I wonder where? What a waste of time. — jgill

:up:

Right. To me this looks like a metaphysical interpretation of QM. One can be more informal in an interview, but he's being hilariously reckless.

For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. — green flag

Yeah, odd. So applying, just for a discussion point, Davidson's radical interpretation, how would one know that the posited creature was seeing green, and not seeing quantity? The critter would say "the water is green" when there is the right amount of water, and "the water is red" otherwise; so a better account would be simply that for the critter, "red" means the wrong quantity of water in that creature's language, while "green" just means "the right quantity of water". That is, one cannot divorce the meaning from the use.

Yes, another rookie error.

How does Wittgenstein account for something like synesthesia? Some people talk about sounds and numbers having colours. It’s certainly a non-standard way to use colour vocabulary, and yet we have some idea of what they mean. How could we even make sense of something like this if we don’t think of colour terms as referring to something that’s going on “in their head” (and not in ours)? It would be incorrect to say that such people just don’t understand English and are using the words “wrong”.

I don't see a problem here. Are you suggesting that synthesis is private? No, it isn't since we can talk about it.

I’m saying that the colours they see and talk about are private to them.

What does "private" mean here? Sure, I don't see red when I hear C♭, but I do see red and I do hear C♭. We have a common language for a shared world in which the synesthete apparently has curious experiences that we can discuss.

I have some sympathy for where you are trying to go, but I suspect that you will not be able to formulate the problem clearly.

I think there’s a distinction between sense and reference. It may be that the sense of a word is public, but I think sometimes its referents are nonetheless private. In the case of the person with synesthesia, when they talk about seeing red when hearing music they are talking about something that I cannot see. They are referring to some aspect of their experience that, perhaps in principle, I am unable to access for myself.

And if we return to the example you gave of the red and green water, perhaps such a person has some special kind of synesthesia and they quite literally see the water to be green when it is of a certain quantity and red otherwise. How does that affect your conclusion that a person who describes water as being red or green depending on its quantity must therefore be using the words differently and so mean something different?

They are referring to some aspect of their experience that, perhaps in principle, I am unable to access for myself. — Michael

Sure. You do not have my pain. That's just a fact of the way "pain" works – of the grammar of "pain". There's nothing "in principle" that prevents my feeling a pain in your toe, except that that is what we mean my my toe and your toe.

...quite literally... — Michael

How could you tell they see the water as green? Ex hypothesi, there is no distinction here. What difference would there be between the critter saying "There is a good quantity of water" and "the water is green"?

How could you tell they see the water as green? Ex hypothesi, there is no distinction here. What difference would there be between the critter saying "There is a good quantity of water" and "the water is green"? — Banno

I can’t, that’s the point, just as I can’t tell that someone sees the number 7 as red. But people really do see the number 7 as red, much in the way that I see blood to be red. So I think the notion that meaning must be related to some public measure of use doesn’t work, and why I’m suggesting that the empirical evidence of synesthesia is evidence against Wittgenstein’s armchair philosophy.

just as I can’t tell that someone sees the number 7 as red — Michael

Yeah, you can, because they can tell you. Indeed, that's how we know about synaesthesia. It's not private.

Yeah, you can, because they can tell you. Indeed, that's how we know about synaesthesia. — Banno

And the critter tells me that the water is green. So why is that evidence that he means something different by the words “red” and “green” but the person who tells me that the number 7 is red is evidence of synesthesia?

It's not private. — Banno

I don’t quite understand what you mean by “private”. His experiences, the things he talks about, definitely are private; I can’t see them for myself. I just have to take his word for it that things are as he says they are.

So why is that evidence that he means something different by the words “red” and “green” but the person who tells me that the number 7 is red is evidence of synesthesia? — Michael

It isn't evidence at all, of any private unsharable phenomena.

His experiences, the things he talks about, definitely are private; I can’t see them for myself. I just have to take his word for it that things are as he says they are. — Michael

Sure, but that does not mean you have no idea of what he is talking about. We do understand when someone else talks of their pain, despite not being the one experiencing it. And we do understand what synaesthesia is, and we understand that it happens to them but not to us. I rather think that if you hold it to be private, then it's up to you to explain how you are using the word.

But let's look at what we agree on. We agree that some folk have synesthetic experiences, but that I am not amongst them – are you? We agree that there are a variety of such experiences, from sounds associated with colours through to feelings associated with seeing someone touching someone else.

So, going back to your question, how does any of this pose a problem for Wittgenstein, or for Davidson? It seems to me to reinforce his point, that what we talk about is public, and if it is private it drops out of our conversation.

And that is pretty much what I would offer as "what I mean" by private and public.

So, going back to your question, how does any of this pose a problem for Wittgenstein, or for Davidson? It seems to me to reinforce his point, that what we talk about is public, and if it is private it drops out of our conversation.

And that is pretty much what I would offer as "what I mean" by private and public. — Banno

I still don’t understood what you mean by “private”. It sometimes seems that by it you mean something that can’t be talked about, in which case it’s a truism that we can’t talk about something private. Is that all you mean? Because that makes for the claim that “what we talk about is public” the redundant claim that “what we talk about is what we talk about”.

It isn't evidence at all, of any private unsharable phenomena. — Banno

This is one such example. By “unshareable” do you mean “can’t be talked about”?

It’s not what I mean. I can talk about my experience, but I can’t show you my experience. You can’t share in my experience. That’s what I mean by “private” and “unshareable”. My experience is mine alone, but I can still talk about. So I am talking about something private and unshareable.

A private language is a language that someone else cannot understand. Hence, if something is private, the it is not available for discussion.

Yet synesthesia, and pain, and the colour red, and so on, are available for discussion. Hence they are not private.

So there is something deeply problematic in philosophical discussions that propose private "phenomena" that they then proceed to describe in detail.

Anyway, that's a side issue to your suggesting that synesthesia is problematic for Wittgenstein. Have you droped that view?

I'm also not keen on behaving like Mww and Meta by discussing material that does not address the OP. Can we move back towards Hoffman? There's another new thread relating to Private Language, we can go there if you like.

A private language is a language that someone else cannot understand. Hence, if something is private, the it is not available for discussion.

Yet synesthesia, and pain, and the colour red, and so on, are available for discussion. Hence they are not private.

So there is something deeply problematic in philosophical discussions that propose private "phenomena" that they then proceed to describe in detail. — Banno

By private phenomena I don’t mean phenomena that can’t be talked about. I mean phenomena that “happens” to one person but not to another. When the person with synesthesia sees the number 7 as red and talks about it being red he is referring to a phenomenon that I have no access to. I can’t see that the number 7 is red. The redness of the number 7 isn’t some mind-independent property of some external world object that I can test for. The redness of the number 7 is entirely “inside his head”, and that’s what I mean by private. And yet he can talk about it and I can understand it (to an extent).

Anyway, that's a side issue to your suggesting that synesthesia is problematic for Wittgenstein. Have you droped that view?

No.

So sure, my pain is felt by me. That's why we call it "my pain". I said that above. What of it?

Problems occur when someone makes claims such as that "you cannot know what my pain is like". Happy to talk about that on the other thread, but here, can we go back to Hoffman, or at least to why synaesthesia might be problematic for Wittgenstein?

Edit: continued on Problems studying the subjective

I do not know exactly where, within me, this system lies. — Metaphysician Undercover

There you go again. We’re not talking about the location of a system, but only the location of a faculty within it.

So the question of where this faculty is, which makes the judgements, is not even relevant at this point. — Metaphysician Undercover

Man, your system is nothing like mine. Not only do you not know where a faculty is within a system, it is irrelevant where it is. But you’re still going to insist this faculty does something, despite not knowing the influences on it given you don’t know where in the system it is found.

All that is necessary now is that we recognize the reality of those judgements. — Metaphysician Undercover

Using your parlance, the reality of any judgement just is that judgement. Even basic understanding grants judgement to be merely a conclusion of some kind, which immediately presupposes that which makes it possible. So not all that is necessary is the reality of a conclusion, which wouldn’t even occur without its antecedents. Besides, we don’t care about the reality of judgements, insofar as we cannot possibly escape them. What we care about, is their validity, which cannot be determined by the judgement itself.

Odds are I’m going to regret this, but it might be helpful to know what you think judgement is.

That's not a paradox. The equations of QM are very clear, and certainly not contradictor. You cannot use them as an example of accomodating a paradox. Shut up and calculate. — Banno

I didn't give wave-particle duality the label : "paradox". That what the scientists trying to understand the evidence of their experiments called it, when it contradicted their classical expectations. Einstein & co. tried to contradict their contradiction (the Copenhagen compromise or accomodation to uncertainty) with the EPR paradox*1*2. This was a difference of opinion among experts : literally a para-dox*3. Is Zeno's paradox really a paradox, or simply the result of inappropriate framing of a question?*4

Schrodinger's equation is clear : the physical status of subatomic particles depends on how you look at it. So different observers and different setups (frames) reach different conclusions. And a difference of opinion (belief) is a paradox. As far as the scientists can tell, there is no Fact of the matter. A particle in superposition is neither a localized object nor a continuous wave, so they punted*5 and called it a "wavicle". Which is a contradiction of Newtonian physics. So, I stand by my use of quantum physics as an example of scientists forced to "accomodate" to a paradox, in order to leave them free to "shut up and calculate". Now, what was the question? :smile:


*1. The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox is a thought experiment proposed by physicists Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen which argues that the description of physical reality provided by quantum mechanics is incomplete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox

*2. Copenhagen accomodation :
Quantum realism rejects both physical realism and Bohr’s Copenhagen compromise.
https://brianwhitworth.com/quantum-realism-3-1-4-the-copenhagen-compromise/
Note --- words related to accommodation, such as: compromise, reconciliation, adaptation, compliance, composition ...

*3. Paradox etymology :
mid 16th century (originally denoting a statement contrary to accepted opinion): via late Latin from Greek paradoxon ‘contrary (opinion)’, neuter adjective used as a noun, from para- ‘distinct from’ + doxa ‘opinion’.

*4. Framing contradictory evidence :
So the crucial question becomes: How can something be both a wave - spread-out over space with a succession of humps and troughs, and at the same time, not spread out - a tiny, localised point-like particle? This dilemma is known as the wave-particle paradox.
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/physics-and-astronomy/physics/paradox-wave-particles

*5. Punted: To Give Up
But as an idiom, “to punt” means to give up, to defer action, or to pass responsibility off to someone else.

, how would one know that the posited creature was seeing green, and not seeing quantity? The critter would say "the water is green" when there is the right amount of water, and "the water is red" otherwise; so a better account would be simply that for the critter, "red" means the wrong quantity of water in that creature's language, while "green" just means "the right quantity of water". That is, one cannot divorce the meaning from the use. — Banno

:up:

Right. And note what seems to the unquestioned dominance of the 'label' metaphor. 'Green' is thought of as labeling some immaterial Experience. This is flat earth semantics, in that makes sense at first but turns out to be more wrong than right.

More generally, it looks like the rhetorical crowbar of fancy math is used against the boundary of science and metaphysics / religion. The flight from death looks to be a motive, and the theory seems to try to make belief in an afterlife more respectable among 'intellectuals.'


***
I want a scientific spirituality in which we begin to explore a world beyond space and time. But we do it with mathematically precise models, and we start to address the big questions about why are we here and what is human consciousness about? Where did it come from? What's the meaning of life? And so forth. Topics that scientists have in many cases said we don’t need to address. But in fact, they did address them. From the physicalist framework, the answer was, there is no life after death. There is no deep meaning to life, because once your brain dissolves, that's it. And so they really did have a theory of life and transcendence: there is no such thing, there is no transcendence. But now all sorts of possibilities open up for exploration. And I'm pretty excited about it. So science and spirituality, I think, could really start to collaborate. But scientists have to let go of spacetime and spiritual traditions have to let go of dogmatism. Not easy.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-self-organization-and-neuroscience/201912/what-is-reality-interview-donald

Scientists have to let go of spacetime ?

I don't see red when I hear C♭ — Banno

On a piano I hear B. But that is a story for another thread.

I’m saying that the colours they see and talk about are private to them. — Michael

One problem with this privacy talk is the implied possibility of a p-zombie. You insist that some locked door exist which can never be opened, and then you tell me what's behind it.

Your justification is that you seem to find yourself in such a locked room ? If AI gets good at reading your mind, will that change your mind ? Or will there always be an ineffable 'surplus' ? As if the public sign system is 'bathed' in Being which cannot be truly named ?

One problem with this privacy talk is the implied possibility of a p-zombie. — green flag

Certainly a logical possibility. Maybe not a physical possibility. It could be that first-person experiences are an unavoidable, deterministic consequence of a sufficiently advanced responsive organism.

If AI gets good at reading your mind, will that change your mind ? — green flag

Depends on how it works. If we ask people what they feel when this area of the brain is activated, and they say pain, and then we feed this information into an AI, then that the AI is able to check to see if that area of the brain is activated and tell me that I feel pain isn't "mind reading" at all.

If it could know that I'm in pain despite not knowing anything about how brain activity correlates to self-reported feelings then that would show evidence of mind reading, and would suggest that first-person experiences are reducible to physical phenomena, and so not essentially private.

It could be that first-person experiences are an unavoidable, deterministic consequence of a sufficiently advanced responsive organism. — Michael

How does this not avoid the homunculus fallacy though? The ghost is already in the machine. That is the very thing to be explained though. It's too "just so" or "brute fact" perhaps?

How does this not avoid the homunculus fallacy though? The ghost is already in the machine. That is the very thing to be explained though. It's too "just so" or "brute fact" perhaps? — schopenhauer1

I don't understand the issue. If I say that it's an unavoidable, deterministic consequence that heating an ice cube above 0 degree celsius will cause it to melt, am I committing an homunculus fallacy?

I don't understand the issue. If I say that it's an unavoidable, deterministic consequence that heating an ice cube above 0 degree celsius will cause it to melt, am I committing a homunculus fallacy? — Michael

These are all physical events. If you said to me, "a feeling of melting is felt by the ice cube", becomes a question of "how?". And you can say, "feeling like something" is a property of the universe. And then I would question that further for explanation. Otherwise yes, that is just brute fact and not useful. Why is blue? If you said, "Blue is one part of the universe sensing blue" then we have some circular reasoning.

These are all physical events. — schopenhauer1

And it might be a physical fact that a sufficiently advanced brain will cause first person experiences.

And it might be a physical fact that a sufficiently advanced brain will cause first person experiences. — Michael

f you said to me, "a feeling of melting is felt by the ice cube", becomes a question of "how?". And you can say, "feeling like something" is a property of the universe. And then I would question that further for explanation. Otherwise yes, that is just brute fact and not useful. Why is blue? If you said, "Blue is one part of the universe sensing blue" then we have some circular reasoning. — schopenhauer1

I’m sorry but I just don’t understand what you’re asking.

I’m sorry but I just don’t understand what you’re asking. — Michael

If someone were to claim that "feeling like something" is a property of the universe, this would raise questions about what is meant by "feeling" in this context and how it is related to the physical processes that occur in the universe. Without a clear explanation, this claim would not be useful in helping us understand the world around us.

Similarly, the question "why is blue?" is not a meaningful question unless it is clarified what is meant by "why". If we were to say that "blue is one part of the universe sensing blue", we would be engaging in circular reasoning, as this explanation simply restates the fact that blue exists without actually explaining why it exists or how it is perceived.

Certainly a logical possibility. Maybe not a physical possibility. It could be that first-person experiences are an unavoidable, deterministic consequence of a sufficiently advanced responsive organism. — Michael

How could something like this be checked or falsified ? What kinds of things do we in fact take for possessors of 'firstperson experience'? Talking primates like ourselves. Soon though we'll have the situation present in Her. The trans controversy today may be nothing compared to the synth controversy tomorrow. The coming androids, ambiguous digital mirrors, as they are given more of a body, including sense organs, are going to freak us the fuck out.

If p-zombies are a logical possibility, then there's something wrong with firstperson experience as a metaphysical concept. It's as elusive as the meaning of being. The 'hard problem' might be semantic, a thrust against language. Any given objective criterion for Experience or Consciousness 'feels wrong.'