If someone says they are in pain they are, if they are not lying, referring to a pain that they feel. — Janus
You agreed that people have pains. — Luke
Your "agreement" that people have pains seems to be no more than that people know how to use the word "pain"; that there is never any feeling of pain involved. — Luke
Is it not scientifically relevant to investigate mental events? — Luke
As far as I know, anomalous monism does not deny that there are mental events. — Luke
I use the word 'pain' same as everyone else because I've been taught how to use it. One of the ways to use it is to say (of someone saying "ouch!") "he's in pain". Nothing in that use reifies 'pain'. — Isaac
I don't see any argument that us using a word somehow automatically means there's an object/event there in need of explanation. How are we always right? Are you claiming we have some kind of deep intuitive insight into the workings of the universe? I'm just not seeing the link. — Isaac
Your "agreement" that people have pains seems to be no more than that people know how to use the word "pain"; that there is never any feeling of pain involved.
— Luke
That's right. — Isaac
Is it not scientifically relevant to investigate mental events?
— Luke
Investigate, yes. But it's not a problem for the science that it can't find anything which correlates to the folk notion. It's not its job to match everything up. Some things won't match. To suggest that everything will match up is to imply we already know all the fundamental objects of the universe somehow. — Isaac
As far as I know, anomalous monism does not deny that there are mental events.
— Luke
Nor am I. — Isaac
If you agree with Wittgenstein's statement that when you have pain you cannot doubt that you have pain, then it doesn't make any sense to be wrong (or right) about it. — Luke
If there is never any feeling of pain involved with people's expressions of pain, then in what sense do they have pain(s)? What is the difference between pain-behaviour with pain and pain-behaviour without pain? Or can there be no pretence of pain? — Luke
Yet you admit there is never any feeling of pain involved with the use of the word "pain". — Luke
There is always a feeling of pain associated with the (felicitous use of the) word pain. — Isaac
Your "agreement" that people have pains seems to be no more than that people know how to use the word "pain"; that there is never any feeling of pain involved.
— Luke
That's right. — Isaac
There is always a feeling of pain associated with the (felicitous use of the) word pain. — Isaac
In your previous post you said the opposite: — Luke
Did I, or did I not use the word 'pain' in the sentence "There is always a feeling of pain associated with the (felicitous use of the) word pain"? — Isaac
Your "agreement" that people have pains seems to be no more than that people know how to use the word "pain" — Isaac
...the last bit doesn't make sense. There cannot not be a feeling 'pain' associated with the felicitous use of the word 'pain'. It's what the word means. — Isaac
it's difficult to get clear on your position. — Luke
Anomalous Monism is only concerned with third-personal causal analysis of propositional attitudes, and so it isn't really relevant to the "hard problem". Rather, AM concerns the "soft problem" of inter-translating the public ontologies of scientific psychology and the physical sciences. — sime
I don't follow why there cannot be a feeling of pain associated.
— Luke
The quote was "... cannot not be a feeling of pain associated." — Isaac
there's no physical manifestation of the word 'pain' — Isaac
I'm arguing something like (2) for both 'pain' and 'consciousness'. — Isaac
you've been saying for a few pages that the use of the word cannot give us any reified object, but now you say that there is always a feeling of pain associated with the felicitous use of the word? — Luke
Then how could we ever learn to use the word? — Luke
According to Wittgenstein, linguistic meaning is all 2), and 1) is his beetle in the box: not a something, but not a nothing either.
This is probably why you find 1) scientifically uninteresting, but I find it philosophically interesting. — Luke
I don't think here is a sensible place to rehash Wittgenstein's arguments. Suffice to say a bland assertion that words do refer doesn't suffice as a counterargument to the claim that they don't. — Isaac
But math doesn't depend on objects. — Manuel
The biggest issue is, where are the numbers? And why do they work so well in physics? — Manuel
Pleasure isnt such a simple concept from an enactivist perspective. What constitutes a reinforcement is not determinable independently of the normative sense-making goals of the organism.
[...]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.04535.pdf — Joshs
That other animals see things differently than us doesn't seem relevant to my point that it seems reasonable to think that any symbolic-language competent species would form concepts of multiplicity, identity and the other examples I gave. — Janus
Why should we think that numbers must be somewhere? As to why they work so well in physics, who knows? How could we ever know the answer to a question like that? We do know that nature appears to possess quantity and multiplicity, but does that say anything about nature beyond how it appears to us? — Janus
Apart from anthropology showing that intra-species diversity even regarding ontology is going strong, sociology shows this intra-nation. -religion, -etc. Just think of the ontology of gender/sexI mean, having an intelligent symbolic creature like us, possessing exactly the same cognitive framework would be pretty wild. Which doesn't imply that it would be impossible. — Manuel
Between human beings? Maybe, but the differences are superficial. Like some tribes may believe in an extreme form of animism, while another tribe believes in one true God. But the general themes are not too different: the good, evil, the bountiful, the beautiful and so on, with different specifications. — Manuel
I mean, having an intelligent symbolic creature like us, possessing exactly the same cognitive framework would be pretty wild. Which doesn't imply that it would be impossible. — Manuel
Are they nowhere? Language is in us, that's true. Numbers too, otherwise, we wouldn't know about them. The difference here being that math applies to the nature of things - physics, chemistry and so forth - which suggests strong elements of mind independence. We can't say the same thing about language use, I don't think.
Multiplicity and numbers are different, though they have some elements in common. — Manuel
Attaching to mind independent aspects of the world, does not imply something being beyond us, it implies mind independence. — Manuel
Even the range of deities is enormous, I mean in terms of kind. You have people ridden by gods. You have cultures where assemblages and networks replace out subjects and objects and they are not the same kinds of 'things' — Bylaw
You mention animism which is radically different from both the secular West and the religious West. You have very different ideas about causation. You have cultures where dreams are considered more real than waking life. — Bylaw
intelligent symbolic creature would think in terms of identity, materiality, multiplicity, diversity, number, form, pattern, similarity, difference and so on — Janus
On the other hand nouns, for example, denote entities of various kinds, and I think that grammar reflects the logic of experience. The obvious ostensible difference is that numbers can be used to calculate, but language can also be used to deduce. Things may not be as straightforward as they seem and there's maybe a huge subject there to inquire into. — Janus
We can say the world consists in a multiplicity of things or in a number of things; is there a difference in the two statements? We can talk about specific numbers. I guess. — Janus
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. — Janus
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