No. It means nothing. — Banno
The original version of intuition pump #3: the inverted spectrum (Locke, 1690: II, xxxii, 15) is a speculation about two people: how do I know that you and I see the same subjective color when we look at something? Since we both learned color words by being shown public colored objects, our verbal behavior will match even if we experience entirely different subjective colors. — Dennett
Make a point. — Banno
A logical condition of what? Or, what do you mean by a "logical condition"? — Luke
I take it there is a particular way things seem to you at particular times, including the way things look, sound, smell, taste and touch. Simply because science cannot directly observe this particular way things seem to you, and/or simply because no direct intersubjective comparison is available, does not make these into "ghostly entities". — Luke
It is only a subject who has a perspective of the world (object), so how can this be a rejection or replacement of the subject/object duality? It seems more like a bolstering of it. — Luke
Yes, but could B&W Mary know what yellow looks like before seeing it? — Marchesk
So take "I enjoy spicy food", I believe Dennett would see that as quite unproblematic. I can taste things, I can have taste preferences. I have a taste preference for spicy food. But what he would see as problematic is an unrestricted commitment to the existence of tastes, spiciness feelings and so on. As if spiciness, enjoyment as we typically conceive of them are somehow instantiated in my mind and body. — fdrake
Take "fdrake enjoys spicy food", when I write that I've got a few memories associated with it, and I'm attributing an a pattern of behaviour and sensation to myself. I've made a whole type out of "spicy food", but in particular I had some memories of flavours from a vindaloo I'd had a few years ago and the burrito I'd described previously. The particulars of the flavour memories didn't really matter (I can give both more and different "supporting evidence" for the statement), as I'm summarising my engagement with an aggregate of foods, feelings and eating behaviours with discriminable characteristics (sensations, flavour profiles, event memories) etc. — fdrake
306. Why ever should I deny that there is a mental process? It is only that “There has just taken place in me the mental process of remembering . . .” means nothing more than “I have just remembered . . .” To deny the mental process would mean to deny the remembering; to deny that anyone ever remembers anything.
305. “But you surely can’t deny that, for example, in remembering, an inner process takes place.” — What gives the impression that we want to deny anything? When one says, “Still, an inner process does take place here” — one wants to go on: “After all, you see it.” And it is this inner process that one means by the word “remembering”. — The impression that we wanted to deny something arises from our setting our face against the picture of an ‘inner process’. What we deny is that the picture of an inner process gives us the correct idea of the use of the word “remember”. Indeed, we’re saying that this picture, with its ramifications, stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is.
Ineffability of experience as a feature of the descriptive strategies we adopt regarding experience, rather than of the abstract entities we are committed to when using those strategies. Analogously, the computer's exact reaction to my call command for "2+2" is also practically ineffable; there are thousands of transistors coming on and off, there are allocation patterns for memory etc; and not because it's trying to express the natural number 2 added to the natural number 2 producing the natural number 4 through the flawed media of binary representations and changes in voltage states of transistors. — fdrake
A perspective (or a point-of-view) is a logical precondition for making natural distinctions and observing things. — Andrew M
Alice points the camera, presses the button and the camera takes the picture. That's a physical process. At the end of that process, Alice has a snapshot of the landscape from a particular perspective. — Andrew M
She can't be standing everywhere, and she can't be standing nowhere. — Andrew M
Intersubjective comparison is available via public language. — Andrew M
We can both agree that the stick appears bent (when partly submerged in water) because we can point to actual bent sticks and recognize the superficial similarity. — Andrew M
Similarly, normally-sighted people can distinguish red, green and yellow apples, so there's nothing ineffable in saying that red and green apples appear dim yellow for dichromatics. And the dichromatic will agree they all appear dim yellow. That the dichromatic lacks the ability to distinguish these three colors is a kind of privacy in practice, but not in principle, since their lack of color discrimination has a physical basis. — Andrew M
What I'm arguing for is that our experiences are not radically private or ineffable (which our public language attests to) — Andrew M
and also that we represent the world from a particular perspective (since our public language reflects the natural distinctions we make when we observe and interact in the world). — Andrew M
The point is that our qualia may be different despite using the same colour words, so I'm questioning what you claim we "agree on". — Luke
The point is that our qualia may be different despite using the same colour words, so I'm questioning what you claim we "agree on".
— Luke
How could you possibly ever determine that? You can't — Banno
and hence it is an irrelevance.
When my wife tells me it is violet, the conclusion is not that she is seeing a different colour to me, but that I have mis-used the word "blue". — Banno
It is still a possibility that our qualia may be different. — Luke
Qualia may be irrelevant to language use - as Wittgenstein notes with his private language argument - but I don’t consider qualia irrelevant to philosophy of mind. — Luke
There is no sense in which the notion that "the quali could be different" could be meaningful. It cannot have a role in a language game. — Banno
But don't complain that there is a problem of consciousness here. — Banno
There is no sense in which the notion that "the quali could be different" could be meaningful. It cannot have a role in a language game.
— Banno
What cannot have a role in the language game? Qualia? I thought it was the subject of this discussion.
With regards to intuition pump #3, you know what is being indicated by "we experience entirely different subjective colors", don't you? I assume you must, since you asserted in your previous post that we can't "ever determine that".
I take it that you know how pain feels and how the colour red looks to you, even though it is not from your own case that the words "pain" or "red" get their meaning. What is "how pain feels to you" or "how red looks to you" - an illusion? Meaningless gibberish? Can't we talk about how red looks to a colour-blind person or to someone with cerebral achromatopsia? Surely the private language argument excludes something (whatever it may be) from providing the basis for linguistic meaning. — Luke
"Qualia"" is the name of all that? — creativesoul
"Qualia" is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. — Dennett, Quining Qualia (opening line)
Indeed; and in much the same way that the subject of Antigonish is the little man who wasn't there, or the Jabberwock the subject of Jabberwocky. — Banno
I understand that you want to argue against the "view from nowhere". I'm not trying to argue for it, but I don't think that you can just stipulate having a perspective as a pre-condition. But perhaps I'm not understanding your point. — Luke
I can't directly show you my perceptions or sensations, and neither can anyone else. — Luke
We can do that, but it's not directly comparing our perceptions or sensations. Consider Locke's spectrum inversion: Since we both learned colour words by being shown public coloured objects, our verbal behavior will match even if we experience entirely different subjective colours. It seems to me more likely that what "straight" and "bent" looks like to you will be the same as what they look like to me, but the same issue could apply if only as a matter of degree (or perhaps if I had some sort of condition or brain malfunction that made me see differently than most people). — Luke
I don't disagree that our minds have a physical basis, but I don't see why the same "privacy in practice" doesn't equally apply to everyone, including statistically "normal" people. This could be another case of spectrum inversion, in principle. — Luke
What I'm arguing for is that our experiences are not radically private or ineffable (which our public language attests to)
— Andrew M
How does our public language attest to the fact that you see the same colour as I do when we both refer to "red"? How can our public language help to show me your sensations? — Luke
and also that we represent the world from a particular perspective (since our public language reflects the natural distinctions we make when we observe and interact in the world).
— Andrew M
I don't believe that it is a "particular perspective", unless you mean some ideal, statistically normal "average person" - which is not a view from nowhere, but not a view from somewhere, either. — Luke
There is no sense in which the notion that "the quali could be different" could be meaningful — Banno
Let's make a game about Prefflings; were the game is to answer the question "what is a Preffling?" The game spins by itself, never making contact. — Banno
Are you an eliminative materialist? — Luke
Painted using a matte house paint with the least possible gloss, on stretched canvas, 3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide, in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
An anti-war statement displaying the terror and suffering of people and animals.
Two ways of talking about the very same thing.
Do we need to reduce one to the other?
Philosophy is a jigsaw puzzle.
Descartes thought the best way to finish the puzzle was to start by finding the corners. The corners are fixed, he thought, so if we get them in place, we can work our way around the edge by finding the straight edges, and work our way into the middle. He argued that "I think therefore I am" was a corner.
Other folk thought he was mistaken. They looked for other corners. A priori concepts, perhaps; or dialectic, or the Will, or falsification, or logic, language, choice... And on and on
Wittgenstein's contribution consists in his pointing out that this particular jigsaw does not have corners, nor edges. There are always bits that are outside any frame we might set up. And further, we don't really need corners and edges anyway. We can start anywhere and work in any direction. We can work on disjointed parts, perhaps bringing them together, perhaps not. We can even make new pieces as we go. — Philosophy is a jigsaw puzzle. Descartes thought the best way to finish the puzzle was to start by finding the corners. The corners are fixed, he thought, so if we get them in place, we can work our way around the edge by finding the straight edges, and work our way into the middle. He argued that
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