The taste is a public concept. The experience is a unique set of memories, emotions, desires, sematic associations etc resulting from the taste. — Isaac
Wow - all that results from a public concept? — Luke
Yes. Is there some limit you had in mind to the number of things a public concept can be party to? — Isaac
I can't possibly think one thing is 'sweet' whilst other people think a different thing is 'sweet', otherwise there's no public meaning of 'sweet' for us to use and the word ceases to have any function. I might be able to detect sweetness in something that other people cannot, but what sweetness is must be public. — Isaac
"phenol-thio-urea., a substance which tastes very bitter to three-fourths of humanity, and as tasteless as water to the rest. Is it bitter?" — Luke
How do you know phenol-thio-urea is a substance which tastes very bitter to three-fourths of humanity, and as tasteless as water to the rest if we don't have a public meaning for 'bitter'? — Isaac
Why must it come down to a matter of ability? — Luke
Public meaning. If it weren't public concepts and our ability to detect them, then we'd have nothing to speak of and would never have learnt the term for the concept in the first place. — Isaac
So why does it seem like we see colours? — Luke
Because there's a public word for them. We're there no word, you'd be less likely to think you see colours. — Isaac
You've suggested that a taste experience is "a unique set of memories, emotions, desires, sematic associations etc" that results from a public concept. I would have thought that a taste experience resulted from eating or drinking instead. — Luke
the example of phenolthiourea that Dennett gives shows that not everyone agrees that it is 'bitter'. — Luke
How do we "detect" public concepts? I thought we just learned to use them. — Luke
Your position is that we don't really see colours, it only seems like we do because of our language? Then how and/or why did the English-speaking community come up with these concepts? — Luke
I'm not sure what bearing you're expecting the fact that you 'would have thought' taste experiences result from eating or drinking to have on the matter. — Isaac
Whether something is 'bitter' and what 'bitter' means are two different things. we might all agree what 'interesting' means, that doesn't mean we all agree on what things are 'interesting'. — Isaac
I'm sure you're right; taste is only a concept and has nothing to do with eating or drinking. — Luke
How can something have a bitter taste if taste is only a concept? — Luke
Are you going to argue that “red” and “bitter” and such are similar to “hello” in that they are simply words that do things, and they don’t need a referent? — khaled
What I would ask you to consider is that the deep grammar of "I have a pain in my hand" is not so much like "I have an apple in my hand" as it is like "Ouch!" That is, that it does not work by referring so much as by exclaiming. — Banno
But the question remains: How do you teach someone what pain is without them ever being in pain? — khaled
how would we ever learn what word to use if the only thing they referred to was private experiences? — Isaac
All we have is someone who obviously doesn't know all there is to know about red and you're assuming the reaction would be the same in someone who does know all there is to know about red. That's just begging the question. — Isaac
I don't think I've ever denied that our full experience at any given time may not be perfectly communicable. — Isaac
There's no evidence at all that you feel it at the time, phenomenologically. — Isaac
If one of those responses is to reach for the word 'redness' or talk about qualia, that's no reason to draw any ontological conclusion. I could train a parrot to say 'red' every time a bell rings, doesn't mean it's having a phenomenological experience of 'red'. — Isaac
So when the evidence we do have from neuroscience suggests that there's no such event — Isaac
So the colour-blind can't know that they're colour-blind? — Isaac
Ask a colour-blind person what it is that they don't see, they will answer "colours". — Isaac
If not, then it seems they know what colours are sufficiently to use the word. — Isaac
Complaints — Banno
How can something have a bitter taste if taste is only a concept? — Luke
By associating the concept with it. That's what 'having a bitter taste' means. — Isaac
The taste is a public concept. The experience is a unique set of memories, emotions, desires, sematic associations etc resulting from the taste. — Isaac
If someone has never seen something red before, but just has a list of words he memorized as "red objects" (for example blood) none of which he has seen does that person understand what "red" means? I would say no and I'm guessing you'd say yes. — khaled
Are you seriously suggesting that if the patient was a neurologist he wouldn't be surprised? I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that among those patients at least one knew how their own illness worked from a neurological perpsective and were still surprised. — khaled
Ok so we have this word "Experience" you assign the property "Ineffable" to. — khaled
I don't see where in your reply to Luke you showed this. — khaled
I want to know what, by your standard, would it take to say "Isaac is having the phenomenological experience of 'red'". — khaled
I don't see how neuroscience can provide any sort of evidence about phenomenology. — khaled
I don't see how that follows. Ask a colorblind person what "red" is and they'll probably think you're rude because you're pointing out that they don't know. — khaled
That is not the same thing as knowing what colors are. If I never studied topology, and you asked me what I don't know about math, and I said "Topology", do I know what topology is? — khaled
You said earlier that taste was a concept: — Luke
Now you're saying instead that (a bitter) taste is "associating the concept with it". — Luke
Photons hit the retina, they fire a chain of neurons in the V1, these (depending on previously cemented pathways) fire a chain of other neurons (with the important backward-acting filters). Some of these neurons represent things like the word 'red', images of other things which caused the same initial V! pattern, emotions attached to either the current image, or remembered ones... All this is held in working memory, which is then re-fired (selectively) by the hippocampus. It's this re-firing which we are aware of when we introspect, not the original chain. The colour red is a public concept. We use it to indicate to other people some category of thing, we learn which word to use by experiment in early childhood (retaining those uses which work), There's nothing more to 'red' than the public use of the word. — Isaac
Is it the theory that is physical, or what the theory is about (what it points to) that is physical, or both?When it comes to producing speculative hypotheses regarding the origins of life and consciousness physical theories are all we have, because only they are testable. That doesn't mean you can't speculate idealistically; it just means there is no way to test such speculations. — Janus
They'd be indistinguishable from your someone who'd never seen anything red. — Isaac
I don't know why you'd add something where there's no cause to. — Isaac
A neurologist does not know everything there is to know about red either. Just fractionally more. — Isaac
I didn't say ineffable. I said 'not perfectly communicable'. — Isaac
The paper I cited. — Isaac
Nothing. The sentence is nonsense. There's no such thing as 'the phenomenonological experience of 'red''. — Isaac
I could train a parrot to say 'red' every time a bell rings, doesn't mean it's having a phenomenological experience of 'red'. — Isaac
If you're just going to take everything you feel like is the case to actually be the case then there's no further work to do is there? — Isaac
The whole point of any investigation is premised entirely on the idea that what feels like it is the case might not actually be the case. If you're going to respond to any such suggestion with "but it doesn't feel like that's the case" — Isaac
Of course they know. "It's the colour of stop signs, blood, teacher's ink..." that's an answer a colour-blind person could give. — Isaac
A colour-blind person could say "pass me the red apples" and the same job would get done as if a normally sighted person said it. — Isaac
"topology" have they misused the word because their studies are incomplete? — Isaac
In behavior yes, but you know they have never seen anything red. I would say then that they don't understand the word. — khaled
The difference between anesthesia and paralysis — khaled
The surprise experienced by people when they first see something regardless of their empirical knowledge about it — khaled
The fact that doctors talk about qualia all the time (does it feel like stabbing or blunt force?)
etc — khaled
I never said "everything there is to know about red". — khaled
regardless of their empirical knowledge about it — khaled
I didn't say ineffable. I said 'not perfectly communicable'. — Isaac
Those are the same thing. — khaled
So far the only thing Lisa has said is that our emotional categories are man made and do not need to exist in nature. — khaled
It makes no sense to me to say somthing doesn't have X if X doesn't mean anything. — khaled
I say "it feels like X" you say "No it doesn't feel like X". — khaled
That's like me saying topology is an area of math. Or citing some of its uses. It doesn't mean I know what topology is don't you agree? — khaled
"topology" have they misused the word because their studies are incomplete? — Isaac
No but as I said, their understanding is rudamentary and far from perfect. And I'm sure you'd agree that the only way for them to understand it perfectly is to be able to use it in every scenario. For topology this is easy, they just finish the course. For color not so much. — khaled
Not really. If I passed him the green apples he wouldn't complain but a person who can see color would. There is a difference there. But fine let's say that the same job gets done. And I know that to you that means they understand the word. However, being able to use the word well in one situation does not show full understanding. Being able to use it well in every situation does don't you agree? — khaled
So for instance if someone drew a red lake and asked the colorblind person "What color is this?" and the colorblind person said "blue" that would be evidence that the colorblind person does not understand the word "color" sufficiently to accomplish the same job as an ably sighted person would doesn't it? — khaled
So how might we teach the colorblind person to be able to distinguish all the colors perfectly in each situation? And that includes seeing new things for the first time too? — khaled
Why? — Isaac
One prevents either nociception or working memory function (depending on type), the other prevent muscle function. — Isaac
We've just been through this. It is not "regardless" of their emprical knowledge. You've not demonstrated at all that surprise is not eliminated by empirical knowledge. All you've shown is that two states of empirical knowledge both show surprise, ie neither have acquired sufficient knowledge to eliminate surprise altogether. You haven't even shown that the neurologist is not less surprised. It's all nothing more than armchair speculation. — Isaac
If they referred to private experience then the doctor will have learned nothing whatsoever from your answer. — Isaac
Not as I intended it they're not. — Isaac
Look at the inferential method she demonstrates. The same thing applies to 'red'. — Isaac
I'll dig out a paper specifically on perceptual features if you're having trouble making the cross-over — Isaac
I'm saying they're not the way things actually are. — Isaac
You haven't answered my question on this. What exactly are you investigating if you're going to assume that the way things seem to you to be is the way they actually are? — Isaac
"Understand it fully". Now you've snuck in a 'fully' which wasn't there before. — Isaac
Colour-blind people understand the meaning of the word 'red'. Normally sighted people understand more. Artists (arguably) understand more still. Colour scientists understand even more. Why draw the line at some arbitrary point? — Isaac
Not one of us has that level of understanding. To use the word well in 'every' situation. — Isaac
Not understanding the word as sufficiently as all other users of it has, thankfully, never been a criteria for understanding the meaning of a word. — Isaac
Give them a spectrometer and tell them that anything with a wavelength of approximately 625-740 nanometres is called 'red'. — Isaac
Is it the theory that is physical, or what the theory is about (what it points to) that is physical, or both? — Harry Hindu
A parrot doesn't understand what a shark is because he learns to use it in one sentence such as "Sharks swim in the sea". And if your definition of "understanding" means that that parrot knows what a shark is I think it's ridiculous, even while recognizing that that parrot did in fact use the word correctly. — khaled
He's explaining how the 'camera' works 'inside all of our heads'(the biological machinery - 'private' - aspect of experience) — creativesoul
It's worth setting aside presuppositions, opening up your defenses, and allowing a bit of knowledge in. — creativesoul
Parrots may make the sound, but correct word use requires a bit more. — creativesoul
Now you're saying instead that (a bitter) taste is "associating the concept with it". What is "it"? — Luke
He's explaining how the 'camera' works 'inside all of our heads'(the biological machinery - 'private' - aspect of experience)
— creativesoul
And I still don't see what that has to do with anything. — khaled
Creative's doing a fine job of keeping the candle of wisdom alight. — Banno
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