It evidently hasn't - "I can't explain it." — Isaac


It's the object of "can't explain.". — frank

Seems a self-immunised definition of 'talk about' to go with. The very sentence "One cannot talk about it" would be self contradictory by that approach. In fact there would be nothing we cannot talk about, rendering the distinction useless. Personally I prefer to avoid definitions which render entire forms of speech useless by dissolving the distinction they're aiming to talk about. Our talk of 'that which we can talk about and that which we cannot' is about some distinction or other, so 'talk about' in this context needs to be defined in such a way as to make such talk functional, so we ought reject the idea that appearing only as an undefined pronoun is sufficient to qualify as having 'talked about it'.

If reason is reserved for conscious processing, which is granted, and if much of the modeling is unconscious, how can such modeling be said to be acting like reason? — Mww

Only that when I say 'like' the properties I'm describing as similar do not include the property of 'taking place in conscious processing'. That would be one of the properties by which the two differ.

that modeling is utterly irrelevant to a separate system that models itself absent all those terms in its purpose, even while operating in conjunction with it. — Mww

It's the 'conjunction with it' bit that matters though. If a model of brain function identifies a region as associated with some function, and the association is suitably strong in all cases thus far, then when we look at that component in our alternative model running 'in conjunction with it' we should find it correlates. If it doesn't then either there's something wrong with one of the models or they are no longer 'in conjunction'.

Who’s we? The teeny-tiny fraction of intellectually specialized humanity that even considers the new system a better explanatory device? — Mww

Yes. The usual manner in which science advances. It hasn't prevented any other common understanding. There's no 'folk-electronics' which runs a whole alternative set of computers. Why should there be a 'folk-psychology' which describes mental events outside of the scientific understanding?

So, technically, you’ve replaced nothing, but only attacked a common opponent.....ignorance.....from a different direction, and with a much smaller hence potentially less effective force, using experimental weapons. — Mww

Yes, I agree, but I don't see a better approach.

I suspect there to be many senior firefighters, soldiers, and these days, nurses’ aides, boldly scoffing at that. A few of ‘em.....the more senior.....rolling on the ground, even. The most insulted, the most senior, would look at you with that, “what....you wouldn’t do your damn job???” expression, and immediately proceed to ignore, if not regret, your very existence. — Mww

Fortunate then that the quality of our models does not have to pass the 'would be scoffed at by firefighters' test. I wonder how much of Kant would be scoffed at by firefighters. I think you and I both would have to to throw out our pet theories were that the test.

Some preliminary conditions for reason are subconscious, but these are not decisions. — Mww

Yes, fair enough. A better word is needed to describe the selection of an outcome by subconscious algorithm, to reserve 'decision' for it's more common use. 'Outcome' perhaps?

That's my question to you: how do you know that it isn't? — Luke

Same way as we 'know' anything - we assume it, act as if it were the case, and see if we're surprised by the results of doing so. Acting as if we all had radically different private experiences yields the surprising lack of physical explanation for that difference.

It's private because I've never known or experienced anyone else's sensations except my own. — Luke

You might have done. You've not given an account of the origin or nature of 'sensations' under your model by which they're detached from physical causes, so how can you say that you've only experienced your own? Perhaps there's not such thing as 'your own' sensations at all, by your definition. Once detached from any physical measurement whatsoever, absolutely anything could be the case, we might as well be discussing the offside rules in Quidditch.

My argument for privacy is that you cannot have other people's experiences/sensations; you can only have your own. — Luke

That's not an argument, it's a statement.

There are the inner sensations and the outer expressions, and you can never see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like. — Luke

Again, that is the matter under discussion, so it doesn't help to pull it in as evidence for a conclusion therein.

All you will get is a (verbal) behaviour. You still won't be able to see or access their sensations. — Luke

In what way is the verbal behaviour not a form of access to their sensations? Is a ruler not a form of access to a thing's height?

How can I not have access to my own feelings of pain? — Luke

I thought I explained that. There's this equivocation over what constitutes 'your feelings of pain'. On the one hand they're some immutable private thing embedded in your body (and so inaccessible to others), but on the other they're whatever you currently think they are, which seems easily communicated.

People generally use the term 'my feelings, or my memories, or my opinion...' to refer to some fixed object as if it were stored in their brain somewhere. That model is wrong. Those things are created in real time, not retrieved from some mental filing cabinet. If you don't have that model, such that when you refer to 'my pain' you mean 'whatever feeling, or memory of a feeling I happen to be creating at this very moment', then my description of your lack of access to it does not apply to you. The consequence, however, of that model is that it's a chimera, which you can never talk about because it changes in the very act of doing so.

I have conceded that we could all have the same experiences. That wasn't my point. As I said: "We could all have the same experiences, but do we? Probably, but who knows? How can we know?" — Luke

I don't really need to add anything to what has already written on this.

The point of Wittgenstein's Eiffel Tower example is — Isaac


I'm not familiar with that example. Do you have a reference? — Luke

No, sorry. I can't think where I got that from - I was convinced it was one of the examples from PI, but cannot now find it. What I had in mind was his discussion on 'exactness' in PI88. He actually uses the example of a pocket watch vs laboratory time, I thought the example was measuring the height of the Eiffel tower. The point is still the same though. Nothing is 'exact' to some default degree, it is implicit what level of exactness we mean.

Accuracy is irrelevant to my argument. It's the fact that we cannot access other people's sensations in order to compare them. — Luke

Yes, I see that now, to an extent. But behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations - the behaviour they cause, the language used, the neural activity associated... These are not only real properties of your experience, but they're the only properties we have to measure. If the only properties we can measure seem to indicate a strong similarity (and exactness qua Wittgenstein), then that is as good a ground as we're ever going to get for treating them as 'the same'.

Just like we look to make and model to determine if you and I have 'the same' phone. We look to behavioural consequence, associated neural activity etc to see that you and I have 'the same' experience.

You can only know of your pain sensations by being conscious of them — Luke

See here you equivocate. Previously you assume direct access to your 'pain' by denying my model of inference. Now you're again describing your pain sensations as if they were some fact of the matter that you become aware of. Which is it to be?

I have direct access to my pains when I feel them. — Luke

And again here. If you're going to talk about your 'pain' as being just exactly that which you feel at some given time, and not that which is inferred from some other physiological trigger, then there is no 'access' at all. You make it up at the time, you're not 'accessing' anything. The only sense in which 'access' is coherent is a model where 'pain sensations' are a physiological thing which you 'seek out' by introspection.

Semantics. What difference does it make if we lump all the sensations which hurt... — Marchesk

That is to have already lumped them.

That is to have already lumped them. — Isaac

So there aren't unpleasant sensations until we create words for them? That makes no evolutionary sense.

If they're not lying ... — khaled

There is no reason to assume that people always say the truth. I my experience, they often say a fair share of the truth but rarely everything there is to say.

But when you have hundreds and thousands of subjects it’s difficult to believe they’re all lying to troll you. And besides, no one has a reason to call a red apple green.

But when you have hundreds and thousands of subjects it’s difficult to believe they’re all lying to troll you. And besides, no one has a reason to call a red apple green. — khaled

It's not to troll, it's to protect themselves.

The very sentence "One cannot talk about it" would be self contradictory by that approach. — Isaac

It could be contradictory. Depends on the context.

Point was, we frequently refer to the part of experience we can't communicate with words, music, novels, and so forth.

And this kind of privacy isn't necessary for subjective experience. You've already approved the unshared, but potentially shareable kind of privacy, so you have approved subjectivity. Good on you.

Well, if that's all there is to it, what do you think of

Semantics. What difference does it make if we lump all the sensations which hurt into one general category? The matter at hand is the subjective nature of the sensations. — Banno

I think Marchesk has already allowed that some parts of subjective experience are shareable in principle.

Whether some aspects are nonlinguistic, so unshareable in words, is an issue we may not be able to resolve. Whether there are aspects that can't be shared in any other way is along the same lines.

But so we don't get lost in the weeds: some aspects of subjectivity are shareable, so we've all confirmed it.

If a model of brain function identifies a region as associated with some function, and the association is suitably strong in all cases thus far, then when we look at that component in our alternative model running 'in conjunction with it' we should find it correlates. — Isaac

Yes, that’s standard modus operandi for theoretical science. At the same time, it is the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy in theoretical philosophy, which you’re probably more familiar with as the “correlation does not imply causation” principle. In this case, it seems your argument is the stronger, insofar as the brain is ultimately responsible for everything human, including philosophy, from which follows as a matter of course that if a certain brain region repeatedly illuminates from a corresponding human function, the former is deemed sufficiently responsible for the latter, in a general sense.

On the other hand, there is no actual occasion to “look at that component in our alternate model”, because it isn’t there. I think you must.....err, subconsciously....realize this important fact, by switching from “function” in the one model, to “component” in the other. The old speculative model does not distinguish regions of the brain as relating to specific components of reason. Conversely, it is impossible for science to distinguish the functions of reason with respect to components of the brain. That is to say, imagination is not to be found in the region containing this component, understanding in that region, moral constitution thataway, aesthetics over yonder. Cognition....aisle three right; opinion....level ten left.

If it doesn't (correlate) then either there's something wrong with one of the models or they are no longer 'in conjunction'. — Isaac

I think we’re both of the mind that they do correlate, and that’s there nothing intrinsically wrong with either model, even if you consider mine chimerical/superficial and I consider yours useless. Dunno....can two things be correlated but incompatible? Oil and water? GR and QM?

But to be fair in acknowledging my lack of scientific exposure....does the exact same region of my brain respond to my understanding of race riots, as it does to my understanding of internal combustion engines? I would suppose not, which sustains my claim that speculative methodological theories are domain-specific, and one does not mix at all with the other.
—————

I wonder how much of Kant would be scoffed at by firefighters. — Isaac

I’m guessing most of it. He admits “....the present work is not intended for popular use...”. In one respect our models are on the same ground, insofar as they both relate to a certain human condition. Yours concerns the physical mechanics that make the condition real, mine concerns the metaphysical methods which make the condition possible. Nevertheless, Everydayman will the more readily accept that he thinks by means and ends of reason, than he will accept mathematical algorithms and natural law as necessary for how he thinks.
—————

On the one hand they're some immutable private thing embedded in your body (and so inaccessible to others), but on the other they're whatever you currently think they are, which seems easily communicated. — Isaac

The old system easily explains this apparent entrapment in a contradiction for an unwary thinker, in that feelings are not things and they are not thoughts. We don’t think pain or pleasure, we think things by which one or the other of those, and the various schemata subsumed under them, is represented. Here is where Witt’s #246 plays, insofar as it is false for you to claim knowledge of my pain, or sensations in general, and it is nonsense for me to claim knowledge of my pain or sensations in general. The former is false because all you can know is what I report to you, the latter is nonsense because sensation is not thought and thinking is the only possible means for knowledge, “....as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?)....”. One does not think the pain he is in, one does not report anything whatsoever to himself; either there is an empirical condition as sufficient causality representing the feeling of pain/pleasure, necessarily sensed and subsequently thought by one but only possibly reported as such post hoc to another....or there is not.

I understand we can do this for days on end. We don’t have to, so without something new and different to talk about.....

Here is where Witt’s #246 plays, insofar as it is false for you to claim knowledge of my pain, or sensations in general, and it is nonsense for me to claim knowledge of my pain or sensations in general. — Mww

That is true, when you think about it. But is that how you feel about it? Isn't knowledge ultimately a feeling of conviction that you don't need to fight, but to refine, until it becomes as good as possible under preconceived criteria, a set of virtues conveyed without need for justification. Isn't all life an impulse. It is as useless to fight your faith in objective knowledge, as it is futile to fight one's sensible doubt in it. I am fully justified in doubting whether you feel or are as real as I am. But how do I know that I am actually real, if not through the impulsive realization that I am, through the trust in the conviction that fact and perception are joined. Can I rationally justify that perceiving you is equivalent to the sense of proof I get from perceiving myself? No. But do I ever rationally justify that I perceive any two things the same way? No. Not even perceiving myself in my different aspects. Are they all real, or are some more real then others? I relate perceptual realizations instinctively. I am bound to, compelled to. I have faith in the property of relatability, between myself and between appearances in general. But I am also equally emotionally compelled to doubt them, because my reason fights my conviction, and I have conviction in my reason. I am also instinctively compelled to discover how you emulate your reaction of my emotion, by observing the apparent image of your neurological construction as it is presented to me. And then, I am similarly emotionally compelled to be appreciative of the apparent closeness between our responses and to respect the meaning of this closeness, as I feel it, whatever it might be.

I object to the rational justification of treating the immediate observation (as I feel myself to exist) and perceptual inference (as I project qualities onto the appearances of other organisms or objects, which demonstrate superficial similarity to the enactment of my presence in the world), if that is any consolation. But I find that I do not object the irrational conviction in that equivalence. I am not debating the value of inductive reasoning, belief in self, will to attain fulfillment, will to attain involvement, etc. All that matters is that I rationally doubt anything irrational. But I should irrationally believe my convictions until a stronger, more convincing instinct makes itself available from experience. I wanted to bring that point into the debate here, and see where it takes us. For example, which irrational convictions can be turned into reasonable statements?

I.e. - I questioned in one post in this thread whether existence outside of myself can be a reasonable statement. I didn't question that it can be a sensible statement, but the two senses of existence, perceptual and my own, do not equate. Then, one starts to ask, when do sensible statements become reasonable statements, and through what means, so forth.

Not too bad an account of §246.

I notice that you talk of pains and pleasures as being represented. I spoke earlier of the dissimilarity between "I have a pain in my hand" and "I have an iPhone in my hand". The temptation is to think that because the grammar is the same, the pain is a thing in the way the iPhone is. As a matter of exegesis, the next few pages of PI show Witti to be rejecting this. He talks of how the length of a rod seems obvious, but not the length of a sphere; the notion of length ceases to have application, because we cannot imagine the opposite, the "width" of a sphere. He points out how a dog might simulate being in pain, but that the situations in which this occurs shows the dog isn't. He talks of feeling another's pain.

Then he asks of our use of "the language which describes my inner experience" (§256), and "how we "simply associate names with sensations..." But note the use of the em-dash at the end of this comment. Because he next moves into what is considered the heart of the private language argument, §259 &c.

And the upshot of that is that it is improper to talk of representing our own pains and pleasures. "I have a pain in my hand" is not like "I have an iPhone in my hand"; it is more like "Ouch!"

If one were to treat of a private, subjective world, it seems one may not be able to name items therein.

After the criticism in the SEP article and the discussion in this article with @khaled, I'll concede to a sort of retrospective naming of supposedly private sensations - chess is a two-player game that can be played by one person. But I will continue to reject any primacy that might be given to supposedly private sensations, such that they form the basis for inter-subjectivity. Such an account is arse-about; we start with what is public, not with what might be private.

The temptation is to think that because the grammar is the same, the pain is a thing in the way the iPhone is. — Banno

In what way is the iPhone a thing, exactly?

Here is where Witt’s #246 plays (......)
— Mww

That is true, when you think about it. But is that how you feel about it? — simeonz

Simply put....there are no feelings intrinsic to a purely empirical statement, in the same way I do not have a feeling about the water I may or may not put to some use. #246 is an empirical statement, for, on the one hand it has to do with the perceptions of someone else and the knowledge possible from them, and on the other, it has to do with the sensations that belong to me alone, from which follows the possibility of my own knowledge. In such case, I don’t feel the former is impossible and the latter nonsense, but rather, I can only justify the truth of it to myself. In language, this manifests as me merely saying I agree with the statement. You hinted at it yourself: truth is in what you think, then to ask of a feeling about the same thing, implies the truth is not in that.

Isn't knowledge ultimately a feeling of conviction that you don't need to fight, but to refine, until it becomes as good as possible under preconceived criteria, a set of virtues conveyed without need for justification. — simeonz

Post-modern convention says that may be the case. I agree, speaking from my well-worn armchair, that knowledge, and here we’re talking empirical knowledge, the kind with which #246 concerns itself, is a relative conviction, but not a feeling of being convinced. That condition reduces to mere persuasion, and we not persuaded to knowledge, but convinced upon arriving at it. But with respect to what you’re asking here, I would deny that empirical knowledge follows from virtue, which makes conveyance sans justification moot. A set of virtues conveyed without need of justification, is called interest. At the same time, I would affirm that knowledge is by definition already as good as possible iff knowledge is taken to mean certainty under the preconceived criteria from which it arises. But not necessarily so, insofar as there may be no preconceived criteria, re: experience, in the event of new knowledge.
————-

I should irrationally believe my convictions until a stronger, more convincing instinct makes itself available from experience. — simeonz

Your comment is commendable, anthropology aside that is, but epistemically I’d take issue with....

.....one doesn’t irrationally believe a conviction, but rather, a persuasion, which reduces to merely holding with an opinion;
.....instinct doesn’t make itself available from experience, but from lack of it, manifest in sheer accident or pure reflex, or congruent circumstances wherein reason is otherwise supervened.

But again, I’m not so good with this post-modern stuff, so.......

It's private because I've never known or experienced anyone else's sensations except my own.
— Luke

You might have done. You've not given an account of the origin or nature of 'sensations' under your model — Isaac

It's not a model. I'm telling you what I haven't experienced. As far as I know, it is logically impossible to experience such a thing, because I cannot have anybody else's experiences.

Perhaps there's not such thing as 'your own' sensations at all, by your definition. — Isaac

Perhaps there's no such thing as 'your own' brain at all, by your definition.

There are the inner sensations and the outer expressions, and you can never see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like.
— Luke

Again, that is the matter under discussion, so it doesn't help to pull it in as evidence for a conclusion therein. — Isaac

Then please explain how you can see or experience or verify what other people's sensations feel/are like.

In what way is the verbal behaviour not a form of access to their sensations? Is a ruler not a form of access to a thing's height? — Isaac

Because that's the distinction between behaviours and sensations. You can perceive someone else's behaviours, but you cannot perceive someone else's sensations. Therefore, you cannot perceive someone else's sensations by perceiving their (verbal) behaviours.

Since you can perceive both a ruler and a thing's height, these are not analagous to sensations and behaviours.

I thought I explained that. There's this equivocation over what constitutes 'your feelings of pain'. On the one hand they're some immutable private thing embedded in your body (and so inaccessible to others), but on the other they're whatever you currently think they are, which seems easily communicated. — Isaac

If I tell you how I feel, all you will perceive are my behaviours, not my sensations. If you could perceive my sensations, then I wouldn't need to tell you how I feel.

People generally use the term 'my feelings, or my memories, or my opinion...' to refer to some fixed object as if it were stored in their brain somewhere. That model is wrong. Those things are created in real time, not retrieved from some mental filing cabinet. If you don't have that model, such that when you refer to 'my pain' you mean 'whatever feeling, or memory of a feeling I happen to be creating at this very moment', then my description of your lack of access to it does not apply to you. The consequence, however, of that model is that it's a chimera, which you can never talk about because it changes in the very act of doing so. — Isaac

But I can still talk about having pains. "Whatever feeling, or memory of a feeling I happen to be creating having at this very moment" isn't a model.

But behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations - the behaviour they cause, the language used, the neural activity associated... These are not only real properties of your experience, but they're the only properties we have to measure. — Isaac

How do you know that "behavioural consequence is a property of your sensations"? That behaviours (or "behavioural consequence") are "the only properties we have to measure" is precisely my point. You can only measure behaviours; you cannot measure sensations. That makes sensations private and not publicly knowable.

Just like we look to make and model to determine if you and I have 'the same' phone. We look to behavioural consequence, associated neural activity etc to see that you and I have 'the same' experience. — Isaac

Again, this is not analagous. We can verify the makes and models of our phones as easily as we can verify the phones themselves: simply by looking at them. All the information required to verify whether our phones are the same make and model can be measured and/or perceived (in principle). The same cannot be said for our (i.e. other people's) sensations, however. You can only make inferences about other people's sensations by looking at the "behavioural consequence"; the sensations themselves cannot be measured or perceived.

You can only know of your pain sensations by being conscious of them
— Luke

See here you equivocate. Previously you assume direct access to your 'pain' by denying my model of inference. Now you're again describing your pain sensations as if they were some fact of the matter that you become aware of. Which is it to be? — Isaac

I don't have pains unless I am consciously aware of them, or unless they hurt. I don't see how I've equivocated on this.

And again here. If you're going to talk about your 'pain' as being just exactly that which you feel at some given time, and not that which is inferred from some other physiological trigger, then there is no 'access' at all. You make it up at the time, you're not 'accessing' anything. The only sense in which 'access' is coherent is a model where 'pain sensations' are a physiological thing which you 'seek out' by introspection. — Isaac

I don't think it's me doing this introspection; although it might be my brain. The problem here, again, is that you speak of my brain functions as if I were consciously performing them. That is, you conflate my conscious mental thinking with my brain's unconscious physical activity and refer to them both as "me" (or "you"). If I'm not consciously introspecting and 'seeking out' pain signals, then I'm not the one doing it. Just as, if I'm not conscious of my physiological "pain" signals, then I'm not having any pain sensations; I'm not in pain.

Simply put....there are no feelings intrinsic to a purely empirical statement, in the same way I do not have a feeling about the water I may or may not put to some use. — Mww

But we never deal with the statements in the abstract, but with their evaluations in some terms, even if syntactic terms. We deal with analysis, conjectures, assertions, objections. Sensation itself does not prompt reaction. Reason itself does not prompt conclusions. We infer and react. Being compelled by reason is feeling of trust in reason. Reason, as we abstractly define it, is not emotional, but being under rational influence is itself, I think, an emotion. Having faith in reason, for me, is an emotion. A preconception. Empiricism, is emotional preconception. But not every emotional preconception is empirical.

#246 is an empirical statement, for, on the one hand it has to do with the perceptions of someone else and the knowledge possible from them, and on the other, it has to do with the sensations that belong to me alone, from which follows the possibility of my own knowledge. — Mww

But is knowledge direct result from sensations, or is it reaction to sensations. A conviction that emotionally stems, possibly through reason, from those sensations.

You hinted at it yourself: truth is in what you think, then to ask of a feeling about the same thing, implies the truth is not in that. — Mww

I think..., that thinking is ultimately a drive, by which I mean, a kind of emotion, not some undisputed fact. It isn't any more or any less reality automatically, but the properties of conviction by reason are particular in some sense, as every emotion has particular qualities, whose relevance is instinctively conveyed to the subject. When I argue with you, I am not being impartial. But I don't mean, merely because of my conviction in my assertions, but more so through my sense of justification by reason and experience. I believe in my methodology. But my methodology (of being reasonable, critical, objective, argumentative, etc.) is not rooted in immutable reality without right of objection. Reason has particular qualities that make it a commendable feeling to have, because I feel it to be. But, ironically, reason is also critically interested in all feelings, because they are its only subject in application. And, somewhat ironically, thinking doubts feeling, for a good reason. Thinking doubts thinking, for a good reason.

Post-modern convention says that may be the case. I agree, speaking from my well-worn armchair, that knowledge, and here we’re talking empirical knowledge, the kind with which #246 concerns itself, is a relative conviction, but not a feeling of being convinced. That condition reduces to mere persuasion, and we not persuaded to knowledge, but convinced upon arriving at it. But with respect to what you’re asking here, I would deny that empirical knowledge follows from virtue, which makes conveyance sans justification moot. A set of virtues conveyed without need of justification, is called interest. At the same time, I would affirm that knowledge is by definition already as good as possible iff knowledge is taken to mean certainty under the preconceived criteria from which it arises. But not necessarily so, insofar as there may be no preconceived criteria, re: experience, in the event of new knowledge. — Mww

But sensibility and reason are a variety of persuasion. Are you not persuaded to trust them? I think that it would be mistake to assume that people should treat all of their persuasions the same. And it will be mistake to oppose different kinds of persuasions to each other. We trust our senses, we trust our reason, and we trust even our instinct in general. We don't use our senses, reason, and general instinct in the same way. We relate them to each other, and they complement each other. The end product, however, is still a persuasion. The question is, not whether we should follow our innate convictions, and not even which innate convictions we should follow, but how do innate convictions relate to each other best, in our experience, and how we best relate them between us, in discourse.

Your comment is commendable, anthropology aside that is, but epistemically I’d take issue with....

.....one doesn’t irrationally believe a conviction, but rather, a persuasion, which reduces to merely holding with an opinion;
.....instinct doesn’t make itself available from experience, but from lack of it, manifest in sheer accident or pure reflex, or congruent circumstances wherein reason is otherwise supervened. — Mww

My point is... an opinion is never merely held. It is held by someone having personal investment in it. Reason is a personal investment. Sensory experience is a personal investment. Being a spoiled child, being in need of ice cream, is still a personal investment. We can relate between the virtues of our personal investments, because they are compelled to relate naturally (not necessarily unambiguously). We can relate between each other our personal investments, as best as we can. There is nothing more to do. We arrive at more investments as we experience life. That is what I meant by instinct. Something that is triggered automatically by involvement, not so much the biological term of being innate at birth.

P.S.: I wouldn't know how to comment on the post-modern quality of my statements.

And the upshot of that is that it is improper to talk of representing our own pains and pleasures. "I have a pain in my hand" is not like "I have an iPhone in my hand"; it is more like "Ouch!" — Banno

Language games? A phone cannot be in your hand, it can only be held by your hand. The cause of pain can be in your hand (arthritis) but can also be held by your hand. Whether contained in or held by, these are both sensations, hence necessarily will be representations to downstream cognitive faculties, because they arise from physical conditions. As sensations, either can illicit a feeling of pain or pleasure, but do not represent pain or pleasure.

Then he asks of our use of "the language which describes my inner experience" (§256), — Banno

#256 begins with.....
“.....Now, what about the language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can understand? How do I use words to stand for my sensations?—As we ordinarily do? Then are my words for sensations tied up with my natural expressions of sensation?.....

First, notice Witt goes from experience to sensation. One should be aware of this time-specific differential; a whole bunch of stuff is happening internally between sensation and experience.
Second, I use words to stand for my sensations just like I always do, And words are always tied up with my natural expression......otherwise they wouldn’t be words......but that does not imply the necessity for expression itself.

I can manufacture a word for the expression of a sensation, then never express it. “Ouch”, of course, is a both a word and a general expression of a kind of sensation, but empty of determinable information by a listener. Time becomes important here, for, in the strictest sense, sensations are not named. They are, technically mere phenomena, until understanding thinks a conception belonging to it. That tickle between your shoulder blades....is it a bug or a hair? If a bug...mosquito or ant? That blind taste test....is it Coke or Pepsi?

Continuiing with #256:

“.....In that case my language is not a 'private' one. Someone else might understand it as well as I...”

My car is privately owned. If I give you a ride in it, is it any less privately owned? Accordingly, if I speak to you in a private language, the fact of your hearing does not affect its privacy. Plus, Witt has already stipulated a language “...only I can understand...”, so it is given that there is not someone else that might understand. Hence, even expressed, my language remains a private language. Useless for being understood, highly likely, but still private.

Witt is guilty of a categorical error, insofar as the “private” implication for the internal construction of the language by one subject, is very far from the “not-private” receptivity of the expression of it by another subject.
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If one were to treat of a private, subjective world, it seems one may not be able to name items therein. — Banno

Usually, yes, words are perceptions, but that does not account for the fact that every single word ever, is itself a private word at the time of its inception, hence not a perception in itself at all, and only henceforth understood by like-minded beings for what it was originally meant to represent, which is exactly the terminus of what Hume meant by “constant conjunction”. You say a word to me and what it means, and if I never heard that word before, I immediately grant whatever you’ve told me. I don’t bother asking you where you got that word from. From now on, I’ll use that word, under the same conditions, out of mere habit.

The items of a subjective world are representations alone, of which words are a species. There are no words in Nature; they are each and every one a construction of a rational being capable of relating a conception to a expression for it. The objects named by words are not private to a subjective world, but that by which each individual human knows them, most certainly is. And language is nothing but an intelligible assemblage of words, so.....there ya go.

But I will continue to reject any primacy that might be given to supposedly private sensations, such that they form the basis for inter-subjectivity. Such an account is arse-about; we start with what is public, not with what might be private. — Banno

Sensation is defined as an affect on sensibility; sensibility is defined as the capacity for receptivity of impressions. Sensation then reduces to the affect of impressions. Even if all humans are capable of receptivity of impressions, it is not given from that, that the affect is perfectly matched to the impression. To whit: even if it is the case that a multiplicity of humans perceive the moon, it is not given that the moon makes the same impression on each human that perceives it. To claim such a thing as a non-private sensation, is a categorical error, from which follows the reconciliation of the error necessitates that all sensations, as such, are private affectations of general impressions. Therefore, rejection of the primacy of private sensations, is unreasonable, and the ground of inter-subjectivity, is mediately given. (Not a typo, not immediately given. If you’re still with me, that is)
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Such an account is arse-about; we start with what is public, not with what might be private. — Banno

Trust me....I dig where you’re coming from. These days, in this small world, there are very few new experiences, hardly anything not common to just about everybody else. It is easy to say we start with what is public because it sure seems that way. And nine times out of ten, it is that way. But not always, which makes explicit it is possible to start with what is not public, and account for that must be made. That accountability results in the conclusion that no matter what is started with, the private part has all the power. The public part just is, the private part says what it is.

quod erat demonstrandum

Or, in Grey-Haired Ponytail parlance..... the story (in) twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is.....

Sensation itself does not prompt reaction. Reason itself does not prompt conclusions. We infer and react. — simeonz

“....For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience?...”
(CPR, B1)

We can say sensation does in fact prompt reaction, and reason does in fact prompt conclusions. At least, theoretically. And, of a sort.
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But sensibility and reason are a variety of persuasion. Are you not persuaded to trust them? — simeonz

Such queries suggest a metaphysical reductionism gone too far. We exist in a epistemological contingency, and rationalize under the auspices of the principle of complementarity, in that every thought has its negation, but despite all that, there is no profit in pretending we have no certainties. So, no, I’m not so much persuaded to trust as I am convinced I have no choice but to trust, and make the best of the circumstances.

I think that it would be mistake to assume that people should treat all of their persuasions the same. — simeonz

I disagree, in principle, in that because they are all persuasions they should be treated as such. It is thus still allowed to attribute different values to each persuasion. It is that one of which we are persuaded, that is not necessarily treated the same as another.

We trust our senses, we trust our reason, and we trust even our instinct in general. We don't use our senses, reason, and general instinct in the same way. We relate them to each other, and they complement each other. The end product, however, is still a persuasion. — simeonz

In the strictest sense, this is true enough. In keeping with what I said above, this is still a reduction too far. It is anathema to pure reason to maintain that mathematical or logical laws are persuasions, at the expensive of knowledge, even while recognizing the tentative nature of it. In conjunction with a specific definition of persuasion, such that varieties in subjective conditions are distinguishable, to limit reason to persuasion is to limit humans to lower-classed intelligences. A rat runs from snakes from instinct alone, but cannot ever reason to the conviction of possible destruction if he doesn’t. We have to account for, not only why we humans can, but also why we do.
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an opinion is never merely held. It is held by someone having personal investment in it. Reason is a personal investment. Sensory experience is a personal investment. — simeonz

OK, so all that means is that there are different kinds or qualities attributable to personal investment. This is mere aesthetics, included necessarily in the human condition. We still need to relate the activity of personal investment to the plethora of states of affairs. Just as in any investment, it needs be determined how to arrive at it and thereby quantify its value, which is not itself mere aesthetics, but.....technically speaking....purposivity. Goal-orientation. And the ultimate goal for humans, is truth.

I appreciate your arguments. They’re well-formed and interesting. Don’t take anything I say as some serious effort to refute them, which really can’t be done anyway, just.....point/counterpoint, nothing more.

And the upshot of that is that it is improper to talk of representing our own pains and pleasures. — Banno

The common view is that pain and pleasure are representations of nervous input. We don't know how awareness and representation work. This view goes back to Descartes with the plucked strings.

There's a contradiction at the base of this view, though, so it's probably a good idea to take it with a grain of salt.

I was unable to follow what you claimed regarding privacy. YOu seem to be thinking of privacy in terms of ownership - cars - which is far off track.

The objects named by words are not private to a subjective world, but that by which each individual human knows them, most certainly is. — Mww

"...that by which each human knows them..."? You continue in the belief that there is a meaning for each word, to be found in one's private subconscious.

Your account of seeing the moon commences with there being a moon to see. My objection is not that each person does not have a sensation of the moon; it is that this sensation is private. In so far as it is of the moon, it is public. In so far as it is private, it is not a sensation of anything. This is the point made so well by @Isaac. The Kantian analysis is outdated.

...but the judge wasn't going to look at the pictures.

The common view is that pain and pleasure are representations of nervous input. — frank

Check that. pain and pleasure are nervous input.

Check that. pain and pleasure are nervous input. — Banno

Are you familiar with multiple realizability?

Another half-question. Yes?

Multiple realizability blocks the path to reductionism. Pain has to be emergent.

Don't explain why. All good.

The SEP are explains it better than I could.

Here.

I'm asking you to show what this has to do with my

pain and pleasure are nervous input. — Banno

Oh. Well you could disconnect the afferent nerves from the brain. You'd have that sensory data, but no pain.

There would be no nervous input within the brain?