Its ineffable?

Being interpreted as a chestnut does not mean that unseen, it's no longer a chestnut.

What reason is there to suppose that unseen, it is no longer a chestnut? — Banno

No, not ineffable. That's not right.

And I wouldn't endorse that conclusion or form of the argument.

Maybe it's better to say that this is very imaginative -- we're imagining a world without us. And if we believe that our senses are what give us justification to believe, a world without our senses would be a world where we don't have justification to believe. Hell, there'd be no beliefs, from what I can tell, though that may be wrong. (the thought that without us there'd be no minds)

Chestnut trees, though. Yeh, I believe they'd be around. Maybe the difference is exactly what's posited -- whatever it is we contribute to the world wouldn't be there. The tree would get on fine, or that's generally how I think of things, it just wouldn't be enmeshed in language, and I'm not sure if I can say what a world without language would be like. I can kind of imagine it, but it's very speculative.

Maybe I should bow out, as I'm feeling out of my depth both with brains stuff and philosophy stuff, here. — Dawnstorm

By all means, I am way out of my depth. That's what makes it interesting. :D Perhaps I'll say some nonsense along the way, but that's all part of the process.

I hope to respond in other ways but will start with this. My take on what Chalmers is presenting is something like: "can the world we touch through our awareness be caused entirely by agents outside of that experience?" The call for a completely objective account is a kind of mapping more than a finding about the 'body.' The scientific method is an exclusion of certain experiences in order to pin down facts. Can this process, which is designed to avoid the vagaries of consciousness, also completely explain it? — Paine

See, I think we're beginning on opposite sides here. Also, I disagree with your take on Chalmers, but that might be better for another thread. (as a hint, I think of his The Conscious Mind as all happening within what he calls "the ontology room")

But I think I agree with I am inspired by you here:

The call for a completely objective account is a kind of mapping more than a finding about the 'body.'

At least, that's where my thoughts are directed at the moment.

Another way to put the question might be akin to Mary's Room -- but that's what I'm trying to avoid. I don't like the frame which pits propositions/sentences/utterances against experience or vice-versa. Mapping counts as finding out about the body.

By saying, 'mapping the body', I meant to distinguish Chalmer's issue from the question asked by many as to whether 'consciousness is purely physical activity'. In his essay, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Chalmer says:

When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the
hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.

Chalmer goes on to say that the 'simple explanation' of functions is reductive, as a rule, because it develops models to show what generates what we encounter through experience. That kind of reduction is an important part of much of the 'scientific' method:

Throughout the higher-level sciences, reductive explanation works in just this way. To
explain the gene, for instance, we needed to specify the mechanism that stores and transmits
hereditary information from one generation to the next. It turns out that DNA performs this
function: once we explain how the function is performed, we have explained the gene. To
explain life, we ultimately need to explain how a system can reproduce, adapt to its environment, metabolize, and so on. All of these are questions about the performance of functions, and so are well-suited to reductive explanation. The same holds for most problems in cognitive science. To explain learning, we need to explain the way in which a system’s behavioral capacities are modified in light of environmental information, and the way in which new information can be brought to bear in adapting a system’s actions to its environment. If we show how a neural or computational mechanism does the job, we have explained learning. We can say the same for other cognitive phenomena, such as perception,
memory, and language. Sometimes the relevant functions need to be characterized quite subtly, but it is clear that insofar as cognitive science explains these phenomena at all, it does so by explaining the performance of functions.

When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.

There is no analogous further question in the explanation of genes, or of life, or of learning. If someone says “I can see that you have explained how DNA stores and transmits hereditary information from one generation to the next, but you have not explained how it is a gene”, then they are making a conceptual mistake. All it means to be a gene is to be an entity that performs the relevant storage and transmission function. But if someone says “I can see that you have explained how information is discriminated, integrated, and reported, but you have not explained how it is experienced”, they are not making a conceptual mistake. This is a nontrivial further question.

This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn’t all this information-processing go on “in the dark”, free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere.

This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role. But for any role it might play, there will be more to the explanation of experience than a simple explanation of the function. Perhaps it will even turn out that in the course of explaining a function, we will be led to the key insight that allows an explanation of experience. If this happens, though, the discovery will be an extra explanatory reward. There is no cognitive function such that we can say in advance that explanation of that function will automatically explain experience.

To explain experience, we need a new approach. The usual explanatory methods of
cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice. These methods have been developed
precisely to explain the performance of cognitive functions, and they do a good job of it. But
as these methods stand, they are only equipped to explain the performance of functions. When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say.

By seeking a 'bridge over the explanatory gap', Chalmers says science can still go forward even if the problem of reduction is acknowledged. We don't know enough to say where the limits are. The approach does bring into question the way we use terms like 'virtual' over against 'actual' and the inner over against the outer. I haven't read much of Chalmers regarding Metametaphysics as it relates to the "ontology room." In terms of establishing a language for science, I did notice AW Carus making the following observation:

For Carnap, a framework was a candidate language of unified science (i.e. for all knowledge), while Chalmers’s “domains” determined by furnishing functions result merely from various gradations of ontological assertion, unconnected to any larger bodies of knowledge (pp. 114-16). The point of classifying a question as “internal” to a framework, for Carnap, was to regard it as, in principle, answerable, with the resources specified by that framework — i.e. to distinguish what we can in principle know from what we in principle can’t.  In Chalmers’s terms, the Carnapian constraints on admissibility are explicitly supplied by the framework itself, and have no need of any supplementation by ontological fiat. So from a Carnapian point of view, the best sense one can make of Chalmers’s supposed “replacement” for the internal-external distinction is that he is attempting to create a space for a “third realm” of statements that are neither answerable in the cut-and-dried, scientific or mathematical sort of way (i.e. internal), nor are fully indeterminate (i.e. external), but, let us say, possibly-answerable by looser constraints in a not-quite-scientific, ontological dialect of ordinary language (and the intuitions it supports) that is somewhat regimented but whose boundaries are unclear (Chalmers refers to Cian Dorr and Ted Sider in this context, p. 100). Between properly behaved frameworks and the outer space of indeterminateness, that is, Chalmers wants to introduce a space for quasi-frameworks.

Carus is critical of Chalmers' approach (i didn't quote the whole thing) but I presume there is a connection between the “third realm” of statements" and the search for an 'explanatory bridge' sought for in the first essay. If I understand correctly, the Metametaphysics is not, by itself, the explanatory bridge.

Sorry for the long post.

We don't expect the crabs or the lions to talk, but some of us might talk to them. Or even claim to hear them.

So, what's the difference? Without an account, then there is no difference. Rather, we have to accept that some people can talk to the whales, crabs, lions of the world. — Moliere

Perhaps, or they may be deluded.

The lion may already be speaking, but there's no way we'd understand what he's saying because we're different creatures. — Moliere

I don't discount the possibility, and yet I see little reason to believe it. Wittgenstein's statement never made much sense to me. If we hear anyone talking in a foreign language we cannot understand them. So, of course if a lion is speaking we cannot understand her; however if she spoke English or we could speak "lionese" we could. I think it's a trivial point to be honest.

We're just barking while we feel like it all means something. — Moliere

That's not how I see it. If the dogs barking different sounds evoke specific associations reliably in other dogs, and they can self-reflectively represent themselves to themselves as beings who are capable of symbolic representation, then you are right. Do we have any reason to believe that is the case?

The only thing is, every single one of the claims is false. So it is possible for us to carry on at length while having no contact with truth -- it doesn't matter that it makes sense to us, because astrology can make sense to us, and it is false. — Moliere

You assume that astrological claims are false. Of course, no one denies that we can make sense of pure fiction, so I'm not seeing the point.The idea of fiction only makes sense in contrast to the idea of reality; which is not to say that we know what is real in any absolute sense.

But this is all just to make sense of an epiphenomenal account of meaning -- that language means, but meaning drifts beyond any empirical measurement and has no causal connection to the world or brains. — Moliere

The epiphenomenal account, as I understand it, says that meaning and consciousness are fictions, that they are unreal, that they don't really exist or at least that they are not what we think they are and have no causal efficacy. I can accept that in a kind of Spinozistic sense, where thinking such and such leads to thinking something else, which leads to thinking something else and so on, and at the same time all these thoughts are correlated with neural "acts" which are causally connected, but we cannot successfully merge the two accounts.

This is a kind of "parallelism" (different to Leibniz' though) where the causal account and the semantic account are different accounts of the one thing from different perspectives, which would mean, strictly speaking to say something like " the thought that I will lift my arm caused my arm to lift" is a kind of category error, but "I lifted my arm because I wanted to" is not and "my arm lifted because CNS signals from the brain caused it to lift" is not either.

As far as I know there is no conceivable way of blending accounts given in causal, physical terms with accounts given in terms of subjective reasons. They are simply different kinds of accounts.

Perhaps, or they may be deluded. — Janus

"Delusion" is exactly what an account would be. To be able to determine if someone is deluded, you sort of already have to have a notion about determining both the minds of others, and the truth about the world. It's not exactly a one-off explanation as much as a name for a complicated explanation.

I don't discount the possibility, and yet I see little reason to believe it. Wittgenstein's statement never made much sense to me. — Janus

Since it's in the PI making sense of it will be difficult no matter what. :D

For me, here, I'm using it as a springboard to ask about brains in philosophy. I'm committed to the strange belief that the lion speaking would mean I understand the lion on the basis that I'm committed to the same strange belief with respect to human beings (if, for whatever reason, a human being had a different brain shape and was able to communicate with me, then I'd say they are speaking). Or, at least, I'm calling this a strange belief in light of the mind-body problem (or maybe, here, the mind-brain problem)

While the way we talk about animals and humans is set by this cultural milieu such that crab-whisperers are deluded, I'm not so sure we have a reason or an account which accepts that human beings are more able to talk than crabs. Why is it that when you talk I'm able to deduce things about your beliefs, and when someone hears the crab talk they aren't?

Note that not having a reason isn't the same as things being true or false. It may just be that there is no reason at all. The reason unmarried men are bachelors is because that's the relationship between those locutions. The reason crabs can't talk is because they are not in the class of talking animals.

As far as I know there is no conceivable way of blending accounts given in causal, physical terms with accounts given in terms of subjective reasons. — Janus

Well, yeah. Exactly why I claimed to be out of my depth -- the mind-body problem has been around for awhile specifically because it's a quagmire of a problem.

I'm not sure what would qualify one to not be out of depth with the mind-body problem.

To be able to determine if someone is deluded, you sort of already have to have a notion about determining both the minds of others, and the truth about the world. — Moliere

True, but to entertain the idea that anyone might be deluded all that is required is the notion of a possible difference between human beliefs and conceptions about what is actual and what is actual.

Note that not having a reason isn't the same as things being true or false. It may just be that there is no reason at all. The reason unmarried men are bachelors is because that's the relationship between those locutions. The reason crabs can't talk is because they are not in the class of talking animals. — Moliere

Again true: but having any reason to believe some proposition does not guarantee its untruth. The bachelor example is a tautology, and the truth there is, as you say, a matter of definition, or which is the same, usage. Whether or not crabs can talk, though, seems to have nothing to do with our definitions, beyond the fact that they either satisfy our definition of talking or don't.

Well, yeah. Exactly why I claimed to be out of my depth -- the mind-body problem has been around for awhile specifically because it's a quagmire of a problem.

I'm not sure what would qualify one to not be out of depth with the mind-body problem. — Moliere

I wonder whether the "mind-body" problem is not so much a "quagmire", if the implication there is that it is a real problem so difficult that we get stuck in it at every step, as it is a merely apparent problem contingent on our dualistic mode of thinking; a problem to be dissolved rather than solved.