Did you know truth at if you put a group of people in a room and ask them to draw images that are evoked by a piece of instrumental music played to the group, many would draw similar images? That sounds representational to me. — Joshs

Yep. Music is like language - what counts as dramatic, peaceful or lyrical in music is generally understood by the intersubjective community from which the music originates. When Westerners hear music from other cultures, it often sounds incoherent, as they have no point of reference.

I put it to you that whether or not experience is external, internal, and/or both is something that is not up to us any more than whether or not our biological machinery, the tree, leaves, and light are. Would you agree with that as well?
— creativesoul

No, I think it's just a matter of definition, nothing more.
— Janus

The toddler's experience is what it is regardless of how we define it.
— Janus — creativesoul

Okay. I've quoted the relevant portions of our exchange above. Where you claimed "No, I think it's just a matter of definition", what - exactly - are you referring to? What - exactly - is just a matter of definition?

I asked that already. You did not answer.

It may be best to revisit the succession of agreements leading up to that objection, because the objection itself contradicted the prior agreements. What you objected to followed from what you'd agreed upon.

You've claimed that experience is a matter of definition and nothing more, and that experience is what it is regardless of how we define it.
— creativesoul

No, I didn't claim that — Janus

Sure looks that way to me...

I put it to you that whether or not experience is external, internal, and/or both is something that is not up to us any more than whether or not our biological machinery, the tree, leaves, and light are. Would you agree with that as well?
— creativesoul

No, I think it's just a matter of definition, nothing more.
— Janus

The toddler's experience is what it is regardless of how we define it.
— Janus — creativesoul

To the basic question asked in the title of the thread...

Is there an external material world?

If by "external" we mean not within the physical bounds of our skin, and by "material" we mean detectable stuff, then all we're asking is whether or not any detectable stuff not within the bounds of our skin exists.

Such questions are the bane of philosophy.

They are consequences of placing far too much - perhaps it's better described as placing the wrong kind of - value upon consistent language use.

Are you serious? — creativesoul

Yes.

As within, so without. As without, so within.

It makes absolutely no sense at all to deny and/or object to the following claim.

"14th century humans had cells."

That's my answer.

It seems instead to me that materialism is an idea which can never be verified, as for it to be verified, it would require proving that there is something existing independently of conscious beings. But do do so, one must step outside of subjective experience. But obviously, that is not possible. — Hello Human

As I see it, this is a language trap. That it is impossible for one to step out of subjective experience is not an empirical hypothesis. It's just a lesson in metaphysical English, an articulation of how concepts tend to be used together by a particular, eccentric community (us), often mistaken for facts about immaterial entities like consciousness and knowledge and sensations.

...proving that there is something existing independently of conscious beings. But do do so, one must step outside of subjective experience. But obviously, that is not possible. — Hello Human

How convenient.

Proving there is an external world does not require stepping outside of subjective experience. Human experience is not the sort of thing that can be stepped into and/or out of to begin with, so it makes no sense at all to claim that doing so is needed for anything else at all.

Understanding how language creation and/or acquisition happens leaves no room at all for serious well founded doubt regarding whether or not an external world exists.

Simply put, understanding that we use the term "tree" to pick out the thing in my front yard suffices.

Could I have included the two Xs either side in my definition of 'a jabberwocky'? Yes, clearly I could have, but I didn't.

Could someone else come along and say 'a jabberwocky' is actually the first four Xs? Yes, obviously they could.

None of this has any bearing whatsoever on the existence of the three, four, or five Xs involved in what we're variously calling 'a jabberwocky'. — Isaac

Don’t we need to include the concept of ‘x’ itself as what is involved in naming.? Put differently, aren’t the words we use more than just added-on tokens to extant objects? Doesn’t the use of a word involve an activity, a set of causal interactive performances that give that word its pragmatic sense? If we look at word concepts this way, as inextricable from causal interactions with an environment , then everything we can say about a series of x’s implies specific patterns of engagement. We can’t then say the x’s existed prior to our naming of them as a jabberwocky , because the meaning of ‘x’ points to a specific way of causally interacting with aspects of the world. As the interactions evolve, so do the meanings of the named concepts.

Simply put, understanding that we use the term "tree" to pick out the thing in my front yard suffices — creativesoul

Naming things with words is more than just sticking a symbol in front of a sign. Words are not just tools that we use to refer to an independently existing universe, they are ways that the world we interact with modifies our engagement with it. Using a word changes us at the same time that it changes something in our environment. Words only exist in their use , and their use reveals new aspects of things.

It makes absolutely no sense at all to deny and/or object to the following claim.

"14th century humans had cells."

That's my answer. — creativesoul

I think the point is that at that time, the word "cells" was not in use, nor was the concept which the word refers to. So at that time it is impossible that human beings had "cells" because there was no such thing as cells.

As I see it, this is a language trap. That it is impossible for one to step out of subjective experience is not an empirical hypothesis. It's just a lesson in metaphysical English, an articulation of how concepts tend to be used together by a particular, eccentric community (us), often mistaken for facts about immaterial entities like consciousness and knowledge and sensations. — Pie

That’s a good point. If we think about what is an empirical hypothesis, the use of words themselves provides a key example. Word use is performative, intrinsic to and inextricable to the way we causally interact with each other and our material circumstances. This includes concepts like subjectivity, which only makes sense in relation to worldly intersubjective engagement, whose reciprocally created constraints and affordances serve to empirically determine the intelligibility of concepts like ‘inner’ and ‘subjective’.

This includes concepts like subjectivity, which only makes sense in relation to worldly intersubjective engagement, whose reciprocally created constraints and affordances serve to empirically determine the intelligibility of concepts like ‘inner’ and ‘subjective’. — Joshs

Yes, exactly. I like cashing out 'worldly intersubjective engagement' in terms of mostly tacit rules for applying concepts. The traditional metaphysician, our traditional foil, talks as if these contingent and blurry rules/habits were the deepest laws of reality, meanwhile oversimplyfing them until they are more plausibly handled in a quasimathematical way, so that what appear to be profound theorems can be cranked out from the comfort of an armchair.

Simply put, understanding that we use the term "tree" to pick out the thing in my front yard suffices
— creativesoul

Naming things with words is more than just sticking a symbol in front of a sign. Words are not just tools that we use to refer to an independently existing universe... — Joshs

As if this somehow applies to what I've been putting forth?

...they are ways that the world we interact with modifies our engagement with it.

Sure. We're not interacting with things contained within the physical boundaries of our skin. The tree in my yard is one such thing. Which is the point. The tree is detectable and not within my skin(material and external).

Using a word changes us at the same time that it changes something in our environment.

We are in our environment. Word use changes us. How exactly does using the word "tree" as a means to pick out the thing in my front yard change the thing in my front yard?

Perhaps you have an example of a situation when language use changes something in our environment. I mean, I agree with that. At least when I take it at face value. Word use helps to create many different parts of our environment.

Words only exist in their use , and their use reveals new aspects of things.

I'm struggling to see the relevance.

I think the point is that at that time, the word "cells" was not in use, nor was the concept which the word refers to. So at that time it is impossible that human beings had "cells" because there was no such thing as cells. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's what I took him to be saying.

"Cell" is a term used to pick out specific biological machinery. That machinery does not need to be picked out in order to exist. The names pick out the machinery. Humans in the 14th century had all the machinery that we later picked out to the exclusion of all else by virtue of using the term "cell" as a means for doing so. The machinery is the cell. The name is not the cell. Humans had the machinery without having the words. Thus, 14th century humans had cells despite not having "cells".

"Cell" does not refer to a specific "biological machinery" (which really makes no sense anyway, as biological organisms are not machines), so your reply is not relevant.

Yes, exactly. I like cashing out 'worldly intersubjective engagement' in terms of mostly tacit rules for applying concepts. The traditional metaphysician, our traditional foil, talks as if these contingent and blurry rules/habits were the deepest laws of reality, meanwhile oversimplyfing them until they are more plausibly handled in a quasimathematical way, so that what appear to be profound theorems can be cranked out from the comfort of an armchair. — Pie

We might want to radicalize the relation of tacit rules to concept application in the direction of the later Wittgenstein.

“…we cannot appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, I have argued, but more important, if there were they would not thereby legitimately bind us. Any regularities in what practitioners have previously done does not thereby have any authority to bind subsequent performances to the same regularities. The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule, since no rule can specify its correct application to future instances (Wittgenstein 1953). Practices should instead be understood as comprising performances that are mutually interactive in partially shared circumstances.”( Rouse)

I don't think there's any substantial disagreement between us on this issue. I try not to be too attached to any particular jargon, so to me we can talk of rules or norms or habits. What I have in mind is the kind of fragile, constantly-updated 'structure' that makes us intelligible and more or less plausible to one another. I think we agree that it's raging white water. I very much understand wanting to emphasize how malleable or response the 'medium' is, even to the degree of insisting that we can only ever lie about it, because it's an unchartable self-drinking river.

A characteristic distinguishing feature of linguistic practices is their protean character, their plasticity and malleability, the way in which language constantly overflows itself, so that any established pattern of usage is immediately built on, developed, and transformed. The very act of using linguistic expressions or applying concepts transforms the content of those expressions or concepts. The way in which discursive norms incorporate and are transformed by novel contingencies arising from their usage is not itself a contingent, but a necessary feature of the practices in which they are implicit. It is easy to see why one would see the whole enterprise of semantic theorizing as wrong–headed if one thinks that, insofar as language has an essence, that essence consists in its restless self–transformation (not coincidentally reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “self–overcoming”). Any theoretical postulation of common meanings associated with expression types that has the goal of systematically deriving all the various proprieties of the use of those expressions according to uniform principles will be seen as itself inevitably doomed to immediate obsolescence as the elusive target practices overflow and evolve beyond those captured by what can only be a still, dead snapshot of a living, growing, moving process. It is an appreciation of this distinctive feature of discursive practice that should be seen as standing behind Wittgenstein’s pessimism about the feasibility and advisability of philosophers engaging in semantic theorizing…

…
[T]he idea that the most basic linguistic know–how is not mastery of proprieties of use that can be expressed once and for all in a fixed set of rules, but the capacity to stay afloat and find and make one’s way on the surface of the raging white–water river of discursive communal practice that we always find ourselves having been thrown into (Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit) is itself a pragmatist insight. It is one that Dewey endorses and applauds. And it is a pragmatist thought that owes more to Hegel than it does to Kant. For Hegel builds his metaphysics and logic around the notion of determinate negation because he takes the normative obligation to do something to resolve the conflict that occurs when the result of our properly applying the concepts we have to new situations is that we (he thinks, inevitably) find ourselves with materially incompatible commitments to be the motor that drives the unceasing further determination and evolution of our concepts and their contents. The process of applying conceptual norms in judgment and intentional action is the very same process that institutes, determines, and transforms those conceptual norms. — Brandom

Oh, for fuck's sake...

The tree in my yard is not a name. The term "tree" is. The term "tree" is used to pick out trees. The same holds for cells and "cells"...

This seems useful as a response the OP's questionable question. It'd be great to get reactions.

Let us consider as an example the simplest kind of entities dealt with in the everyday language: the spatio-temporally ordered system of observable things and events. Once we have accepted the thing language with its framework for things, we can raise and answer internal questions, e.g., "Is there a white piece of paper on my desk?" "Did King Arthur actually live?", "Are unicorns and centaurs real or merely imaginary?" and the like. These questions are to be answered by empirical investigations. Results of observations are evaluated according to certain rules as confirming or disconfirming evidence for possible answers. (This evaluation is usually carried out, of course, as a matter of habit rather than a deliberate, rational procedure. But it is possible, in a rational reconstruction, to lay down explicit rules for the evaluation. This is one of the main tasks of a pure, as distinguished from a psychological, epistemology.) The concept of reality occurring in these internal questions is an empirical scientific non-metaphysical concept. To recognize something as a real thing or event means to succeed in incorporating it into the system of things at a particular space-time position so that it fits together with the other things as real, according to the rules of the framework.

From these questions we must distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself. In contrast to the former questions, this question is raised neither by the man in the street nor by scientists, but only by philosophers. Realists give an affirmative answer, subjective idealists a negative one, and the controversy goes on for centuries without ever being solved. And it cannot be solved because it is framed in a wrong way. To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system; hence this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the system itself. Those who raise the question of the reality of the thing world itself have perhaps in mind not a theoretical question as their formulation seems to suggest, but rather a practical question, a matter of a practical decision concerning the structure of our language. We have to make the choice whether or not to accept and use the forms of expression in the framework in question.

In the case of this particular example, there is usually no deliberate choice because we all have accepted the thing language early in our lives as a matter of course. Nevertheless, we may regard it as a matter of decision in this sense: we are free to choose to continue using the thing language or not; in the latter case we could restrict ourselves to a language of sense data and other "phenomenal" entities, or construct an alternative to the customary thing language with another structure, or, finally, we could refrain from speaking. If someone decides to accept the thing language, there is no objection against saying that he has accepted the world of things. But this must not be interpreted as if it meant his acceptance of a belief in the reality of the thing world; there is no such belief or assertion or assumption, because it is not a theoretical question. To accept the thing world means nothing more than to accept a certain form of language, in other words, to accept rules for forming statements and for testing accepting or rejecting them. The acceptance of the thing language leads on the basis of observations made, also to the acceptance, belief, and assertion of certain statements. But the thesis of the reality of the thing world cannot be among these statements, because it cannot be formulated in the thing language or, it seems, in any other theoretical language.
...
From the internal questions we must clearly distinguish external questions, i.e., philosophical questions concerning the existence or reality of the total system of the new entities. Many philosophers regard a question of this kind as an ontological question which must be raised and answered before the introduction of the new language forms. The latter introduction, they believe, is legitimate only if it can be justified by an ontological insight supplying an affirmative answer to the question of reality. In contrast to this view, we take the position that the introduction of the new ways of speaking does not need any theoretical justification because it does not imply any assertion of reality. We may still speak (and have done so) of the "acceptance of the new entities" since this form of speech is customary; but one must keep in mind that this phrase does not mean for us anything more than acceptance of the new framework, i.e., of the new linguistic forms. Above all, it must not be interpreted as referring to an assumption, belief, or assertion of "the reality of the entities." There is no such assertion. An alleged statement of the reality of the system of entities is a pseudo-statement without cognitive content. To be sure, we have to face at this point an important question; but it is a practical, not a theoretical question; it is the question of whether or not to accept the new linguistic forms. The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended.
...
Thus it is clear that the acceptance of a linguistic framework must not be regarded as implying a metaphysical doctrine concerning the reality of the entities in question.
...
A brief historical remark may here be inserted.The non-cognitive character of the questions which we have called here external questions was recognized and emphasized already by the Vienna Circle under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, the group from which the movement of logical empiricism originated. Influenced by ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Circle rejected both the thesis of the reality of the external world and the thesis of its irreality as pseudo-statements; the same was the case for both the thesis of the reality of universals (abstract entities, in our present terminology) and the nominalistic thesis that they are not real and that their alleged names are not names of anything but merely flatus vocis. (It is obvious that the apparent negation of a pseudo-statement must also be a pseudo-statement.) It is therefore not correct to classify the members of the Vienna Circle as nominalists, as is sometimes done. However, if we look at the basic anti-metaphysical and pro-scientific attitude of most nominalists (and the same holds for many materialists and realists in the modern sense), disregarding their occasional pseudo-theoretical formulations, then it is, of course, true to say that the Vienna Circle was much closer to those philosophers than to their opponents. — Carnap

http://www.ditext.com/carnap/carnap.html

The tree in my yard is not a name. The term "tree" is. The term "tree" is used to pick out trees. The same holds for cells and "cells"... — creativesoul

A "cell" as commonly defined can be either a complete living organism, or a part of a living organism. How is it, that in some cases an entire living organism is "picked out" as a cell, and in other cases, a part of a living organism is picked out, and called by the same name. One is an entire living organism, the other is not, yet they are both said to be the same independent thing, a cell. Obviously, the term "cell" is not used to pick out cells, because it is used to pick out two completely different types of things, one being a whole living organism, the other being a part of a living organism.

You may want to try a better example.

ALL living things consist of cells. But how many varies from beastie to beastie. Some consist of one cell, some consist of millions. The term "cell" by itself has nothing to do with being a living organism.

Using a word changes us at the same time that it changes something in our environment. Words only exist in their use , and their use reveals new aspects of things. — Joshs

:up:

If what is being picked out by the name exists in its entirety prior to being picked out then it does not matter one bit if those different uses conflict with one another. My point remains.

I put it to you that whether or not experience is external, internal, and/or both is something that is not up to us any more than whether or not our biological machinery, the tree, leaves, and light are. Would you agree with that as well?
— creativesoul

No, I think it's just a matter of definition, nothing more.
— Janus

The toddler's experience is what it is regardless of how we define it.
— Janus — creativesoul


Okay. I've quoted the relevant portions of our exchange above. Where you claimed "No, I think it's just a matter of definition", what - exactly - are you referring to? What - exactly - is just a matter of definition? — creativesoul

Since you said that whether or not experience is external etc. is something that is not up to us, and I said I think it's a matter of definition, no more, I think it should have been obvious what "it" was. Anyway, I've already cleared it up in the previous post. so there's no need to go over it again I hope.

Thus, 14th century humans had cells despite not having "cells". — creativesoul

This practical reminder, while maybe not the last word, deserves respect.

…we cannot appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, I have argued, but more important, if there were they would not thereby legitimately bind us. — Joshs

In my view, this supports what might be called the primacy of the space of reasons or of the philosophical situation itself. He invokes the concepts of argument and legitimacy against the same norms that make such concepts intelligible or relevant.

"14th century humans had cells."

That's my answer. — creativesoul

Good. Now what about the phagocytised or excreted proteins in the cell vacuole. Were they part of what makes up these 14th C cells or not? If you gave an intelligent 14th C citizen a microscope and showed him the cell, told him they were called "cells", what would he make of the phagocytised or excreted proteins in the cell vacuole?

Don’t we need to include the concept of ‘x’ itself as what is involved in naming.? — Joshs

Possibly, but X here simply stands for something and the spaces between them stand for some boundary. I don't doubt you could make an argument that both concept (an external world matrix, and 'boundaries') are constructed concepts, but I haven't seen the evidence for that. All I've seen indicates that such fundamental concepts are present in very young babies and so seem likely to be hard-wired.

Doesn’t the use of a word involve an activity, a set of causal interactive performances that give that word its pragmatic sense? — Joshs

I agree, yes. I think the differences between us might be the foundation on which this activity acts. You might have it have nk foundation at all, I believe there are physical and biological building blocks from which these senses are constructed.

We can’t then say the x’s existed prior to our naming of them as a jabberwocky , because the meaning of ‘x’ points to a specific way of causally interacting with aspects of the world. — Joshs

As I say, I can see how you might theorise that, but the evidence I've seen seems to contradict it.