You misunderstood me. I agree with you. The view that thinking is reflective cognition is the view Wittgenstein is opposing. — Joshs

Then why attribute this view to Wittgenstein and say that he “did not have available to him other ways of conceiving ‘thinking’”?

My point was that there are alternatives to reflective cognition, such as certain phenomenological philosophical perspectives like that Heidegger’s. took of thinking or Metleau-Ponty’s embodied intercorpoeality, that do not posit a hidden inner repository of meaning, and yet offer an origin of language that is more primordial than Wittgenstein’s interaubjective grounding of language. — Joshs

AFAIK, Wittgenstein never attempted to “offer an origin of language”.

You need to make your point yourself, instead of throwing a long quote at me and then concluding that I completely misunderstand Wittgenstein, without telling me how specifically you are interpreting my claims, and how the quote refutes them. I may indeed completely misunderstand Wittgenstein , but please make the argument yourself so I know what the hell you are talking about. — Joshs

You stated - or, at least, strongly implied - that, for Wittgenstein, 'thinking' is a "classical reflective cognition" according to which "one consults an already present inner scheme of understanding to locate a rule that one then follows, which makes it inner and private."

This is exactly the type of view that Wittgenstein was attempting to undermine in his Philosophical Investigations, particularly with his remarks on family resemblances, the private language argument and rule-following, but also more generally throughout.

To say or imply that Wittgenstein considered there to be one essential defining commonality to all instances and uses of the word "thinking", e.g. "consulting an inner template", would be to ignore his family resemblance concept, according to which the various meanings/uses of a word such as "thinking" do not all have one essential defining feature, but instead those various meanings/uses share "a complicated network of similarities" which lack any essential defining feature.

Likewise, to say or imply that Wittgenstein considered rule-following to consist in consulting an inner template would be to ignore or misconstrue virtually all of his remarks on rule-following and the private language argument, which seek to evince that the (public) grammar of the word "rule" (and the following of such rules) precludes a strictly private or isolated usage.

However, your misguided claim was about Wittgenstein's position on "thinking", which Wittgenstein refutes himself:

316. In order to get clear about the meaning of the word “think”, we watch ourselves thinking; what we observe will be what the word means! — But that’s just not how this concept is used. (It would be as if without knowing how to play chess, I were to try and make out what the word “checkmate” meant by close observation of the last move of a game of chess.) — Philosophical Investigations

This contradicts your assertion that thinking is something "inner and private". If thinking were something "inner and private", then we could only ever know what "thinking" meant by observing ourselves think. But Wittgenstein explicitly states that this is not the meaning/use of the concept.

36. What would we reply to someone who told us that with him understanding was an inner process? —– What would we reply to him if he said that with him knowing how to play chess was an inner process? — We’d say that when we want to know if he can play chess, we aren’t interested in anything that goes on inside him. — And if he retorts that this is in fact just what we are interested in, that is, in whether he can play chess — then we should have to draw his attention to the criteria which would demonstrate his ability, and on the other hand to the criteria for ‘inner states’.
Even if someone had a particular ability only when, and only as long as, he had a particular feeling, the feeling would not be the ability. — Philosophy of Psychology - A Fragment (aka Philosophical Investigations part II)

Wittgenstein is making a distinction between thinking as classical reflective cognition and his notion of practice [...where], according to the traditional notion of reflective cognition , one consults an already present inner scheme of understanding to locate a rule that one then follows, which makes it inner and private.

But Wittgenstein did not have available to him other ways of conceiving ‘thinking’. — Joshs

You've got a lot of work to do to demonstrate that Wittgenstein was committed to this (narrow) view of thinking or understanding. I'm not sure where you get this from - perhaps by completely missing the point of his 'five red apples' example and almost all of his later philosophy? Consider this reading:

It has been noted that the trip to the grocer that Wittgenstein
presents us with in the opening remark of Philosophical Investigations
is apt to strike readers as somewhat odd (see Mulhall 2001; Hutchin-
son 2007). The grocer seems dumb (or extremely miserable and rude);
moreover, he seems in need of colour charts so that he might associate
the word “red”, as written on the note passed to him by the shopper,
with the colour of the apples, which he keeps in drawers. Is there a
reason for such an eccentric presentation of an otherwise familiar and
mundane scenario? I submit that there is. Wittgenstein structures the
story of the trip to the grocer as such to reflect the form of a dominant
picture of “inner mental processes”. Wittgenstein tries to tempt his
reader/interlocutor into asking for more, into asking for something
that will serve as grounds for predicating of the grocer understanding.
His interlocutor in Philosophical Investigations obliges: “But how does
he [the grocer] know where and how he is to look up the word ‘red’
and what he is to do with the word ‘five’?” Wittgenstein thus succeeds
in tempting the interlocutor into undermining her own prejudices. As
Stephen Mulhall writes, commenting on this passage in his book Inher-
itance and Originality: “If the public, externalised versions of such
procedures were not in themselves enough to establish the presence of
understanding to the interlocutor’s satisfaction, why should their inner
counterparts?” (2001: 45).

Let us consider this for a moment. Can it be that inner processes
would be more satisfactory to Wittgenstein’s interlocutor in virtue of
their being simply inner? If we theorize modules and elicitation files
matching mental images of colour with files having semantic content,
then why should this satisfy the interlocutor when the grocer, having
done the same externally in the scenario, failed to so satisfy her? Surely,
“going inner” is not enough?
The subtlety of Wittgenstein’s example does not stop there. Mulhall
writes,

If Wittgenstein’s shopkeeper’s way with words strikes us as surreal
and oddly mechanical, to the point at which we want to question
the nature and even the reality of his inner life, and yet his pub-
lic behaviour amounts to an externalised replica of the way we
imagine the inner life of all ordinary, comprehending language-
users, then our picture of the inner must be as surreal, as oddly
mechanical, as Wittgenstein’s depiction of the outer. (Ibid.: 46)

Of course, one of the driving forces behind the interlocutor’s ques-
tion (her craving for more) is the thought that the outer behaviours
described by Wittgenstein in this scenario are merely contingent,
merely accoutrements: for, obviously we can imagine a grocer who
simply picks up five red apples (without the use of colour charts etc.)
and of whom we are happy to say that they have understood the
request. This makes the interlocutor assume that something general
must be going on “behind the scenes” – in the grocer’s head – that
affords us the right to attribute to him understanding. What this sce-
nario does, therefore, is facilitate one’s realization that what is at issue
is not whether certain practices are internal or external, mental or
physical, but rather what would count for us (for Wittgenstein’s inter-
locutor) as a grounding for an attribution of “understanding”. The
craving for generality [that W is attempting to subvert] leads us to
look for general grounds underlying all instances of understanding. — Phil Hutchinson

You might have an interesting point to make, but your conspicuous misunderstanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy isn't helping.

We don’t have to duplicate each other’s understanding to play chess or do science, we only have to approximate it — Joshs

To quote Wittgenstein:

201. [...]That there is a misunderstanding here is shown by the mere fact that in this chain of reasoning we place one interpretation behind another, as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another lying behind it. For what we thereby show is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”.
That’s why there is an inclination to say: every action according to a rule is an interpretation. But one should speak of interpretation only when one expression of a rule is substituted for another.

202. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it.

There is no standard or template to transcend the interpretations — Joshs

There are English teachers.

If there are three of us in a room, one is speaking English, one French and the other German, we obviously don’t say that the three speakers are
are offering three interpretations of one language , because in this case the language is synonymous with the speaker. — Joshs

Your position must be that there is no such thing as an English, French or German language/speaker because each individual in the world speaks their own unique language.

You could always try the same argument about a game with equally established rules, such as chess - that everyone interprets/understands it differently, that everyone plays it by their own rules, that there is no standard or template to transcend the interpretations, that there is no singular game that we call "chess". It would be equally false.

269. Let us remember that there are certain criteria in a man’s behaviour for his not understanding a word: that it means nothing to him, that he can do nothing with it. And criteria for his ‘thinking he understands’, attaching some meaning to the word, but not the right one. And lastly, criteria for his understanding the word correctly. In the second case, one might speak of a subjective understanding. And sounds which no one else understands but which I ‘appear to understand’ might be called a “private language”. — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

@Joshs - your OP seems to be more about one's "subjective understanding" of a public language, rather than about a private language, as per Wittgenstein's distinction here.

One's understanding of a public language does not itself constitute a language. That is, you don't interpret a public language via the "language" of one's subjective understanding (because one's subjective understanding is not a language).

Public conveys a meaning determined within a context determined as a field, ensemble or gestalt. The private language argument thinks of this field as an ensemble of persons. I determine this field as located ‘within’ the individual as an implicit body-environment intricacy. This is the primary site of language. — Joshs

You appear to collapse the distinction between a public and a private language such that all language is private. Against what “field, ensemble or gestalt” do you determine that your language is private? Again, what would a public language look like to you?

So if I say that a public language in Wittgenstein’s sense isn’t ‘possible’ , what I mean is that it is an imprecise abstraction. — Joshs

Doesn’t this mean that you exclude the possibility of a public language?

If the use of a ‘public’ language like English is idiosyncratic to the individual users of it , that is, if the precise sense of each word used either in private reflection or interpersonal communication is unique to each user, then English is ‘private’ in my sense. — Joshs

If English is a private language, then what would a public language look like? Is a public language possible in your sense?

the block-verse model doesn't specify the indexical here-now, you have to plug it in. Call it a feature or incomplete if you like; the model has use. — jorndoe

Sure, the model may have a use, but some people think it matters whether or not time actually flows when discussing the nature of time. Does the block universe accurately describe the nature of time if it does not include temporal flow? J.M.E. McTaggart, who introduced the A- and B-theory discussion, was of the view that temporal flow (including a changing present moment) was required for time:

Without the A series then, there would be no change, and consequently the B series by itself is not sufficient for time, since time involves change.

The B series, however, cannot exist except as temporal, since earlier and later, which are the distinctions of which it consists, are clearly time-determinations. So it follows that there can be no B series where there is no A series, since where there is no A series there is no time. — J. M. E. McTaggart

Sometimes there’s a (possibly subtle) misunderstanding of eternalism, or a block universe, in that the universe is said to be frozen, static, something like that. This is inaccurate, however, since change already is modeled along the temporal axis. On eternalism, or the block universe, there “is” still time (— by the way, notice the present tense “is” here — it’s misleading due to our language). Claiming that the past exists now is incoherent. Should a future come to pass, then that’s what the block model is supposed to have (thereby also separating ontology and epistemology). — jorndoe

You might think that the future coming to pass is "what the block model is supposed to have", but it doesn't have this - unless you "plug it in". The impetus that involuntarily propels us from one moment in time to another is what many consider to be time's most essential element. This impetus comes for free with Presentism, because it's what a present moment does. You might be able to insert or imagine or "plug" this impetus into Eternalism or a block universe, but it does not belong to Eternalism or a block universe, by definition.

In my notion language is ‘private’ only in the sense that it does not require the direct or indirect participation of a contextual community of other persons. But it is ‘public’ in the sense that the individual is already a community unto itself, sequentially transforming itself. Thinking and perceiving is already expressive, before and beyond the participation of other persons. Fundamentally, we show, express and check our language in relation to our own anticipations, in a kind of internal conversation. From this vantage , interpersonal communication is secondary and derived. — Joshs

Is it a language? If so, in what sense is it private and not a public language (such as English)?

:up:

It appears to flow, but it does not actually flow. This is not because of the physics of the block universe, since time does not flow. Rather, it's illusion created by our nervous system. — Marchesk

@Banno doesn't recognise a distinction between the appearance of flow and actual flow, so he ends up logically excluding the possibility that the appearance of flow could be an illusion. He's not willing to accept that time does not flow in a block universe, and he offers no support for his assertion that "Time does not flow in the block universe" actually means "Time does not flow relative to an observer who can see the whole block."

Read the description of the block universe you provided. That's what it implies happens. — Banno

I've repeated it several times: "in the block universe model, time doesn't flow."

Fuck. The only difference is that I object to the word "illusion" - it's not an illusion. — Banno

Then time does flow.

End of posts on this topic. — Banno

Huh?

Time does not flow relative to an observer who can see the whole block. — Banno

Do you have any supporting evidence for this assertion?

Right, so you are logically excluding the possibility that time passing is an illusion. In other words, you are saying that time must actually pass. If, as the news article states, time does not actually pass in a block universe, then you are also logically excluding the possibility of a block universe.

The appearance of time flowing could be an illusion. Time actually flowing cannot be an illusion.

I do not agree with you that "time appearing to flow and time flowing are exactly the same", nor that time actually flows in a block universe.

My 'evidence' is simply that time appearing to flow and time flowing are exactly the same.
— Banno

So the block universe model and the illusion of temporal flow are logically impossible? — Luke

Hu? Why would you think that? — Banno

The news article states that "in the block universe model, time doesn't flow", so any appearance of time flowing in the block universe can only be an illusion. Yet you say that there is no difference between "time appearing to flow and time [actually] flowing", which implies that it is impossible that time appearing to flow is an illusion.

Therefore, you are implying that it is logically impossible for temporal flow to be illusory, which implies the same for the block universe in which temporal flow can only be illusory.

My 'evidence' is simply that time appearing to flow and time flowing are exactly the same. — Banno

So the block universe model and the illusion of temporal flow are logically impossible?

I can't see how what you are saying is any different from what I have said, except that you say that the passage of time would be an illusion, while I say it is real. — Banno

Okay, but you are contradicted by the article which states:

So from our perspective, it appears that time flows or passes. But in the block universe model, time doesn't flow. — the news article

And you still haven't provided any support for your claim that time actually passes in a block universe.

How could time appearing to pass differ from time passing? What would that difference look like? — Banno

It wouldn't look different. The only difference is that temporal passage is an illusion in a block universe. If the appearances may or may not be illusory, then the appearance of temporal passage shouldn't be regarded as evidence of a block universe. Furthermore, block universe proponents need to provide additional argument or explanation for how we experience illusions in the absence of temporal passage.

An illusion occurs when something looks like something else, but isn't. It would be an illusion if time appeared to pass, but didn't. The word is being misused. for our perspective, time doesn't just appear to pass, it does pass. — Banno

Obviously time appears to pass, whether illusion or not. But you seem to take this as some sort of evidence that we inhabit a block universe:

The way the universe appears to us is exactly how it would appear to a being inside a block universe. — Banno

It is also exactly how it would appear to a being inside a non-block universe.

Yes, you said that already. What support do you have for your claim that:

Time passes for a person inside the block universe. IT's not an illusion, it's just how it looks from that frame of reference. — Banno

Pointing back to the article that states that "in the block universe model, time doesn't flow" seems contradictory.

ETA: the news article doesn't state that the block universe model is true or that we live in a block universe, which you appear to assume without argument.

That link makes exactly the same point that I am making. It uses the term "illusion", which is unfortunate. — Banno

"Unfortunate" is one way of putting it. Contrary to your view is another, since "illusion" indicates that time doesn't actually pass or flow:

So from our perspective, it appears that time flows or passes. But in the block universe model, time doesn't flow. — the news article

Time passes for a person inside the block universe. IT's not an illusion, it's just how it looks from that frame of reference. — Banno

Can you provide any reference or support for this claim?

How do you know?

News article on block universe

The way the universe appears to us is exactly how it would appear to a being inside a block universe. — Banno

Except that time doesn't pass in a block universe, yet time appears to pass.

Maybe the same brain state can correspond to more than one thought.

Both Wittgenstein and Dennett acknowledge that there is a private aspect of conscious experience.
— Luke

Glad to see you have that. I don't deny it, either. — Banno

Great, then I only need you to concede on the two remaining properties.

The job of setting out what qualia are is were it should be: with the advocates of qualia. The purpose of the article is to set out the considerable difficulties involved. — Banno

The title suggests that the purpose of the article is to "deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." Dennett appears to begin by saying that he is attempting to resolutely deny the four "special properties" of qualia, and he ends by saying "there simply are no qualia at all."

On closer inspection, however, Dennett does not begin by denying any properties of qualia. Rather, Dennett's four special properties are qualia:

Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way.

Note that he says qualia are special properties, not that they have special properties.

For Dennett, qualia are not assumed to have the special properties of being private, ineffable, intrinsic and immediate. Instead the special properties of being private, ineffable, intrinsic and immediate are qualia.

However, Wikipedia provides a very different definition of qualia:

In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience.

Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to "propositional attitudes", where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.

This is at odds with Dennett's characterisation of qualia, which is not about the qualitative character of instances of conscious experience, but is instead about some other properties of instances of conscious experience. What Dennett calls qualia are not the taste of wine or the perceived sensation of pain, but are instead the four "special properties" of being private, ineffable, intrinsic, and immediate to consciousness.

To deny Wikipedia's definition of qualia would be to deny the "qualitative characters of sensation". To deny Dennett's definition of qualia would be to deny that a sensation has Dennett's four special properties. Evidently, it is easy to mistake Dennett as trying to deny the qualitative characters of sensation on the basis that sensations do not have his four special properties, rather than merely denying that sensations have his four special properties. Dennett has introduced this confusion through his misuse of the term 'qualia'.

No, I was aware of being touched on the shoulder. That was my experience. — Andrew M

You weren't aware of the experience?

It's not that a person touched me on the shoulder (an external occurrence) and then I felt it (a subsequent internal occurrence). It's that I felt a person touch me on the shoulder. That was my experience - a relation between myself and the world. If I hadn't felt it, then my experience would have been different - an alternative experience that didn't include an awareness of being touched on the shoulder (although I nonetheless was). — Andrew M

I never claimed anything of the sort.

This is an example of how we're using the word "experience" differently. Dichotomizing it into internal and external occurrences creates ghosts, or shadows on the cave wall. — Andrew M

It's implied by your own example. You get touched on your shoulder (externally), and you might feel it or not (internally). You cannot dissolve the distinction between internal and external without dissolving the distinction between self and world.

Suppose I stub my toe. I feel pain in my toe. And my toe is in the world. — Andrew M

You, as a person and as a body, are in the world. But we need to distinguish you as a person (and/or you as a body) from the world. Your toe is in the world, but your toe is a part of you and you are the one feeling pain. It's not the world's toe or feeling of pain, it's yours.

Or, in another case, I might feel a generalized pain. But I am also in the world. — Andrew M

Do you feel the pain or does the world?

The distinction between a person and the world is one of perception and conceptualization, not one of ontological separation. That is, a person is embedded in the world that they are perceiving. A person is materially constituted by their body, but we conceptualize a person differently from their body (i.e., as having a higher level of structure and organization). — Andrew M

I disagree. I don't think there's a distinction to be had, with only one proviso: that the person/body is living.

And the rest of §306, and on through §308. The error comes from thinking that because we treat mental processes as we do other processes: "We talk of processes and states and leave there nature undecided". This is what has been done with qualia. — Banno

Don't overlook the end of §308:

And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don’t want to deny them.

Again: it would be absurd to deny that we experience tastes and sights and feelings. — Banno

Yes, it would. But I don't think it's very clear from the paper (and, perhaps more so, from his defenders here) what Dennett intends to deny: whether it's conscious experiences themselves, the four properties of conscious experiences that he cites, qualia as an explanation of consciousness, qualia as a cause of consciousness, our knowledge of the causes of qualia, or something else.

But they are not private - we can talk about them. — Banno

We do not and cannot talk about the private aspect of conscious experiences. That, again, is the upshot of the private language argument. However, this doesn't imply that there is no private aspect of conscious experiences (at least, Wittgenstein keeps repeating that he does not want to deny any "inner" or mental processes).

What is absurd is positing another level of experience, qualia... — Banno

Who said anything about "another level of experience"? Dennett, at least, speaks of qualia as properties of conscious experience.

...which are private and hence ineffable... — Banno

Yes...

and then talking about them by using them to explain consciousness — Banno

What explanation of consciousness?

The illusion is the notion that because folk talk about qualia, there must be something there... — Banno

Both Wittgenstein and Dennett acknowledge that there is a private aspect of conscious experience.

Go ahead and explain your reading of it, then. Meanwhile:

305. “But you surely can’t deny that, for example, in remembering, an inner process takes place.” — What gives the impression that we want to deny anything?

306. Why ever should I deny that there is a mental process?

Yet these inner mental processes are just what Wittgenstein claims do not give our words their meanings, as per the private language argument.

307. “Aren’t you nevertheless a behaviourist in disguise? Aren’t you nevertheless basically saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?” — If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.

Qualia exist if they make a difference. They make no difference. Hence they do not exist. — Banno

Something exists only if it can make a difference to a conversation? Or what do you mean by "make a difference"?

304. “But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behaviour with pain and pain-behaviour without pain.” — Admit it? What greater difference could there be? — “And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a Nothing.” — Not at all. It’s not a Something, but not a Nothing either! The conclusion was only that a Nothing would render the same service as a Something about which nothing could be said.

Wittgenstein seems to acknowledge a distinction between what exists and what can be said.

The point here isn't whether or not qualia "add anything to the conversation", but whether or not they exist. — Luke

But I thought you were advocating what Dennett says in the article. Doesn’t he deny that qualia are ineffable?
— Luke

I'm not sure what to do with this. — Banno

Do you agree with Dennett or not?

If qualia are ineffable, then we can't talk about them.

If not, then they are just everyday tastes and smells and sights; talk of qualia would add nothing tot he conversation... — Banno

Isn't this to be expected if qualia are ineffable? - Qualists claim that qualia are ineffable and your complaint is that this "adds nothing to the conversation"? To ask for a third time: since you agree that qualia are ineffable, do you also agree that qualia are private? And while I'm here, I may as well ask: do you also agree that qualia are instrinsic and immediately apprehensible in consciousness?

The point here isn't whether or not qualia "add anything to the conversation", but whether or not they exist. As Dennett states:

The verb "to quine" is even more esoteric. It comes from The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1978c, 8th edn., 1987), a satirical dictionary of eponyms: "quine, v. To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." — Quining Qualia

And further (my emphasis):

Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? Everything real has properties, and since I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. I grant moreover that each person's states of consciousness have properties in virtue of which those states have the experiential content that they do. That is to say, whenever someone experiences something as being one way rather than another, this is true in virtue of some property of something happening in them at the time, — Quining Qualia

Of the four properties that Dennett cites, I consider privacy as the main one, which encompasses the other three. Dennett seems to acknowledge that we have inner private experiences, not only in the above quote, but also in the following sense:

And that is just what we do when we seem to ostend, with the mental finger of inner intention, a quale or qualia-complex in our experience. We refer to a property--a public property of uncharted boundaries--via reference to our personal and idiosyncratic capacity to respond to it. That idiosyncracy is the extent of our privacy. If I wonder whether your blue is my blue, your middle-C is my middle-C, I can coherently be wondering whether our discrimination profiles over a wide variation in conditions will be approximately the same. And they may not be; people experience the world quite differently. But that is empiricially discoverable by all the usual objective testing procedures. — Quining Qualia

Empirically discoverable by all the usual objective testing procedures except for the main one: another person's experience cannot be directly detected by the senses. In other words, you can't directly see another person's experience (or their "personal and idosyncratic capacity to respond" or their "discrimination profiles"). In short:

if I have your experiences, then those experiences are mine and not yours. — SEP article on Other Minds

And you seem to agree, via your earlier approval of my exegesis of Wittgenstein, that language cannot access or refer to anybody's personal and idiosyncratic experience - which is why such experience is ineffable. Quite obviously, having this personal and idiosyncratic experience is also what makes it intrinsic and immediate to (or perhaps even constitutive of) consciousness. Hence, it is this sort of privacy which encompasses and accounts for qualia's ineffability, intrinsic nature and immediacy to consciousness. The same personal and idiosyncratic privacy that Dennett admits is, I would think, the same kind of privacy that most Qualists are advocating.

That surprises me. It's what I have maintained since the start fo the thread: — Banno

But I thought you were advocating what Dennett says in the article. Doesn’t he deny that qualia are ineffable?

Do you believe that we have inner private experiences?

You agree that qualia are ineffable?
— Luke

Short answer, Yes. — Banno

I'm surprised by this response. Do you also agree that we have inner private experiences?

There is a way of talking about qualia that is not ineffable, but it appears to be no different to our talk of tastes, sights, fellings and so on - all quite adequatly dealt with without reference to qualia. — Banno

"There is a way of talking about qualia that is...all quite adequately dealt with without reference to qualia"? (Is this the first rule of qualia club?) Seriously though, how do we talk about qualia without reference to qualia?

Yep. — Banno

You agree that qualia are ineffable?

Given the discussion's recent linguistic turn (assuming the discussion is still about qualia), I thought I'd try and revive my earlier point:

If we take the point of Wittgenstein's private language argument to be that our words cannot get their meanings from anyone's inner private experiences, and if we further assume that we have inner private experiences, then the flip-side of the argument is that our inner private experiences must be ineffable because language cannot refer to them, so we cannot use language to speak about them.

Related:

It is worth pausing to consider the seriousness of the problem of knowing others. While some draw a parallel between the problem of gaining knowledge of the past and of another mind, there is an important asymmetry to be noted here: in the case of the past it is at least logically possible that there should be direct knowledge, while in the case of another mind such knowledge seems to be logically ruled out. — SEP article on Other Minds

No. I'm just saying that phrases can have different senses depending on how they are used. Practical contact is going to be different in some sense for a human than it is for a robot, even though the same phrase might be used for both. — Andrew M

I'm still unclear on the distinction.

Experience is a term that applies to humans but not to robots. Not because humans have Cartesian minds (where they have internal experiences), but because humans have different capabilities to robots. A human's practical contact with the world instantiates differently to a robot's. — Andrew M

You said that the phrase "practical contact" might be used for both humans and robots, so why couldn't the term "experience" also apply to both humans and robots? What different capabilities do robots and humans have if it's not "internal experiences"?

From Lexico, touch means "Come into or be in contact with." while feel (in this context) means "Be aware of (a person or object) through touching or being touched."

If I felt someone touch my shoulder, then I have become aware that someone is there. That's my experience of the world.

What I felt was not "in my mind", it was in the world. It is only the introduction of a Cartesian theater that makes what I felt internal to a container mind. — Andrew M

I understand that the Cartesian theatre indicates having an experience of an experience, but I don't think that I or other Qualists need to commit to any such thing, as the non-Qualists here like yourself have suggested.

You want to say that a feeling is of something "in the world", and not of something "in your mind". Okay, but you are either aware or not aware of being touched, and it is the awareness (or not) that makes it a feeling (or not). You are aware of the experience; you are not having an experience of the experience. The same thing could be said of the awareness of the colour red or of the taste of coffee (or of some property of those). It needn't be some homunculus viewing red on the mind's stage. Otherwise, you would be committed to the same homunculus viewing feeling on the mind's stage.

What about the feeling of pain - is that a feeling of something "in the world"? If so, then what is the distinction between the feeler of pain (i.e. the person) and the world? Do you consider a person to be identical with their physical body?

In this context (i.e., regarding human experience), "practical contact" and "physical contact" can have different senses, which is why I gave the robot example. — Andrew M

I'm still not clear on the distinction between the different senses of "physical contact" and "practical contact" or how the robot example helps to distinguish them. Unless you are just stipulating that people can have "practical contact" with their environment but robots can't?

And physical contact is still an abstraction over concrete things. A concrete thing is something that is not predicated of anything else. So the cup and the person are examples of concrete things. Whereas physical contact is a relation between concrete things. Since it's predicated of those concrete things, it is abstract, not concrete. — Andrew M

Surely a physical interaction between a person and a cup is not merely an abstract relation.

OK, I thought you were saying that "seeing red" was an experience in the mind — Andrew M

I don't really see much difference between experience vs. experience in the mind. For there to be "seeing red", there needs to be a subject or a person who sees red. This involves a dichotomy between the subject (or person) and their environment, sometimes called subjective/objective. You pay lip service to dispensing of this dichotomy but you cannot avoid speaking in terms of it.

When I touch something, the implication is usually that I felt it (though I need not have), and whatever other human-specific aspects are involved in that event. That's not the case with a robot (though the robot may register it as an event if it has sensors). — Andrew M

What is the difference between touching and feeling something? Touching is physical, whereas feeling is... what? Conscious? Experiential? This is simply another manifestation of the subjective/objective or mind/matter divide that you seem to want to eliminate in the name of a Cartesian theatre.