Whaever gives rise to the collective representation of a world does so reliably, else there could be no collective representation. That is all we know about the "in itself". — Janus

You claim that we "represent" an X that is otherwise completely unknowable. But somehow you believe there is a we in the first place, that we all represent this weird X. This, sir, is itself a claim about the world. Or is it just a claim about your private representation of the X ? Is our representation relationship to the X not part of the real world ? Not what is the case ?

This kind of Kantianism is arrogant in a cloak of humility. I don't mean this as a comment about you but about the strangeness of the claim. We can't know anything about reality, yet we are damned sure about the basic metaphysical structure of any possible human being. "I know nothing about true reality, but I know that any possible human being is locked in a representational relationship to some hidden kernel." Because somehow you are outside of the situation, seeing each of us in a box ? And I suppose you can't refute solipsism, right ? Because you are trapped behind a wall of intuitions and concepts? But isn't your trapped self one of those intuitions and concepts ?

We can talk about the schizophrenic hearing voices (that aren't there), or we can talk about the schizophrenic not "actually" hearing voices (because there aren't any). The idea that one or the other is in some sense the "correct" way of talking, or says something about the philosophy or science of perception, is mistaken. — Michael

I agree. I will concede that arguing for one usage or another might be worthwhile in certain contexts. But I think it's very much case that one should have a grip on whether making grammar explicit is being mistaken for an empirical discovery.

Your account leaves out how we have contact with one another in the first place. Do we have Kantian bodies in the thing-in-itself ? If so, we shouldn't be able to know that. If not, how do we 'meet' to create the intersection of our private representations of the one X that we seem to call the world in your account ?

If memory serves, Kant believe in a noumena self and hid our freedom there, but I haven't studied such madness closely.

You claim that we "represent" an X that is otherwise completely unknowable. But somehow you believe there is a we in the first place, that we all represent this weird X. This, sir, is itself a claim about the world. — green flag

It's a claim about the ordinary everyday world of experience. I'm not claiming that we represent any particular X, or anything weird; we don't know such things. I'm saying that the empirical world is a collective representation constructed upon inter-subjective communication about the commonalities of individual human experiences, which consist in sensations, images and impressions, and which seem to reveal an ordered, differentiated world of more or less invariant phenomena.

We don't know what gives rise to this phenomenal world based on human experience and judgement: we cannot get outside our experience of it to see what whatever is causing it is in itself. That seems to me to simply be the primary fact about the human situation. Why else would there be such a long history of argumentation about metaphysics and ontology?

Of course we can just be naive realists and take the world to be just as it appears, and that is arguably the default. This is fair enough, since the in itself reality is unknowable, but consciously taking that stance is also showing a kind of willful blindness to our actual fundamental ignorance.

Your account leaves out how we have contact with one another in the first place. Do we have Kantian bodies in the thing-in-itself ? If so, we shouldn't be able to know that. If not, how do we 'meet' to create the intersection of our private representations of the one X that we seem to call the world in your account ? — green flag

We know how we make contact in the phenomenal world; it's no mystery because it is all going on within our basic human communication of experience and understanding. That is to say that we of course know how things seem to us, but intellectual honesty dictates that we should not extend that seeming beyond its limited ambit.

Well, I mean, it's not that we "can just be naive realists" - it's that we are naive realists the vast majority of the time, despite how incoherent it may be to us.

We don't have a choice.

Maybe if someone is mystical or something, maybe they can avoid being naive realists most of the time, we can't.

The funny thing is that really simple arguments begin to show how weak such belief actually is.

I don't think you are seeing the issue.

Do you think we are all trapped in individual control rooms ? Locked forever in or behind sensations and concepts ?

Where do other people exist for you ? Only on your screen ? Is the idea that other people are trapped behind thier screens something you see on your screen ? Or the truth about screens that transcends your screen ?

collective representation constructed upon inter-subjective communication — Janus

Can we tell me how the phones are wired ? How do my words get to your control room ? Please give me the entire journey from my control room to yours. Where are these control rooms, please ?

Of course we can just be naive realists and take the world to be just as it appears, and that is arguably the default. This is fair enough, since the in itself reality is unknowable, but consciously taking that stance is also showing a kind of willful blindness to our actual fundamental ignorance. — Janus

Or we can pretend that philosophy didn't die in 1777. 'Naive realism' is like the word a particular cult has for outsiders. 'If you doubt the genius of Kant, you are a silly monkey' ?

Well, I mean, it's not that we "can just be naive realists" - it's that we are naive realists the vast majority of the time, despite how incoherent it may be to us.

We don't have a choice.

Maybe if someone us mystical or something, maybe they can avoid being naive realists most of the time, we can't.

The funny thing is that really simple arguments begin to show how weak such belief actually is. — Manuel

Yes we are naive realists in a sense because we naturally and pre-reflectively just accept the phenomenal world as a given. We are truly naive realists if we believe that the way we experience and understand the world to be is exactly the way it really is independently of us.

And I think you're right: really simple arguments do show how weak such belief actually is.

I don't think you are seeing the issue.

Do you think are all trapped in individual control rooms ? Locked forever in sensations and concepts ?

Where do other people exist for you ? Only on your screen ? Is the idea that other people are trapped behind there screens something you see on your screen ? Or the truth about screens that transcends your screen ? — green flag

You seem really confused; I haven't claimed any of the things you are saying here. And the confusion seems all the more deep since you also seem to claim that language cannot refer to things in the phenomenal world; that meaning is endlessly deferred and hence indeterminate, a la Derrida, and these are claims which seem to be at odds with your naive realism.

I don't claim 'naive realism.' I reject that baggage as more harm than good. The point is to get out of the metaphor that structures the pseudoproblem.

I also don't claim that language can't refer. I just admit that it's a difficult problem. I do think that yes indeed there's something like a limit on the determinateness of meaning ('semantic finitude'). I think we'll have reason to work at or as our tower of babble forever, but not without progress. Indeed, my criticism of your 'Kantianism' is mostly a paraphrase of 20th century philosophers.

As I see it, you yourself offered a theory of our shared situation in the world. I pointed out difficulties in it as I perceived them and presented a challenge.

How do my words get to your control room ? Please give me the entire journey from my control room to yours. Where are these control rooms, please ? — green flag

There is an excellent and informative article in Wikipedia, the Private language argument that I always refer to. — RussellA

Thank you, although I disagree. I wrote a large part of the article, most of which still stands, back in 2006. But it now has multiple issues and really needs a re-write; especially if it leads to the sort of mistaken understanding you express here.

That no one can know another's private language is not the argument, but just the setting out of what a private language consists in, for the purposes of presenting the argument. A private language is a language understandable by only oneself.

The private language argument is that such a thing cannot be understood in a coherent fashion. That there can be no private languages. That such a thing could not count as a language.

Wittgenstein does not argue that "nobody can know another person's private experiences" so much as to point out how talk of private experiences is problematic. If you read beyond §272 you will see an argument that such colour inversion cannot be made to work. So

279. Imagine someone saying, “But I know how tall I am!” and laying his hand on top of his head to indicate it! — PI

Take a look at the diagram in the OP. In so far as the indirect realist sees, and is the only person to see, the brown blob, it is private to them. If this is so, then the indirect realist sees and talks about only the brown blob, and not the shared world. That is, the indirect realist is using a private language, one that refers only to the brown blob that they construct.

What the private language argument shows is that if this were so, the indirect realist would not be able to talk about the world at all.

Summarising, what the private language argument shows is that one cannot construct a private language that is about one's private sensations. If indirect realism holds that what we see is not the world but a private model of the world, then one could not construct a language about that private model.

Treating this as a reductio, we do have language about the world, and therefore we talk about the world, and not about our private world-models. At least that form of indirect realism is wrong.

This is the argument I paraphrased as

When the indirect realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the brown thing.

When the direct realist says "I see the Earth", they are referring to the Earth. — Banno

What exactly is the "metaphor" and the "pseudoproblem" you think it "structures" you are trying to get out of? What exactly does structure mean in this context?

You say that you don't deny that language can refer; if it can then why would it be a "difficult problem"?
Are you saying that language is inherently somewhat fuzzy? If so I agree with you, but it's all we have to attempt to communicate, and it seems determinate enough. Is there some arcane method we might discover that can we employ to make it more determinate? If not, then why bother and why not instead just focus on our actual communication and try to make it as clear as possible,

So, it seems you believe in philosophical progress; I don't; I tend to think philosophy by and large has gone backwards roughly since Kant.

What "theory of our shared situation" do you think I've offered? And what are the difficulties you've point out and the challenge you've presented? It's not clear to me. Surely you don't mean this:

How do my words get to your control room ? Please give me the entire journey from my control room to yours. Where are these control rooms, please ? — green flag

I haven't said anything about control rooms. I hear or read your words, and I believe I understand what you are saying, a situation which itself would be understandable if we experience the phenomenal world in similar enough fashion, which it seems obvious to me that we do.

We are truly naive realists if we believe that the way we experience and understand the world to be is exactly the way it really is independently of us. — Janus

I do not understand why some do not see or feel the emptiness of this description. The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to “Reality” by saying what it is not. But we never can get there, and they come up with equally empty slogans like if only we can get a “view from no where” or if we only can get “outside ourselves”. This move seems so innocent to use words that we are so familiar with yet are used in such unfamiliar ways.

But the indirect realist will say, “Wink, wink you get what we are saying.”

Yep, pure nonsense!

I'm not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with what you've quoted there...

we cannot get outside our experience of it to see what whatever is causing it is in itself. — Janus

But how did you get outside your mind to see others' situations ? How can you make all these claims about what we can and can't know ? You won't even say where we are. Where are our bodies ?

I will of course politely drop it if you think further discussion is useless.

I do not understand why some do not see or feel the emptiness of this description. The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to “Reality” by saying what it is not. But we never can get there, and they come up with equally empty slogans like if only we can get a “view from no where” or if we only can get “outside ourselves”. — Richard B

:up:

This thoughtvirus had an innocent birth. The world is complex and it's easy for an individual to say something stupid and wrong. So we learn to be more careful about the claims we make. We hold them more tentatively. This is smart. We self-consciously let our hypotheses die so that we may live.

But then a wacky blend of primitive psychology caught on which turned life into a videogame out of which we could never climb poor souls, down from which however our noses were ever pointy at those who childishly dreamed that they were not dreaming.

What exactly is the "metaphor" and the "pseudoproblem" you think it "structures" you are trying to get out of? What exactly does structure mean in this context? — Janus

Good questions ! If sincere, we have dialogue.

Are you saying that language is inherently somewhat fuzzy? If so I agree with you, but it's all we have to attempt to communicate, and it seems determinate enough. — Janus

Yes, inherently fuzzy. But progress is possible. Enough ? Then close up the bar and let's go home. Because the point of philosophy is (I claim) more clarity, more light, more music.

s there some arcane method we might discover that can we employ to make it more determinate? If not, then why bother and why not instead just focus on our actual communication and try to make it as clear as possible, — Janus

No arcane method, just philosophy (and dialogue in general and science and ...)

I am trying to make my actual communication as clear as possible in the brief time given to/as me.

So, it seems you believe in philosophical progress; I don't; I tend to think philosophy by and large has gone backwards roughly since Kant. — Janus

Insane in the membrane ! But it's a free country till they sick the A.I. on our facecrime.

The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to “Reality” by saying what it is not. But we never can get there, and they come up with equally empty slogans like if only we can get a “view from no where” or if we only can get “outside ourselves”. — Richard B

Yep, pure nonsense! — Richard B

No, it's not nonsense. There is something else that needs to be added to the explanation. I've said this before already, and no one seems to care to include it as a corollary to whatever it is we claim about reality so that we don't run into that kind of issue. And that something else is the hypotheses we keep making about the world that stand the test of time and save us from perishing. If the world population now in the 8 billion does not work as evidence for you, then I don't know what would.

So, to support this explanation, please read John Locke and his argument for critical realism.

We can certainly invite each other to that reality, and not sound lame.

Edit: we don't have to use JTB in our explanation of reality outside our mind.

People can see red even if they don't have a language to describe colour. — Michael

This is just an assertion. People respond to colour. That's not the same as them seeing 'red' unless you concede that 'red' is indeed a wavelength of light and so a person without language would still see red. You want to have your cake and eat it. If 'red' ids a private sensation, then you can't use third party observation to judge other people must be seeing it.

I can smell so many different things and yet I don't have words to describe each kind of smell. There's no thinking involved in this. I don't think, "it's smell X" or "it's smell Y". I just smell. — Michael

Again, you respond to the olfactory sensations, that doesn't mean you smell this smell or that smell (like rigid components but without a name yet). You just respond. You might even post hoc think one smell was like another you smelt yesterday (but still with no name) but there's no way of knowing if that's even correct.

What a young child means when they say that an apple is red is exactly what I mean when I say that an apple is red — Michael

Again, this is just assertion. It's almost certainly untrue. The full 'meaning' of red for you is very unlikely to be the same as the child's partly because of your increased knowledge. You have a lot more connection to those sensory inputs than a child does.

it's certainly not the case that when I see that the apple is red (but say nothing) that I am thinking anything about quantum mechanics. I'm just seeing. — Michael

This one I can literally disprove in an instant (well you'd have to get into an fMRI). Under no circumstances are you 'just seeing'. It's not been recorded, ever. The closest we've ever got is showing blank swatches of colour (no objects, no context) and even then dozens of other areas are consistently associated with different colours (including, of course, language centres).

Yet I need a name for the cause of my perception of a tree. My solution is to give the cause the same name as the effect. — RussellA

Who told you what the name of the effect was?

Learning that the tongue contains gustatory cells that respond to the chemicals in food, and that sugar tastes sweet because of its hydrogen bonds, doesn't change the taste of sugar. And learning the name of this animal doesn't change how it looks. And in fact with this animal, being able to see it doesn't involve "reaching" for whatever word names it (given that I can see it but don't know its name), and so too seeing the colour red doesn't involve "reaching" for the word "red".

You really are making such bizarre claims.

Learning that the tongue contains gustatory cells that respond to the chemicals in food, and that sugar tastes sweet because of its hydrogen bonds, doesn't change the taste of sugar. And learning the name of this animal doesn't change how it looks. — Michael

Well, for a start both those claims are demonstrably false. learning new things about an object changes the priors our lower hierarchy cortices use to process sensory inputs which changes the resultant responses, including post hoc construction of the 'experience'. This has been demonstrated over an over again in the literature.

But notwithstanding that, the claim isn't that you'll see it differently, the claim is about seeing 'red'. 'Red' is a cultural division of a continuous colour spectrum. No one can see 'red' who doesn't know that category. they just see. Light stimulates the retina and the brain responds. That response can be of almost any type depending on priors (and to a small extent 'hard-wiring'). None of that response answers to 'seeing red'. there is literally nothing in the brain (and people have looked really hard) that corresponds to 'seeing red'.

All we have neurologically is photons hitting retinas and behavioural responses in a constant cycle. they differ between people and there's no grounds at all for identifying any of those responses as being 'seeing red'.

Who told you what the name of the effect was? — Isaac

In a sense, no one needs to tell me the name of the image that I perceive. I would assume that just from five pictures you could hazard at a guess at the meaning of "ngoe". I discover the name from a constant conjunction of events.

"Ngoe" means at least a third of the picture is green? Or the picture is an odd number from the left?

Well, for a start both those claims are demonstrably false. learning new things about an object changes the priors our lower hierarchy cortices use to process sensory inputs which changes the resultant responses, including post hoc construction of the 'experience'. This has been demonstrated over an over again in the literature.

But notwithstanding that, the claim isn't that you'll see it differently, the claim is about seeing 'red'. 'Red' is a cultural division of a continuous colour spectrum. No one can see 'red' who doesn't know that category. they just see. Light stimulates the retina and the brain responds. That response can be of almost any type depending on priors (and to a small extent 'hard-wiring'). None of that response answers to 'seeing red'. there is literally nothing in the brain (and people have looked really hard) that corresponds to 'seeing red'.

All we have neurologically is photons hitting retinas and behavioural responses in a constant cycle. they differ between people and there's no grounds at all for identifying any of those responses as being 'seeing red'. — Isaac

Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway

There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1). The distinction between these two different neural representations advances our understanding of visual neural coding.

...

This task aimed to exclude the involvement of higher cognitive processes, such as color naming, as it did not require any explicit judgment of the chromaticity of the stimulus.

What is it you think that experiment is demonstrating which contradicts what I've said?

What is it you think that experiment is demonstrating which contradicts what I've said? — Isaac

That seeing the colour red isn't just "reaching" for the word "red", and that colour is "in the head", not a property of external world objects (whether light or the apple).

That "there is literally [something] in the brain ... that corresponds to 'seeing red'".