I can talk about something that only happens inside my head. — Michael

Of course you can. So it's not private. That's the point.

A private language is one only you understand.

Presumably the phrase "your own private thought" refers to my own private thought. — Michael

Indeed. I should have written...

What I don't seem able to do is give a similar account of what using a word privately to refer to one's own private thought might be.

What is one supposedly doing when one is using a word to refer to a private thought? What does 'refer' mean in this heterodox context you've placed it?

What I don't seem able to do is give a similar account of what using a word privately to refer to one's own private thought might be. — Isaac

Why not? If a phrase like "one's own private thought" can refer to one's own private thought, then why can't a word? Is there some bizarre condition that a single word can't refer to a private thought but a multiple word phrase can?

Of course you can. So it's not private. That's the point.

A private language is one only you understand. — Banno

Again you seem to be equivocating. I'm not saying that there's a language that only I can understand. I'm saying that words can refer to things that only happen inside our heads. The word "pain" for example refers to a thing that happens inside our heads. It doesn't refer to some public expression of pain, like saying "I'm in pain" or taking aspirin.

See

This is a basic problem first of even knowing whether similar/the same phenomena are experienced the same way because the experience is private and only accessible first-person. — Andrew4Handel

If "Only accessible first-person" means that one can only talk about it to oneself, then it is private in the requisite sense, and drops out of consideration.

But we do talk about red and pain, so they are not private.

So they are not "only accessible int he first person"

You can talk about my pain. Pain is not just "in my head". It is public, shared, part of the world. Sure, you cannot feel my pain, but that's just what it's being my pain means.

I'm not saying that there's a language that only I can understand. I'm saying that words can refer to things that only happen inside our heads. — Michael

:grin: If the words only refer to things inside your head, then it's private. As in, If only you can refer to your pain, then I cannot refer to your pain. And if no one else can refer to your pain, then you are " using a language that only (you) can understand".

I dunno. Can't see why you are not following this. It's certainly not equivocation.

Is there some bizarre condition that a single word can't refer to a private though but multiple words can? — Michael

Yes (though I'd quibble with 'bizarre'). The expression "one's own private thought" is a placeholder into which any private thought can go. It itself is a public placeholder - we're all agreed we have private thoughts, so the notion, it's full content and meaning are public. It is, in Wittgenstein's example, the label given to the box.

A single word would suffice but it would suffice to describe the container, the set, {one's private thoughts}, which itself has a fully transparent public meaning.

The contents of that set are different to the set itself.

As in, If only you can refer to your pain, then I cannot refer to your pain. — Banno

I'm not saying that only I can refer to my pain. You can refer to my pain as well.

My feeling of pain is private in the sense that only I can feel it. But it's "public" in the sense that we both can talk about it.

And the beetle I see inside my box is private in the sense that only I can see it. But it's "public" in the sense that we both can talk about it.

It is, in Wittgenstein's example, the label given to the box. — Isaac

I'd say it's the label given to the contents of the box. That's why we use the word "private" in the phrase "one's own private thought". If it was a label given to the box, which is public, then the phrase would be "one's own public thought".

Or, to use Wittgenstein's example, the phrase "the contents of the box" refers to the contents of the box, not to the box itself.

And I don't see why we can't coin a single word that refers to the same thing as the phrase "the contents of the box". How about "beetle"?

I'm not saying that only I can refer to my pain. You can refer to my pain as well. — Michael

Yep. That's why your pain is not just a thing inside your head that only you can refer to. If it were, no one else could talk about it.

That's the problem with @Andrew4Handel's proposal that "the experience is private and only accessible first-person" - it implies that only he can talk about such an experience.

Yep. That's why your pain is not just a thing inside your head that only you can refer to. If it were, no one else could talk about it. — Banno

I didn't say that only I can refer to it.

Pain is a thing inside my head that we can both refer to.

That's the problem with Andrew4Handel's proposal that "the experience is private and only accessible first-person" - it implies that only he can talk about such an experience. — Banno

This is where you equivocate. To say that an experience is private is just to say that no-one else can experience it. It says nothing about who can or can't talk about it. There's no prima facie connection between not being able to experience something and not being able to talk about that thing. I don't need to see something (like the beetle in your box) to talk about it. The blind manage just fine in that regard.

Yep.

That's not me, that's Andrew. He says that it is "only accessible first-person"; only "I have a pain", no "He has a pain" and no "Andrew has a pain".

The full quote was this:

This is a basic problem first of even knowing whether similar/the same phenomena are experienced the same way because the experience is private and only accessible first-person.

Seems pretty clear that he's only saying that because we can't experience another person's experiences we can't know what it's like to experience as they do. Doesn't seem to say anything about what we can or can't talk about. It may be that his pain is nothing like my pain, but that's not to say that we can't talk about his pain being like, or not like, my pain.

Doesn't seem to say anything about what we can or can't talk about. — Michael

...only accessible first-person. — Andrew4Handel

You're going to have to explain the connection there. What does not being able to access something have to do with not being able to talk about that thing? I can't access the contents of your safe, but I can talk about the gold bullion locked inside.

I'll leave you to it. Not much more I can offer you. Maybe more tomorrow.

'The many dwell in their own private world, whilst the awakened have but one world in common' ~ Heraclitus (quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos).

It might be relevant to introduce a Buddhist perspective on this question. It is often said that Buddhism holds that there is no self, but that is not quite right. The Buddhist teaching is that everything ('all dharmas') are without self (anatta). My interpretation is that by the very act of identifying something as 'me' and 'mine', then you're introducing a separation or a division between self and other - 'this is mine'. That is the basic act of 'I-making and mine-making' as the Buddhist saying has it. Then as soon as you create that conceptual division, there is space within it for all kinds of differentiation of 'mine' from 'yours', and what I understand versus what you understand, and so on. This leads to a proliferation of concepts and 'thicket of views'. I think the Buddhist view is that, so long as you're preoccupied with what is peculiar to you, or specifically yours, you can find an endless number of items to occupy that list, but then it becomes something that weighs you down, cuts you off from others. I think that is the import of 'anatta', no-self.

The "problem" is inherent in human being's tendency to differentiate self from Other.
We are born in a body that has been conditioned by natural selection for millions of years and a collective unconsciousness that has been conditioned biologically and socially.
And on top of that, our conscious has been conditioned by one's current society.

So we are kind of doomed on so many layers of conditioning to feel ourselves as a completely separate entity from the Other.
The world becomes an arena where "I" has to affirm itself and the Other is inevitably separated from you.

So the I-thou/it dichotomy is born.

So is the is this a resolvable problem? — Andrew4Handel

I would say yes but it is very difficult to resolve since one has to deal with such a deep conditioning on many levels.
And it can only be resolved experientially.

As Heraclitus beautifully said:

'The many dwell in their own private world, whilst the awakened have but one world in common' ~ Heraclitus (quoted in John Fowles, The Aristos). — Wayfarer

The many live in the Subject V Object dichotomy.
The awakened dissolve the object into the subject where the observer becomes the observed.
As expressed by stories of deepest love the I-Thou merges into One.

I would say yes but it is very difficult to resolve since one has to deal with such a deep conditioning on many levels. — TheMadMan

Right. Ever since we became selves, back on the African plains.

Right. Ever since we became selves, back on the African plains. — Wayfarer

Or in religious symbol, since we fell from Eden.

I feel that when it comes to the mind people are willing to accept less than rigorous explanations than would count in the rest of science.

It is easy just to say all of the mind is in the brain and leave it at that. A bit like using a computer. You don't know how it works but are happy to use it and assume it all takes place in the circuitry.

It is inducing apathy. I think we need an actual causal explanation with the phenomena clearly described and given a causal pathway with no explanatory gaps.

That's the problem with Andrew4Handel's proposal that "the experience is private and only accessible first-person" - it implies that only he can talk about such an experience. — Banno

Let's take the example of colour. My blue could look exactly like your green. When I say "the sky is blue it actually looks green to me. But we can never know this because all that matters is that blue and green are different. The words do not capture the essence of what we are seeing despite dividing up the world.

How would you prove that my blue and your blue were the same colour?

Language gives us limited access. For example we might both say "I have a dog" but my dog could be a tiny chihuahua and your dog a large deer hound. The word dog can refer to a wide array of dog types. I don't see one word having the power only to refer to one thing which is identical to everyone.

In the case of words relating to mental states what they are referring to are entities we have yet to have an agreed upon definition for like intelligence, emotion, beliefs and so on.

My mother has never had a headache so what is she referring to with that word? Blind people and deaf people can use a lot of words that relate to things they haven't experienced.

But that's not right...

Migraine

pounding
pulsating
“sick” headaches (due to associated nausea)
throbbing sensation
Tension headache — Banno

In my experience a lot of illnesses can be hard to describe and detect.
People have died of cancer a few month after diagnosis with moderate symptoms like a persistent stomache ache.

I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in my early 40's after years of problems. People do not seem to come with a prepackaged set of tools or rules for assessing other peoples maladies etc.

Medicine would it seem be much easier if you could diagnose or your own illnesses by introspecting on the symptoms.

Most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, according to a 2015 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

If experience is truly private, than it is presumably impossible to even refer to someone else's experiences in the literal sense of "someone else".

In which case, whatever legitimate doubts you might have regarding the quality or existence of "someone else's" experiences, is it not the case that for those doubts to be intelligible to you, your doubts must at least be defined in terms of empirical criteria that you yourself could observe in principle?

In other words, doesn't the privacy of experience actually imply that the problem of other minds is solvable in principle, contrary to popular opinion?

If experience is truly private, than it is presumably impossible to even refer to someone else's experiences in the literal sense of "someone else". — sime

How so? I don’t need to experience something to talk about it.

If two people have headaches there is no way of comparing whether both of them are having the same type of pain. — Andrew4Handel

I would say from a physical perspective that the genes that encode pain receptors and endorphin release mechanisms determine how "sensitive" someone is to pain stimulus.

But that is very reductive. Genes aren't the only thing that determines our pain perception. For example a headache has dozens of different causes and pathways that all lead to the same "head pain" experience: for example muscle tension, migraines, dehydration, meningitis and concussion (trauma) all of which influence the severity of the headache. For example a subarachnoid hematoma causes a "thunderclap headache" which is described as "the worst headache one can ever have" (my career is medicine).

Furthermore psychology and mental state also influences pain perception. A person who experiences a headache during something highly negative in emotional aspect - like a cancer diagnosis or divorce tend to have enhanced pain perception while someone who experiences the same headache source while just having great news, falling in love or getting a big reward experience the pain at a lower degree.

So in summary considering headaches: they have different sources, different genetic influence, and different psychological influences that combine to determine the qualitative difference in experience of the pain.

So is the is this a resolvable problem? Does this mean we are closed off from others in some kind of profound way?
I think it is all a problem form brain correlations because if you can't define something accurately how can you correlate it? — Andrew4Handel

We are closed in a profound way. Our perceptions and awareness develop with reference to our individual environment. Our individual relationship with everything else.

What I mean by that is none of us occupy the same temporospatial point. So the environment we experience is never the same/perceived from the same perspective as another object (person) in the environment.

So we always have unique relationships with the remainder (external reality - which includes others). Therefore our conscious experience can never be the same and so the sensations we feel are inherently subjective/unique.

Every experience, interaction and memory you form is yours alone. No one is identical in this respect not even identical twins.

This doesn't mean we aren't all fundamentally based on the same physical laws that determine interactions. It's just that the interactions rely on 2 separate or distinct things at 2 separate points in 4 dimensional reality, and those 2 things are inherently different by nature due to this.

So to calculate "you" - ie to make a perfect simulation of you and your experience and behavior (and thus predict your entire life, thoughts and choices) - we require identical environmental variables, identical genetic variables, and identical interaction between the 2 for how ever many years you have existed this far. And we need to calculate them faster than you are experiencing real time, to keep up with your current state of being or ever predict your future.

To reproduce the same phenomenon (you). This is a level of computation that is simply not possible and may never be. The amount of data and control required would be essentially trying to duplicate the entirety of realities information from within said reality. A condensation - but condensing things (number crunching) invariable loses informationnalong the way.

Every atom, every synapse, every single piece of of you at every single moment in your lifetime. That level of information is not possible to calculate in real time die to the limitations of information transfer (speed of light) .

If two people have headaches there is no way of comparing whether both of them are having the same type of pain. — Andrew4Handel

You're correct. There is no way of comparing. Because there are genetic components (pain receptors and endorphin production), anatomical components, the source of the headache (tension, migraine, meningitis, subarachnoid hemorrhage, dehydration etc) and your psychology/mood/attitudes towards pain/suffering to factor in before we can qualify the perception of a headache and whether it's the same as another's.

The variables there are massive alone. And that list is influences is not exhaustive.

So is the is this a resolvable problem? Does this mean we are closed off from others in some kind of profound way? — Andrew4Handel

We are closed in a profound way. We are spatiotemporal points of conscious awareness. No one else can occupy the same space as you at the same time as you without you both being in one another.

Thus, conscious perception is always a unique perspective on the external environment as referenced to your spatiotemporal location. In other words, your consciousness awareness is fundamentally unique by you being a physical object from which such an object experiences.

Furthermore, in order to "calculate you" - ie gain access to your private experience non-consentually, using universal laws of physics, chemistry and biology, with computation, we would have to account for every variable of your existence from birth to your present moment - genes, every atom of food you eat, every gram of shit you produced and when. Every person you ever met (which requires calculating an entire other individual) as well as the full interaction, every memory you ever formed and why.

Everything about you, and thus everything that isn't you by proxy.

This degree of information processing is simply not possible to emulate as it would be a duplication of the entire universe from within the universe.

No calculation from within the universe can formulate an algorithm for everything, everywhere, all at once without being identical to the real thing. There is no algorithm for reality.

So you are truly private in nature. No one has access to your mind without you allowing them "in" and even then, their interpretation of you is not you hit an approximation.

However all is not lost. This does not mean love and intimacy is not possible between 2 people that can never fully "know" eachother in entirety. A couple in love cannot show eachother their entire life from start to finish and yet are still in love nonetheless. Because relationships don't require full knowledge to work, they require trust. Vulnerability. Love despite uncertainty.