The philosophy of mind and for that matter psychology is riddled with technical terms and terms used in special technical senses, "qualia", "visual experience", "percept" , "mental state", "representation" etc etc. I know from bitter experience that not all philosophers using the same terms use them to mean the same things, even if they think they are doing so.

Well, I would start by asking both Chalmers and Dennett what they mean by "qualia", after all, clever as they undoubtedly are, they are not immune to conceptual confusion and this might be revealed when we push them to express what they mean. — jkg20

If it were just the two of them creating a new thread on here, sure. But it's been an ongoing debate among many philosophers for several decades now. So if it were just a conceptual confusion, you would think someone would have pointed that out by now, and all the rest of the philosophers engaged in the debate would have been like, "Oh yeah! How did I not see that? Moving along ...".

But that doesn't happen. So either Witty diagnosed some really deep and difficult problem with philosophy. One that's hard to root out. Or his approach doesn't work for long standing and well known disputes, because maybe they're about something more than proper use of language.

The thing is that it's not like professional philosophers don't know about Wittgenstein, or Carnap or Sextus. And the other thing is that determining how correct Witty was depends, at least in part, on analyzing his language use. And there is some disagreement over that.

But maybe philosophers are just a cursed lot who love to argue.

If it were just the two of them creating a new thread on here, sure. But it's been an ongoing debate among many philosophers for several decades now. So if it were just a conceptual confusion, you would think someone would have pointed that out by now, and all the rest of the philosophers engaged in the debate would have been like, "Oh yeah! How did I not see that? Moving along ...". — Marchesk

I don't think so. There could well be systematic reasons why some conceptual disputes can't get cleared up, because we lack the cognitive ability to understand how we're confused, or to see how people think differently from each other, or use words semantically blindly. In fact that seems plausible, since lots of conceptual disputes just sort of go on forever.

Alternatively, it could be that only questions that are conceptually confused in this way in perpetuity are labeled philosophical, so by definition philosophical questions are conceptually confused without resolution.

Well, consensus amongst dissenting parties doesn't guarantee anything and some of the most well known philsophers are renowned for changing their minds after many years. In any case you seem to allow that analysis of language use can be a useful tool at least at the beginning of a debate. But if a tool can be used, it can be used well or badly. I'm not saying this is the case, but perhaps Chalmers and Dennett did not use those tools effectively at the outset. The only way we could ascertain that they did or did not, would be to go back to what they say and apply those tools once again.

But if a tool can be used, it can be used well or badly. I'm not saying this is the case, but perhaps Chalmers and Dennett did not use those tools effectively at the outset. The only way we could ascertain that they did or did not, would be to go back to what they say and apply those tools once again. — jkg20

But popular debates usually have a long history with people coming at them from many different angles. We could go back and say, well Chalmers messed up here using that terminology, and Dennett failed to understand the argument there, and so on. But what about Nagel, Frank, etc? They all present their own arguments and starting points.

Well, consensus amongst dissenting parties doesn't guarantee anything and some of the most well known philsophers are renowned for changing their minds after many years. — jkg20

If there can't even be a consensus on whether getting clear about language resolves philosophical disputes, then why suppose it does?

don't think so. There could well be systematic reasons why some conceptual disputes cant get cleared up, because we lack the cognitive ability to understand — Snakes Alive

Cognitive closure is one possibility that McGinn has put forward for difficult philosophical problems. But it's not a very popular position, because it smacks of "mysterianism", and if you can ask a question, you should have the means to answer it, in principle. A dog doesn't understand relativity because it can't grasp the concepts. A dog can't even ask questions about it. Or so the counter argument goes.

In any case you seem to allow that analysis of language use can be a useful tool at least at the beginning of a debate. — Snakes Alive

Sure, I'm not saying it's not useful or not important to philosophy. I'm expressing my skepticism that most philosophical debates are really about language misuse, and thus can be resolved by proper linguistic analysis. Or at least not the long-standing metaphysical ones, because those have been expressed in so many ways across cultures and different languages. You would think that if the realism/idealism debate was fundamentally a language mistake, then somebody would have pointed that out long ago, dissolving the matter.

@Luke,@Snakes Alive,@jkg20
Let's take an example from a real life incident that remains a mystery. The Dyatlov Pass is where nine Russian ski-hikers died during a 1959 winter trek in the Ural mountains. There are 70 some theories, and bunch of books on Amazon you can read on the case. The original investigation concluded that some unknown compelling force was responsible. The lead investigator, interviewed decades later, said that "fire orbs" were involved, but the higher ups wanted to shut down the investigation.

Something real did happen to those hikers. But the evidence is insufficient to decide which theory proposed so far, or even category of theory, is correct. So the debate continues on for those who remain interested, like with Jack the Ripper or other famous unsolved cases.

So what does that have to do with philosophy? It's an example where the ongoing debate is not one of language, and it won't be solved by analyzing terms used in the debate.

I agree with you that "lets look at how we use these words" should not be the be all and end all of philosophical analysis. Where I think we might disagree in indivdual cases is that some people, myself included by the way, would benefit from paying closer attention to how words are used, since sometimes they do misuse them, intentionally or otherwise and sometimes that misuse, if clarified, reveals errors.

That's true. My question is have there been substantial philosophical debates settled by demonstrating that the issue was a misuse of language? Certainly some people have been convinced this is the case, at least for some issues. But shouldn't that be logically provable for everyone? Or is that also a matter of linguistic debate?

I'm sure Dennett or Chalmers or whoever have made mistakes in their arguments, and misused words. But that doesn't mean the issue itself is resolved. If it is, I'd be curious to see examples.

My question is have there been substantial philosophical debates settled by demonstrating that the issue was a misuse of language?

Not to my knowledge. But I'm not sure that absence of evidence in this case can be taken to provide evidence of absence.

Not to my knowledge. But I'm not sure that absence of evidence in this case can be taken to provide evidence of absence. — jkg20

Reminds of that interesting NY Times article a few years back about how philosophers in general have failed to take the latter Wittgenstein's arguments seriously enough. Whether he was right or wrong, his position warranted serious investigation.

I'll admit that I tend to dismiss him out of hand because I just can't believe that substantial philosophical arguments are mostly just language on holiday.

I think some socalled Wittgensteinians can be dismissed out of hand, but I think the Philosophical Investigations is well worth reading.

You expect that Wittgenstein's philosophy should enable us to prevent deception? — Luke

Haha, that's funny. Philosophy has a long history of rooting out and exposing deception. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all addressed sophistry as a significant problem inherent within the educational institutions of the day. Then came skepticism. Now we have all sorts of modern attacks on deception, starting with Descartes. I believe that a philosophy with no principles for the recognition of deception, to distinguish real knowledge from fake knowledge, is useless, and not actually philosophy. But many, perhaps you, believe that philosophy is useless.

1: For the person feeling a pain, the pain sensations they have represent some other thing or process. — jkg20

I believe "process" is the better word here. And this is important to the topic of the thread, "idealism" because most forms of idealism represent ideas as static passive things. This is the problem Plato identified in Pythagorean idealism with the theory of participation, an inherent problem which Aristotle greatly expanded on to decisively refute that form of idealism. In this idealism,the thing being participated in, the idea is necessarily passive. That's a problem in metaphysics, which leads to the accusation by monists, that eternal ideas cannot have any causal affect in the world.

Also, as I tried to explain earlier, I would not call the sensation a representation. I think that this is a mistake which we get from Kant, who describes sensations as representations. From the philosophy of semiotics we can see that biological activities can be described in terms of "signs". The significance of a sign is described in terms of meaning, not in terms of representation. We can get some insight into this difference through Wittgenstein's two ways of describing meaning, as representation in the Tractatus, and as use in PI. We can understand that any sign, such as a word for example, has significance or meaning, which might or might not be accurately called a representation.

So, I first look at the sensation as a product, created by the biological systems. The biological systems use semiosis to create the sensation. Since we cannot conclude that the significance of a sign is necessarily as a representation, we cannot conclude that a sensation is a representation.

2: For that person to really be in pain, the pain sensation must correctly represent the presence or occurrence of that other thing. — jkg20

If my explanation of #1 wasn't complicated enough, this is where things start to get complex. For a person to be really "in pain", we need a definition of what constitutes "pain". So now we have to turn to the public use of language, as "pain" is a word in the public communication system, and we need to look for the so-called objective definition of pain. If we were staying within the private realm, I could have a sensation, and mark it as S, and every time I had a similar sensation I'd call it S. If my judgement was good, I'd have consistency, in what S refers to. But S would probably refer to something very specific, a head ache, a sore thumb, or any other specific sensation, like when I call another person or animal by a particular name. When we go to the public sphere however, we allow our words to have extremely generalized and vague meaning, because the application, usage, in communication rather than naming particular sensations, is extremely varied. If "pain" could only refer to a sore thumb, then we'd need another word for a sore finger, and sore toes, legs, hands, etc. So "pain" being a public word in the domain of communication, rather than a private sign for a person's own internal usage, has a significantly vague meaning.

Furthermore, we now have the issue of the internal process which is being referred to with the word "pain". To judge whether a person is really in pain or not, we are looking on as an external observer, with an understanding of the public word, "pain". So we would be judging whether the person's sensation corresponds with "pain" as defined. Therefore in judging whether the person is really experiencing pain, and what we would call "real pain", we do not even approach this internal relation between the sensation, and the thing which the sensation is symbolic of. To put this in Kant's terms, we are judging the phenomena, the sensation, we are not getting to the noumena. But I do not agree with Kant, that we cannot get to the noumena, we actually do get to them through the private experience of reflection, and apprehension of the intelligible objects themselves, directly as intelligible objects, as described by Plato.

But here we are faced with the incompatibility. The intelligible object presents itself to us in the form of a symbol, a sign, which is a static thing. The sign though symbolizes something active, a process. The true intelligible object is active. So we have a gap to bridge. The true thing-itself is the process which is symbolized by the sign. Idealism assumes a static "idea", and asserts that this static thing is the true intelligible object, which in its own interpretations it is, but this static thing can only be a sign, or symbol of the underlying process (a "representation" of it, which is not even properly called a representation), and that process remains within the realm of the unintelligible for idealism. But actually we do have access to this process, to understand it, through understanding this relation between the sign and the process, which people call "representation", but more properly known as significance or meaning, because a static thing cannot correctly represent an activity.

3: Where there is representation there is the possibility of misrepresentation. — jkg20

Yes, and the problem is far deeper than that simple representation you offer. What is called a "representation" is most likely not even a representation at all. Therefore we cannot start with the assumption of representation. This is the problem which Socrates demonstrate way back in Plato's Theaetetus, and Wittgenstein demonstrated in the Tractatus. If we start with the assumption that knowledge consists of representation, then knowledge must be correct, or "true" representation. Now we have Socrates' problem of how false representation is excluded from knowledge. It appears like it cannot be done. Now knowledge consists of both true and false representation, but that makes no sense to say that false representation could be knowledge. Therefore we ought to recognize that describing knowledge as representation is a mistake.

The concept of "description" becomes very important now. So we need to understand the difference between a description and a representation. We can use mathematics to make a model, a representation for example, but that representation is based on a description, it represents what has been described (observed). Now we need to proceed toward understanding what constitutes a description, an observation. Notice that we need to make available the apt terms, and this process of making them available is more a process of defining rather than representing. This is where Wittgenstein appears to stumble, by assuming that language in general has inherent limits, making some things impossible to understand, rather than allowing that it is limitless, and we only apply boundaries as necessary. However, to give Wittgenstein credit, he distinctly describes the latter in some passages, but he seems to always revert to the former. We can see in mathematics for example, the concept of infinite is intended to allow that anything can be counted.

4: So a person could be having pain sensations, but not actually be in pain because those sensations are incorrectly representing the presence of that other thing. — jkg20

The problem here is the double representation, what Plato called narrative, which he warned us against. "Pain" here is the public word, defined by public use. So in reality it refers to having pain sensations. If the person has pain sensations, then it is real pain. We could even allow a further layer of representation and say it refers to pain behaviour, like Luke suggests. But each layer of representation gets us further from the truth. If we go the other way now, to the deeper internal level of what the sensation is symbolic of within the person, we cannot properly use that term "pain" here, this would create equivocation and the potential for the appearance of contradiction.

That's what "the beetle in the box" analogy shows, the inclination to equivocate in this respect. In the private language, the person notes the sensation as S. But the sensation noted as S, is symbolic of something further, and this is called the "beetle". So "beetle" here refers to that further thing which is indicated by a particular sensation. In the public language there is also "beetle". But "beetle" here in the public language refers to a person's sensation. Notice that "beetle" now has two completely different validations. Do you see that if the person is feeling the sensation of pain, the presence of "the beetle", but the sensations are incorrectly representing the presence of that thing, the person is truly in the presence of "the beetle" according to the public usage, but not in the presence of "the beetle" according to the private sense, in which the sensation is supposed to represent that deeper thing.

If we're going to debate anything, we have to use language. That doesn't mean the thing being debated is dependent on language. — Marchesk

You're assuming there's something "out there" independent of our thoughts, words, and interrelations. While that may be the case in a Kantian sense, it makes no difference when discussing anything phenomenal. In that case, there's a contribution of the thinking mind -- always. Anything "beyond" this or "independent" of it we simply can't discuss.

So yes, what's debated is indeed partly dependent on language.

Analyzing the language usage of "social distance" and "flattening the curve" isn't going to tell us how long to continue to doing both, for example. That's a matter for the epidemiology of Covid-19 and health care capacity balanced against economic concerns. — Marchesk

And how do we determine how long? Well, using words -- but how do we determine? By using models and analyzing statistics. Epidemiology and medicine don't have a nomenclature? Is how long we social distance for really independent of words and their meanings? Of course not.

You seem to be framing the problem as if people and phemenoma "suspend" until we find the "right" definition, or something to that effect. That's obviously not the case, and no rational person will argue that, so why create an obvious straw man?

There's an enormous amount of interpretation that goes on, even in looking at the world. Study vision, and you'll see what I mean. So even on a non-verbal level, we're interpreting. Thus, the world does depend on us. Assuming there's something out there, independent of our being, has a long tradition - but as long as we're assuming a subject/object ontology, there's simply no denying that any object and thus any phenomena is a representation to us, is filtered through the brain and, thus, dependent on us in part.

Realism does zero good to resort to, nor have you made any clear arguments in its favor.

But that doesn't happen. So either Witty diagnosed some really deep and difficult problem with philosophy. One that's hard to root out. Or his approach doesn't work for long standing and well known disputes, because maybe they're about something more than proper use of language. — Marchesk

I have often suspected that Wittgenstein, when we finally "get over him," will be ignored rather than refuted.

That pretty much already happened – being a 'Wittgensteinian' is now just one more historical specialty. It's like Rorty said, the philosophical literature goes out of date every 10-20 yrs.

because most forms of idealism represent ideas as static passive things.

That might be the case for the kind of idealism that Berkeley advocated, although even that is not certain: I would need to see a detailed argument to convince me, not just some name dropping of millenia dead Athenians. As for Absolute idealism, the situation is even more complex, after all, central to many versions of it is the dynamic of the dialectic. But that aside, let us at least try to get me to understand at least one thing about your position.

We need to be very clear here that saying that one thing represents another does not entail that it is a representation of it. My lawyer can represent me in court, but he is not a representation of me. The point I want to get clear on about your position is whether you consider that the sensations of pain an individual feels has a representative function for that person, not whether those feelings of pain are representations or not. My expression of point 1 explicity did not call feelings of pain representations, it just described them as having a representative function. With that disinction in mind, do you accept 1 as it was stated, i.e, with the use of "thing" dropped:

1: For the person feeling a pain, the pain sensation they have represents some other process.

Yes, and the problem is far deeper than that simple representation you offer.

I've not offered any representation, by which I presume you mean "analysis of representation", deep or shallow, I'm just trying to pin down what your position actually is. We can then discuss the intricacies of what representation is, and how the concepts of representing and representation come apart, later on.

I've been out of the academic philosophy cycle for nearly two decades now, but Wittgenstein's influence was still very strong some fifty years after the publication of the last thing he ever even came close to considering worth publishing. You may be in a better position than I am to know: has that influence evapourated over the last twenty years? Rorty's influence, minimal at best, probably has by now, but I find it less credible to think that Wittgenstein's has. Of course, I could be wrong. I guess I could always go to jstor and see how many articles are being written about Wittgenstein and compare them to how many Rorty has motivated.

It hasn't evaporated, but my sense is that Wittgensteinians are seen now more as a particular in-group, or as a cult by those who don't like them. The dominant forces in analytic philosophy are mainstream ethics, metaphysics, and phil. language – Williamson, Sider, Lewis, and whoever the ethicists are these days. That sort of thing. The big Wittgensteinians are around, like Horwich, but they're sort of considered weirdos now, and a lot of people casually talk about how they hate the late Wittgenstein.

And yeah, I think you're right, Rorty is not going to be a lasting influence on analytics. I see him as the culmination and also last gasp of the Moore – positivist – ordinary language – pragmatist line, which is now out of fashion in favor of a return to naïve and fairly professionalized / scholastic logic-chopping.

The point I want to get clear on about your position is whether you consider that the sensations of pain an individual feels has a representative function for that person, not whether those feelings of pain are representations or not. My expression of point 1 explicity did not call feelings of pain representations, it just described them as having a representative function. With that disinction in mind, do you accept 1 as it was stated, i.e, with the use of "thing" dropped: — jkg20

You seem to be changing the subject. Having a "representative function" implies being used for a representative purpose. So if you are asking whether the sensation has a representative function for the person experiencing the sensation, then you are asking whether the person uses the sensation for a representative purpose. I would say that in most cases the answer is no. An individual accepts the sensation for what it is, as a sensation, and does not seek the meaning behind it. It is only when a person investigates, to seek the meaning behind the sensation, that the person will move to establish a relationship between the sensation, and what lies behind it. In this case, the person might assign a representative purpose to the sensation, employing the sensation as a representation in an attempt to understand the underlying thing. This is what I think is wrong. The sensation is not a representation in its natural relationship with the underlying thing, so to employ it as a representation, (describe it that way or define it that way as a premise) for the purpose of proceeding with a logical investigation of the underlying thing, would be a mistake.

So the short answer, is yes, the sensation may have a representative function. But a function is dependent on a purpose. And if the goal or purpose is to understand the underlying thing, then I think it is a mistake to give the sensation a representative function. To use your lawyer analogy, you could hire a carpenter to represent you in court, therefore the carpenter would have a representative function, but that would be a mistake.

We can then discuss the intricacies of what representation is, and how the concepts of representing and representation come apart, later on. — jkg20

As you can see, I think looking into representation would be to head in the wrong direction. And if the concepts of representing, and representation, run into difficulties or "come apart", I'm not at all surprised.

Haha, that's funny. Philosophy has a long history of rooting out and exposing deception. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all addressed sophistry as a significant problem inherent within the educational institutions of the day. Then came skepticism. Now we have all sorts of modern attacks on deception, starting with Descartes. I believe that a philosophy with no principles for the recognition of deception, to distinguish real knowledge from fake knowledge, is useless, and not actually philosophy. But many, perhaps you, believe that philosophy is useless. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have no idea why you would expect Wittgenstein's philosophy to help you identify when people are pretending to be in pain. This is not something Wittgenstein was attempting to do. None of the philosophers you mention above did so, either. You might as well complain that Kant didn't write a cookbook.

Sider is a new name to me, must look her or him up. Williamson and Lewis, particularly the latter, were influential even when I was mixed up in the business. There was even a danger of a Lewis cult growing up, which I heard gathered some speed after he died. The hositiliy to Wittgenstein from logic chopping analytic philosophers was always around, ironically in a particularly fierce and sometimes cruel manner in Cambridge, he seemed to be more palatable in Oxford. Even so, there were a number of genuine logic choppers around (at least in the UK) back then, Dummett, Champlin and Budd come to mind, who had a great deal of respect for the later Wittgenstein's work, so I never really understood the hostility to Wittgenstein himself, although I admit some people who claimed to be Wittgensteinians could come across a little like the philosophical equivalents of Jehova's Witnesses, or those Buddhists who want you to buy a rose.

You seem to be changing the subject. Having a "representative function" implies being used for a representative purpose.

I'm really not trying intentionally to change the subject, I am just trying to get to an understanding of what you mean. The route might be meandering, but I retain a glimmer of hope of reaching the destination. In any case, it was you that introduced the idea of representation in relation to the whole "beetle" / "pain" discussion:

It can't be more than a representation of my beetle, which may or may not be an accurate representation.

Anyway, let us drop the subject of representation and representing and so on for the moment and let me try a different tack. What would help me understand your position would be a response to the following requests:

You seem to have reached the opinion that there is some third process involved in pain that most people are ignorant of. Would you be able to express that opinion as the conclusion of a deductively valid argument? If so, would you do me the favour of giving that deductively valid argument, with precisesly articulated and numbered premises and do so, if possible, without name dropping any philosophers or philosophical movements? If, on the other hand, the opinion is one that cannot be reached by the route of a deductively valid argument, why do you think that is so?

Please do not read into these requests a belief on my part of the sacrosanctity of deductive logic, it is one philsosophical tool amongst others. It is, however, a tool that I am thoroughly comfortable handling, and if you yourself can use that tool to show how you reached your conclusion, it would greatly help me understand what you are trying to say.

Addendum to the above:
I should perhaps be precise in what I mean by a "deductively valid argument", since I am demanding precision from you. I mean an argument consisting of premises which, if all true, can be shown to lead (through the use of standard logical rules of inference such as modus tollens, modus ponens, contradiction, universal and existential substitution and so on) to the truth of the conclusion.

You seem to have reached the opinion that there is some third process involved in pain that most people are ignorant of. Would you be able to express that opinion as the conclusion of a deductively valid argument? If so, would you do me the favour of giving that deductively valid argument, with precisesly articulated and numbered premises and do so, if possible, without name dropping any philosophers or philosophical movements? If, on the other hand, the opinion is one that cannot be reached by the route of a deductively valid argument, why do you think that is so? — jkg20

This would be an argument from causation, similar to some arguments used to demonstrate the necessity of God, which might or might not be acceptable to you. Would you agree that the existence of anything requires a cause? Would you agree that pain is something? If so, then the sensation of pain must have a cause.

At first glance, you might think ok, the cause of pain is some physiological processes, let's say it is damage to the living body which causes pain. But that description wouldn't account for the defining feature of pain which is that it is an unpleasant feeling, one we try to avoid. I can cause damage to all kinds of things, without causing that unpleasant feeling within myself, so the cause of pain cannot be described that way. Therefore, to account for the cause of pain, we need to account for what is essential to that feeling, according to accepted definition, and this is the unpleasantness of the feeling. What causes the unpleasantness of the feeling is unknown.

So, I have presented two deductive arguments above. The first, quite basic, two premises with the conclusion that pain has a cause, so I won't bother numbering the premises. The second concerns the unknown nature of the cause. This argument is a bit more complicated because the first premise is that to understand the cause of pain, we must start with an acceptable definition of "pain". The second is that the defining feature of pain, that it is "unpleasant" , has a cause which is unknown. The cause of "unpleasantness" is unknown. From this argument we can conclude that the cause of pain is unknown.
1. Pain is an unpleasant feeling.
2. The cause of "unpleasantness" is unknown.
C. The cause of pain is unknown.

Please do not read into these requests a belief on my part of the sacrosanctity of deductive logic, it is one philsosophical tool amongst others. It is, however, a tool that I am thoroughly comfortable handling, and if you yourself can use that tool to show how you reached your conclusion, it would greatly help me understand what you are trying to say. — jkg20

Deductive logic is the best tool. However, to do its job, it requires clearly expressed premises which may be analyzed, criticized part by part, and judged for soundness. The problem being that the foundational premises are always derived from something other than deductive logic. And these must be well understood in order that the deductive argument may be judged for soundness.

So your request for a deductive argument is very good because it makes me lay out the premises, so that we can determine what principles support the premises.

Thank you. That has considerably cleared things up for me, and I feel a little more comfortable that I know what you are getting at.

So if we amalgamate the two arguments we have something like this I won't bother mentioning the actual rules of inference in use:
Premise 1. All things and processes that exist have a cause.
Premise 2. Pain is a thing that exists.
Lemma 1. From Premise 1 and 2, Pain has a cause.
Premise 3. Pain is an unpleasant feeling.
Premise 4. The cause of an unpleasant feeling is unknown.
Conclusion, From Lemma 1, Premise 3 and Premise 4, the cause of pain is unknown.

I think there are probably some people who will disagree with Premise 1, but there are already "something from nothing" discussions underway elsewhere on the forum, so I won't pick up on that here. Also, Premise 2 and Premise 3 seem true. I know that some people might try pointing out that masochists might enjoy pain and actually seek it out, so it is not unpleasant for everyone, but we could probably just replace "unpleasant" with "a certain kind of" in premise 3 and I think we will remain faithful to your argument as a whole. In any case, as you probably guessed, what I want to focus on is premise 4.

Let's take a particular case of pain, the one I have right now as I pinch myself pretty hard. It is pretty mild as pain goes, I'm not willing to go to extremes to make a philosophical point, but I am certainly feeling something unpleasant. Now I feel really tempted to say that I know what the cause of this unpleasant feeling is, it is me pinching myself, and if I am asked how I know that this is the cause I will say something along the lines "well, it started when I started pinching myself and it peters away when I stop pinching myself".

Now, this seems to be the kind of counterexample to premise 4 that you are trying to preempt in this paragraph.

At first glance, you might think ok, the cause of pain is some physiological processes, let's say it is damage to the living body which causes pain. But that description wouldn't account for the defining feature of pain which is that it is an unpleasant feeling, one we try to avoid. I can cause damage to all kinds of things, without causing that unpleasant feeling within myself, so the cause of pain cannot be described that way. Therefore, to account for the cause of pain, we need to account for what is essential to that feeling, according to accepted definition, and this is the unpleasantness of the feeling. What causes the unpleasantness of the feeling is unknown.

Is your claim then, that I cannot know that pinching myself is the cause of the pain because I cannot know how it causes the pain? That seems like quite an ask as a general principle for being able to know what a cause of an event is. After all, it seems reasonable to suppose that I can know that the cause of my car starting is my turning the ignition key, without my having to know the details of how internal combustion engines work. I can also know that my spilling a cup of coffee on my laptop caused it to stop working without knowing the first thing about computer hardware.

I think it is pretty clear that you will find something wrong headed in the examples I have just given, so I guess what I am asking from you now is something along the lines of turning that paragraph of yours I just quoted, into a deductively valid argument which has Premise 4 as its conclusion, so I can see precisely where you think I am going wrong.

s your claim then, that I cannot know that pinching myself is the cause of the pain because I cannot know how it causes the pain? That seems like quite an ask as a general principle for being able to know what a cause of an event is. After all, it seems reasonable to suppose that I can know that the cause of my car starting is my turning the ignition key, without my having to know the details of how internal combustion engines work. I can also know that my spilling a cup of coffee on my laptop caused it to stop working without knowing the first thing about computer hardware. — jkg20

The issue is this. If the essence of "pain", the defining feature, is that it is a certain type of feeling, (in this case an unpleasant feeling), then to know the cause of pain in any particular instance, (in this case the instance of pinching yourself), is to know what causes the feeling in that instance, to be of the specified type (unpleasant). Can you say that you know what causes the feeling you get when you pinch yourself, to be of that specified type (unpleasant). As I suggested, we could turn to the fact that the act of pinching is damaging to your body, but damage to a body is not sufficient to account for the feeling of pain, because things can be damaged without causing that feeling.

The issue here is that we have to address the reason why some feelings are identifiable and distinguishable from other feelings as a particular type. This requires that we produce an acceptable notion of what a feeling is, which allows for different types. So, #4 premise deals with "pain" as an identifiable type of feeling. To know the cause of "pain" in general, is to know what makes some feelings distinguishable from other feelings, and identifiable as pain. So I think your example is a sort of category mistake. A combustion engine has no feelings. You might try to make it a sort anology, saying that the electrical activity is comparable to "feelings", and the car knows how to distinguish between being turned on and being turned off, but I would say that's a poor analogy

As I suggested, we could turn to the fact that the act of pinching is damaging to your body, but damage to a body is not sufficient to account for the feeling of pain, because things can be damaged without causing that feeling.

In the particular instance of my pinching myself, why is it not a sufficient account of my feelingthat specific pain? I can strike a match and it produces a flame. Sometimes I can strike a match and the flame is not produced. But where I strike a match and the flame is produced, it would seem sufficient to account for that flames presence that I struck the match. Premise 4 is the claim that I cannot know the cause of pain. My claim is simply that sometimes I can.

To know the cause of "pain" in general, is to know what makes some feelings distinguishable from other feelings, and identifiable as pain

Are you suggesting that there is a general cause of pain? Why do you think that? From my own case, many different things cause me pain. There might be a general characteristic of pain, certainly, otherwise I would not be able to recognize the painful feelings. But why should all causes of pain share a general characteristic as well? Like effects must have like causes does not seem like a particularly tenable general principle. Perhaps, however, it is not that principle you are relying on. If you could give me the deductive argument for premise 4, perhaps I could see things more clearly.

In the particular instance of my pinching myself, why is it not a sufficient account of my feelingthat specific pain? I can strike a match and it produces a flame. Sometimes I can strike a match and the flame is not produced. But where I strike a match and the flame is produced, it would seem sufficient to account for that flames presence that I struck the match. Premise 4 is the claim that I cannot know the cause of pain. My claim is simply that sometimes I can. — jkg20

Because we have to account for why the feeling produced is pain and not pleasure or some other feeling. Similarly, with the match, we need to account for why striking the match produces fire, and not water, air, or something else.

Are you suggesting that there is a general cause of pain? Why do you think that? — jkg20

When numerous different things have something in common, it makes sense to think that there is a common cause. When things are hot, for example, the common cause is the activity of the molecules. when things are red there is a similar cause. So when different feelings have something in common, pain, it makes sense to think that there is a common cause to the pain. Here's another example. Consider that each time you see a different scenario in front of you, this is a different sensation. But all these sensations have something in common, they are instances of sight. So it makes sense to think that they all have a similar cause. The cause of the sensation of sight is the activity of your eyes and brain.

From my own case, many different things cause me pain. — jkg20

You are not looking at the pain itself here, the fact that the feeling is an unpleasant feeling is what makes it pain. As I explained above, we cannot look at the physical injury, and say that this is the cause of the pain, because physical injury is insufficient to account for the feeling of pain, the unpleasantness.

So, you have many different things which you associate with pain, but you cannot say that these things are the cause of pain. In fact, it makes no sense to say that all these different cause the same thing, pain. Take the example of sight, above. it makes no sense to say that all those different things which you see, cause the sensation of sight, because you have organs and a neurological system which really cause that sensation. Likewise it's nonsense to say that all these different things you associate with pain cause the pain, because you have organs and a neurological system which really cause the sensation of pain. We have numerous senses. You would not say that the thing seen causes the sensation of sight. So in the case of a tactile sense, why would you say that the thing which touches you causes the sensation of pain?

Like effects must have like causes does not seem like a particularly tenable general principle. — jkg20

I think if you look at the world around you, you'll see that the principle is very tenable. It's the basis of science and predictability. When there is similarity in the occurrence of complex events, it's not a matter of random chance or coincidence, and this allows us to produce scientific laws, and make predictions.

Perhaps, however, it is not that principle you are relying on. If you could give me the deductive argument for premise 4, perhaps I could see things more clearly. — jkg20

We are not in the ream of deduction any more, we have moved into inductive principles. But that's what happens when we get to the bottom of a deductive argument, we get to the foundational premises which cannot have been produced by deduction. Otherwise we'd have an infinite regress of deductive arguments producing premises, because the premise of each argument would be produced by deduction and so on. So we must judge those basic premises by other means.