The experience consists in the sensations, feelings and images of the body-mind. They don't all have to be conscious, or reflexively conscious, let alone reported. — Janus


If that's the definition of experience you prefer, then we definitely don't have experiences of 'red'. We just have some neurons fire. Else, which of them are the sub-conscious experience of 'red'? The V4 cluster? BA7? Parietal lobe? Which bits would be 'red'? — Isaac

Seeing something red (and whatever else goes with that) is an impression, image or sensation, whatever you want to call it, experienced by the body-mind, You seem to be trying to look at it from the perspective of neuronal activity, which is a performative contradiction since there is no experience of neuronal activity and hence no neuronal "perspective". If I seem to be having an experience then I am having an experience: I can only see absurdity in trying to deny that; in saying "I don't really have an experience".

"The experience of riding a bike is/adds to one's knowledge of how to ride a bike."

No, it doesn't. The experience neither adds to, nor is, one's knowledge of riding a bike. — Banno

This contradicts what you said earlier in the discussion. I've quoted this a number of times now:

...suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. — Banno

Despite having a highly detailed list of instructions on how to ride, you say we still wouldn't know how to ride. Why wouldn't we know? You clearly indicate here that "the riding of the bike" adds knowledge.

It doesn't help that your posts do not show in mentions. — Banno

How can I change that? I quoted you here. Did you not receive a notification?

Do you think Wittgenstein is hard to follow for a lay reader? — Tom Storm

Yes. I'd recommend tertiary sources rather than PI or the Tractatus.

This contradicts what you said earlier in the discussion. — Luke

I don't see how. Yes, you have quoted it but not explained any contradiction. One is about the experience of riding a bike, which does not add to one's knowledge. The other is riding a bike, which demonstrates such knowledge. There's no obvious contradiction, so if you see one, set it out.

Despite having a highly detailed list of instructions on how to ride, you say we still wouldn't know how to ride. Why wouldn't we know? You clearly indicate here that "the riding of the bike" adds knowledge. — Luke

This is not what I have been claiming. I've said that having a detailed list of what to do is not being able to ride a bike. Riding the bike demonstrates that one knows how to ride a bike, but... (and here I will change approach, to see if it will chime with your view) saying that riding the bike "adds to one's knowledge" is a fraught phrasing. It shows that one knows, to be sure.

This contradicts what you said earlier in the discussion.
— Luke

I don't see how. Yes, you have quoted it but not explained any contradiction. — Banno

You said (earlier) that a person with an exhaustive list of instructions would still not know how to ride.
You also say (now) that no knowledge is added from riding the bike.

That is, one cannot know only from the instructions and no knowledge is gained from riding.

Therefore, no one can ever know how to ride.

You have yet to explain why a person with an exhaustive list of instructions does not know how to ride. Is there something missing from the instructions?

If I seem to be having an experience then I am having an experience: I can only see absurdity in trying to deny that; in saying "I don't really have an experience". — Janus

I am going to try to give this idea of “seeming to have a experience” some sense. But we will have to accept that a human is just a machine and that there is a world that we experience. Lets assume there is a color detecting machine. You place a red object in front of it and on its screen it will report what color the object is. The machine goes on working fine but one day it reports that the object is red when no object was placed in front of it. Do we want to say the machine seems to experience red? Or would it better to say it is broken and needs to be fixed? What about human making such a claim of experiencing red when there is no red object? Does the human seem to have the experience or is just broken?

I actually had to dig through the thread to find your responses, too. I'm not sure why that's the case, but I can report similar . . . dare I say . . . experiences? :D

You also say (now) that no knowledge is added from riding the bike. — Luke

No knowledge is added by the experience of riding the bike.

Having a list of what to do to ride a bike is not riding a bike, nor being able to ride a bike.

no knowledge is gained from riding... — Luke

...but here knowledge is demonstrated.

Let's try rephrasing...

Someone might have the experience of riding a bike without riding a bike - in a dream , or a simulation, or an hallucination. Hence having the experience of riding a bike is not being able to ride a bike.

Someone might memorise everything that one does in riding a bike, and yet not be able to ride a bike - they are missing the needed balance, or their legs, or some such. They cannot demonstrate that they can ride a bike. One might phrase this as that they "know how to ride a bike" but can't; but there is no way to show that "they know how to ride a bike" in such a case.

Someone who memorised everything that one does in riding a bike, given a bike, would still have to take time to practice getting their balance and movement correct. There is more to riding a bike than just memorising the motions. This was my original point, long lost in the murk of the forum.

In this last case there is not something missing from the instructions. What is missing is the act of riding the bike.

Now, where is the contradiction?

Is there a point to this discussion? If so, it evades me.

(Edit: I guess, giving you the benefit of the doubt by trying to make your argument for you, one might say that what is missing from the list is the neural networking needed in a body that can ride a bike - the auto neural connection between eyes, inner ear and body that permits balance. Is your point that this could be included in the list?)

That we can participate in the ‘same’ language games and the ‘same’ cultural conventions means that my public and your public, while not identical, must be recognizable and interpretable to each other.
— Joshs

Reasonable. How does this play out for us in terms of building 'community' or a shared moral framework? Surely there is some sense in which this must be almost impossible — Tom Storm

The feeling of mutual understanding varies quite widely depending of how superficial the shared activity is. Driving in traffic we normally co-ordinate our actions with respect to other drivers without any problem. We don’t have to know anything about their intentions outside of the general and generic indicators that act as cues for successfully driving on the road with other vehicles. The same is true for engaging in team sports or dancing with a partner. With these activities there seems to be a purely public exchange of signs and a melding of individuals into a group psychology. But in social interchange that involves a much more complex and specific set of ideas, such a politics , religion, philosophy or intimate personal engagement, we are constantly reminded that we are dealing with an other, that our expectations of their response to our communications frequently have to be adjusted , that there will be aspects of the relationship that will have to be less intimate than others, due to gaps in mutual understanding that will never be filled in.

Someone might memorise everything that one does in riding a bike, and yet not be able to ride a bike - they are missing the needed balance, or their legs, or some such. — Banno

Wouldn't you include "the needed balance, or their legs, or some such" in knowledge of how to ride?

They cannot demonstrate that they can ride a bike. One might phrase this as that they "know how to ride a bike" but can't; but there is no way to show that "they know how to ride a bike" in such a case. — Banno

This conflates knowledge with demonstration. We had this argument earlier. As I said then, Magnus Carlssen still knows how to play chess even while he is not playing chess. I know how to ride a bike even though I'm not riding a bike right now. Having "no way to show" that one knows how does not imply that one does not know how.

Someone who memorised everything that one does in riding a bike, given a bike, would still have to take time to practice getting their balance and movement correct. There is more to riding a bike than just memorising the motions. — Banno

Wouldn't you include this in knowledge of how to ride? If one couldn't do these things then they wouldn't know how to ride, despite having read all the instructions. Therefore, there is something missing from the instructions - something known (by the authors) which cannot be stated. Something ineffable.

Man, I really miss https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/11715

I got distracted at the time, but it seems pretty close to all the ponderings we have going on here.

I don't think Wittgenstein's point is that we know ethical principles, but we just can't put them into words (ineffable).
— frank

Putting them into words is irrelevant. What counts in "ethical principles" is enacting them. — Banno

According to Moses, God thought very highly of putting them into words. What did you name your religion?

And that something just is riding the bike.

Which is not a something. As if the list were only complete when we add as a final item:

• ride the bike

According to Moses, God thought very highly of putting them into words. — frank

Despite protestations to the contrary, the commandments were not a highpoint for meta-ethics.

You place a red object in front of it and on its screen it will report what color the object is. The machine goes on working fine but one day it reports that the object is red when no object was placed in front of it. Do we want to say the machine seems to experience red? Or would it better to say it is broken and needs to be fixed? What about human making such a claim of experiencing red when there is no red object? Does the human seem to have the experience or is just broken? — Richard B

Why not just specify the various ways in which objects are given to us in conscious experience, such as dreaming , imagining , perceiving , remembering? These are all modes of experiencing. My imagining or recalling a red color is not an ‘actual’ experience of red , but it is still a kind of experience. What all these modes have in common is an object emerging via a temporal structure, as a present ‘now’ linking a context of memory and expectation. A machine doesn’t have conscious temporally structured experience.

Despite protestations to the contrary, the commandments were not a highpoint for meta-ethics. — Banno

It was the fucking iron age.

It was the fucking iron age — frank

And, after Moses found his wisdom, he came back from the mountain and condemned the people for doing what they had been doing to the point of recruiting one of the tribes to kill them all. "Thou shalt not kill... well after this" so saith the lord.

Not a high point even for ethics, on the whole, given all the murder that came after.

And, after Moses found his wisdom, he came back from the mountain and condemned the people for doing what they had been doing to the point of recruiting one of the tribes to kill them all. "Thou shalt not kill... well after this" so saith the lord. — Moliere

I missed that. Where in the text does this transpire?

It was the fucking iron age. — frank

Things havn't changes all that much.

Someone who memorised everything that one does in riding a bike, given a bike, would still have to take time to practice getting their balance and movement correct. There is more to riding a bike than just memorising the motions.
— Banno

Wouldn't you include this in knowledge of how to ride? If one couldn't do these things then they wouldn't know how to ride, despite having read all the instructions. — Luke

Knowing things such as "getting their balance and movement correct" adds knowledge over and above the knowledge included in the instructions. One could not ride a bike without knowing them.

There is therefore a gap between the knowledge one can gain from reading the instructions and the knowledge required to ride the bike. Why is this additional knowledge not stated and included in the instructions? Because it is ineffable. Otherwise, it would be included in the instructions.

Let's not forget that it is your assertion that the written instructions do not give one all the knowledge required to know how to ride.

Yeh, I'm still digging for the quotes I know are there...

but it makes me sad.

Why is this additional knowledge not stated and included in the instructions? Because it is ineffable. — Luke

It's not ineffable. It's "ride the bike".

Let's not forget that it is your assertion that the written instructions do not give one all the knowledge required to know how to ride. — Luke

Yep. So for you adding "ride the bike" to the instructions is just a way of completing them.

Cheers, Luke. This is going nowhere.

Cheers, Luke. This is going nowhere. — Banno

Yeah, because you do not address the argument:

There is therefore a gap between the knowledge one can gain from reading the instructions and the knowledge required to ride the bike. — Luke

This gap in knowledge is not just "riding the bike". Riding the bike is what you can do after you read the instructions and after you learn...some additional ineffable knowledge that cannot be included in the instructions.

But you obviously want to ignore the argument.

This is going nowhere. — Banno

But creeping along in a pleasing cadence. :nerd:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=KJ21

5 And when Moses saw that the people were naked (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies),

26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’S side? Let him come unto me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

27 And he said unto them, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: ‘Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’”

All those years of seminary paying off... :D

...it’s not public in quite the way you may suppose.
— Joshs

Are you so sure you know how I privately suppose it to be public? How could you? — Banno

I know that I will have to adjust my expectations of your responses to the dialogue with me in ways that will differ from others responses. My adjustments will eventually reveal a pattern to your differences from others. Through these progressive adjustments of my expectations, what I will eventually ‘know’ of how you suppose something like the public to be will not be a matter of my reading your mind but of my making sense of your unique pattern of responses to me relative to the pattens of others. My ‘knowing’ you is a situated, perspectival unfolding of anticipative engagement, an I-thou interplay of guesses and corrections evolving into a patterned rhythm.

Here's were this increasingly ridiculous line started:

Or, suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. But that's not something it makes sense to add to the list! — Banno

it was an attempt to point to the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge and to show that tacit knowledge is not ineffable. Any tacit knowledge can be made explicit.

There is therefore a gap between the knowledge one can gain from reading the instructions and the knowledge required to ride the bike. — Luke

There is a gap between what is on the list and what is required to ride the bike. But whatever is missing can itself be put into words. Nothing here is unstatable; nothing ineffable. And yet there will aways be more that might be added to the list.

But creeping along in a pleasing cadence. :nerd: — jgill

Indeed, turns out a thread on the ineffable runs to at least twenty pages.

I am going to try to give this idea of “seeming to have a experience” some sense. But we will have to accept that a human is just a machine and that there is a world that we experience. Lets assume there is a color detecting machine. You place a red object in front of it and on its screen it will report what color the object is. The machine goes on working fine but one day it reports that the object is red when no object was placed in front of it. Do we want to say the machine seems to experience red? Or would it better to say it is broken and needs to be fixed? What about human making such a claim of experiencing red when there is no red object? Does the human seem to have the experience or is just broken? — Richard B

That humans are "just machines" and that "there is a world that we experience" are not two necessarily conjoined ideas. The first is from a particular methodological perspective, namely that of science, and the second is common to all perspectives, that is no one denies that we experience (or at least seem to experience) what we call a "world". Leaving aside the question as to whether there really is a world, experiencing and seeming to experience are not distinct as far as i can tell.

So, you draw an analogy between someone claiming they have experienced red when they are hallucinating and a machine designed to detect and respond when red objects are placed in front of it, that has broken down, and responded inappropriately to some non-red object.

The difference is that the machine makes no claim and has no thoughts on the matter, but just responds inappropriately, and that seems to me to be a very great difference. In other words the machine does not think it is experiencing red, either correctly or erroneously.

an I-thou interplay of guesses and corrections evolving into a patterned rhythm. — Joshs

Heh. This is where I believe @180 Proof and myself are currently at, at least mid-read. Is it an I-thou, or is it an I-it, or is it something else?

But I still take your point that your responses are based upon guesses from the other. Why else talk, after all, if you can figure it all out on your own?