That's good. I had in mind something more like the Myth of the Given.

I might not have to assert anything stronger than that pain is a family resemblance - that there is nothing that all talk of "pain" has in common. Then there need be no property or set of properties that is common to all talk of 'pain'.

A symphony. But a symphony that is in the process of being written.

It seems not to be individuated. — Banno

:point:

Or individuated in a manner that doesn't resemble labelling classes of similar states with the word "pain" as we usually use it.

Hence doubts regarding the accuracy of folk psychology, whose truth depends upon just that kind of procedure. "This hurts!" as expletive more than description.

That's good. I had in mind something more like the Myth of the Given. — Banno

Do you have time to explain more about how that relates?

might not have to assert anything stronger than that pain is a family resemblance - that there is nothing that all talk of "pain" has in common. Then there need be no property or set of properties that is common to all talk of 'pain'. — Banno

Still, I need to know if it's sharp or dull, burning or electrical, rate it from 0 to 10, etc.

Precision comes with practice.

I'd need more info to address this. I'm not following the argument.

Do you have time to explain more about how that relates? — frank

No - later.

I think you would have a pretty good idea if I am acting out my pain. Of course it's always possible I am merely acting, not acting out. If you saw my injuries you'd know "that's gonna hurt".

'The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.'
Robert Louis Stevenson.

Pain is a thing, an aspirin is a thing. The world is so full of a number of things, of different kinds. What are we getting so hung up about?

Not interested.
— creativesoul

Ok. I take it you didn't really have a point to make there. — frank

Well, that's one way to take it.

might not have to assert anything stronger than that pain is a family resemblance - that there is nothing that all talk of "pain" has in common. Then there need be no property or set of properties that is common to all talk of 'pain'. — Banno

Pain is already a broad category like color. There's a long list of types of physical and psychic pain. Pain is especially prone to being part of an experiential soup though. Fear and dread amplifies it and so on.

How about cadmium red deep hue? Is there something that all talk of this color has in common? I think so.

Pain is a thing, an aspirin is a thing. — Daemon

I'm not just making a bald assertion; see the last half-dozen posts to @khaled. If you want, address the argument.

Is there something that all talk of this color has in common? I think so. — frank

But, can you set out what that "something" is?

And if you can't how can you be so sure of it?

Or is it that we expect genus-differentia definitions even were they cannot be found?

So, if you think so, then tell us what it is. My suspicion is that for any genus-differentia definition you offer we will be able to posit a counter-instance; or make one up.

But, can you set out what that "something" is? — Banno

It comes from a particular formulation of cadmium, so there's an external standard as with the frequency middle-c.

Or is it that we expect genus-differentia definitions even were they cannot be found? — Banno

So maybe like the power of suggestion?

So, if you think so, then tell us what it is. My suspicion is that for any genus-differentia definition you offer we will be able to posit a counter-instance; or make one up. — Banno

What does this lead you to conclude?

We tend to assume that there is something common to all red things - the supposed thing that makes them all "red"; but as Austin pointed out, why should this be so? why shouldn't we have a word that we just use to talk about a bunch of different things? That all they have in common is that we call them 'red'.

It's not as if we could not make a sample of cadmium red deep hue appear a slightly different shade or hue by, perhaps, shining a light of a different colour on it, or accelerating it away from us at some decent velocity. But we are back to talking about colour, which I was at pains to remove from the discussion because of its status as a secondary quality.

Scientists find woman who sees 99 million more colours than others

Newcastle University neuroscientist Dr. Gabriele Jordan, recently announced that she has identified a woman who is a "tetrachromat," that is, a woman with the ability to see much greater colour depth than the ordinary person.
...
According to Discover Magazine, in 2007, Jordan, now at Newcastle, developed more powerful methods for identifying women with tetrachromatic vision. She chose 25 women all of whom had a fourth cone and tested them for tetrachromatic vision. She identified one woman tagged cDa29, who got all questions designed to detect an extended range of colour vision correct. Jordan told Discover Magazine: “I was jumping up and down." After 20 years of search she had finally found a true tetrachomat.
Discover Magazine reports that Jay Neitz, vision researcher at the University of Washington, believes that all women with four cones have potential for tetrachromatic vision but most need to develop or awaken the ability. Neitz said: “Most of the things that we see as coloured are manufactured by people who are trying to make colours that work for trichromats. It could be that our whole world is tuned to the world of the trichromat.”
Neittz also suggested that the natural environment may not have sufficient hues of colours to harness the full potentials of tetrachromatic vision. He said that people with four cones may be helped to develop full tetrachromatic vision if they regularly visit a lab where they are exposed to vision experiences that will help then develop the cognitive skills to identify a richer variety of hues.
An intriguing question that arose was: How does cDa29 see the world? She was unable to communicate her experience to the researchers in much the same way as it is impossible to describe the experience of red to a dichromatic person. Jordan says: “This private perception is what everybody is curious about. I would love to see that.”

______________________________________

So all the men here are colourblind, and an estimated 88% of the women.

We tend to assume that there is something common to all red things - the supposed thing that makes them all "red"; but as Austin pointed out, why should this be so? why shouldn't we have a word that we just use to talk about a bunch of different things? That all they have in common is that we call them 'red'. — Banno

We can equip a computer with an electric eye and program it to acknowledge in memory every time it detects something that reflects red light. In this sense, there is such a thing as a red light detector.

I think it would be simple to demonstrate that humans qualify as red light detectors. Can we put aside whatever calibration issues Austin was referring to? Or is it important enough to address?

It's not as if we could not make a sample of cadmium red deep hue appear a slightly different shade or hue by, perhaps, shining a light of a different colour on it, or accelerating it away from us at some decent velocity. But we are back to talking about colour, which I was at pains to remove from the discussion because of its status as a secondary quality. — Banno

I used the word "standard" for a reason. An external standard allows you to verify that I can pick out cadmium red deep hue. All you'd be doing is verifying that I'm a red light detector with some precision built in from experience.

The question remains: do you think there is a phenomenal aspect to my detecting abilities?

the language itself is no longer connected to anything aside from itself and it's user. — creativesoul

That part. Just being a bit snide.

There's obviously more to pain than language use. — frank

Not just that, pain determines language use. Pain is one of the things that show what words like "good" and "bad" mean.

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young

-- e e cummings

The question remains: do you think there is a phenomenal aspect to my detecting abilities? — frank

Mice were shown a screen with a faint grey line appearing and moving across it, they pressed a lever to receive a reward when they saw the grey line. Certain synapses could be seen firing when they saw the line. The line could be made fainter. Eventually synapses were seen to be firing in synchrony with the appearance of the line when the mice no longer pushed the lever. The line was being detected by the brain, but without any phenomenal aspect.

Not just that, pain determines language use. Pain is one of the things that show what words like "good" and "bad" mean. — Daemon

There's an entire ethical system built around that.

do you think there is a phenomenal aspect to my detecting abilities? — frank

Yeah, I've shown, at least to my own contentment, this question has no sense nor reference.

Mice were shown a screen with a faint grey line appearing and moving across it, they pressed a lever to receive a reward when they saw the grey line. Certain synapses could be seen firing when they saw the line. The line could be made fainter. Eventually synapses were seen to be firing in synchrony with the appearance of the line when the mice no longer pushed the lever. The line was being detected by the brain, but without any phenomenal aspect. — Daemon

So there was a phenomenal aspect and then there wasn't?

Yeah, I've shown, at least to my own contentment, this question has no sense nor reference. — Banno

Ok

Do you agree? — creativesoul

Yes

All that pains have in common is that we use the same word for them. — Banno

The point is that there is a "them". There is an experience behind the word. And when we have that experience (or range of experiences) we say "Ouch". So far your objection to the idea that there is something that pain is like is simply that the category is vague:

"How do you teach someone what pain is" assumes that there is some thing that is had in common by a scratch, a broken arm, a bowl perforation, a broken heart, a betrayal; and of course this is wrong. — Banno

but we can always narrow it down more. "Feels like a stabbing" is different from "Feels like blunt force trauma" for example and so on. And furthrmore we can say that there is something common to all those forms of pain: They are all unpleasant, and all bring some sympathy when someone is seen to experience them.

I still don't see how this will end up being:

do you think there is a phenomenal aspect to my detecting abilities?
— frank

Yeah, I've shown, at least to my own contentment, this question has no sense nor reference. — Banno

So there was a phenomenal aspect and then there wasn't? — frank

If you mean that there was conscious awareness and then there wasn't, I'd agree; but what do you think that demonstrates?
Denying that there is any conscious awareness, or "phenomenal aspect" and saying that it is not what we might intuitively think it is, that it is not a mysterious non-physical "something", are not the same.

So what is the camera?
— creativesoul

Your eye is the camera and it is projecting footage on the screen which you watch. This “footage” is Qualia. — khaled

Good metaphor. Just want to say that we have two cameras (eyes), not just one, and therefore that we see actually 2 different footages all the time. So every time we see a red cup, we actually see two distinct images of the same cup. The difference between the 2 images tells us how far the red cup is from our eyes.

At least this is true for those of us who are qualiaphiles. I don’t know how the qualiaphobes can account for the fact that we see two cups where there’s only one cup.

Pain is interesting. Per Hilton's law (@Isaac is it Hilton's?), any nervous pathway that is used extensively, will become a pain superhighway, so pain from any source in the area will use the same pathway and present the same feeling to the subject.

How do we explain this without resorting to talk of phenomenal consciousness? — frank

I think Hilton's is more about the overlapping of sensorimotor and surrounding tissue nerve ending, the superhighway idea is a consequence of it, but my expertise ends at the neck, so I'm not sure.

Either way, I'm not clear what the issue is with explaining this. Presumably if our nerve endings had a one to one relationship with each patch of tissue you'd have less of an issue, right? So why not apply the same one-to-one relationship with the neurons in the post central gyrus where the location of pain signals is interpreted? I don't see the fact they're imperfectly wired causes any issue.

Learning what pain is consists in no more than being able to use the word suitably. — Banno

Learning any concept consists in no more than being able to use the word suitably. However, it does not follow that pain consists in no more than being able to use the word "pain" suitably.

Likewise, learning what a tree is consists in no more than being able to use the word "tree" suitably. However, it does does not follow that a tree consists in no more than being able to use the word "tree" suitably.

There is a distinction between "pain" and "learning what pain is".

"How do you teach someone what pain is" assumes that there is some thing that is had in common by a scratch, a broken arm, a bowl perforation, a broken heart, a betrayal; and of course this is wrong.

All that red things have in common is that we use the same word for them.

All that pains have in common is that we use the same word for them. — Banno

All that games have in common is that we use the same word for them? Wittgenstein's point is that family resemblance concepts have no essential defining property, not that they have "no sense or referent".

Rather, it's that "'pain' does not refer". At least, not in the same way that "apple" does. — Banno

What does it mean for a word to refer "in the same way" as another word? Why should we expect all words to refer "in the same way"? If a word does not refer "in the same way" as another word, does it imply that one (or both) of the words must have no referent?

Learning what pain is consists in no more than being able to use the word suitably. — Banno

But, but using the word suitably is only possible because we feel various pains. just like the various color words exist because we see colors.