Yep, you don't have a concept of a subject. It figures. So what is your internal perspective then? If you're not a subject, what are you? — Echarmion

So, a subject is a view? Are you saying that is all that you are - a view of the world? The "internal vs. external" is a product of the same problem as the "physical vs. non-physical" - dualism. I am not just my view of the world. I am a human being - an organism of which my view is only one part.

Actually the problem is just as bad because no causal process to explain qualia has been discovered. If everything is objects, there'd have to be some physical process that converts, say, electric charge into feelings. You talk as if this process was common knowledge, but it's not, and you haven't provided any. — Echarmion

That' because you keep thinking in terms of physical vs. non-physical. You don't seem to be paying attention to what I'm saying. You seem to want to only promote your view as if it is objective - as if it is the case for not only you, but everyone else. Why do you think you keep trying to get me to agree and see things how you see them? What is the purpose of that?

I asked you how you move your "physical" arm with your "non-physical" mind? You need to show me the same respect that I have shown you and answer my questions. Do you agree or disagree that there is a causal relationship there? Do you disagree that there is a causal relationship between imagining flying to the Moon and the existence of "physical" rockets that fly human beings to the Moon? Could human beings travel to the Moon without first having imagined it and then imagined the plans for the design of a rocket ship to get them to the Moon?

Are you at all familiar with the whole "existence is not a predicate" argument? — Echarmion

The concept, "existence" is implied by the concept of "property".

I am not part of my world though. I cannot be both the subject and the object. You're arguing that there is no subject, which means your epistemology is stuck in the 17th century. — Echarmion

I didn't say your world. I said the world. The world is not yours unless you're a solipsist.

If you are not part of the world, then how are you communicating with me and others?

If by subject, you mean process or relationship, then I can agree with that. I wouldn't know what you mean by subject other than a type of object. You refer to subjects just like you do objects in your use of language, so what is the difference?

That's the hard problem, isn't it? They don't seem to be. — Echarmion

The problem is only hard if you're a dualist. The mind is part of the world because it has a causal relationship with the world.

That question doesn't make sense. Qualia and preferences aren't events, and only events have "causal relationships". — Echarmion

Causes and effects have causal relationships. Qualia and preferences are caused by other states-of-affairs and are themselves causes of states-of-affairs in the world. If you don't agree, then I ask how you move your body (physical) with the intent of your mind (non-physical)? The answer is that there is no physical vs. non-physical dichotomy, and therefore no hard problem. It is all part of the same world.

The subject doesn't technically exist, since existence is a relationship between the subject and an object. If you think that there are only objects, then of course this discussion doesn't makes sense to you. — Echarmion

So objects and subjects don't exist, only process/relationships (Whitehead)? I might actually start to agree with you here, but then we'd be talking about, and agreeing on, the actual state-of-affairs, which would be objective. Whenever you assert how things actually are, you are attempting to be objective.

So according to you, literally every statement is objective, including statements about qualia and preferences?
— Echarmion
Are qualia and preferences part of the world? Do qualia and preferences establish causal relationships with the world? If not, then you aren't part of the world. You would be non-existent. Imaginings and delusions cause people to behave in certain ways. Imaginings and delusions are themselves caused by states-of-affairs in the world. — Harry Hindu

While imaginings and delusions are real and objective in the sense that they exist, what they are about is inaccurate, and in that sense they would be subjective. Like I said, subjectivity is projecting mental states onto things that don't have mental states, or aren't those mental states. Projecting your delusion or imagining onto the world as if it were also a state-of-the-world besides just being a delusion or imagining in the objective sense (you'd have to be able to distinguish between delusion and reality to be able to distinguish between subjectivity and objectivity), is what subjectivity is.

“Everything is subjective” doesn’t even need to be asserted as holding for everyone, to be an objective statement in itself. In at least one established theoretical human cognitive system, all cognitions are judgements, all judgements are objective, and all judgements are objective statements in form, when passed to an external observer.

Thing is.....”everything is subjective”, while being a valid objective statement, cannot be an objective truth, insofar as it is impossible that every thing is subjective. On the other hand, “any human knowledge of things is a subjective condition” would be an objective truth, iff that statement holds across the entire human domain without exception, which, theoretically, it does because its refutation is immediately self-contradictory under the same circumstances by which the statement was thought in the first place. — Mww

We don't know when statements are true until we can all establish some evidence or proof of the claim. The claim is still objective in the sense that it is about the world as if from a view from everywhere (God's-eye view). It doesn't matter if it is right or wrong. People are asserting things all the time, as if it were true, because they are making arguments for it, and to disagree would be wrong. When making an argument for some view, you are asserting truth while at the same time saying that anyone that disagrees is wrong.

If you thought that your assertion was actually subjective, then why say it at all? What use would it be for others?

That's like saying New York isn't part of America, but part of the universe. My ability to know things is a subjective ability. It might be objective to some other observer, but that's beside the point. — Echarmion

No. It's not. You keep making objective statements, seemingly without knowing it. Each sentence you just wrote is an objective statement about you, and you are part of the world.

So according to you, literally every statement is objective, including statements about qualia and preferences? — Echarmion

Are qualia and preferences part of the world? Do qualia and preferences establish causal relationships with the world? If not, then you aren't part of the world. You would be non-existent. Imaginings and delusions cause people to behave in certain ways. Imaginings and delusions are themselves caused by states-of-affairs in the world.

No, I am not making claims about the world, but rather claims about our ability to know the world. — Echarmion

...which is part of the world. Your knowledge of the world, accurate or not, is part of the world.

Unless the person saying it uses it as a general statement of doubt, in the form of "everything is subjective, including this statement". — Echarmion

"everything is subjective, including this statement". — Echarmion

How is this statement useful? Subjectivity is essentially making category errors, of projecting mental properties, like color and taste, onto things that don't have mental properties.

Doubt is part of the world. Is it not an assertion of truth that you doubt? Is it not an assertion about the state of your mind? How do you go from making assertions about your state of mind to making assertions about others state of mind by using the term, "everything", which includes the world, minds and all?

You don't seem to understand that your mind's state is part of the world.

We're all subjects imagining other subjects doing subjective stuff. It's subjects all the way down.

But seriously, there is a difference between subjective, intersubjective, and objective. The objective part here is that we're somehow exchanging information. The intersubjective part is that we're using an Internetforum, computers, the English language etc. And then we each have a subjective interpretation of what is said and why, with a small model of what the person saying it might be like.

Unless you're specifically doing metaphysics or epistemology, there isn't any reason to differentiate between objective and whatever is intersubjective for all humans. — Echarmion

You're making objective claims about how the world is for everyone, as if you have a view from everywhere.

The funny thing is, any assertions we make are assertions of objectivity. So if we say we are subjective beings, then we're making an objective truth claim. So in order for us to say that we are subjective beings we have to assume there is objectivity that we can utilise in the first place. — Cidat

Yes. At least some of you are getting it.

I'll say it again,

"Everything is subjective" is an objective statement as it is being asserted to be true for everyone. — Harry Hindu

If there was a chance it'd go wrong, then the prediction wasn't completely accurate. A well designed plane can still crash. — Echarmion

Right. So a crash wouldnt happen because of the design of the plane, but for some other reason that has nothing to do with the design of the plane.

It doesn't need to be the case that 'true' is exactly identical for everyone. It is sufficient that everyone finds enough truth in a statement to make practical use of it. Do you believe that your words are delivered without lack? Yet I still understand you. — emancipate

If you understand, then what is lacking? Again, you are making objective statements about words lacking something, as if anyone that uses words lacks something.

What I don't understand is how you keep making claims about some state-of-affairs that is true for everyone - namely that "It doesn't need to be the case that 'true' is exactly identical for everyone. It is sufficient that everyone finds enough truth in a statement to make practical use of it.", while at the same time claiming that it's not true for everyone. It's like saying that you know that you know nothing - a contradiction. You can't escape making objective claims about the world as it relates to all of us.

"Everything is subjective" is an objective statement as it is being asserted to be true for everyone.

You cannot technically predict anything with complete accuracy. — Echarmion

It depends on the goal. If the goal was accomplished, how can it be said that it wasn't accurate?

Do truth statements need to be absolutely objective? Can truth statements be both objective and subjective at once? In that case, I would prefer to say that my statements were partially true or that they contained an element of truth. While also being partially false. — emancipate

What do you mean by "true" if not that it is the case for everyone? If it's not true for everyone, then why say it? What use would it be for others? Keep it to yourself as it only applies to you.

Objective truth or objective reality may exist, that is, there may exist truths that are true regardless of perspective or bias, — Cidat

Perception requires a reference point, that will inherently be subjective. — Shawn

It looks like you just stated a truth about reality, therefore it would be an objective statement.

Depends on the language, no?

Mathematics, physics, and formal languages require no reference point as an "I". They're about as objective as you can get. — Shawn

How do we make objective statements with words, which are just particular sounds or scribbles, from our subjective perspective?

They do require a reference point though, because the data provided through these domains must be subject to interpretation. — emancipate

This is just your imagination of another perspective, from your reference point. — emancipate

Are you making true statements, emancipate? If so, then aren't you're statements objective? How is it that you are making truth claims about how things are for Banno, when you aren't Banno? You must have some objective perspective of Banno to do that.


What about our own minds? Do we have objective access to our own minds, and are not our own minds part of the world?

Perception requires a reference point — Shawn

Which is to say that that is how the world appears from that reference point, which seems like an objective statement to me.

So what would entail subjectivity? When you are being subjective, you are making category errors. To say that the apple is red and good, you would be confusing the state of your mind with the state of the apple. The apple is simply ripe. Redness and goodness is a property of the mind, not the apple. Ripeness is a property of the apple represented in different ways to different sensory organs (red to eyes and good to tastebuds).

or there is no difference at all between being fearful and having direct access to the mental state of being fearful. — creativesoul

There is a difference. Being the thing implies that there is one thing. Talking about direct access implies two things - the thing being accessed directly and the thing directly accessing the thing ie. a Cartesian Theatre.

I only have direct access to my own mental states and I can't think of a way that I can have the same access to anyone else's. I believe science in all its current methodologies has no direct access to private subjective mental states.

An analogy is if I gave a cook eggs, flour and sugar and told them go make me a fruit salad.

However, at the same time I think that our own access to our mental states is not very helpful either. — Andrew4Handel

Crime scene investigators don't have "direct" access to the crime either. They learn about the crime by finding evidence of the crime. The evidence has a causal relationship with the crime. The evidence is the effect, the crime the cause. If we can still determine truths about the cause, like the time of the crime, the identity of the criminal, etc. from the effect of the cause, then why wouldn't we be able to determine truths about some mind if minds establish causal relationships with the world?

If I learned that you were in pain because of observing you stub your toe and you wincing, why would it be helpful to know how you experience the pain? What new knowledge would you be able to acquire that would be useful?

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.

Pretty much the same goes for definitions. — Banno

Well, if bullshit surrounded the kale, I wouldn't want to eat it, for sure, even if you cleaned it. The smell... :vomit:

Now, if you don't mean literal bullshit, but something else, well, we'd need you to define your use of "bullshit" to really know whether or not it would be a reason or not to eat kale.

Since joining this forum a few months ago, I've been surprised at the number of times people have appealed not only to "common sense," but specifically the dictionary, in an attempt to support their claims about the meaning of various terms. — Xtrix

What does "dictionary" mean?

When I hammer a nail, my thinking (it may or may not be accompanied by a verbal act) is different from thought in each of the following situations: I plan to hammer a nail, I order to do it, I take a verbal account of how I do it, or I teach somebody how to do it. Nevertheless, despite of the distinction between all these ways of thinking, each of them is virtually given when I hammer a nail. — Number2018

I don't understand when you say "my thinking is different from thought..." Thinking and thought are the same process.

The rest of your post doesn't seem to address my question. I asked if the sound of a word is about something that isn't the sound of the word. I'm also asking is the thought of hammering a nail the act of hammering a nail. If your answer is yes, then you are a solipsist. If no, then thoughts are about things (of which thoughts could be a thing, hence we can turn our thoughts back on each other, just as we turn our view back on itself in being self-aware). In other words, a word or thought is about things other than the word or thought.

reminds me of, and likely maps onto, the common distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how, combined with the further distinction I have long drawn of knowing-with. — Janus

Knowing-how is simply a sequence of knowing-thats. Knowing-with is simply knowing-how to use a language, and knowing-how to use a language is a sequence of knowing-thats (the rules of the language). A plurality of thought and knowledge is more complex than is necessary to explain the dynamics of thought (Occam's Razor and all).

Words are just particular visuals and sounds in our experience of the world. If we can know-with and think-with particular visuals and sounds that we call "words", then why can't we know-with and think-with other visuals and sounds (and even other sensory data like tactile and gustatory and olfactory sensory data) that aren't words? And why wouldn't knowing-with and thinking-with words fall into the same category as knowing-with and thinking-with other sensory data?

Indeed, representational thinking does not cover the entire domains of our thought, which are embedded within our daily practices. — Number2018

So words don't represent, or mean, something that isn't the words being used? And by mean, or represent, I also mean to act as a stimulus to drive a particular behavior in someone (the behavior isn't the word being used to drive the behavior), because meaning and representations are causal.

This doesn't make any sense. You want to conclude that if our thoughts are about the same thing, then the thoughts themselves are the same. To think about something is to create a relationship with that thing. It's illogical, that I, being a thing, would have the same relationship as you, being a second thing, to a third thing. In order for you and I to have the same relationship with another thing, we'd have to both be the same thing. You and I would be one thing. Therefore we should conclude that yours and my experiences of that third thing are not the same.

The other option you propose is that the experiences of you and I are similar. That they are similar would need to be demonstrated. I think we demonstrate the similarities, along with the differences, through communication. — Metaphysician Undercover

What does it mean to say that our what our thoughts are about are the same, but the thoughts themselves aren't? If you only know about something by your thoughts, and they are different than mine then how do we know that we are thinking about the same thing?

You say that we can demonstrate the similarities and differences through communication. What would you be communicating - your thoughts or the thing your thoughts are about? If you can only talk about your thoughts - which you say are different, then we would be communicating different things, and never anything similar.

Say you and I are standing on opposite ends of a table looking at an apple on the table. Your view is one side of the apple and my view is the opposite side of the apple. But within my view is you, looking at the apple. It is a fundamental, pre-linguistic understanding that human beings have is that other humans have a view from their location is space. Even chimps seem to have this understanding as they understand that blocking someone's eyes is blocking their view. We don't need to communicate with each other to understand that we are both looking at the same thing.

I think that inference only makes sense if one clings to consciousness-grounded paradigm that is exploded by the beetle-in-the-box example. The whole habit of trying to ground everything in consciousness deserves rethinking when it comes to language. As I see it, there are certain biases or prejudices that are so automatic that we don't even notice them and find the questioning of them absurd at first. I suggest that it makes as much sense to ground the subject/consciousness in language as it does to ground language in the subject/consciousness. The whole philosophical discourse of consciousness occurs within public sign-systems. The subject is an effect of language, not as a body, of course, but as a concept, as one more sign that only makes sense in a system of signs. — jjAmEs

That isn't what I was trying to do. Language is just visual scribbles and sounds, like mostly everything else in consciousness - that is about things that aren't the scribbles and sounds. If we can adopt various sounds and scribbles in our experience to mean certain things, then how is it that we can't just use the visuals and sounds that we already experience prior to learning any language to be about some other experience? We don't need language to have a narrative. We simply need categories, which are basically the same thing as concepts. Animals can establish causal relationships (explanations) without having any language. A deer passing through the forest scents the ground and detects a certain odor. A sequence of ideas is generated in the mind of the deer. Nothing in the deer's experience can produce that odor but a wolf; therefore the scientific inference is drawn that wolves have passed that way. But it is a part of the deer's scientific knowledge, based on previous experience, individual and racial; that wolves are dangerous beasts, and so, combining direct observation in the present with the application of a general principle based on past experience, the deer reaches the very logical conclusion that it may wisely turn about and run in another direction. All this implies, essentially, a comprehension and use of scientific principles; and, strange as it seems to speak of a deer as possessing scientific knowledge, yet there is really no absurdity in the statement. The deer does possess scientific knowledge; knowledge differing in degree only, not in kind, from the knowledge of a Newton. Nor is the animal, within the range of its intelligence, less logical, less scientific in the application of that knowledge, than is the human. The animal that could not make accurate scientific observations of its surroundings, and deduce accurate scientific conclusions from them, would soon pay the penalty of its lack of logic.

Pre-linguistic children establish object permanence - converting from solipsism to realism - all prior to language-use. At this point in our lives - when we are very young we understand the concept of existing information that is missing from our minds - that information exists even when it isn't in our minds, and that information is called "private" by English speakers. So the words only refer to existing experiences that aren't words. We can establish patters without words. Words simply communicate the pattern that we already have established.

I don't dispute that the external "game" is separate from the internal "understanding". — Metaphysician Undercover

I wasn't trying to make a distinction between an "external" game and "internal" understanding. It seems to me that if there is no "internal" understanding, there is no "external" game. It requires at least two people to understand the rules for there to be an external game, and there requires external parts for there to be an understanding about - different pieces have different rules.

We are clearly not talking about "the same thing" in this situation, so I don't know why you keep coming back to this, talking as if you think that we are talking about the same thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

MU, experiences and thoughts are about things. If you and I have a visual experience of a hamburger, are our experiences not about the same thing? If they are about the same thing, or causally related to the same thing, then how is it that our experiences of it aren't the same, or at least similar? If they aren't about the same thing, then we would just be talking past each other or living in different realities.

Using eye tracking technology, the experiment looks for differences in the way users of different languages look at a picture. When asked simply to examine a certain picture, there are very few differences in how different language-users look over the picture. When, however, asked to describe the picture in words, "speakers’ eyes rapidly focused on the event components typically encoded in their native language, but only when asked to describe the events... The stories told by the speakers highlighted properties of the picture-story, in correlation with the grammatical patterns of the languages. ... Speakers of English and Spanish, languages that mark progressive aspect, describe two events as aspectually different ... Speakers of German and Hebrew, languages that do not mark progressive aspect, treated the events as aspectually similar [not describing temporal apsects of the picture - SX]" (Dor, The Instruction of the Imagination) — StreetlightX

In other words, the way we think - what we pay attention to, how we 'parse out the world' - is very much dependant on what we are thinking for. — StreetlightX

If there were very few differences in the way users of different languages look at the picture prior to being asked to describe it, and the differences arise when asked to describe the picture, then another explanation could be that we parse the world in similar ways prior to learning a language, and the description isn't reflective of how they parse the world, but reflective of the limits of they language that they use to describe it.

If language had such a drastic effect on how we think, then I would expect to see pre-language children, or pre-language adults like Ildefonso (https://vimeo.com/76386718) looking at the picture the same way and once they learn a language then how they look at the picture prior to being asked to describe it would be different.

We must all parse the world similarly prior to learning a language if we all are capable of learning a language in the first place. We would need to be able to understand the difference between the sound of someone's voice vs. other sounds in our environment and understand that the voice is an attempt at communication - that the sound is about something else that isn't the sound, just like a thought-of is about something that isn't the thought.

In being asked to describe something, you are no longer just thinking-of the picture. You are thinking-of the words and grammatical rules used to represent your thinking-of the picture. Words are about things just as thoughts are about things. So you're not pluralizing thoughts in thinking-of thoughts this way. You're simply adding another level of thinking-of.

The two are different categories.

Conservation is a temporal invariance in the first place.

Where does seeing your food go after supper?
The experience thereof came and went, the occurrence started and ended, was interruptible.
Temporal and process-like.

The conservation of the food isn't interruptible, and the food persisted throughout your experiences thereof, much like body persists sufficiently (structurally) throughout mind.
Spatial and object-like (left to right, top to bottom, front to back; we eat food, not experiences thereof).

I guess it's all interrelated in whatever ways, and the synthesis is where we might infer that, say, your mind depends on your body. — jorndoe

Are you asking where the actual food went after supper, or where your experience of the food went after supper? Your experience of seeing food left the same time the actual food left. So it seems to me that they are both (the thought of eating food and the actual eating the food) come and go at the same time, or else you would be hallucinating when there isn't any actual food. But your thoughts come and go just like eaten food.

We can never know if we see the same colors. It's intuitively plausible, and an argument can be made for it, but it's unnecessary. Generations come and go without knowing whether they use 'green' to refer to the same quale. Or whether anyone ever has the same signified for 'toothache.' — jjAmEs

Why wouldn't we see the same colors if we are members of the same species? It would be surprising for someone to say that we are so different that some humans might have experiences more like bats or beetles. How many varieties of experience of the world are there? Does the type of brain have some influence on how you experience the world? Do different types of brains have different types of experiences? What reason would we have to posit that the same type of being, human-beings, have different experiences? What is the scope of the difference? If we can't realize whether or not we have the same quale, when using "green", how do we know if we even are referring to the same quale when we use, "colors"?

If we can't say that what everyone experiences is different or not, then it can be safely said that we each have or own private language. What one person's quale is when interacting with a particular wavelength of light is their "word", or symbol, for that wavelength. What another experiences is their "word", or symbol for that wavelength. Because we each experience that symbol when interacting with that wavelength of EM energy, we can use symbols that we both can observe (like ink on paper, sounds from the mouth, hand motions, etc.) to translate our private language to a public one. Because we both consistently have a color experience (even though they may not be the same color) when interacting with that wavelength, just as we consistently experience someone saying "green" when we experience that color, we can harness some aspect of the world that we both have access to to communicate our experiences that we don't have access to. So our private world becomes public once we translate our private experience into public symbols.

Communicating doesn't consist of making "the right sounds", it consists of understanding. The fact is that in every different situation there are many different words, or sounds, which could be used for the specific purpose, so there is no such thing as "the right sound".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ruling out similarity, as playing an essential role. I am just trying to induce the proper distinction between "similar" which implies different, from "same" which implies not different. In this way we won't be inclined to say that similar things are the same, and we'll have some rigorous logical principles to approach the issue.. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you can make any sounds you want, then understanding isn't part of the language game. You just make sounds. If there is a language "game" then there are rules to follow when referring to certain things. When people use language incorrectly, or in the wrong contexts, like talking as if you were Elvis Presley and claiming that you are, and acting like you are, then we typically think those people delusional or insane.

Regarding similarity vs. difference vs. same: If our experiences are so different, then how is it that we can communicate and understand each other? How could we learn to use words the same way and then use them the same way if we are so different? We at least seem to agree that we both experience colors and sounds, but not the same colors and sounds? Why that distinction? How would we know that we both experience colors and what those are and that we are both talking about the same thing when we write the scribble, "colors" on a screen? It would seem to me that we talk about those things in the right contexts, like when colors are in both of our experiences, and we refer to the experience (which refers to the body's interaction with the world) when talking.

Wouldn't the idea that we are both similar beings, as in human-beings, lead one to believe that we have similar experiences, at least more similar than you would with a dog or goat?

Downward causation doesn't necessarily act in the same way as upwards in any case. I think, in classical philosophy, the idea of a final cause, 'that towards which a thing tends', is not 'causal' in the material or efficient sense. It's the reason for something to exist in the sense of the purpose it intends. IN that sense, fire is the cause of the match, in that matches are only made in order to generate fire; but from the perspective of efficient causes, then matches obviously cause fire. — Wayfarer

Intentions aren't always realized. What one intends does not always come to fruition, so a final cause, or an effect in the future is not the cause of the present behavior. What one intends exists in the present and drives behavior forward in time. What one intends is not in the future pulling the behavior forward towards it. Intentions are simply ideas in the present about a possible future, not a given future.

I can intend to become Superman, but if there is no Harry Hindu Superman final cause in the future, then my cause, or intent is in the present driving me forward to a final cause that doesn't exist, except in my mind in the present.

Chess can be realised physically, but it is not itself physical. It’s a set of rules which can be represented by many different physical forms - but change one rule, and it’s no longer chess. And chess can be played with no pieces whatever; I read once that the Arabs used to play chess without boards whilst crossing the desert on camels, although I can't imagine ever pulling off such a feat myself. — Wayfarer

It's neither physical or non-physical. The "non-physical" rules apply to moving "physical" pieces on a "physical" board. It would have been impossible for a human being to realize chess without some kind of interaction with the world. "Physical" and "non-physical" become incoherent in a reality where mind and world interact causally.

We might be seeing the same thing, but each of our respective experiencing of that is different. And that's what we're talking about, what's inside each of our minds, and that is different. My experiences involved with that word are different from yours. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't agree with this. I disagree with people about the colour of things quite frequently. Sometimes I see as a green what others see as a blue, or I see as a purple what others see as a pink, etc.. We clearly do not see the same colour when the same wavelengths interact with our eyes. What colour it is, is a judgement made, based on training and habit, which varies from one to the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

This, I can't see as relevant to what we're talking about. But I really don't understand any point being made here, if there is a point being made here, so maybe that's why. We were talking about whether what's in my mind is the same as what's in your mind. And I really don't see how they could be the same or else I would know what you are thinking. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is critically relevant to what we are talking about, MU. Think about about it. When someone experiences a particular color and they use a word to refer to that color, the color you're experiencing (whether it is different or not) will be associated with that word. That is the word you'd use for that color experience. How would you ever know that what you see is different than what someone else is if you are both using the same word to refer to a particular color experience? So you could never actually know that when someone sees blue, you see green, because that is the word you learned to associate with that color experience. You would know what beetle is another's box if you know that your beetle is different. In other words, the beetle is no longer private.

If you claim to have different color experience, how do you know that you don't have different auditory experiences? How do you know you don't hear a different sound when hearing people speak? Wouldn't you make the wrong sounds if you heard the wrong sounds when someone spoke? Speaking requires control over your lips and tongue and emulating the movements of other's mouths when learning how to say a word, so your visual experience of their mouth and the auditory experience of the sound would be different than what they hear themselves say. How would you learn to communicate and make the right sounds if you didn't have an accurate experience of someone else speaking? It must be that we do experience the world similarly so that we all make the same sounds with our mouths, or scribbles on a screen, when speaking or writing.

Mind is "immaterial" in the sense that thoughts (for example) are occurrences.
There's no conservation involved, like there is with the food we eat.
My supper is movable, my experiences thereof are interruptible.
And it so happens that my mind is uniquely associated with my body when occurring. — jorndoe

Try having thoughts when you havent eaten or slept for days.

If the mind is causally connected with the rest of the world that does practice some form of conservation, then why wouldnt the mind? Thinking is hard work. Responding without thinking is easier.

It seems to me that the private vs public distinction is incoherent in a shared world with causal relationships, where effects are not their causes, but are about their causes.

Prove an object moves without referring to its change in position relative to something else, like a point in space.

What do you mean by movement is relative? Time is relative in that is really an iteration of events, and is hard to accurately measure unless it is a small subset of the universe (special relativity). But two objects can pass through and gauge their velocity based on the same point in 3d space. Next thing you are going to tell me is two objects can't pass through the same "point" in 3d space. — christian2017

Looks like movement is relative, whether relative to another object, or a point in space (a point in space seems to qualify as an object in space). The mind has this habit of quantifying (or objectifying) space/change.

As I said, "similar" does not mean "the same", it means different. Your post is just a big contradiction. You start out by saying that our beetles must be "the same" in order for their to be communication, and you end up by saying that they must be similar (different) in order for there to be communication. Which do you really believe is the case, must they be the same, or different? — Metaphysician Undercover

As I said, they are the same independent of the difference of being in different spatial-temporal locations. You see the word, "Wittgenstein" the same as I do, just from a different location in space. We are looking at the same thing - the word on the screen. Our experiences are about the same thing. If not then we're not talking about the same thing when we talk.

Colour does not consist of "a particular wavelength of light", it's far more complex than that, so we can't even start on this analogy. — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't say that color consists of a particular wavelength of light. I said that we both experience the same color when the same wavelength of light interacts with our eyes. Colors are properties of minds. Wavelengths are properties of EM energy. The former is about the latter.

Why do philosophers seem to shun this notion of "aboutness". Our minds have this defining property of being about the world, while at the same time being part of the world. It seems to me that minds inherently understand aboutness - that sounds are about what is making the sound, not the thing itself - that pee and poo is about the health of another organism, that the sound of grass and brush rustling is about something moving in the brush, etc. So it seems to me that the "private" language is really a shared language of the world communicating with minds about it's state-of-affairs. It even informs you when someone is using language as opposed to not. How can you learn a language if you don't already understand the concept of communication, or aboutness prior to learning a language? The type of brain and sensory organs one has seems to be the difference in the complexity of this "private" language.

I think we probably do see the same colors, etc., for reasons you've mentioned. But I think it misses the point of Wittgenstein in the passage quoted. Language can't depend on what is radically private. The most obvious thing to consider is how our actions are synchronized.

To work what is radically private by assumption into causal explanations seems like a bad way to go. It's inaccessible and uncheckable by definition. Whatever it is, it can't play an important role. — jjAmEs

If you're agreeing that we all experience the same colors, then I don't understand why you disagree with me about a "private" language. If we all experience the same colors, then it seems to me that we all share the same language of the mind. It seems that we are all informed of the state of the world in the same way. Being informed is part of what communication is, and we are all informed the same way.

How does one even come to understand language-use without first understanding the concept of communication? It seems to me that you need to be able to understand communication for you to understand when some sound you hear is someone is communicating with you as opposed to a glass breaking, a wave crashing or the wind blowing. You'd have to understand communication for you to be able to make the distinction between language-use and other sounds. How do you do that if you need language to synchronize our actions - distinguishing between different sounds prior to learning a language. How can you learn a language if you don't already understand the concept of communication, or aboutness prior to learning a language?

In order to learn a language, you have to already understand the concept of object permanence, (ie realism) - that there are things in the world that are outside of your experience and that language can be about those things. Language about things that are already in your experience is redundant information. Seeing that it is raining and being told it is raining is redundant because the sound, "It is raining" is about it raining, just as seeing it raining is about it raining. "It" means "the state-of-affairs". If a public language was only about synchronizing actions, then how can language-use be redundant to observing the state-of-affairs the language-use is about?

The only time it wouldn't be redundant is if one person is trying to teach the symbols to use when it is raining to inform others that are not privy to the same information. We seem to understand that using language to report what is already seen is redundant. And you'd need to be able to make the distinction, prior to learning any language, between the sound of rain falling and the sound of someone speaking, and to make the connection that the sound of someone speaking is about the sound of the rain falling, not trying to synchronize actions other than how some state-of-affairs is represented and reported to others that are not privy to that information, like telling a friend on the phone in another city that it is raining in your city. If your friend already knew it was raining, what would be the purpose in telling them? The synchronization of our actions (knowing that it is raining; knowing is an action) happened independent of language use. It seems to me that one has to privately make the distinction between the sounds of language-use and other sounds in order to understand when language is being used as opposed to some other sound.

When you injure your leg and you experience pain, is the pain about the injury? Is the pain caused by the injury? If there is no causal relationship then why does the doctor try to remove your experience of pain by attending to your leg?

What does "private" vs "public" language even mean when we are share the same world and are participants in the causal relationships that make up the world. Language-use is a causal sequence. Effects are about their causes. Hearing someone speak (the effect) is about the contents of the speaker's mind. The sound you experience isn't the speakers mind, it is about it. So, what is "private" is the cause. We can only get at the cause through it's subsequent effects. Effects are not their causes, hence the "private" vs. "public" distinction. We can only experience the private, or the effect, but it is public in that it is connected causally with the rest of the world, hence effects are about their causes, or the private experience is about the public, shared world.

Time is not composed of instances. Time is relative change. Movement is relative.

An interval is simply a string of instances - each a particular snapshot of time in the mind. Instances and intervals only exist in minds. Time exists everywhere there is relative change. The mind breaks up time into instances, just like it breaks processes into objects. The mind is converting the analog signal of the world into binary bits - objects of thought (instances in time and objects in space).

We contemplate all sorts of ways the world is not. — frank

And then we bring about the way the world is not in our minds, to the world. Our imaginings can become reality. How does that happen if the world is material and the mind isn't?

This suggests that your interpretation of W is a bad reading. Of course we have uses for words that refer to some interior. But it all falls apart on close examination. It's already there, the whole collapse, in positing some distinct interior that is radically other. This interior could not interact with the complementary exterior. Dualism as a first approximation is not ridiculous, but taking a serviceable but rough and imperfect distinction as absolute just doesn't work. The fantasy of a divine geometry (constructing existence from a system of words deductively) is only that, a fantasy. And it scratches a religious itch. Self-caused. Self-justified. Self-known. Etc. A continuation of monotheism in another register. — jjAmEs

Considering W was a bad writer, it's no surprise there are bad readings of his writings.

It seems to me that if we all have different beetles in our box, then how do we communicate, how do we even begin to consider what is in W's box? He seems to say that we don't have the same beetle and could never understand each other's beetle, let alone explaining the causes that lead us to have different beetles rather than similar beetles considering that we are all members of the same species with similar sensory organs, yet goes about explaining his beetle as if everyone else can understand his beetle. Is W saying that he got his ideas from someone else? Where did his ideas come from?

Natural selection would be the explanation as to how we all have the same beetles in our box. Natural selections "selected" the beetles (colors, sounds, etc,) that the brain uses to interpret the world. So what would cause us to become separated? There needs to be a causal explanation as to why we would all have different beetles.

Let me remind you that similar does not mean the same, it means different with similarities. So even if we have similar things under the title "beetle", they are not the same, and contrary to your claim, they actually are different. — Metaphysician Undercover

Above you said "similar". Now you say "the same". Which do you really believe? Clearly, under the terms of Wittgenstein's example, the thing in my box is not the same thing which is in your box. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your explanation of "similar" is circular.

Similar: resembling without being identical.

The way our beetles are different is that they are in different spatial-temporal locations. Your beetle is not my beetle and they are separate. However we are looking at the exact same beetle - the color black, the shape of the letter W, the sound of the letter W, are all the same for each of us, or else how would we be able to communicate? If I said, "beetle" and you hear, "bottle", then how are we going to ever be able to communicate our beetles?

Even if you experience purple when I experience blue, we both experience those colors consistently when there is a particular wavelength of light interacting with our eyes. Because the experience (the effect) is consistent with the cause, we would both never know what that our inner experience is different, but we would both be talking about the same thing - that particular wavelength of light, just as if we spoke different languages, we use different symbols to refer to the same thing. Our inner language of sensory data (colors, sounds, texture, etc,) make speak to use differently, but we translate our inner language to a public one in order to communicate with each other. If we didn't have similar beetles, we would never understand what we are talking about.

Huh? I take Wittgenstein's "beetle" as an indication of the exact opposite to what you say. The only thing external, social, is the word "beetle". The important thing, what matters, is what's in the box, and this is internal, private. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, MU, words are just visual scribbles and sounds. The hearing or seeing the word, "beetle" would be just as "internal" as any other experience of some visual or sound. If we all have different "beetles", then how we hear and see any word would be different for each of us as well. How would we be able to communicate if we actually do have different beetles in each of our boxes? It must be that we all have similar beetles if we are able to communicate.

Our inner sensations are themselves a langage informing us of the state of our bodies relative to the state of the world. We only need a public language to communicate to others our inner sensations. We translate our private sensations to a particular sound or scribble, which are themselves seen or heard internally.

It seems to me that we all have the same beetle in our boxes if we understand when someone is using language and when they aren't. When a sound that we hear is language use as opposed to a glass breaking, waves crashing, the wind blowing, etc., how do we make the distinction if we needed a public language to make that distinction first? If language can only be public, then how does one come to make the distinction between sounds that are language-use and sounds that aren't if we'd need a public language to make that distinction? We would all need to understand prior to learning a public language that languages are different than other sounds. In this sense we all have the same beetle in our boxes.

For a person to be changed, then need to be open to change. "Rooted beliefs" are beliefs that the person already believes is true, and anything else is wrong. They also make emotional attachments to their belief, as if anything that contradicts what they believe is emotionally detrimental to them.

To change someone's beliefs, they would already need to be in a mode where they are questioning their own "rooted beliefs". For instance, I was raised a Christian. I believed in the existence of the Christian god. In my late teens, I began to see inconsistencies and asked questions to try and resolve them. The answers I received created more inconsistencies instead of resolving the prior ones. I began to understand my emotional attachment to my belief in god. I realized that truth is not reliant on my emotional state. The truth may be something that I may not like to hear. I decided to be true to myself (intellectually honest) and seek the truth wherever it leads me even if it's not the answers I like.

I began reading alternative views - open to an explanation that was consistent with observations and with other views. The truth would need to be able to explain why we have a variety of beliefs and why a majority are based on where you were raised and who you associate yourself with (the bubble you surround yourself with, ie religion and politics).

So others did change my views. I should probably say that they helped to change my view because I was already in the mode of changing, but they gave me a direction and a method - science.

Properly stated, as a realist, it would be a claim one's imagination was in one's mind. In other words, just a recognition one's imagining are states of their experience.

The realist postion is things which do appear in our minds are not our minds. If we cannot imagine anything outside our minds, there is no consequence of rendering everything mental. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That would be the naive realist position. For the indirect realist, the things that appear in our minds are about things that are not in our minds.

How is the idea of your best friend different or separate from your best friend? How is it similar? If you are saying that they are one and the same, then you are arguing for solipsism/naive realism. If you are arguing that they are different yet similar, and their differences are spatial-temporal and similarities being the causal relationship, then you are arguing for some kind of indirect realism.

Our minds are not cut off from the world. They are causally related. We use the world (air to speak, ink and paper to write) to communicate with each other - through the process of cause and effect. Effects are not their causes, but they are about their causes, so we can be safe in knowing that the things in our mind can be about the things in the world thanks to causation.

A unicorn and the idea of a unicorn are radically different kinds of objects. For one thing, a unicorn is a horned horse, while the idea of a unicorn is not a horned horse (rather, it represents a horned horse). So too, the idea of a unicorn exists in the mind, while a unicorn itself does not. — Alvin Capello

You said that they are "radically different". I would agree, but probably not in the way that you meant. They are radically different because one exists and the other doesn't.

A horned horse also doesn't "exist", so "horned horse" is just another idea. So, your idea, "unicorn" would represent another idea, "horned horse". So you only end up representing other ideas in the case where the idea wasn't caused by an actual observation of that organism, like dogs and cats. Your idea "dog" is caused by your mental categorization of your observations of similar organisms. Being taught the word, "dog" to represent that mental category is something else, or a separate process. We don't need words to categorize the world. We need words to communicate our mental categories (ideas).

What caused the idea of "unicorn" to exist in your mind? Probably someone else communicating that idea to you. How did "unicorn" come to exist in the first mind that imagined it if there are no unicorn organisms for them to observe? How does any imagining in our mind come to exist? Imaginings are an amalgam of existing mental categories. Unicorns are an amalgam of horse and horn. You can only assemble an amalgam of mental categories that you already have, or already experienced. Your picture of a unicorn would be a representation of the original unicorn - the one you imagined.

I understand this view, but I don't accept it. The reason why is because many nonexistent objects have causal powers. For instance, Frodo Baggins caused the One Ring to be destroyed by casting it into the fires of Mount Doom, but Frodo doesn't exist. — Alvin Capello

Now you're confusing the idea of causation with the process of causation. You seem to have understood the difference between an organism and the idea of an organism, but here you regressed into confusing the process of causation with the idea of causation (Frodo causing the One Ring to be destroyed).

On my view, to say that something exists is just to say that it has the property of existence; while to say that it doesn't exist is just to say that it lacks the property of existence. This might sound somewhat uninformative, but in my view existence is a simple property, and thus cannot be analyzed into something more basic. — Alvin Capello

It's not just uninformative. It's circular. If this is how you define, "existence" then I don't understand your use of "existence" any better than when you first used the word.

I do not define the object in terms of the subject, for the properties of the unicorn are not dependent upon the brain. Unicorns would still be horned horses, even if no humans had ever existed. And to say that unicorns exist as images in the mind is to make a common mistake. Surely ideas of unicorns exist in the mind, but unicorns themselves do not. A unicorn and the idea of a unicorn are two very different things, so conflating them is a mistake (indeed, I think this is one of the central errors of idealism). What I want to claim is that unicorns do not exist anywhere, and thus don't have existence in any sense. — Alvin Capello

It seems to me that unicorns do exist. They exist as ideas, not as organisms. Ideas have just as much causal power as an organism. The idea (or more precisely, the imagining) of a unicorn can cause you to talk about, write about, draw a picture of it, - leave a "physical" mark on the world. How does a "mental" idea cause "physical" effects, if both the idea and the paper and ink are of completely different substances?

To say that something exists means that it has causal power. To say that it doesn't exist means that it doesn't have causal power.