So what is missing, what form must an answer take in order to constitute one here? — Isaac
When you stub your toe, thousands of neurological events take place, and probably hundreds of mental events...
Of these thousands, some of them we infer as 'pain'. How do we decide? The answer is that we decide by applying predictive models of what sensations are likely to be caused by, — Isaac
The mere existence and use of the word 'pain' in association with behavioural cues goes into making up those models by which we interpret the thousands of signals rushing around at the time of stubbing our toe. — Isaac
Pain is the model, not the signals the model infers from. The signals might be radically different (in their entirety), but the model is not. — Isaac
Is it different at all? Yes, probably. — Isaac
But this causes us no linguistic problems normally. — Isaac
None of this usually affects our talk of 'sameness', and for good reason. — Isaac
Spell it out then. What does Luke mean by 'private' that I've thus far misunderstood. — Isaac
Create our own new....
What better inkling of “private” could there be? “Create our own new” is merely speechifying synonyms for inventive, individual, personal, and time-successive, all necessary ingredients in the recipe for “private”. — Mww
Nahhh....nothing so dramatic. — Mww
Pain speaks to dangerous effect; reason speaks to the quantity and quality of the cause of it. The one is immediate and not a cognition, the latter is mediate and is always a cognition. — Mww
What ta hell is a hidden state anyway? — Mww
which for you means taking all the unknowns of experience and squashing them into a little guy in the closet who does something with a representation or model. He's got a second pair of closet eyes with which he does that, and so forth. You need to explain that away as well. — frank
Pain doesn't come from language, it's biological. — Marchesk
We wouldn't have language for sensations or feelings if we didn't already have them. — Marchesk
Certain pattens of neurons fire and we experience color. How do neurons firing result in color sensations? There's no answer to this as of yet. — Marchesk
I have no idea what an answer will look like. — Marchesk
Why do we need to "predict" what pain is? Why does someone who is in pain, after stubbing their toe, need to make any predictions? — Luke
How does a child infer and predict their own pain without knowing the word for it? Do children not feel any pain before they learn how to use the word 'pain'? — Luke
Yes, that's my point (assuming by 'signals' you mean pain sensations). Once again, I'm talking about the privacy of subjective experience, not the privacy of language or the privacy of the use of the word/model "pain". The pain sensations might be radically different. Indeed. — Luke
Why can't you be sure about this? Is it due to the privacy and inaccessibility of knowing the subjective experiences of other people? — Luke
We could all have the same experiences, but do we? Probably, but who knows? How can we know? — Luke
Spell it out then. What does Luke mean by 'private' that I've thus far misunderstood. — Isaac
Nothing special. In this context, I'm using 'private' to mean 'not publicly known'. — Luke
Why do we need to "predict" what pain is? Why does someone who is in pain, after stubbing their toe, need to make any predictions?
— Luke
Evolution. Why do we 'need' to have camera eyes and not compound eyes? Why do we 'need' to have legs and not wheels? We just do predict the causes of sensations, it's how our brains work. The cognitive scientists who develop these theories don't just make this stuff up on a coffee break you know. — Isaac
Children feel all sorts of things and respond to them. That some of those thing should be labelled 'pain' is obviously something children only learn when they learn a language. That some of these things fall into on group and not another is something they might learn pre-linguistically by observing others in their social group. The idea that they have some kind of 'natural grouping' of some of these sensations which they're just waiting for a label for has been quite soundly refuted by the evidence from psychological studies. It's not, of course, universally held. There's disagreements, but if you want to discuss those disagreements you'll need to cite the studies proposing them so we've got something to discuss. — Isaac
244. ...How does a human being learn the meaning of names of sensations? For example, of the word “pain”. Here is one possibility: words are connected with the primitive, natural, expressions of sensation and used in their place. A child has hurt himself and he cries; then adults talk to him and teach him exclamations and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behaviour.
257. “What would it be like if human beings did not manifest their pains (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word ‘toothache’.”
Did you even read the whole section I wrote after this? Two people's heights are radically different too at the nanometre scale. so now we can't ever say two people are the same height. I don't have a nanometre calibrated ruler, so now I can't say I 'know' what height a person is? — Isaac
Every single instance of every single object, property or event is a fuzzy categorisation based on similarities and ignoring certain differences, otherwise we would simply have a billion nouns and be inventing new ones all the time. It's normal to group things by similarity at some scale. — Isaac
But more to the point you don't have access to that particular set of signals either. — Isaac
It's not private (in the sense that you have access and I don't) it's hidden, in the sense that neither of us have access. — Isaac
I have indirect access to it via your self-reports, your behaviour, fMRI scans etc. — Isaac
You have access to it via your working memory, your sematic centres, your somatosensory feedback systems. — Isaac
Neither is more direct than the other, neither is privileged, neither more accurate. — Isaac
Why can't you be sure about this? Is it due to the privacy and inaccessibility of knowing the subjective experiences of other people?
— Luke
Inaccessibility, yes. Privacy, no. As above, you don't have access either. — Isaac
So far the best access is from computational neuroscience, but even that is limited by it's own models. Nonetheless, it's better than your own guesswork based on what we know for a fact to be flawed memories and socially mediated self-reports. — Isaac
fMRI scans, conversation, behavioural observations... — Isaac
If these aren't enough for you to know we have the same experiences, then it is a question of 'sameness'. — Isaac
If they have the same neural signature, the same behavioural response, if we understand each other when we talk about them, even in intricate detail, then we've just as good a reason to call them 'the same' as we have to say you and I have 'the same' phone. — Isaac
Private does not simply mean 'not publicly known' to me. There's a difference between unclaimed property and common land, though neither is privately owned. — Isaac
I don't see the advantage in throwing out good quality research in favour of your introspection. — Isaac
What ta hell is a hidden state anyway?
— Mww
(reference) — Isaac
I had in mind something along the lines of Wittgenstein: — Luke
“What would it be like if human beings did not manifest their pains (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word ‘toothache’.” a Well, let’s assume that the child is a genius and invents a name for the sensation by himself! But then, of course, he couldn’t make himself understood when he used the word. So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone? But what does it mean to say that he has ‘named his pain’? How has he managed this naming of pain? And whatever he did, what was its purpose? When one says “He gave a name to his sensation”, one forgets that much must be prepared in the language for mere naming to make sense. And if we speak of someone’s giving a name to a pain, the grammar of the word “pain” is what has been prepared here; it indicates the post where the new word is stationed.
248. The sentence “Sensations are private” is comparable to “One plays patience by oneself”.
You're trying to make this about language again, here, instead of the privacy of subjective experience. — Luke
You are trying to make it about the privacy of subjective experience again, instead of the way we use language. — Banno
If there is a private subjective world, then by definition you cannot see into mine, nor I into yours. and it would not be possible to confirm any commonality.
How can subjectivity be shared? — Banno
If the topic of discussion was intended to be the private language argument, then you should have made that clearer in your OP: — Luke
I'm thinking that we've reached the end of what is doable here. — Banno
'Pain' is a concept created by a socially communicating group collecting some of those sensations and naming them. — Isaac
The dissolution of this apparent contradiction comes about by recognising that what was taken to be private subjective stuff is instead an outcome of our shared language - — Banno
OK: now, why is it ridiculous? — Banno
The term "intersubjective" suggests that somehow these private sensations can be recognises in someone else, such that we can speak of "shared" experiences. — Banno
281. “But doesn’t what you say amount to this: that there is no pain, for example, without pain-behaviour?” — It amounts to this: that only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious. [my bolding] — Wittgenstein
The dissolution of this apparent contradiction comes about by recognising that what was taken to be private subjective stuff is instead an outcome of our shared language — Banno
246. In what sense are my sensations private? Well, only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it. In one way this is false, and in another nonsense. If we are using the word “know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know if I’m in pain. Yes, but all the same, not with the certainty with which I know it myself! It can’t be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I’m in pain. What is it supposed to mean a except perhaps that I am in pain?
Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.
This much is true: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.
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