We've no apparent biological reason to group the various neural goings on in the way we do. No reason to have the collection 'smelling coffee' at all, other than for communication. — Isaac
In addition to communication, what’s common to many instances of the collection ‘smelling coffee’ is the smelling of coffee. — Luke
I think maybe my poor writing is creating some confusion — Isaac
We've no apparent biological reason to group the various neural goings on in the way we do. — Isaac
The 'bizarre claim' I was actually referring to was the one implied by an 'investigation' into they way things seem to us without (bracketing out) the question of reality (external states). I just don't believe one approaches the question of how some thing seems to one with a blank slate. I think given almost any question at all one will have preconceptions about it. — Isaac
I'm claiming that the evidence we have thus far points to such a lack of neural criteria for the collection of the various activities at 1 into the grouping of 2 that we must have learned those groups. — Isaac
No reason to have the collection 'smelling coffee' at all, other than for communication. — Isaac
That argument is circular. If you decide that some collection of neural activity is called 'smelling coffee' then obviously 'smelling coffee' is going to then be common to all, you defined it that way. — Isaac
The contention that the aroma of coffee cannot be described in words is blatantly wrong. — Banno
.There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is the same as B's. There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is same as B's (smell-of-feces), and vice versa. There exists no verbal exchange between A and B which can tell them which state of affairs holds. because 2 is inexpressible. — hypericin
At the center of the wheel should be the smell of coffee itself. — hypericin
The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it. — Banno
Instead, the aroma of coffee is a family resemblance, a way in which we talk about a group of things that have nothing specifically in common. — Banno
Here's that mad view that we can never see things as they are in themselves, — Banno
If the scent of coffee is describable why is this impossible:
.There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is the same as B's. There is a state of affairs where A's (smell-of-coffee) is same as B's (smell-of-feces), and vice versa. There exists no verbal exchange between A and B which can tell them which state of affairs holds. because 2 is inexpressible.
— hypericin — hypericin
As a realist, you believe in the independent existence of a world outside of our interaction with it. For you this is an indubitable , or founding presupposition, and it is what orients the bracketing by science of naive appearance and preconception. — Joshs
And as I said in the OP,
The problem with claiming that something is ineffable is, of course, the liar-paradox-like consequence that one has thereby said something about it. — Banno
Nothing specifically in common? Not much of a "family resemblance". — hypericin
It is here that Wittgenstein’s rejection of general explanations, and definitions based on sufficient and necessary conditions, is best pronounced. Instead of these symptoms of the philosopher’s “craving for generality,” he points to ‘family resemblance’ as the more suitable analogy for the means of connecting particular uses of the same word. There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally—and dogmatically—for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word. We should, instead, travel with the word’s uses through “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing” (PI 66). Family resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form—be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favour of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance. — SEP
That's your claim. It's not what I've said. — Isaac
It's not missing. The difference is that one's a name and the other is a
So epiphenomenalism then? Just because a correspondence has yet to be empirically demonstrated does not mean there isn’t one.
— Mww
collection of neurons firing. — Isaac
You've misunderstood reference. 'The apple' refers to the apple. They're two different things (one an expression, the other a fruit). They don't both 'refer' to different things. 'The apple' refers. The apple is just an apple. — Isaac
Of course it does. Your spleen is in the group {parts of MU}. — Isaac
That group was christened by naming something MU which was not a simple. You christened that group by naming the entity MU even though you do not know it's actual constituents. The point of all this being that you don't need to know what makes up the sensation 'smelling coffee' in order to name it. — Isaac
ndeed, but denying a one-to-one correspondence is not, I think, the same as denying a correspondence of any sort.
What I'm saying is that we group some loose collection of neural activity as 'smelling coffee' so whenever any activity which falls into that group occurs we're inclined to think that we're smelling coffee. — Isaac
The contention that the aroma of coffee cannot be described in words is blatantly wrong. — Banno
What you said is that there is a lack of one-to-one correspondence, and then you described this as a gap. I can remove "gap" if you want, and say that the lack of corresponds presents a "difference". This implies that the two are not the same. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah, judging by your wheel of aroma, it can be described in pretty much whatever words anyone wants to use. — Metaphysician Undercover
it seems like there must be some method by which a sip of this liquid gives the experience with this name, and no other, — Mww
For Husserl the existence of the world as an independent fact is not a founding presupposition but a preconception which can be bracketed. When one does this one has the opportunity to reveal... — Joshs
If you smell something new, it smells like something. — hypericin
We have immense neural machinery to process sensory data. Did all this come after language use? Then why do other animals have it too? — hypericin
Every animal recoils from pain, and manifestly finds it unpleasant. Only humans have to be taught this? — hypericin
Animals and babies are deemed to be unaware? In spite of having the behaviors we correlate with awareness? — hypericin
It is far more reasonable to believe that sensations are abstractions of specific neural activities, and that this abstraction is built in. — hypericin
My dog strongly disagrees. Scents carry information on where food is, what is safe to eat and what is not. The purpose of being aware of your environment is not to just communicate, it is to be able to act on it, in a manner more sophisticated than reflexive instinct. — hypericin
I can only imagine that the findings that there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence comes from testing subjects’ neural activity while they are smelling coffee (or while they are “in the presence of coffee” as you originally put it). Therefore, what is in common to them all is that they are smelling coffee. — Luke
Isaac, you might be interested in my comments here and here, which address why I think this characterisation of science misguided. — Banno
What you said is that there is a lack of one-to-one correspondence, and then you described this as a gap. — Metaphysician Undercover
in order to say that a specific collection of neural activity corresponds with smelling coffee, this must be a one-to-one correspondence. Otherwise that activity could sometimes signify something else, or smelling coffee could occur without any of that neural activity. — Metaphysician Undercover
I can only imagine that the findings that there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence comes from testing subjects’ neural activity while they are smelling coffee (or while they are “in the presence of coffee” as you originally put it). Therefore, what is in common to them all is that they are smelling coffee.
— Luke
Nope. Thinking of coffee does it too. — Isaac
On your argument, the copy of Joyce's Ulysses sitting next to me on the bookcase is two different things, a novel and a block of cellulose. — Banno
Of course it can be described with any word one wants to use, and provided this functions as part of the task at hand, that's fine. That's how words work. — Banno
ndeed. It does exactly that. — Isaac
it seems like there must be some method by which a sip of this liquid gives the experience with this name, and no other,
— Mww
Why do think that? Have the same drinks not given you different experiences at different times? — Isaac
Did wine taste the same to you at five as it does at 50? Does water give you the same experience when thirsty as it does when added in excess to your whisky? — Isaac
One cannot 'reveal' something one did not previously think without the concept of one's thoughts having previously been wrong on some matter. If it is possible to be wrong on some matter, there must exist some external state against which one is comparing one's thought to determine it's wrong.
It's not about 'external worlds', it's about external states - information, not matter. It's merely a description of a system. Any defined system must have internal states and states external to it (otherwise it's not defined as we can say nothing about it - it's just 'everything'). Any complex networked system must also have boundary states (otherwise it would either be a single node or linearly connected). This means that internal states have to infer the condition of external states from the condition of boundary states. We've just described a system. There's no need for any commitment to realism, all this could be taking place in a computer or a field of pure information. It's just derived necessarily from the description of a system.
Phenomenology appears to me to be saying that the internal states can infer the condition of other internal states. They could, but there'd be no reason to change any first inference. There's no 'revelation' no 'investigation'. You might one day feel one way, another day, feel another. There's no reason to prefer one over another. One is not 'investigating' anything, one is merely changing one's mind arbitrarily. — Isaac
Realism is just supposing that statements are either true or false, that this is the correct grammar to adopt in taking about how things are, that the appropriate logic is bivalent. Talk of "the independent existence of a world outside of our interaction with it" is irrelevant, misleading philosophical twaddle. — Banno
Does what too? — Luke
before you explicitly said there is no one-to-one correspondence, now you explicitly say there is one-to-one correspondence? What are you really saying? — Metaphysician Undercover
How could it, if I call it the same drink? And conversely, if I have different experiences, how could I say such experiences are of the same drink? — Mww
These are aesthetic judgements on an object already perceived, not the sensation itself given from objects themselves as they are perceived. — Mww
Phenomenology shows... — Joshs
We can have two different descriptions of the very same thing. We can have two names for the very same thing. We can have a description and a name that both refer to one thing.Seems to me that we can have two descriptions, one listing the chemical and physiological reactions of my brain in the presence of coffee, and another saying that I smell coffee, and that these are two different ways of saying much the same thing. Isaac? — Banno
The point though, is that anything which can be described with any word that one wants, (i.e. there is no degree of correctness or wrongness to the description, and absolute arbitrariness is allowed for), will actually not be described at all — Metaphysician Undercover
How could it, if I call it the same drink? And conversely, if I have different experiences, how could I say such experiences are of the same drink? — Mww
If your claim is that phenomenology correctly shows us how things are, then there must be some way things actually are, some true propositions opposing false ones. — Isaac
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