I still have no idea what that means, sorry.

nevermind

Oh go on, indulge me. How do Lewis and qualia relate to what I said?

I don't know what you were saying. If I had understood you, then you easily would have understood me.

I think we've sufficiently explored how profoundly we are unable to communicate with one another.

Bah, quitter.

I'm trying to make the point that the public/private distinction is something that we regularly circumvent in conversation or usual language use. It has a strange position in being a precondition on the types of account that are admissible for the sense of linguistic acts, while doing nothing to limit the expression of sensations, emotions or dispositions. IE that language isn't just shared contingently, it's necessarily shareable. Since events of emotion, disposition or sensation aren't shareable in some sense - you don't feel mine exactly -, they make a poor candidate for the sense of linguistic acts. One reason for this is because your sensations aren't accessible to me; I can't feel how they feel for you. This easily leads to I can't know how they feel for you.

But we can, really. This is because language can be used to express the private, and we can establish an equivalence between a linguistic act and the 'private' event of feeling just by talking about it. This is not to say that the words are the things, or that emotions are things 'attached' to words, but to say that there are much richer senses of equivalence at work in the construction of sense than intimated by the public/private distinction; strict identity. The feelings, insofar as they permit expression, are already 'public'.

Then what I'm trying to say is because the private stuff is already public insofar as the private drives a language game, the distinction dissolves in use.

EG: people had no problem saying 'I felt the same' in your recent thread on dread. This isn't to say that they felt your dread, but that the feeling of dread is already expressible up to posited/established equivalence in the use of language. EG, we can establish equivalence between dreads by matching descriptions with our feelings. Or, as works in general, match the of the word with this or that particular emotion, sensation or disposition that I have had.

Equivalence is a lot richer than identity.

By epistemic access I imagine a relation between a person and thing such that the person can come to know the nature of the thing. Which is a bit of a fuzzy idea. What I'm trying to say with reference to epistemic access is that what is 'private' is beyond our reach - epistemically inaccessible - and what is public is not. — fdrake

When it comes to what we know there are a variety of language-games in which we can make claims to knowledge. So in science we would appeal to inductive and deductive arguments (mostly inductive), but there are other ways of knowing such as: Linguistic training, I know that that is a cup, because that is what we mean by cup in English; knowledge through sensory experience, I know the orange juice is sweet because I tasted it; testimonial knowledge, I believe that X is true, because the testimony is reliable (most of our knowledge comes in this way); and pure reason or pure logic (tautologies). So there are a variety of language-games that use the word knowledge, and each of these is a correct use of the word, and each use is public. I say all this just to give some background of where I'm coming from.

Since each of these uses of the word know is public, i.e., that's where knowledge gets its sense, it's senseless to make a claim to knowledge outside this public use. So it's not, to my understanding, that knowledge of the private is inaccessible, it's that knowing makes no sense in this arena. Maybe that's what you're saying, I guess I didn't like the word inaccessible, but maybe it works.

Also I view these first-person events, like, "I am in pain," "I feel..." as very basic kinds of beliefs, or bedrock beliefs quite apart from epistemic considerations.

I would also say that what is private is accessible, but only in a public way (a slight variation on what you're saying), viz., what's going on privately has meaning as it's exposed publicly through our use of language.

Then I'm trying to say that this is a bit weird, as that each sensation, disposition or emotion can be made equivalent to a series of expressive linguistic acts. The privation associated with any sensation is only the privation of the event of feeling only ever happening to one person, but absolutely nothing to do with the sense of speech acts about it. This works in the real use of language as if the privation can be circumvented by the use of language (which pace the Wittgensteinian background we're working in is language simpliciter) to treat my pain event as equivalent in another's pain event within a language game. — fdrake

I'm not sure you can say, "...that each sensation, disposition or emotion can be made equivalent to a series of expressive linguistic acts." My understanding is that our pain is not equivalent to the speech act, but gets its meaning through the outward public expression. What you're saying reminds me of the idea that the word's meaning is associated with the thing, but it depends on what you mean by equivalent.

I agree that the private event, say, of pain, is only happening to one person, but I'm not sure I agree that it has nothing to do with the sense of the word pain. It has everything to do with the sense of the word, but only as it can be made public. So I can't point to my private sensation and think it will acquire sense without the public expression of the pain (beetle-in-the-box PI 293). The private experience isn't circumvented, it's only that meaning of the private sensation must be shown in the public arena of language use.

You seem to be using equivalent in a strange way, i.e., you say, "...to treat my pain event as equivalent to someone else's pain event within a language-game," but is this what we mean when we compare pains? If I say, "I have the same pain," do we mean that it's equivalent to a similar pain event that I might have, or is it akin, for e.g., to saying, "Stand here," where we don't need to have an exact point in mind, but rather a rough idea.

Which is fine, mostly. We don't feel particular dispositions, emotions or sensations from others, even if two people, A and B, are subjected to the same pin prick, A does not feel the pain that B feels and vice versa. But why should this entail that A's pain and B's pain cannot be part of the language game? Contrast this to A's pain event and B's pain event, which will never be the sense of the words about them. My point is that A's pain event and B's pain event can still be part of a language game, because a comparisons can be made. — fdrake

If someone says, "I've experienced the same pain," referring to a lumbar puncture, we understand what they mean, it's not as though we think that our pain experiences are different; so we can say it, and A's pain and B's pain is part of the same language-game. And what is A's pain event, and B's pain event, other than A and B's pain? It's true that the private experience itself doesn't give sense to the word, but that doesn't mean we can't speak about private sensations. The only point I would want to make is that the only way we can speak about these private sensations, is that we have something that's not private. Once we have the sense, then it follows that the language-games about private experiences do make sense. I'm not sure we are disagreeing.

So, what problem do I have with epistemic access being used as a criterion to demarcate that which may be a sense of a word (its use) and that which may not be the sense of a word (the invisible or maybe impossible referent of pain)? Just that epistemic access itself is part of a language game of knowing, philosophically transposed into the realm of language use simpliciter. — fdrake

I think I answered this already.

If we pay attention to the words people use when describing private sensations, emotions, states of mind, we can establish a kind of equivalence between them. Like two alcoholics on TV describing addiction unfelt by the audience. Establishing equivalence between things is something we do with words. — fdrake

No, argument here.

During the language game of pain comparison, people can offer a lot of adjectives to describe qualities of the pain. Some common ones are; sharp, stabbing, throbbing, blinding, maddening, dull, intense. There are words which connote different intensities of the sensation; like agony and discomfort. Those intensities can clearly be part of the language game, so why not something which is equivalent to the pains themselves within the language game? — fdrake

I think I've answered what you getting at above, but maybe not.

Long story short: epistemic access and establishing equivalence are both part of word use, rather than a transcendental precondition of them. — fdrake

Is this what you think I'm saying, i.e., that there is some transcendental precondition to word use? Because I definitely don't believe this.

Well, I tried to answer, and/or add to what you were saying.

I see. An expression of pain will be understandable to everyone except that rare person who has never felt pain, even if that person is a neurologist.

I think it's just qualia that we're talking about. Where a word isn't enough to convey a feeling, we resort to music, paintings on chapel ceilings, and giant novels.

Does something remain that's completely unsharable? People will answer that according to what they believe about consciousness. People who are allergic to superstition would reject the existence of communal feelings. That's basically what the divinity Eros is.

I don't follow. "Soul" under the langauge game model would be sensical. It would mean that non-existent entity to which Christians believe a person's essence resides. That their internal thought varies from their public use (I.e. they believe it existent) would mean that meaning really isn't use only if you're willing to delve into the phenomenal state of Christians, something I thought you wouldn't do. — Hanover

What I would say here is that just because we use a word in a language-game, as in the Christian use of the word soul, that that in itself doesn't mean it has sense. Consider Wittgenstein's beetle-in-the-box example, let's suppose that we develop language-games to refer to what's in each of our boxes - does it follow that the word beetle has a sense? No. The tendency is for people to take Wittgenstein's example of language-games and use, to be, the be all and end all of meaning, but it's not, and Wittgenstein never meant it to be.

The problem with saying that the soul is where the person's essence resides is that there is nothing public about such a thing. I could say for example, that what's in my box (beetle thing again) is where the soul resides, but it would be senseless because there is nothing public here. The same is true of Christians who point to the inner thing in reference to soul. There isn't anything public - as Wittgenstein points out - what we think we are referring to may be something quite different, it may be nothing, or it may be something changing all the time. The sense of the word soul has nothing to latch onto, which is the same with the beetle example.

Meaning isn't always use, we often use words incorrectly. Meaning isn't always driven by context either, and meaning isn't always driven by a language-game. Use has to be looked at in a much broader sense, and that takes place in everyday language. By everyday I don't mean that the man on the street is the one who decides meaning, but that meaning is derived across a wide linguistic swath. One also has to look at the original home of words in conjunction with language-games. It's not an easy thing to do.

Finally, it's not a matter of looking into the phenomenal states of Christians, quite the opposite.

I see. An expression of pain will be understandable to everyone except that rare person who has never felt pain, even if that person is a neurologist. — frank

I don't think you need to feel pain in order to understand the sense of the word. Surely I could understand the sense by observation, and thereby use the word correctly, giving it sense.

Mary, prior to leaving Mary's Room, has never had the experience of seeing red.

Where John is talking about that experience, Mary does not understand.

Whether or not Mary can satisfy anyone with her usage of "red" is irrelevant.

Mary, prior to leaving Mary's Room, has never had the experience of seeing red.

Where John is talking about that experience, Mary does not understand.

Whether or not Mary can satisfy anyone with her usage of "red" is irrelevant. — frank

It's true in this example that Mary doesn't understand the sense of the word, there is nothing public here, so Mary has no sense of the word. I don't see in this example how Mary would be able to use the word. However, in my example of the use of the word pain, it's quite different. Bob doesn't feel pain, but he is able to observe along with everyone else the outward signs of pain, for e.g., moaning, crying, pleading, etc., so Bob is able to see how the word is used, and apply it correctly. Mary is not able to partake of anything public.

If someone has never experienced childbirth does that mean they can't use the word correctly? We don't always have to experience the same thing others do in order to understand the correct use of a word or concept.

Bob doesn't feel pain, but he is able to observe along with everyone else the outward signs of pain, for e.g., moaning, crying, pleading, etc., so Bob is able to see how the word is used, and apply it correctly — Sam26

Ok. He still doesn't know the experience of pain.

True, but the sense of the word isn't dependent on your private experience anyway.

Is this what you think I'm saying, i.e., that there is some transcendental precondition to word use? Because I definitely don't believe this. — Sam26

I don't think I'm trying to paint a picture of word use where words like pain attach to a pain. To be sure, in cases like the pain in my right leg, I could describe it and it would resonate in some way with you - but this is more of a function of our shared history of language use than any pointing to my pain. The sensation would drive my expressions (motivating how I use language, constraining which words are adequate), but the words never have the meaning of the pain I feel, they don't attach to each other in a bizarre marriage like 'red' and 'red-ness' in the 'sense of the word is identical to the feeling'. Rather, the words do something like correlate with our shared heritage of language and we interpret this fuzzy composite of correlates in a way that links it to feelings I have or have had. It's use all the way down.

By equivalence of pain event with linguistic acts I meant that 'rough accord' you mentioned, in my terms a fuzzy cluster of correlates, which nevertheless enables more precise exposition.

To see if we're disagreeing or not, do you think that the public criterion is a necessary feature of language use? If it is necessary, why is it a necessity?

Should probably look to use to discover meaning. In some cases Bob will not understand what's meant by "pain".

Are you familiar with Terrence Deacon's theory of language evolution?

To see if we're disagreeing or not, do you think that the public criterion is a necessary feature of language use? If it is necessary, why is it a necessity? — fdrake

I do believe that public criterion is a necessary feature of language use, so I don't think it's possible to have a private language. However, this is different from having a language and putting it to private use.

It's necessary because of the nature of language and following rules, i.e., since language necessitates rule-following, and rule-following is not a private endeavor, then it follows that having a language is not private but public. Sounds a bit circular, so let me give a deductive argument.

(1) If it's not possible to follow a rule privately, then a private language is not possible.
(2) It's not possible to follow a rule privately.
(3) Therefore, it's not possible to have a private language.

Of course then the challenge is show that premise 1 is true. What does it mean to follow a rule privately in this context. This doesn't mean that I can't do mathematics in a private setting, but to know that I've done it correctly needs to be shown objectively, i.e., publicly. In this case many mathematicians have their work checked by other mathematicians to validate correct use of the rules.

If it was completely private, then whatever I think is correct, is correct. Following a rule is by its very nature is public, and not private. Much more can obviously be said.

What use of the word pain would be beyond Bob's grasp?

Nope.

Not sure if this link would help. He's using a lot of information theory and thermodynamics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature

What use of the word pain would be beyond Bob's grasp? — Sam26

Where the experience of pain is being discussed.

That's not an example. So Bob couldn't look at a person who is screaming and correctly use the word pain, viz., he couldn't tell someone else that Sue is in pain based on observation? That would be strange.

The way I view this is that all uses of language, even when used in private, even when an inner monologue, even a 'half formed' thought are parasitically social. That is to say they must be expressible in some way, even if that expression is one of the ambiguity or conflict within the 'private' episode. I don't imagine this possibility as something external to language, a contingent fact which happens not to obtain now in a separate possible world.

Instead I imagine it as the ability for a person to put words to their thoughts and feelings with varying degrees of difficulty depending on the thoughts, feelings and how the person inhabits those emotive or thinking states; even when the states themselves are conflicted like cognitive dissonance, deliberation and dysphoria.

So I'm with you insofar as yes, language is necessarily public. And yes, this comes with the idea that senses are historically constrained as a positive feature of their expression (I cannot use this word, but there are many I could use). Also, this comes with agreeing to the idea that rule following is not something that can be 'done' without at least a parasitic dependence on the norms of expression that are in play.

What I'm trying to say is that if I express a feeling and its concomitant behavioural tendencies, that expression can be taken as the expressed feeling with no additional linguistic constraints. You either can or cannot see the aspects put forth in linguistic acts. You might make a new box of correlates, like I have done with dysphoria; something my beetle has never felt. But which it can interpret by correlation, analogy, and notional equivalence.

The privacy of feelings; that all feelings which are felt in my lifeworld are mine; can make it difficult to express the private thing, to guide the possible interpretations with the right words so that the other can cotton on to how that feeling is for me. The same goes for ideas that we have or opinions that we hold; it is always difficult to take the amorphous and half-formed and codify it into our shared canon of experience and language use.

There is a struggle against the trappings of what is shared to express what is novel and singular; what is not already a habit or established permutation of language use. The private/public distinction paints the borders of sense as something demarcated beforehand; as a necessary condition for language use the beetle is not allowed out of the box.

Really, all I have is a suspicion that as uses of language are dynamic, languages evolve, uses are introduced for novel phenomena, and the box the beetle is in shrinks. Just as much as use is a contingent and yet constitutive activity of language, just as much as language is enmeshed in cultural norms, use frames language as the collection of the codified already sensible. Forgetting that use is as much the codification of the new as the reference of the established.

The beetle screams and we are its voice.

What I'm trying to say is that if I express a feeling and its concomitant behavioral tendencies, that expression can be taken as the expressed feeling with no additional linguistic constraints. You either can or cannot see the aspects put forth in linguistic acts. — fdrake

If you express a feeling and its accompanying behavioral acts, then it is necessarily rule-governed, so it may or may not need other linguistic modifiers in order for meaning to be conveyed. Whether I "...can see or cannot see the aspects put forth [as] linguistic acts," is dependent on many things.

The privacy of feelings; that all feelings which are felt in my lifeworld are mine; can make it difficult to express the private thing, to guide the possible interpretations with the right words so that the other can cotton on to how that feeling is for me. The same goes for ideas that we have or opinions that we hold; it is always difficult to take the amorphous and half-formed and codify it into our shared canon of experience and language use. — fdrake

I agree, although I wonder about the use of mine, i.e., these feelings I have are mine. I think this may generate confusion, viz., the tendency to associate meaning with my feeling, as opposed to the shared social construct of language. There is a tension here that seems to force us to acknowledge that there is a private world, but this private world doesn't give meaning to our linguistic expressions, but it's necessary. We also don't want to restrict language to the point that we don't allow for novel thinking and expression. So sense is not a fixed or contrived border, but moves and expands, but ever so slowly around the fixed point (fixed point may not be the best choice of words) of what we already know or believe.

There is a struggle against the trappings of what is shared to express what is novel and singular; what is not already a habit or established permutation of language use. The private/public distinction paints the borders of sense as something demarcated beforehand; as a necessary condition for language use the beetle is not allowed out of the box. — fdrake

Yes, as I mentioned above, we have to be careful that we don't let the border between sense and nonsense become so fixed that we stifle creativity. Sometimes the beetle gets out of the box, as our expressions become clearer and more precise, and other times our words remain senseless because there is no sense to be had. However, it may be necessary for this to take place in order for language to grow and expand. It's like being in a maze, some paths lead to nowhere, other paths take us to new places, expanding our knowledge. Wittgenstein did this with his idea of language-games, and his method of inquiry.

Really, all I have is a suspicion that as uses of language are dynamic, languages evolve, uses are introduced for novel phenomena, and the box the beetle is in shrinks. Just as much as use is a contingent and yet constitutive activity of language, just as much as language is enmeshed in cultural norms, use frames language as the collection of the codified already sensible. Forgetting that use is as much the codification of the new as the reference of the established. — fdrake

I agree, but I'm not sure the box shrinks, the beetle sometimes escapes though, into the world of sense.

@fdrake, @Sam26

Perhaps I missed it, but one point that doesn't seem to come out clearly in your exchange is that language use includes non-linguistic elements, which include private, personal, phenomenal experiences -- however you'd like to put that. People's actual pain is part of the "talking about pain" language-game -- even if only by its absence, as in shamming, lying, exaggerating, etc., and its absence would be important. (The blocks too are part of the builders game.)

And then we note again how all of this is underwritten by the broadly similar biology of speaker and audience, blah blah blah. Ultraviolet is part of the spectrum just like green, but we talk about it differently.

Really, all I have is a suspicion that as uses of language are dynamic, languages evolve, uses are introduced for novel phenomena, and the box the beetle is in shrinks. — fdrake

Temporarily anyway. Experience isn't finite. (With all this talk of novelty, creativity and sense-making, why isn't @StreetlightX here?)

Two short thoughts on this:
(1) Imagining an instance of this sort of thing, of trying to get an idea (or an experience or sensation, novel or not) into words for someone else to understand, one interesting indicator of success is when the listener, trying to figure out what you're getting at, says something right that you haven't said yet -- on the right track! -- and even better when they say something right that you hadn't even thought of yet. In the best cases, you seem to pick up on this immediately, can recognize whether they've gotten it, even when their thought is now, in turn, new to you, though in tune, or in line, with the thought you were trying to express to them. (Again, all of SX's stuff about sense making is swirling around this for me.)

(2) Back during the discussion of Russell's paradox, it occurred to me that while it may be true that natural language has no meta-language we can kick paradoxes up to, we seem to be able to temporarily switch levels as needed, and do so all the time. Even the simplest cases, like saying, "That's not what 'literally' means," betray an ability to temporarily, on-the-fly, conjure a meta-language we'll dispose of when we're done, which might be at the end of a single sentence. This is not so far from where Davidson lands, that people only ever speak local, temporary, negotiated shared languages, not some capital-L Language. And oddly, this starts to look like the scenario in (1) there.

It is interesting that our ways of talking about pain, for instance. can evolve, despite the experiences being broadly constant through human history.

One thing that might be useful to add to this discussion is the importance of inference-making. I mean one way - perhaps the only way - to 'coordinate' between meanings is to check if we make the same inferences, or if the same implications follow from one's use of that word. If I say 'I am in pain', and start athletically jumping over fences and smiling and saying 'no it doesn't hurt', one can reasonably suspect that I am using 'pain' in a way at odds which how one usually uses the word pain. However, if I start doubling over, grimacing, looking uncomfortable, etc, one can reasonably suspect that I'm using the word 'pain' how it is usually done.

Importantly, it's not a given that the 'athletic response' is entirely nonsensical. Maybe someone thought me that 'pain' means something other ('happy'?), or I misread the word 'pain' in a book and mistook it for something else. Or else one might intentionally be trying to subvert the meaning of pain, perhaps for some kind of in-joke or some other reason ("look I'm in pain haha" - maybe someone's bullying someone in pain?). In any case, the expression 'pain' is just one 'unit' in an entire ensemble of words and action, which, taken together, 'realize' the meaning of the word pain (the elements of this ensemble is, in principle, inexhaustible).

That's why how one uses a word doesn't always mean that one is using it correctly. It's also true of groups of people, for e.g., if certain religious groups use a word in a particular way, that doesn't mean they're using it correctly. People forget that although language-games tell us a lot about correct usage, they're are not necessarily good indicators.

I'm not sure what 'correctly' means in this context. All the uses of 'pain' I sketched could be said to be 'correct' if generalizable ('publicizable').

I'm not sure what 'correctly' means in this context. All the uses of 'pain' I sketched could be said to be 'correct' if generalizable ('publicizable'). — StreetlightX

I'm not necessarily criticizing your post, but only pointing out that use is not always a good indicator of the correct use of a word. Some people who read Wittgenstein necessarily equate meaning with use when it's not always the case. This same problem arises when we say that meaning has to be seen in context; and while it's true that both of these play an important role, we don't want to be absolutist about it.

The word correct has it's own problems, but generally we know if someone is using the word pain correctly or incorrectly. If for e.g., I'm learning English words and I confuse the use of the word pain with being happy, then it's clearly incorrect. This of course doesn't always mean that it's clear that a word is used correctly, sometimes people are just confused about the use of a word. Moreover, if I make a claim that a word is not used correctly, it's incumbent on me to demonstrate how it's incorrect. I've been making the claim that Christians generally use the word soul incorrectly, because much of the time it's exactly like Wittgenstein's beetle-in-the-box.

Perhaps I missed it, but one point that doesn't seem to come out clearly in your exchange is that language use includes non-linguistic elements, which include private, personal, phenomenal experiences -- however you'd like to put that. People's actual pain is part of the "talking about pain" language-game -- even if only by its absence, as in shamming, lying, exaggerating, etc., and its absence would be important. (The blocks too are part of the builders game.) — Srap Tasmaner

I agree with this absolutely. One of the motivations I had with picking a bone with @Sam26 was to draw attention to the undercurrents of language. There's a lot of expressive, delicious and vital parts of language use that are pulled along by them.

When you have the (( (language game) background ) form of life) schema, it's easy to remove all the passions and ambiguities from use by bracketing them in background and form of life, with the means of bracketing being epistemic access and the public/private distinction. The public/private distinction and that all language is public(izeable) is all well and good, but it's often used in a manner which displaces attention from the background and forms of life and onto followed rules. At least by us armchair philosophers on here.

My posts tried to achieve this by situating the public/private distinction within the use of language and that, often, we spend our time wantonly disregarding it by bringing how the beetle rattles about into the realm of sense. This changes the beetle; passions, moods, sensations, dispositions; from a passive exterior of sense to its guide.

As Banno puts it, we spend our time effing the ineffable.