hmm. You’ve introduced the bugaboo “subjective” already.

You and I agree Trump is venial. Don’t we have the same belief? So what is it that is subjective?

Subjective, whatever it is, is not private. Beliefs can be attributed to others.

...we need to delve a lot deeper than language. — Mww

...unless what they are is what they do.

Sarcasm doesn't translate well into written word alone. — creativesoul

1:45 the start of the good part where he complains about being designed to perceive like a limited human being.

HA!!! You said all we needed was a topic, I tossed around stuff like space and time, mind/body. I never thought of the subjective/objective dichotomy. Would have been a good topic.

You and I agree Trump is venial. Don’t we have the same belief? — Banno

I’d rather say we have the same agreement.

The ice in your toddie is just like the ice in my cocktail, but the ices are not the same ices. You manufacture your beliefs in the same way I manufacture mine, but your brain is not my brain.
——————

Subjective, whatever it is, is not private. — Banno

Under what domain? Philosophically, the subjective is private, private taken to mean inaccessible to an observer.

I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays. I want to hear X-Rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupd, limiting, spoken language. But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws and feel a solar wind of a supernova FLOWING OVER over me. I'm a machine and I can know so much more, could experience so much more, but I'm trapped iin this absurd body ... — Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactiica

Or like when Q on Star Trek Next Generation takes human form to annoy Picard.

I’d count that as obvious and wonder why we would bother. — Banno

Wouldn't have taken you for a modal realist, but if we're going to defeat Trump so you can a very nice warm qualia inside, we best put all our cards on the table.

...it seems to me that yours is a path to an unneeded and misleading superstructure...

I’d rather say we have the same agreement. — Mww

OK; a divergence from common practice. Such things are worthy of care. So we do say things such as "Mww and Banno both believe that Trump is venial", but whereas casually that seems to be attributing the very same belief to us both, you're suggesting it is to be analysed in a deeper way by looking to private... somethings... to which others do not have access.

This is were I differ, since it seems to me that those things which are private, ineffable, inaccessible, are also not suitable for analysis.

Kant, like Wittgenstein, pointed to stuff about which we cannot speak. We should take their advice, and not.

Wouldn't have taken you for a modal realist, — Marchesk

I'm not keen on argument by name-calling.


In terms of modality, I tend to Kripke; yet I still don't see a point to your addition.

An experience is not a concrete thing like cups and taste buds are. It instead describes your practical contact with things in the environment, which occurred at some time and location.
— Andrew M

1. Isn't the "practical" (physical?) contact between you and your environment a "concrete thing"?
— Luke

No, it's an abstraction over concrete things. It describes something that a person does or has. That is, no person, no experience. (Which we can appreciate if we substituted a robot for the person, since robots don't have experiences.) — Andrew M

I was probably unclear. You said that an experience "describes your practical contact with things in the environment". Could you clarify whether "practical contact" is the same as "physical contact"? If so, isn't one's physical contact with the environment a concrete (i.e. physical) thing? (This would imply that an experience is a physical thing.)

2. Isn't there more to an "experience" than this physical contact? E.g. There's not just the "practical contact" experience of light entering the eye, there's also the experience of seeing red.
— Luke

Those aren't experiences, at least on an ordinary definition. This is a good example of how we're using language in completely different ways. — Andrew M

Seeing red is not an experience? To be clear, I'm talking about a person seeing red (e.g. seeing a red object).

Experience isn't merely physical contact. A robot can do physical contact. But it isn't therefore something separate from physical contact either (which would be dualism). It's an abstraction over that physical contact in a manner applicable to human beings. — Andrew M

I'm not sure that I understand. You're saying it's not merely physical contact but it's also no more than physical contact...? How are robots any different in this regard?

And I would add that the practical contact is between the cup/coffee and the person, not between the person's eyes and the photons. The latter is detail about the physical process and operates at a different level of abstraction than what I'm describing here. — Andrew M

On the one hand, there is practical contact between a person and a coffee. On the other hand, there is practical contact between a person and photons. What's the difference? What other process is there besides "the physical process"?

seems to have given up. His contribution was pivotal, giving a solid foundation to the physiological background.

Or to put it another way, most of this thread is his fault. — Banno

Yeah. It was a great idea for a thread, and, Dennett's frequent invocation of neuroscientific principles (especially section 5), justifies the introduction of neuroscience into the topic.

I just don't see the point in continuing a discussion in which the primary counter-argument is "...but it's obvious". If we take that which seems obvious to just be the case then all discussion is rendered pointless, not to mention us being stuck banging rocks together in a cave somewhere.

I just don't see the point in continuing a discussion in which the primary counter-argument is "...but it's obvious". — Isaac

That was never the argument. Rather, the point that you and others kept missing was that any knowledge of any kind comes from our self-awarenes and the phenomena we perceive. Including of course scientific knowledge. There is no such thing as a third person view, or an impersonal view. It’s always a mind that speaks, writes, observes, deducts, etc. And therefore any attempt by any scientist to reduce minds to brains is self defeating. It saws the branch on which it sits.

It’s always a mind that speaks, writes, observes, deducts, etc. And therefore any attempt by any scientist to reduce minds to brains is self defeating. — Olivier5

Where has any scientist reduced minds to brains?

Where has any scientist reduced minds to brains? — Isaac

Nowhere, to my knowledge. That would be self-contradictory and thus in my opinion highly unlikely to ever happen. But there were on this thread many attempts to deny a phenomenological ‘layer’, a ‘representation’ of the world constructed in (or for) our minds based on sense data, and we know that’s precisely what Dennett is after: the idea of a mental theater.

The problem is that without such a Cartesian theater, without representation, there can be no science since science IS NOTHING BUT representation of reality by minds.

science IS NOTHING BUT representation of reality by minds. — Olivier5

Or is it the creation of texts and pictures by organisms able to play a social game of agreeing to pretend that these symbols point at the world, according to principles of pointing that differ in interesting ways from those of art, music and literature?

I just don't see the point in continuing a discussion in which the primary counter-argument is "...but it's obvious" — Isaac

You do take many things as obvious. For instance, if you hold up a hand and say "Here's a hand.”, there's nothing wrong with that. There's no ontological commitment in that.

Clean away the strawmen piled in the idea of phenomenal consciousness, and it's the same situation.

Clean away — frank

Ah.

a social game of agreeing to pretend that these symbols point at the world, according to principles of pointing that differ in interesting ways from those of art, music and literature? — bongo fury

If that was the case, science would have no authority and no effectiveness. And yet it works.

If that was the case, science would have no authority and no effectiveness. And yet it works. — Olivier5

Hence induction.

I don't want to be human! — Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactiica

Best tv show ever.

Because they designed him to be a dualist? :wink:

Because they designed him to be a dualist? :wink: — bongo fury

Did they?

Thread title changed again. Next version ought to read:

Not shivering Zombie Dennett's "Quining Color"

Where has any scientist reduced minds to brains? — Isaac

Nowhere, to my knowledge. — Olivier5

Then why bring it up?

there were on this thread many attempts to deny a phenomenological ‘layer’, a ‘representation’ of the world constructed in (or for) our minds based on sense data — Olivier5

The second is not just a simile for the first. There's a world of difference between merely asserting a 'phenomenological layer' and asserting that it is 'constructed in (or for)our minds based in sense data'.

Bug then this has been the standard trick. Make some fundamentally indubitable claim, then tack on a load of properties to it which have no warrant and attempt to smuggle them in under the certainty accompanying the more basic claim. I've really no desire to play that game.

With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum!

Why not have him complain:

with eyes designed to order and classify objects according to only a tiny fraction of the variation in their EM reflectivity!

"With eyes designed to shiver a color model according to a tiny faction of variation in their EM wavelength!"

their EM wavelength! — Marchesk

The objects (or illumination events) not the light rays. (Are what we see.)

Not shivering Zombie Dennett's "Quining Color — Marchesk

See, but act
Grow, but stand firm
Shiver, if only to woo
And lose nothing

--Asian poem

You do take many things as obvious. For instance, if you hold up a hand and say "Here's a hand.”, there's nothing wrong with that. There's no ontological commitment in that.

Clean away the strawmen piled in the idea of phenomenal consciousness, and it's the same situation. — frank

Yeah, but since that's not a sufficient reason to accept all matters which seem obvious prima facie, it hardly stands alone without further justification. Even Moore wrote at great length as to why we should accept that 'here is a hand' and the like.

You have to make an argument for it being the same situation, not merely claim it is.

Moore's argument was that the skeptic could not provide more reason to doubt than he had to not. That is evidendtly not the case for qualia as both knowledge of physiology and confusion over intuitions gives ample reason to doubt.

it seems to me that yours is a path to an unneeded and misleading superstructure... — Banno

Generally speaking, sure. Precious little need for analytic or speculative philosophy fulfilling a grocery list. If life in general was only that mundane, we wouldn’t have gone to the moon.
—————-

This is were I differ, since it seems to me that those things which are private, ineffable, inaccessible, are also not suitable for analysis. — Banno

Sure, but that still asks, do you not compare the words you hear, to the words you yourself use, and is that not an analysis? And doesn’t that analysis transpire between your ears? And is not the space between your ears your own personal private space? If that is the case, and every single rational agency does the same thing, it is clear none of them are analyzing each other, but each of them are analyzing themselves. In this sense, you are correct, insofar as it is not my analysis of your private, ineffable attributes, but is really my analysis of their affect on my private, ineffable attributes.

Problem is of course, all that analysis is almost always immediate because that to which it applies is familiar. Nature’s way of not cluttering up the works, doncha know. It is only when presented with something new and different, that the active analysis comes center-stage and we become conscious of its activity. Still, being inattentive to it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Nahhhhh.....we analyze, to some extent, every damn thing we come in contact with, before, now or later; it’s called thinking.
————

Kant, like Wittgenstein, pointed to stuff about which we cannot speak. We should take their advice, and not. — Banno

What kind of stuff can be pointed to, but not spoken about? Tell me that, in order that I can consider their advice.

Anything pointed to, that is, indicated by thought, is conceivable, anything conceivable has its representation, any representation has its schema. The schemata representing conceivable things are words, words are that which are spoken. If it can be thought, it can be spoken about.

Witt said that of which we cannot think is that of which we cannot speak, which is tautologically true, because there wouldn’t be anything to point to if it isn’t thought. Kant never makes mention of what we cannot think, meaning, for him, that which is not present to possible cognition, which translates to, we can speak about anything we do think. Kant generally seeks to affirm, rather than disavow.

Ever onward.....