He is apparently saying you should not talk about things that you are not certain about. Which rules out everything. — Andrew4Handel

He's not saying that.

If two people have headaches there is no way of comparing whether both of them are having the same type of pain... Does this mean we are closed off from others in some kind of profound way? — Andrew4Handel

The philosophical problem is created because we are focused on the number of things and their being identical. "They are two people, so how do we know their, say, pain, is identical". And we picture this as when there are two blocks but the identical color; we say the color is the same, and that it is one color.

But with people it is more like when we both have cars; we each have our own car, but if both of our cars are Porsche 911s, we have the same car (to the extent they can be described the same). Wittgenstein puts it like this:

Another person can't have my pains."—Which are my pains? What counts as a criterion of identity here? Consider what makes it possible in the case of physical objects to speak of "two exactly the same", for example, to say "This chair is not the one you saw here yesterday, but is exactly the same as it". In so far as it makes sense to say that my pain is the same as his, it is also possible for us both to have the same pain. — Wittgenstein, Philososphical Investigations, #253

So we can have the same pain ("I have a searing headache on the back of my head", "me too!", as @Banno points out), and memory, dream, thought, etc. However, the real issue is that we each have our own body, so you have to express your pain for it to be said it is the same as mine (my pain is "private" like a secret, not "private" as if unable to be had by another). So we feel unsure of this descriptive solution, as if the problem remains. Philosophy mistakenly takes it as a ("hard") problem of knowledge, in the sense of certainty (and so "correlation" or "identity" become the sticky points).

But the simple truth is that, yes, we can be closed off from others in a profound way. You may not express your pain as the same as mine, and I may reject your expression of pain. This knowledge is different than certainty, it is the acknowledgement of pain. In this sense, I may not acknowledge that you are in pain, react to your claim that you are in pain with: "I know" (your pain). I may not accept that my heartache is the same as yours (I am putting on a brave face; or I won't let you make a fool of me).

Not to be known is thus your conviction (PI, p. 223 3rd), not an intellectual lack (me not being certain of your experience @Michael). Language can bridge any divide between us, but we must remain responsible to being intelligible to each other (Cavell).

Kant worries about responding to the threat of a deeper and more radical semantic skepticism. This is the claim that the very idea of our mental states purporting to specify how things are is unintelligible — plaque flag

I think that Descartes showed that by thinking one proved to oneself that one exists in some form.
Now I come to think of it seems to me that Descartes proves that Language works.

In order to understand a sentence language must work (successfully carry meaning).
We could never communicate if language didn't refer to anything at all. Or didn't work in some form. We can be skeptical that the object of language is represented successfully but not dispute that something is being communicated to us.

Some language like "pain" we understand with reference to our own transparent experiences. The experience does not require language in any way but it becomes transmittable as an idea somehow through as yet unexplained features of language.

But anyway essentially you can't doubt that language transmits meaning and understand a sentence.

I think that language can refer by referring to likeness. For example "Dog" can just mean things that share attributes pertaining to dogs" or "Doglike"

So a cake can look like a dog, a bush at night maybe be mistaken for a dog, a fox maybe mistaken for a dog because they share traits or likeness. One is not commented to veridical representation or total truth. maybe it is a form of pragmatism. Such as "Pain" "successfully refers to a set of experiences with some shared features". And also language can evolve to more accurately and subtly represent discovered features.

I think that Descartes showed that by thinking one proved to oneself that one exists in some form.
Now I come to think of it seems to me that Descartes proves that Language works. — Andrew4Handel

No. That's the problem. Descartes took the voice (language) and its unity (the self) for granted.

In order to understand a sentence language must work (successfully carry meaning). — Andrew4Handel

Language works, yes, but it's not clear we need the vessel metaphor. I suggest that an equivalence class of phrases as tools or flags is just as good. Language is central to my thinking. What is it to be rational ? I claim that it is to conform to various norms, especially perhaps a coherence norms. You aren't allowed to contradict yourself. That, I claim, is what a self is. It's a unity to which we as talking bodies aspire in tribes like ours (and probably all tribes.) 'I' refers to this process or infinite task. The self is like an avatar in social-discursive space, tracked for coherence, including how its deeds fit its words.

Some language like "pain" we understand with reference to our own transparent experiences. — Andrew4Handel

This has been shown to not work, as I see it.

So a cake can look like a dog, a bush at night maybe be mistaken for a dog, a fox maybe mistaken for a dog because they share traits or likeness. — Andrew4Handel

Yes. I claim that we see the world 'directly' but can still make incorrect judgments. We can withdraw judgements. 'I thought it was a dog but it was just a bush.' We don't need 'private images' for this. If the self is understood as a primarily normative entity within the space of reasons, one is not tempted by the screen metaphor --- or to construct reality as something like the overlap of these screens, etc. The thing that makes claims is in the world. 'Seeing a tree' is mystical nonsense until it's integrated into this space of claims for which one can be held responsible (or, at the very least, use in inferences.) Thus spank blank flag.

I think that skepticism about mental states and language meaning is self defeating.

There is no way to talk about the existence of ANYTHING (I feel compelled to capitalise this.) if you are not conscious and don't have language.

Everything we describe as reality and the physical can only be perceived and known through consciousness.

So if my mental states are illusory why would my belief in a physical external world be reliable and the existence of planets and atoms be reliable?

So if I can reliably assert that the moon exists because I believe A) I have veridical experiences and B) can use language I think that then that skepticism is greatly undermined.

People can have illusory perceptions but then science has produced many false theories but we don't throw science out because of mistakes yet people like eliminative materialists are trying to discredit all mental states and I actually view it as a form of bullying because undermining people's mental states is a personal attack.

Robert Brandom like Daniel Dennett and Gilbert Ryle seem to be behaviourists in any other name. The external manifestation of thought in behaviour is not equivalent to the thought. Thought can take place without observable behaviour.

Do what now ?
:chin:

You have misunderstood me completely. I don't blame you or take it personally. I just want it on record. I may able explain more later.

I linked my post you but it is just a general critique
and I am referring to the general tenor of skepticism around this issue and semantic skepticism as quoted via you from Robert Brandom.

This is just a general comment now.

"From Wikipedia"

"Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma"

I think that Skepticism can simply be a value judgement about someone else's claims. Not an analysis of those claims but a dismissal based on one's own attitudes and beliefs.

I think a lot of skepticism in philosophy is hypothetical and tool for thought but it becomes made concrete/reified.

So for example I think the question of whether we are a brain in a vat is useful to explore the nature of perception.

But there is no evidence we are a brain in a vat but there is huge amounts of evidence for our mental lives that we have all days of our lives that we have no reason to doubt and that allows us to negotiate life.

So my idea now in this thread is like that of Descartes, that our selves and experiences are immune from doubt but external reality is not immune from doubt. In this sense rather than rely on academics to tell us what our mental life is we have reason to trust our own intuitions and explore our own experiences.

I grew up in a religious cult myself and along with other experiences I have been in a position for long periods where people try to insert ideas/beliefs in you and override your intuitions. Maybe that is why I am passionate about this? I can cite several philosophers trying to cast aspersions on peoples solid experiences that they have no reason to doubt and peoples thoughts and experiences are valuable to them.

I am not aiming this at you in particular Plaque.

No offense taken, just to be clear. I'm pretty much an antiskeptic. I reject mental images as a bad invention, a bogus middle man, that encourages a mistaken skepticism that hilariously takes for granted the very machinery it hopes to use to hide from reality. I agree with Kojeve's Hegel that skepticism is a 'slavish' ideology -- that it glorifies interiority as a substitute for fighting for status in the real world, possibly at the risk of its life, but certainly at the risk of being made to look foolish.

So my idea now in this thread is like that of Descartes, that our selves and experiences are immune from doubt but external reality is not immune from doubt. — Andrew4Handel

This is consider to have been shown absurd by philosophers who followed Descartes. It assumes all kinds of machinery for which it can give no account. It mistakes itself as exceedingly careful when it's accidentally recklessly credulous. To see where I'm coming from (and it's not your duty to give a damn, of course), you might look into how Heidegger had to fix Husserl, with Husserl being something like Cartersianism done better but not well enough, given the faults in its basic orientation or founding metaphor of its magic bubble.

I will say that Brandom puts conceptual norms between us rather than in us. As I take him, there's no supermatterstuff or supermindstuff. There's us in our shared world in our shared language making claims, and the self is the kind of thing that is held responsible by itself (autonomy) and a community. A dualist might think that meaning is being made into supermatterstuff but that whole framework is irrelevant in a lifeworld which is not mediated by Sensations in the first place. We are always already, as discursive creatures, thrown into one and the same world, the one we talk about, even when we paradoxically try to say that we can never talk about it.

What the fuck is a self ? Who decided on one ghost per machine ? — plaque flag

This is a strange line of questioning.

For the most of human history we didn't know about lymph nodes, neurons and the pancreas. But they didn't cease to exist and didn't stop being essential.

Why can you not believe in the self before someone gives a causal/material explanation for it?

A good reason a for a self is the unity of perception.

In order to understand a sentence one person must hold it before his or her mind.

For example take the sentence " This dog is big, black and loud" If three separate people or 3 souls in one body each processed one part of the sentence it would be meaningless so we need one conscious perspective to hold before it a sentence meaning or perception.

I don't believe each cell in our body is aware of forming one human and many are replaceable but we have unity of perception to know we are an independent entity and can differentiate between unified objects and concepts

I feel like skeptics of the self put in almost no effort to characterise it sensibly before dismissing it and as with most of mental content they do not feel under the same obligation as a biologist for example to present something that is solid, testable and can be manipulated.

This is a strange line of questioning. — Andrew4Handel

I hope so.

Why can you not believe in the self before someone gives a causal/material explanation for it? — Andrew4Handel

Come away my friend from this Cartesian obsession with certainty.

It's not about whether P is true.
It's about whether we know what the flunk we are talking about when we say P.

We emit these platitudes without hearing ourselves. Proximally and for the most part, we are bots, as I've said before and botlike must say again.

If you can tell me what a self is supposed to be, then I will consider not believing in it. <smile>

A good reason a for a self is the unity of perception. — Andrew4Handel

I think this is an angle. But what is the unity of perception ? Is this linguistic ? Is it part of our convention or habit of thinking about ourselves as a single ghost trapped in a single skull ? Why can't two fit in there ? Or four and twenty ?

I feel like skeptics of the self put in almost no effort to characterise it sensibly before dismissing it and as with most of mental content they do not feel under the same obligation as a biologist for example to present something that is solid, testable and can be manipulated. — Andrew4Handel

I think Brandom's theory of the self is pretty good. He bothers to do what Descartes couldn't even grasp as necessary, which was to explicate the philosophical situation itself.

I think this is an angle. But what is the unity of perception ? Is this linguistic ? Is it part of our convention or habit of thinking about ourselves as a single ghost trapped in a single skull ? Why can't two fit in there ? Or four and twenty ? — plaque flag

As I have suggested if you don't believe in the validity of conscious states and language meaning you can't have a meaningful conversation. It is self defeating skepticism. I am at the juncture where I am not sure what you believe is true or communicable or why.

The reality of a perception is not a theory. Consciousness and self and language are not theories they are immediacies. Pain is an immediacy. We don't believe we are in pain we just have a state of pain.

The unity of perception is an immediacy.

We know the world consists of parts, trees have leaves and branches, we have eyes and ears but we perceive wholes not just parts and can only communicate because of whole's.

Like I said about language each individual part of sentence only makes sense as a whole not on it's own. Consciousness allows for unified perceptions. This logically requires one perceiver which is my self.

We don't even need to posit a homunculus or ghost in the skull because we have one unified brain and body. We don't need someone elses heart to pump blood around our body. We are very well self contained so it is no surprise our visual system should present unified perceptions. You do seem to be supporting a position of extreme skepticism not warranted by anything we know.

Language works. Someone says "The building is on fire" I leave the building and save my life. Only in philosophy does such an extreme level of meaning skepticism exist that nobody applies to real life. And then we have to clarify which sense of meaning we mean pointless. Semantic meaning is the ability of language to carry accurate information. Language is not a game it works.

As I have suggested if you don't believe in the validity of conscious states and language meaning you can't have a meaningful conversation. — Andrew4Handel

Ah Lou ! [ Fight Club reference ]. I don't doubt the self or language. I'm the opposite of a skeptic in some ways.

The reality of a perception is not a theory. Consciousness and self and language are not theories they are immediacies. Pain is an immediacy. We don't believe we are in pain we just have a state of pain. — Andrew4Handel

No they not. That just they grammar. In other words, that's a kneejerk metaphorical frame which one usually doesn't question, until some 'insane' person loans you a crowbar to pry it off. Maybe maybe maybe there is pain below the concept of pain, but the concept is social --just like the negative concept of immediacy.

The unity of perception is an immediacy. — Andrew4Handel

Says who ? I dare you to say that ten times in a row until its nullity is audible.

Consciousness allows for unified perceptions. This logically requires one perceiver which is my self. — Andrew4Handel

How ? Why ? Says who ? I'm not just messing with you. I think there are decent tentative answers to these questions.

You do seem to be supporting a position of extreme skepticism not warranted by anything we know.

Language works. Someone says "The building is on fire" I leave the building and save my life. Only in philosophy does such an extreme level of meaning skepticism exist that nobody applies to real life. And then we have to clarify which sense of meaning we mean pointless. Semantic meaning is the ability of language to carry accurate information. Language is not a game it works. — Andrew4Handel

I'm arguing from the success of language. I am looking under certain rocks [foundational concepts], not pretending they don't exist or don't do their job. The issue is how. Can we get clearer on what it is we are ? What is it to be a self ?

It's about whether we know what the flunk we are talking about when we say P. — plaque flag

I thought you weren't a skeptic because this appears to be skepticism.

Do you know what I mean when I refer to a "dog"? I certainly do. I see dogs every day.

I am aware of my self and mental states everyday. You don't have access to this because of the privacy I am talking about in this thread. You can be skeptical about other people's mental states because they are invisible to you and I can't comment on your mental states because they are invisible to me.

But your skepticism about my mental states has no bearing on their validity and may have no relevance whatsoever because I have no requirement to prove my mental states to you only to myself.

If we cannot agree on the nature of self that does not undermine my viewpoint because neither of us accessed each others private mental states to settle disputes.

Say I was sexually abused as a child. Only me and the abuser were there and the abuser dies and I am the only witness and my memories, that this ever happened. I cannot prove this to you so should my failure to produce shareable evidence mean it didn't happen?
It is illogical to rule out people's testimony on the grounds that you choose not to believe them and that there evidence is not publically available. Things don't cease to be true when you are on your own and not sharing your experiences.

I thought you weren't a skeptic because this appears to be skepticism.

Do you know what I mean when I refer to a "dog"? I certainly do. I see dogs every day. — Andrew4Handel

Ah I see. So let me be clearer then. We obviously have some kind of average blurry understanding of what words mean. So we can go to the grocery store, chat with the neighbor, etc.

But with metaphysical beliefs this ordinary language takes on new roles. You said: The unity of perception is an immediacy Now it's hard to imagine this is anything like: pass me that screwdriver. So it's fair to ask what exactly or at least more exactly that's supposed to mean. Maybe I tell you : everything is God's will. And for some people that's comforting, as if an itch has been scratched. But what does it mean ?

To me philosophy becomes sensitive to how 'deaf' we mostly are when we toss words around so causally. We have only a hazy idea of what we meme as we pass on the metaphysical gossip.

The unity of perception is an immediacy Now it's hard to imagine this is anything like: pass me that screwdriver. So it's fair to ask what exactly or at least more exactly that's supposed to mean. — plaque flag

I have posited that the unity of perception is why we understand a whole sentence and see a whole object. Do you have a competing theory of how this is possible? And possible without a perceiver. Who is having experiences?

We obviously have some kind of average blurry understanding of what words mean. — plaque flag

I don't know where you are getting the "blurry" bit from. Language successfully transmits veridical information. "I am a male of 46 yrs" It this initial ability of language to transmit facts that allows us to then extend it to trickier concepts.

If language is not initially fact based then it would have no meaning but it clearly does. From the fact of "horse" and "wings" we can create the imaginary Pegasus.

We are not travelling from the Mythical Pegasus and then discovering the concepts wings and horses. All we need to do is to attach a sound/word/symbol to something in the external world to establish a relationship of fact. So I could start calling a Dog a "Quaggle" but the real existence of dogs can make this refer.

There is enough going on in perception and time and space to allow concepts to form. It is not as thought we exist in a sparse environment with nothing to form a language from. The huge diversity of reality is enough to explain the initially diversity. To me semantic skepticism is somewhat ridiculous if it requires us not believing in the huge amount of perceptual information we receive and acting like we are blindly clutching in the dark when we aren't

How ? Why ? Says who ? — plaque flag

I explained earlier. Make sense of a sentence where the words are distributed between several different perceivers in different bodies and time frames.?

Your stance of not understanding just illustrates the point of this thread it seems. I allegedly cannot transmit my knowledge or experiences to you and vice versa, which rather than creating a societal, community based group understanding has degenerated into solipsism.

I'm actually just trying to pass on mainstream philosophy from the 20th century in my own playful way. As I see, it is pretty radical at first, so it's hard to make sense of at first. It sounds crazy. I studied constructivism in education briefly, and I think it's correct that our assumptions get in the way of interpreting statements that question the basic framework of those assumptions. As I see it, you are forced to understand me using the very system of concepts I'm trying to put in question. But I'm not at all trying to reduce you to some skepticism. It's just about looking at familiar things in a new way.

. "Broadly Cartesian foundationalism depends on there being a semantically autonomous stratum of thought" — plaque flag

According to this: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sberker/files/phil159-2018-lec15-cart-found.pdf

"We can define foundationalism as follows:
foundationalism:
a. There are immediately justified beliefs.
b. All other justified beliefs are justified in virtue of their relation to immediately justified beliefs."

I disagree with experiences being characterised as beliefs. My beliefs are justified by my experiences but my experiences just are.

Nothing would have a foundation if it were all described as beliefs. I don't think there anything semantic about my perception of sunlight which I may then attempt to explain. I attempt to explain The sunlight not my beliefs about it.

My overriding point here then is that to be skeptical about your very experiences and language meaning doesn't do anything but destroy your ability to explore your reality and communicate things about it.

It is a dead end. If you believe we can understand each other and communicate facts about experiences you have abandoned skepticism or even pragmatism. Then what we are trying to discover is what is causing our experiences and thoughts.

The answer to that could be anything but we cannot doubt we are having experiences it makes no sense and doubting itself requires an experience.

As I see it, you are forced to understand me using the very system of concepts I'm trying to put in question. But I'm not at all trying to reduce you to some skepticism. It's just about looking at familiar things in a new way. — plaque flag

I studied Philosophy at degree level myself and the Linguistic turn in philosophy. To me the Linguistic turn was sycophantic to science and destructive. It defeated itself because it could justify its foundations by its own philosophy.

It tried to put mental and conceptual entities on the same footing as the physical objects described in science which obviously meant they would not longer exist because they are nothing like physical objects nor perceptible in the same way.

I also believe academic trends have had a destructive effect on society. When they are not criticised and if they become the overarching paradigm and silence critiques.

I think if philosophy is just being done for fun or entertainment that should be stated clearly at the outset but if a philosopher attempts to influence fields like psychology, science, politics or social development I think they then have a social responsibility.

Subjectivity is a problem for us as our scientific method tries always to give an objective answer or model about reality. Hence it simply doesn't care actually of two separate people having different kind of perceptions or headaches. It could look at them on an aggregate, it could just concentrate on the chemical / physical reactions that one can observe. How me or you or somebody experiences something is like a wrong meaningless question. With trying to be objective, it shouldn't be a surprise that the subjective is left out.

I also believe academic trends have had a destructive effect on society. When they are not criticised and if they become the overarching paradigm and silence critiques. — Andrew4Handel

Or basically when their limitations aren't understood and just taken at face value in the most simple terms. Perfect example is economics (or political economy). Politicians can announce to be following one economic school or ideology, yet actually do usually everything else. But that understandably gives a bad rap to the school of thought as micromanagement of the economy usually (if not allways) fails.

experiences being characterised as beliefs. My beliefs are justified by my experiences but my experiences just are — Andrew4Handel

I agree with this. At a basic level experiences are not mediated by beliefs. But there are plenty toady who disagree and claim that perceptions themselves are inferential and further claim that neuroscience confirms this,

Leaving that aside, I would say the most important thing about human life is how it seems to us; this is the living reality. A so-called objective purported refutation of that based on what is interpreted to be delivered to us by science is secondary to and derivative of how things seem to us. Even in regard to what science shows there are multiple interpretations, so we are again back to seeming.

The only way to judge the value of contradictory seemings is to assess what affect they have on the quality of our lives. As Nietzsche said, the importance of the truth of ideas (which is mostly not demonstrable anyway) is secondary to how those ideas contribute to or detract from human flourishing.

In this arena of undecidable values why should we give a fuck about trying, per impossibile, to be correct, anyway? That is the question the analytic dogmatists of normativity who see the substance of human life, of being a self, as consisting in making claims, and philosophy as contest, cannot answer. The reality is that we each choose the ideas we want to live with, and by. Fuck the mind police I say!

As you can see I'm passionately opposed to the impossible dream of normative correctness and the machineman ethic.