It leads to silly, solipsistic statements such as
The definition of "red pen" is that thing that is out there that appears in my head as red.
— Hanover — Banno

It's not solipsistic at all. My comment referenced an external object. Solipsism says I only know my own mind.

How does Lionino know how the pen appears in your head? Your definition doesn't even get to stand up, let alone take a step forward. — Banno

He can't know my beetle, so we don't talk about that. What he can know is what I say and so long as we use the words in a consistent way, we get to play our language game together.

Maybe we have the same beetle, maybe we don't. We must realize it's irrelevant so we remain silent about it.

What is important is that we have a commonality of usage, so when I say my pen looks red you compare it to the other times you've heard the word and you assume a consistency. All that is important is that our language interaction work.

If you ask what's behind the curtain, as in, what is the meaning in the mind and what are the phenomenal states, you go hopelessly down the road of asking what precedes language and what exists independently of it.

Such is linguistic philosophy.

I am aware of the strained argument that an external object must exist to remind us of our prior usage. That seems ad hoc and wrong, designed perhaps to avoid my conclusion that the external is irrelevant for the playing of the word game. I say there's a red pen and you agree and so we speak together, regardless of whether we have a metaphysical underpinning.

This is about words. If the red reaaly is out there or really is just imposed by the brain doesn't matter. All that matters is that when i explain my view, you understand it and I speak it consistently.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word is God. And that's that. Sentences can mean very different things in very different contexts.

Anywat, I don't buy into the above, but I can recite if having to sit for an exam.

My own view is a dualistic theism where there are hearts and minds and an entire inner and external world of mystery and purpose, where every blade of grass sits exactly where it does for a specific reason, including there being a higher purpose for our having this conversation.

I say that just to avoid any confusion that i buy nto what I recited above.

It’s still writ large in current philosophy of mind. Search for ‘eliminativism’ in this thread and there are half a dozen returns, most of them advocating it. — Wayfarer

Here's that search.

I'm not seeing it. Distinguishing primary and secondary qualities is mostly of historical interest - perhaps except for you and maybe @Michael.

We measure them! — Wayfarer

So the list of primary qualities includes electric current, speed, pressure, torque, potential energy, luminosity...

Ok.

And oddly, roughness moved from being a secondary to a primary quality when the invention of X-ray diffraction permitted it to be measured.

But is seems it needs to be pointed out that when a notion such as primary and secondary qualities is superseded, it does not thereby disappear.

...Kant showed that knowledge of the categories of primary qualities is apriori. — frank

And that was uncontroversial? I think it stoped being useful when folk found themselves doing more work on what the difference was than on how it explained anything.

Cutting to the chase, I don't see that it helps here.

He can't know my beetle — Hanover

The point is, colour is not a beetle. @Lionino cannot see your beetle, by definition, but you both see the red pen. You both see red.

so long as we use the words in a consistent way — Hanover

Indeed. And if colour is only in your head, then how is it that Lionino is able to use the word in a way that is consistent with what is in your head? Could it be because there is a shared pen that is red?

This is about words. — Hanover

Well there's progress. Small steps.

...dualistic theism... — Hanover

There's your problem right there then. That and that all variations of idealism have trouble avoiding solipsism.

So the list of primary qualities includes electric current, speed, pressure, torque, potential energy, luminosity... — Banno

Current is measured in amps. Why do you think it can't be measured?

I don't think it can't be measured. I think it a curious candidate for a primary quality. "...roughly speaking, (primary qualities) are said to be real objective properties of objects and to be distinctly known" (SEP). I'm not sure how current is "distinctly known".

But that's just me. You go on ahead.

I'm not sure how current is "distinctly known". — Banno

Not a member of the 110 club, then? That's people who've been shocked by 110 volts AC. I've been a member since I was a kid.

110v is for 'mercan big girls blouses. Real Men (or children) get the full 250v. Makes your hair stand on end, that does.

110v is for 'mercan big girls blouses. Real Men (or children) get the full 250v. Makes your hair stand on end, that does. — Banno

I bet it does. :lol:

So are you suggesting that the electric current is known distinctly by the jolt felt? And that this is much the same way we know distinctly that some object is solid, or round?

Ok. Again, it doesn't work for me.

So are you suggesting that the electric current is known distinctly by the jolt felt? And that this is much the same way we know distinctly that some object is solid, or round?

Ok. Again, it doesn't work for me — Banno

Current is an object in its own right. It's a flow of electrons (or holes, depending on your point of view).

Current is an object... — frank

Hmm. Not convinced. Seems strained.

Hmm. Not convinced. Seems strained. — Banno

I don't think you're familiar with the concept.

I don't think you're familiar with the concept. — frank

Which concept? Current? Object? Conviction? Strained?

Are you going to defend pressure, heat and torque in the same fashion?

And just to be sure, I'm not claiming the distinction between primary and secondary qualities cannot be made, but that it is difficult to maintain, and not of as much use as other notions.

Which concept? Current? Object? Conviction? Strained? — Banno

Current is an object like a waterfall is an object. The water flows over the rocks. I guess you could think of the waterfall as a property of the rocks, but that's kind of weird. It's more like something that's happening to the rocks. Likewise, current flows in a conductor, like iron. The flow is something happening to the iron. Anyway, we usually talk about current as a thing, not a property.

Are you going to defend pressure, heat and torque in the same fashion? — Banno

I could.

And just to be sure, I'm not claiming the distinction between primary and secondary qualities cannot be made, but that it is difficult to maintain, and not of as much use as other notions. — Banno

It's like a lens through which people see the world. Color is mental, length is not. Does it fall apart at the edges? I think it probably does, but so does every way of thinking. There is no complete package. That's why philosophy never ends.

Primary qualities or attributes are just those which are measurable, and, crucially, those that are said to be mind-independent. A hue may look different to different observers - although that’s hard to tell - but any value that can be measured objectively is not subject to opinion. — Wayfarer

Colour is precisely measurable, so this criterion does not work. @Banno is correct that the 'primary/ secondary' distinction is outmoded.

I mentioned Whitehead's 'bifurcation of nature' previously:

Whitehead describes modern thought as plagued by a “radical inconsistency” which he calls “the bifurcation of nature”. According to Whitehead, this fundamental “incoherence” at the foundation of modern thought is reflected not only in the concept of nature itself, but in every field of experience—in modern theories of experience and subjectivity, of ethics and aesthetics, as well as many others. In “The Concept of Nature” Whitehead states that nature splits into two seemingly incompatible spheres of reality at the beginning of modern European thought in the 17th century: ‘Nature’ on the one hand refers to the (so-called) objective nature accessible to the natural sciences only, i.e., the materialistically conceptualized nature of atoms, molecules, cells, and so on; at the same time, however, ‘nature’ also refers to the (subjectively) perceptible and experienced, i.e., the appearing nature with its qualities, valuations, and sensations. Whitehead considers this modernist division of nature in thought—the differentiation of primary and secondary qualities, of ‘first’ and ‘second’ nature, of a material and mental sphere—a fundamental, serious, and illicit incoherence. His term for this incoherence is ‘bifurcation of nature’, for the question of how these two concepts of nature—‘objective’ and ‘subjective’—relate to each other remains largely unresolved for Whitehead within the philosophical tradition of modernity. — Nature and Subjectivity in Alfred North Whitehead

Similar analysis expressed by Hans Jonas:

The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to the laws of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space. This denuded substratum of all reality could only be arrived at through a progressive expurgation of vital features from the physical record and through strict abstention from projecting into its image our own felt aliveness. In the process the ban on anthropomorphism was extended to zoomorphism in general. What remained is the residue of the reduction toward the properties of mere extension which submit to measurement and hence to mathematics. These properties alone satisfy the requirements of what is now called exact knowledge: and representing the only knowable aspect of nature they, by a tempting substitution, came to be regarded as its essential aspect too: and if this, then as the only real in reality.

This means that the lifeless has become the knowable par excellence and is for that reason also considered the true and only foundation of reality. It is the "natural" as well as the original state of things. Not only in terms of relative quantity but also in terms of ontological genuineness, non-life is the rule, life the puzzling exception in physical existence.

Accordingly, it is the existence of life within a mechanical universe which now calls for an explanation, and explanation has to be in terms of the lifeless. Left over as a borderline case in the homogeneous physical world-view, life has to be accounted for by the terms of that view. — Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology

You seem to be talking about notions of the continuum which would be a small part of Peirce’s semiotics. — apokrisis

You should read the article I referred, it's quite interesting. The subject is how Peirce dealt with "the problem of induction", and how this relates to Wittgenstein. Peirce's distinction between corollarial (habitual) proofs and theorematic (creative) proofs, is argued to be influential to Wittgenstein's middle work, and this work of Peirce is shown to have a relation to inferentialism in general. The question is whether all conclusions derivable from a set of premises or axioms are already predetermined, or do proofs produce something new. Peirce's Theorematic proofs are creative, producing new knowledge.

However, as already Peirce pointed out, theorematic reasoning involves
“foreign ideas”, concept formation or transformation over and above the
theorem’s formulation, and the background knowledge. The nature of these
new concepts is suggested by his examples, and is made explicit in modern semantic information theory. They manifest in the construction and/or
recognition of new patterns, auxiliary figures in geometry, composite structures in set theory, or compound predicates and propositional formulae in
formal systems (D’Agostino, 2016, p.170). One defines new objects, and/or
finds new ways to describe their properties and interrelations with other
objects, old and new. Many previously proved properties are turned into
new definitions. Conceptual omniscience is problematic because much of
mathematicians’ effort goes into crafting definitions, and few theorems are
proved about objects introduced already in the axioms. Skeletal semantics
of the model theory, that parses formulae down to basic elements, is not
the semantics of informal proofs (Azzouni, 2009, p.18). To use Dummett’s
own example, the concept of ellipse does not appear in either planimetric or
stereometric axioms, and it is only one among an infinite variety of objects
they give room for. That theorems about ellipses should be proved at all is
not determined by the formalism.
Of course, ellipses are strongly motivated by common observations, but
this suggests exactly the empirically mediated “determinacy” that Wittgenstein describes. In the practice of mathematics, definitions do more than
single out formal patterns. Newly formed concepts are linked to concepts
from other formalisms, informal intuitions, and applications outside of mathematics. When conceptual resources are specified in advance, the interpretational labor required to make proofs and theorems meaningful can not
be captured by them. And “without an interpretation of the language of
the formal system the end-formula of the derivation says nothing; and so
nothing is proved” (Giaquinto, 2008, p.26). The meaning of unproved theorems is not determined because, after all, we may not be smart enough to
deduce them, let alone anticipate concepts to be introduced in their proofs,
or statements. The appearance of elliptic curves and modular forms in the
Wiles’s proof of the Last Fermat theorem gives an idea of just how much
new concept formation can be involved. — p9-10

...length is not... — frank

Long ago, someone who has posted on this thread insisted that Mount Everest did not have a height until it was measured. Pragmatism and Pierce and stuff had led them to this opinion.

After I stoped laughing, I was left puzzling that they could have such an odd conception of length. Presumably for some folk, length is mental.

Anyway, nice analogue with the waterfall. So is a waterfall a primary quality of a cliff? Not during a drought, I supose. We might have some level of overall agreement.

Colour is precisely measurable, — Janus

Glad you said that. I thought it obvious.

Long ago, someone who has posted on this thread insisted that Mount Everest did not have a height until it was measured. — Banno

You might be interested to note that measurements of its height have varied considerably since it was first observed, and that furthermore its height is also changing due to movements in the underlying tectonic plates.

You can make exact predictions of how a colour should appear to a viewer, but appearance still requires a viewer. Obviously there are the color-blind who can't differentiate red and green. There are many other anomalies governing colour perception i.e. different types of organisms see by different bands in the electromagnetic spectrum. In that sense, perception of colour always entails a subjective aspect, as a phenomenon, because 'phenomenon' means 'what appears', and that isn't included the spectrographic analysis of a colour. (c.f. Mary's Room).

I don't think you're familiar with the concept. — frank

+1. Seems not.

Long ago, someone who has posted on this thread insisted that Mount Everest did not have a height until it was measured. Pragmatism and Pierce and stuff had led them to this opinion. — Banno

Philosophy has corrupted the minds of the young. Again.

You might be interested to note that measurements of its height have varied considerably — Wayfarer

Of course. It just seems to me that if one sets out to measure the height of a mountain, one already presumes it has a height to be measured.

There is one side insisting that red is the experience that we have of red and the other side that red is the thing that causes the experience, for several pages now.

Is arguing about semantics that interesting?

The implications are interesting. One concludes that reality is a construct of the mind, the other, not a construct at all.

It just seems to me that if one sets out to measure the height of a mountain, one already presumes it has a height to be measured. — Banno

I don't dispute the reality of objective facts. Where I differ with cognitive realism is that I claim that objective facts are still in some fundamental sense dependent on cognition. Speaking of Mount Everest, for instance: if Mount Everest were to be sentient, then it would probably not comprehend humans, as humans are so small, and their life-spans so perishing, that they would be incomprehensible to a mountain, their movements imperceptibily brief and small. But Mt Everest would recognise glacial flows, as they stick around to tens of thousands of years, and have the mass to alter the topography of the mountain itself. At the other end of the scale, were microbes to be sentient, they would perceive human bodies as the limit of their Universe, and thousands of generations of them would live and die within a single body.

None of that is to deny that Mt Everest is - let's see - 8,849m (although source notes there are still disputes due to topography, ice mass, and other factors. That is the 'agreed definition' although whether it is objectively true is still, ahem, up in the air :-) )

but appearance still requires a viewer. — Wayfarer

Appearance of anything requires a viewer. So where is the distinction?

Appearance of anything requires a viewer. So where is the distinction? — Janus

The whole thread is about it, it shouldn't have to spelled out. The physical attributes of a wavelength of light vs how it appears in the eyes of a subject. The former is exactly specificiable in objective terms, the latter is prone to subjective particularities. This is what the OP was getting at and what has been debated since.

I just see a fellow brother from far away through your words — Mp202020

I'm glad they made sense for you.

In some ways the structure of Tibetan Buddhism was a bit too close to my lapsed catholicism, a bit too ritualistic. I did like the incense and decor.

Philosophy has corrupted the minds of the young. Again. — frank

Nope. That is just Banno trying to rewrite ancient forum history to console his still hurt feelings. :grin:

None of that is to deny that Mt Everest is - let's see - 8,849m — Wayfarer

The more important measure in everyday humans terms is that Mt Everest is numero uno. The peak that stands above all others.

But others might protest that is not the metric that encodes the greatest skill, the greatest effort, or whatever else ought to be given prime importance due to some socialised context.

Science might indeed offer you a least socialised metric in terms of metres above sea level. All other aspects of being a mountain – such as being a tectonic bulge rising and falling over eons, or a fractally complex feature that is of some average roughness, hence easier or harder to climb – are allowed to fall away in that particular view.

It might be the measure that is pragmatically useful at a really general level of physical description based on spatial distances at temporal instances. Kind of like, you know, Newtonianism. :up:

So generally you are right. Folk philosophy does tend to make that primary vs secondary property distinction. And it is sort of there in the data. Hue discrimination seems somehow different even as a neurocognitive act than object recognition.

The perfect sphere of a ball set against the messy fractal scene of a typical natural landscape just kind of pops out as being "that kind of Platonically perfect object that we form as an ideal object".

The backdrop has scale symmetry – a fractal averageness to it. The ball has its rotational symmetry – an abstract symmetry that only comes into view once we get all spacetime relativistic on Nature's arse. That makes a ball a rather striking thing even on our back lawn. It is clearly "out there" even if it is also about as Platonic an object as, well, a square.

Then hue discrimination comes from the other pole of neurocognitive decoding. We can say it is about wavelength – as if a frequency of light is the key that flips the detector switch in a cone receptor cell and our brain suddenly feels that "redness".

And yet really there is huge complexity in the neurology to even start the discrimination. The round football is striking against the fractal garden backdrop. But hue discrimination has to build a whole contextual hierarchy of contrast to get to where it wants to go.

Just as a taster, consider how the three cones are already set up at the retinal level to construct both the visual sameness and the visual difference that gets the game going. Same information cut both ways in dialectical fashion so as to have any hat to hang the processing on – extract some difference that makes a difference as it has become the signal that stands proud of the noise....

Most animal species have the capacity for color vison, and in all known cases it is based on detecting light with two or more photoreceptor classes that differ in the wavelength sensitivity of their photopigments. However, having more types of receptors does not necessarily confer a higher dimensionality of color vision.

Most humans have three classes of cone receptors maximally sensitive to short (S), medium (M), or long [L] wavelengths, and thus normal (or, more aptly, routine) color vision is trichromatic. Encoding color further depends on the neural machinery for comparing the relative cone responses, for example to determine whether the L cones or M cones are more excited by a light spectrum.

These comparisons begin in the retina, in post-receptoral neurons that receive inputs of the same or opposite sign from different receptor types, and are carried within three “cardinal” mechanisms with distinct cell types and pathways, named for their projections to different layers of the lateral geniculate nucleus.

Cells in the magnocellular (M) pathway sum the L and M cones’ signals and are the substrate of our luminance sensitivity (L+M). Chromatic information is instead carried by two cone-opponent cell types that receive opposing signals from the L and M cones (L-M, the parvocellular or P pathway) or from S cones opposed by both L and M (S-LM, the koniocellular or K pathway).

However, these mechanisms describe only the initial steps of color coding. There are major further transformations of the cone-opponent signals in the cortex, and different transformations may arise at several different cortical stages. Moreover, even within the retina, there is a possibility that color percepts are carried within pathways that combine the cones in different ways than the cardinal mechanisms

With the football in your back garden, it seems to tell its own tale. If it appeared only this morning, perhaps a neighbour booted it over the fence. There seem to be no low level behind the scenes type neural processes going on. If the football is easy to see and explains itself, this is because you understand the intellectual type stuff about rotational symmetry vs scale symmetry. It is your choice whether to take an everyday lumpen realism about balls on lawns or to get mystical about Platonic strength forms.

But with hue discrimination, there is a massive amount of preprocessing to create the same kind of "its just obvious" pop out contrast. To have the immediate and primary impression that the football is blue with yellow stripes and not red with green ones.

At the end of the day, it if pops out, it pops out. Our neurology is doing the job it is meant to do. We can be lumpen realists speaking in everyday language about thoughtlessly inhabiting a cosy familiar world of medium sized-dry goods. The whereabouts of our pending luncheon the only concern.

However the immediacy is an illusion. The reality is the phenomenal complexity of an acquired neurological habit. We must each build hue discrimination for ourselves as bodies that develop neural pathways via processes of growth and pruning. We must get wired for colour as a pragmatic interaction we form with the world as we find it.

That's the look of surprise you see starting to form on the newborn's face as it emerges. Nothing makes sense. And yet within a few months, it really starts to fall into its comprehensible patterns. Footballs that are red. Redness that is not just about footballs.

We must each build hue discrimination for ourselves as bodies that develop neural pathways via processes of growth and pruning. We must get wired for colour as a pragmatic interaction we form with the world as we find it. — apokrisis

Of course. I read somewhere - can't recall where - that ancient Greek has a very limited range of words for colours, and that the 'wine-dark sea' of the Homeric epics might have really reflected that they couldn't differentiate the colours of wine and the ocean as we do now. And there's the old trope, I think now debunked, about the Eskimos having 37 terms for snow, allowing them to make all kinds of differentiations in snow colour and conditions which we ourselves wouldn't see.

Anyway I think you would concur that color perceptions are instances of the co-arising of sensation, apperception and judgement - neither objective nor subjective but transjective - 'referring to a property not of the subject or of the environment but a relation co-created between them'.

The perfect sphere of a ball set against the messy fractal scene of a typical natural landscape just kind of pops out as being "that kind of Platonically perfect object that we form as an ideal object". — apokrisis

Everything you see, hear and think comes to you in structured wholes: When you read, you’re seeing a whole page even when you focus on one word or sentence. When someone speaks, you hear whole words and phrases, not individual bursts of sound. When you listen to music, you hear an ongoing melody, not just the note that is currently being played. Ongoing events enter your awareness as Gestalts, for the Gestalt is the natural unit of mental life. If you try to concentrate on a dot on this page, you will notice that you cannot help but see the context at the same time. Vision would be meaningless, and have no biological function, if people and animals saw anything less than integral scenes.

The obvious reason for this is that life plays out in whole events, and the objects with which every animal interacts are complete things. A deer must instantly recognize the form of a cougar (and vice-versa), a squirrel must see the separate branches on a tree, a honeybee must know different kinds of flowers each having a distinctive design. Birds must tell the difference between nourishing and poisonous butterflies by subtle differences in wing design and markings. The habitat of every living thing is multiple and complex, and survival depends on the power to learn and recognize its intricacies. Even single-celled animals respond differentially to complex configurations. The more we learn about animal life, the more clearly we see that all perception and all action are designed for survival in a multiform and dynamic world of whole objects and complete events. In such a world, living organisms must be able to perceive undivided patterns and whole configurations. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 29). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[quote="Wayfarer;926273"]Where I differ with cognitive realism is that I claim that objective facts are still in some fundamental sense dependent on cognition.[/quote] Well, yes, since facts are true and hence in some way propositional. Of course what you believe is dependent on cognition, cognition being what you believe. Speaking quite approximately, of course. There be devil's in the detail. Or at the least, in the overly long threads. Been reading Kafka?[media]

Where I differ with cognitive realism is that I claim that objective facts are still in some fundamental sense dependent on cognition. — Wayfarer

Well, yes, since facts are true and hence in some way propositional. Of course what you believe is dependent on cognition, cognition being what you believe.

Speaking quite approximately, of course. There be devil's in the detail. Or at the least, in the overly long threads.

Been reading Kafka?