consciousness means subjectivity — Marchesk

It's easier to see this is not the case if we avoid the word consciousness and stick with qualia and behavior.

It's clear that when speaking of qualia we are not talking about behavior, and vice versa. A behaviorist would deny the existence of qualia, not say that qualia is actually behavior, because that makes no sense. — Marchesk

There is definitely a private, unshareable aspect to our being. — Marchesk

When you call it an aspect, that seems less troubling; but when it is isolated linguistically as 'the quale of red', it has become a veritable beetle in a box, whereof one cannot speak. There's been a shortage of beetle talk in this otherwise excellent thread.

If we try to compare our private unsharable experience of red, one might say, 'it reminds me of the peace and comfort of the womb, I have my bedroom painted red, because it is relaxing', and the other might say, 'I find it stimulating and exciting, I also have my bedroom painted red, but for quite different reasons', and another might not like red at all, and find it provokes anxiety and stress.

We share the particularity of our different associations and responses to red, but we fail to quite touch the beetle in the box, because the beetle has been defined to be the purified essence of privacy. We have talked of individuality, of subjectivity, in relation to our response to red, but you want to say that this is not the experience of red: the quale always escapes - by definition. But if you strip out every association, every response, is there in fact anything left, some other, unsharable secret?

I just read the article in the OP. Fascinating stuff and a great read!

If we try to compare our private unsharable experience of red, one might say, 'it reminds me of the peace and comfort of the womb, I have my bedroom painted red, because it is relaxing', and the other might say, 'I find it stimulating and exciting, I also have my bedroom painted red, but for quite different reasons', and another might not like red at all, and find it provokes anxiety and stress. — unenlightened

How is it that these three people aren't sharing their "unsharable" experience of red, when they use language to share their experiences of red? If it were "unsharable", then we shouldn't even be able to communicate it, much less have listeners understand it.

How is it that these three people aren't sharing their "unsharable" experience of red, when they use language to share their experiences of red? If it were "unsharable", then we shouldn't even be able to communicate it, much less have listeners understand it. — Harry Hindu

It's a problem isn't it? One has to say that they are sharing associations, responses (behaviours) but not the quale. Because that is what the quale is supposed to consist of - the unsharable aspect of experience. But strip away all the associations and responses that we clearly can talk about because we just did, and there seems to me at least, to be nothing left that is the quale itself. The box turns out not to have much of a beetle after all.

For many years I was party to a rewarding relationship with green and orange. But that's fallen by the way now.. The only green I abide now is something I call yolive. It's mostly yellow with just a hint of...well it's navy if it's acid dye.

Dark blue...that's my true love now. And another color from my past: I first met it on a box of Japanese incense. I call it pumpkin mushroom. Most recently it showed up again in the fleece of a churro. Together with white and my midnight blue, it creates a feeling of being at sea.

Fawn is another word for it...the mushroom.

I would feel sad for people who lack this rich relationship with color, but I figure they must have something else in place of it. Maybe something I'm clueless about?

But strip away all the associations and responses that we clearly can talk about because we just did, and there seems to me at least, to be nothing left that is the quale itself. The box turns out not to have much of a beetle after all. — unenlightened

If this were the case, then we'd be able to share color experiences with people blind from birth, and what's it's like to be a bat would have no meaning at all. We wouldn't wonder whether a machine could be conscious, or just programmed to fool us.

We share the particularity of our different associations and responses to red, but we fail to quite touch the beetle in the box, because the beetle has been defined to be the purified essence of privacy. We have talked of individuality, of subjectivity, in relation to our response to red, but you want to say that this is not the experience of red: the quale always escapes - by definition. But if you strip out every association, every response, is there in fact anything left, some other, unsharable secret? — unenlightened

I think Wittgenstein was wrong about the beetle in the box. We can somewhat share our subjective experiences because we have them in common by virtue of being human. We're not a mix of bats, lions and aliens with different sensory modalities trying to communicate.

My experience of pain isn't a behavior. It's a feeling. It's true that I've learned the language of expressing pain to others in a community of language speakers, but that doesn't remove the fact that my pain is mine and not shared by anyone else. I stub my toe and you don't feel it, although you could empathize and say it looks like that hurt. But then again, maybe I was wearing steel toed boots and just pretending to be in pain.

It's obvious that we each experience things a bit differently. Notice how several people in a room will complain about the temperature being wrong. One person might say it's a bit chilly, and the other that it's warm. I might find it to be just fine. And yet we can communicate our feeling on the temperature and whether it needs to be adjusted, despite each person's experience of the room's temperature being private. It's private in that I don't feel your chilliness or warmness. I only feel what my body feels.

You might argue that I can know you're cold by your behavior. But that's only when you have behavior accompanying your feeling, and your behavior isn't deceptive, or open to interpretation, which it often can be. I might not be able to tell that you're cold, because you're not shivering, and you choose not to complain. Or you might shiver because you felt like someone walked on your grave, and I thought that meant you were cold, when you felt something else entirely. And so on and so forth.

Wittgenstein had a lifelong obsession with solipsism that appears never to have left him before his death. There's some speculation that his worries over privacy, the nonexistence of subjects, and the linguistic inefficacy of private experiences were a result of his poor theory of mind, since he was likely somewhere on the autism spectrum. Early on he even tried to dissolve reference to psychological subjects in belief reports.

Wittgenstein had a lifelong obsession with solipsism that appears never to have left him before his death. There's some speculation that his worries over privacy, the nonexistence of subjects, and the linguistic inefficacy of private experiences were a result of his poor theory of mind, since he was likely somewhere on the autism spectrum. Early on he even tried to dissolve reference to psychological subjects in belief reports. — The Great Whatever

I feel like he's not the only philosopher who had a poor theory of mind. What is your view on language, subjectivity and the ability to communicate our private experiences?

And how did the Cyrenaics think we communicated if it was all subjective?

I think language stabilizes around a core set of uses for which it's well-suited, which are extremely narrow. Most everything in the world, and even in our daily lives, 'internal' and external, aren't really in its ken. Language is a small part of the world and our lives – an important one, but small.

There's no Cyrenaic theory of language, but there are comments to the effect that words can have common usages without reflecting any common internal reality.

I think Wittgenstein was wrong about the beetle in the box. We can somewhat share our subjective experiences because we have them in common by virtue of being human. — Marchesk

But earlier, you were rejecting this 'somewhat' in favour of a radical separation between subjective and objective.

But what does a behaviorist mean when when they say that dropping a rock on your toe "hurts"? If they mean you hop up and down and yell, then that's not consciousness. That's simply behavior. It they mean certain nerves are firing resulting in that behavior, it is again not consciousness, it's neurological activity. — Marchesk

This latter is what W is arguing against; the radical separation of experience and behaviour, of inner and outer. Not that he is defending behaviourism either, of course. One has never finished the tale of associations and responses to red, and so there is never a complete understanding of each other's experience, sharing is 'somewhat', and open to discovery of ends to sharing as differences.

If someone is blind, then we know they do not have the visual experiences we talk about, so perhaps they will not understand our visual talk. Their experience is different, and we know that well enough, as do they. Aphantasia is a more subtle deficit, that is hard to notice on either side.

It reminds me of the way the west thought for ages there were only 4 tastes - sweet, salt, sour, and bitter. And then someone invented umami... Now what was the private subjective experience of umami doing before we started talking about it? Presumably it was disguising itself as an aroma? And was that a different experience or the same experience?

It's a problem isn't it? One has to say that they are sharing associations, responses (behaviours) but not the quale. Because that is what the quale is supposed to consist of - the unsharable aspect of experience. But strip away all the associations and responses that we clearly can talk about because we just did, and there seems to me at least, to be nothing left that is the quale itself. The box turns out not to have much of a beetle after all. — unenlightened

You see someone in the street and you say to your companion "Hey look at that guy; he really looks like our friend Paul". Your companion replies, " No, he looks absolutely nothing like Paul at all". She simply cannot see it.

You are sharing your general experience with your friend insofar as she knows what it is like to find that someone looks like somebody else. But she cannot share the particular experience of seeing the person in the street as looking like Paul. And yet the experience of seeing that is far from being "nothing".

Indeed. Another example of the aphantasia guy who doesn't have the same experience. And we know that we don't have the same experiences to just that extent that we can share them.The argument is not against difference, but against privacy.

I learned that my friend has a fairly accurate sense of time by comparing his feeling to a clock. He said 30 minutes is the length of an I Love Lucy episode. In spite of his attempt to share, his experience remains private.

Same thing with my cousin who has perfect pitch. The piano confirms that we're different. The difference indicates privacy.

The difference indicates privacy. — Mongrel

No it doesn't. One knows the difference by making a comparison. Making a Comparison denies privacy.
We compare our private parts and find out that boys and girls are different; but in comparing them, we make them public.

I can't share the experience of seeing blue with a congenitally blind man, but I can convince him that there's something I can't share.

True sharing means we aren't different. If we are different there is only the sharing of that fact.

It's a problem isn't it? One has to say that they are sharing associations, responses (behaviours) but not the quale. Because that is what the quale is supposed to consist of - the unsharable aspect of experience. But strip away all the associations and responses that we clearly can talk about because we just did, and there seems to me at least, to be nothing left that is the quale itself. The box turns out not to have much of a beetle after all. — unenlightened

But how can we share quale without becoming the person themselves? That would be like asking what it is like for that apple to have the same colors, shape, texture, aroma, taste and position in space-time that this apple has. If that were the case, it would be the same apple.

Why would we want to share our quale anyway? What would be the point? What new knowledge would we acquire that we can't already acquire via our own observations, or via language? If I told you I see a blue sky, why would you need to experience my quale? What new knowledge you you gain that you wouldn't have by looking at me looking at the sky, or by hearing my words?

I can't share the experience of seeing blue with a congenitally blind man, but I can convince him that there's something I can't share. — Mongrel

Agreed. But you can share it with me, because we aren't different in that regard. Or perhaps when we discuss the experience further, we will find we are different, after all.
Does the earth move for you,
When you experience blue?

So we 'truly' share experience to the extent we are the same - that is what you are saying. But then all you have to do is find your soulmate, and nothing is private.

I have not the least idea.

Indeed. 'I think, therefore I am you.' - Feuerbach

Indeed. 'I think, therefore I am you.'

I'm with you.

"Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can"

Pink Floyd, Echoes.

The argument is not against difference, but against privacy. — unenlightened

I would say that identity and identification (two different things) are of the empirical (the shareable realm) and difference is of the transcendental, which is not determinable, or comparable, but is encounterable. So, I would say that the private realm cannot rightly be denied, or counted as nothing, as it is the necessary 'other face' of the public realm.

I listened to an interesting programme yesterday about blind sight (The Digital Human, BBC Radio 4). In which they interviewed people who sleepwalk and have lost their sight, but unconsciously see things around them. They even suggest that in a sense the person is acting as a Zombie during these events.

Why would we want to share our quale anyway? What would be the point? What new knowledge would we acquire that we can't already acquire via our own observations, or via language? If I told you I see a blue sky, why would you need to experience my quale? What new knowledge you you gain that you wouldn't have by looking at me looking at the sky, or by hearing my words? — Harry Hindu

I have not the least idea. — unenlightened

Then asking why we can't access other people's quale is one of those nonsensical philosophical questions that, even if we did answer, wouldn't provide us with any useful knowledge.

If our "subjective" experiences are unshareable then that would mean that the world outside our minds is also unshareable - meaning that the information out there never gets in here, and the information in here never gets out there. But it does get in here and out there, and it does so via the process of causation. Effects carry information about their causes.

Effects carry information about their causes. — Harry Hindu

What sort of information? The black ball that fell in the pocket doesn't "carry" information about the colour of the ball that pushed it – or even that it was a ball that pushed it. The only information it "carries" is (as far as I'm aware) the momentum of its cause.

"Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can"

Pink Floyd, Echoes. — Punshhh

:)

, sure it does. Which pocket did the black ball go in, and where is that relative to the other balls still on the table? Billiard balls leave colored marks on each other after you hit it. Ever seen a well-used cue ball?

Do you think information has an objective, mind-independent existence?

I have my doubts. I think maybe the mind creates information about the world. The world exists as it is, but we derive information about it as we interact with the world.

The interesting question is whether the information is created or derived. If derived then it suggests that our thinking is an integral part of the world-process. The world creates information about itself via minds, yet minds are themselves creations of the world. On the other hand the world comes to be in the fullest sense only in the reflexive process of its self-creation.

Do you think information has an objective, mind-independent existence?

I have my doubts. I think maybe the mind creates information about the world. The world exists as it is, but we derive information about it as we interact with the world. — Marchesk

I have the sense of gathering or acquiring information, not arbitrarily creating it. If the relationship between a criminal's behavior and the evidence that is left behind didn't exist independently of the criminal investigator's mind, then the criminal investigator is jut making up the relationship between the evidence and some cause of the evidence's existence.

When a lumberjack cuts down a tree, he can see tree rings in the stump. These rings carry information about the age of the tree. The lumberjack's mind didn't create this relationship between the tree rings and the age of the tree. The tree did, naturally, by how it grows throughout the year.

The relationship between cause and effect exists independently of our minds. Our minds create time and space, which essentially is the stretching of these relationships. Our sensory-brain system is a causal system and is part of the world as well, and the frequency at which it functions is relative to the rest of the processes of reality. So our minds have this kind of skewed view of reality with all relationships appearing relative to each of us (hot/cold, small/large, near/far, fast/slow, past/present (ME)/future, etc.). This is why these causal relationships seem to be connected yet stretched out over "time" to us.