples.

so you’re basically a panpsychist? Everything has a little bit of consciousness.

so what is the functional account of seeing red when processing a particular wavelength of light. What would the code look look like?

What is it like for bits?

To avoid a semantic debate over the word seeing, we can distinguish a red perceptual experience from an internally generated one. This demonstrates that red experiences come from us and not into the eyes riding on light waves, as if the red somehow jumps onto electrons and enters the visual cortex.

Yeah. I would only be careful: we are of reality, and don't stand outside of it looking in. "If no people existed, objects would be...?" is still a strange question. "If there are no clouds, objects would be...?" - one has to wonder: what even is this question? How does the one relate to the other? It's loaded, but badly. — StreetlightX

The question is asking what the word is like instead of how we think and perceive the world to be, which has clearly undergone lots of revision over time, as we've discovered that world is not what we naively took it to be, and that we can be wrong. So yeah, we're part of reality. That doesn't mean we understand that reality exactly as it is. Turns out it's a lot of work to figure out and plenty of skeptical questions can be raised in the process.

I think Jackson proves is that there is such a first-person experience that we have, the likes of which philosophical zombies would not have. Which, again, is a complete trivialism because I think everything necessarily has that and it's incoherent to talk about not having it so saying something has it really doesn't communicate anything of greater interest than disagreement with such nonsense. — Pfhorrest

It's not a trivialism when we try to determine whether machines can be conscious, which is also the case for other animals. Does a pig or a cow experience pain, and if so, is it ethical to eat them? Should we medically test rats if they have subjective experiences of suffering?

Those are meaningful questions.

What would be the point in asking such a question? What knowledge would we be getting that we couldn't acquire by thinking about it differently? — Harry Hindu

We're asking if bats have kinds of experiences that we don't because there physiology differs, particularly with the use of sonar. Surely human experience does not encompass all possible experiences in the universe. And a good reason for thinking this isn't so is because sensory organs, brains and body plans differ across animals, and there are tons of things outside of human perception.

A simple one would be seeing in four primary colors, which some animals have the eyes for that and even more.

So is experiencing eating cake different from eating cake? — Banno

You can imagine or dream it. You can also do an activity while paying attention to something else, thus not experiencing it. An example would be driving down a highway on autopilot where you're thinking about something else or listening to the radio.

because there is no it, the whole concept of 'the experience of seeing red' as opposed to just 'seeing red' is incoherent. — Isaac

This is wrong, because we do have experiences of seeing red without seeing red. Dreams, memory, imagination and optical illusions do not count as seeing red. And as was noted earlier, the part of the brain that creates color experiences can sometimes be stimulated in blind people by other means.

The number of cows that the paddock can sustain is not an issue that can be settled by a poll. — Banno

Is the sustainability of the paddock fixed to a certain number of cows?

1. A Big Fat Dictator who shoots anyone who tries to put two cows on the commons.
2. Sell the commons, making it private so that folk take care of it. (We might call this the Selfish Git solution)
3. Develop a culture that treats the commons with respect. — Banno

4. Find an economic model that supports the commons.

I wonder what happens after the tragedy of the commons? Life goes on so the tragedy can't be the final word. Let's say the land gets ruined by overgrazing and now nobody can raise cows and make money. So now what happens? Does the land no longer have any use? Does nature never recover? Is there no technology that comes along and introduces grass that can support more cows?

Your thought experiment seems to treat the world as some steady-state entity. This used to be the way to estimate the carrying capacity of Earth. But then it was realized that humans alter that equation, creating higher yield crops, making deserts bloom, and so on. So now the carrying capacity is estimated to be around 10 billion. But some say we could increase that by building huge arcologies, genetic engineering and advanced nanotech and replicators.