Example: the realest dream of a cow is indistinguishable from actually seeing a cow. — Lionino

If this is so, how is it that we have the distinction between dreams and lucidity?

...you've missed my point completely — AmadeusD

Perhaps there was no real point for you to make.

That is one way of getting around the possibility you missed it. Perhaps we are destined to throw this at each other forever :)

Try going into a shop and asking for the red pens that are not red and see how far you get. — Banno

But we're not in the shop. We're here. Use is contextually based. Maybe a tomato is a fruit, but I'm asking the shop owner to direct me to the vegetables for the tomatoes. I'll speak French in France as well.

This reduces to what we just think are one another's idiosyncratic uses of language. I say the pen itself isn't red, which is consistent with how the neuroscientists define it. Reliance upon experts to define terms in an intellectual setting such as this is reasonable. What do you suggest, a democratic vote?

Perhaps we are destined to throw this at each other forever :) — AmadeusD

No.

No one, in every-day life, understands the difference of refering to Red, the colour, and referring to things as red-causing things. — AmadeusD

But key there is "understands" the difference. Physicists say that some star is red, even though they can't see the star at all, all they got are numbers on a screen. People who learn pop science, which are many, will take on that use of 'red' to refer to things they can't see. They will say UY Scuti is red, even though they have never seen it. Do they understand the difference between the cause of red and the experience of red? Likely not, but that doesn't mean that they are not talking about a different thing as when they say the shirt is red, when they say UY Scuti is red (a scientifically correct statement). Who are we to say one domain of discourse is invalid and the other is valid? If you want to do prescriptive linguistics, English is the wrong language for that, I recommend Icelandic instead.

When you say "in every-day life", you mean "to those that don't pay attention to philosophical matters". Should we, in philosophy, take input from those that don't pay attention to philosophy? I suppose the common-sense philosophers would chant "yes".

The body is not necessary — AmadeusD

I am taking it you misread. I am saying the body is not necessary, but it is sufficient. So we are agreeing there, unless you miswrote.

My understanding is "no" — AmadeusD

This, imo. — AmadeusD

We are all entitled to our opinions on topics, but I like to furbish my opinions with reasons.

but I like to furbish my opinions with reasons. — Lionino

Not really a tangent, but weakly related: I detest those goofy "Well we have less philosophical problems with this stance so I am taking this stance" arguments. One that comes to mind is the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument. Quine is the king of shit metaphysical arguments. Scientific parsimony needs to stay away from metaphysics.

how is it that we have the distinction between dreams and lucidity? — Banno

Have you had the realest dream of a cow, or just the realest-1% dream of a cow?

This reduces to what we just think are one another's idiosyncratic uses of language. I say the pen itself isn't red, which is consistent with how the neuroscientists define it. Reliance upon experts to define terms in an intellectual setting such as this is reasonable. What do you suggest, a democratic vote? — Hanover

You show signs of recognising differing uses. Progress. The physiology is not the whole story.

Have you had the realest dream of a cow, or just the realest-1% dream of a cow? — Lionino

A child learns to differentiate between dreaming and being awake. How? It's partially to do with their interactions with others.

Children think that 12+12=22.

No. — Banno

You can't possibly be lacking this much in humour.
Ah well. I prefer human interactions anyway ;)

Do they understand the difference between the cause of red and the experience of red? Likely not, but that doesn't mean that they are not talking about a different thing as when they say the shirt is red, when they say UY Scuti is red (a scientifically correct statement). — Lionino

I don't think this is really apt. They don't know they are saying different things. They think that the colour of the star matches the colour of the shirt. IFF they could see the start, it would match their experience of hte red shirt. The different uses are there, but I don't think they are acknowledged as different uses. I just don't think people make these distinctions. Barely anyone takes Red to be anything but a property of some objects that they cannot escape, when their eyes are open.

"Well we have less philosophical problems with this stance so I am taking this stance" arguments. — Lionino

This is one of my biggest pet-peeves. It is the reason things like Austin and Searle make me laugh so much. Ignoring things doesn't make them go away. Just like ignoring that I've made a distinction between 'red objects' and 'the colour red', spoken about the former - Results in Banno responding to both at once which would be a reasonable response, had i confused the two uses.

A child learns to differentiate between dreaming and being awake — Banno

They largely differentiate being asleep to being awake. Not dreaming. These can be confused all the way through life and indeed, are.

OK.

How do they lean what dreams are?

Roughly, Ayer's argument is that:

* When we see something, there is always a thing that we see.
* There are instances where what we see is a different thing to what is "really" there; a thing philosophers call "sense data"
* This account must be generalised, so that in all instances, what we see is sense data.

So far we have watched Austin carefully dismantle the first two steps. The first in Lecture II, the second in Lecture III and IV. Now we are moving on the finishing step.

Before looking at Austin, let's consider Zhuang Zhou. You will no doubt be familiar with the story. As a butterfly, he did not know he was Zhuang Zhou. When he was Zhuang Zhou, he wondered if he was a butterfly.

It's a stimulating story, throwing one's considerations off-centre, and I do not wish to detract from it, but to add to it, since I think it can give us some insight into the approach Austin takes in Lecture V. We do know the difference between dreaming and being awake. We understand the nature of dreams, that they occur during sleep, usually at night, and may involve various otherwise impossible things. We understand what it is to dream and what it is to be awake - we must do, because we have the language around dreaming. If we could really not tell our dreams from our more lucid states, we could have no such language. We could not even have the word "dream".

We know also that the story is told from the point of view of Zhuang Zhou, and not from the point of view of the butterfly. If we did have the story from the perspective of the butterfly, the world would be a very different place. But the symmetry on which the story depends must be broken in order for the story to be told.

Considerations such as these have a close parallel in the final writings of Wittgenstein on certainty. The story can only take place if the very things it brings into doubt are held firm. And the story, being constructed of words, has to take it's place in a community of human beings.
— Banno

How do they lean what dreams are? — Banno

I am not really a psychologist of dreams, even though Freud was a cocaine addict, but since you are asking my opinion, I will give to you:

It is the things, which are sometimes coherent and other times incoherent in respect to each other, that come before waking up to the thing that is always coherent in respect to itself every single time we wake up. In other words, induction and comparison.

When it comes to that quote, I will read the thread eventually. Most likely not this year.

It is the things, which may be coherent or incoherent in respect to each other, that come before waking up to the thing that is always coherent in respect to itself every single time we wake up. In other words, induction. — Lionino

You lost me here.

IFF they could see the start, it would match their experience of hte red shirt. — AmadeusD

Here is the problem, however:
Even if they don't get annihilated with fatal radiation before seeing the star properly; depending where they are, there is a chance they would just see white from UY Scuti, even though it is red. The Sun itself, classified as a yellow dwarf, looks white, even though spectrographically it is blue-green.

You lost me here. — Banno

I live through something. – Experience X
I wake up.
I live through something. – Experience Y
I go to sleep.
I live through something. – Experience Z.
I wake up.
I live through something. – Experience V.

Experience Y and V are coherent with each other (the sky is blue, my friends from this city are here and not my friends from the other city, I can't fly), while experience X and Z sometimes are completely incoherent.
Additionally, experience X and Z come after going to bed in the preceding experience. Experience V and Y come always start with waking up. There is another distinction between the two groups, though not enough to tell which is real and which is fake. What helps us tell real from fake is coherence.

So you can tell when you are dreaming and when you are awake. Good.

Yes. Anyway, back to the original point.

The realest dream of a cow is, by definition, indistinguishable from actually seeing a cow. It is the dream when taken as a whole, and arranged temporally with the experiences that came after or before it, that is rationally determined to be a dream or reality. But if the dream is simply the realest dream of a cow and nothing else, and it is so long ago that we forgot about what came before or after that experience, there is nothing telling us whether we dreamed that cow or actually saw it — false memories, deja vu's, may sometimes come from dreams.

You show signs of recognising differing uses. Progress. The physiology is not the whole story. — Banno

Your argument reduces to saying that my use of the term "red pen" is incorrect because no one uses it that way. My argument is that they do. The physiology dominates my definition.

Since use is determined by whatever the community says it is, then I say my definition is correct. I live in a different community than you apparently.

We're just arguing over who's the better dictionary writer.

there is a chance they would just see white from UY Scuti, even though it is red. — Lionino

This runs into the distinction. They are wrong to think they would see Red. In THAT sense, the star is not red.

We're just arguing over who's the betterworse dictionary writer. — Hanover

And it seems to be by design.

In THAT sense, the star is not red. — AmadeusD

Meaning that there is some sense in which the star is red, and another sense in which the star is not red. Since we are not violating the LNC, this must mean that the word 'red' may take on related but different meanings. My original statement.

who's the better dictionary writer — Hanover

I vote for myself.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/sensation-of-pain — AmadeusD

Idk what part of the link you are referring to.

Meaning that there is some sense in which the star is red, and another sense in which the star is not red. Since we are not violating the LNC, this must mean that the word 'red' may take on related but different meanings. My original statement. — Lionino

Sure. That is not what they discern. That's my point. You discern this difference. That is not what is happening when the average person refers to both the shirt and star. They think they are referring to the same immutable property of the two different objects. That's what I disagreed with - not that two senses are being employed.

Idk what part of the link you are referring to. — Lionino

Yeah, that's not what I linked, weirdly. Let me see if I can both figure out why that's the case,a nd provide hte page I intended to link.

This was the link I intended (if this again links to that indexical page, ignore it, and move to the below)

From the linked article:
"Pain receptors, also called nociceptors, are a group of sensory neurons with specialized nerve endings widely distributed in the skin, deep tissues (including the muscles and joints), and most of visceral organs.
....
Activation of nociceptors generates action potentials, which are propagated along the afferent nerve axons, especially unmyelinated C-fibers and thinly myelinated Aδ-fibers. At the spinal cord level, the nociceptive nerve terminals release excitatory neurotransmitters to activate their respective postsynaptic receptors on second-order neurons.
....
The nociceptive signal, encoding the quality, location, and intensity of the noxious stimuli, is then conveyed via the ascending pathway to reach various brain regions to elicit pain sensation. Physiological pain responses normally protect us from tissue damage by quickly alerting us to impending injury."

If we take this account seriously, the possibility to pain being in the injured area is not open to us. It is a mental phenomenon triggered by events in the injured area which are not mental events. Back to the interaction problem, it seems.

The realest dream of a cow is, by definition, indistinguishable from actually seeing a cow. It is the dream when taken as a whole, and arranged temporally with the experiences that came after or before it, that is rationally determined to be a dream or reality. But if the dream is simply the realest dream of a cow and nothing else, and it is so long ago that we forgot about what came before or after that experience, there is nothing telling us whether we dreamed that cow or actually saw it — false memories, deja vu's, may sometimes come from dreams. — Lionino

So in summary, if we could not tell when we were dreaming, then we could not tell if it's a cow or a dream cow.

Well, yes.

But we can tell when we are dreaming.

So. Not very convincing.

Since use is determined by whatever the community says it is... — Hanover

Odd.

Use is determined by... well, what we do. Not by what we say we do.

But we can tell when we are dreaming. — Banno

That's not very common. It's only happened to me once.

You are thinking of Lucid dreams? I've had them a few times. No, I'm talking generally - we differentiate between dreams and wakefulness.

You are thinking of Lucid dreams? I've had them a few times. No, I'm talking generally - we differentiate between dreams and wakefulness. — Banno

Not when the dream is happening, though.

But we can tell when we are dreaming. — Banno

No, not always - retrospect isn't all that relevant here. If we can only tell the difference by dry comparison, then the events themselves are not phenomenally distinguishable. I think that's more important for the point... But yours is taken, nonetheless.

Use is determined by... well, what we do. Not by what we say we do. — Banno

Clearly untrue. We are told what to do with language all the time. Institutions and systems enforce language use constantly. Sometimes under threat of force.

Use is determined by... well, what we do. Not by what we say we do. — Banno

You say you use words in some way other than saying them?

Doubly odd.

Not when the dream is happening, though. — frank

I had an 8:00 am class in college that I'd go to and come back home and sleep. I was half awake and half sleeping and I knew I was asleep so I'd fly and do other cool shit I couldn't do when I was awake.

I think sometimes people who talk about how other people think actually think there's one way of thinking. I'd suspect Picasso saw things like he painted them more than that he just jumbled his real thoughts.

I had a professor once who talked about what dogs could think and I think he thought he knew, but I knew he never could have had a dog, or if he did, he never took it seriously.

The animal thing foreclosures me taking seriously that language is needed for serious thought.

Wittgensteinian is interesting to the extent he lets you know the logical conclusions of analytic philosophy where the only objective is to define your terms and forget about the world