In one sense it tells us that there is nothing more to say about red; given the domain is only the beads, red just is {1,2,3}.

I agree that there is something annoying here, but I suspect that it cannot be well articulated. — Banno

I wonder if part of the problem lies in the choice of "red". I thought that picking an irreducible quale would help us see what's going on with "meaning," but maybe not. In a certain sense, "red" is like a proper name, in that it's "just there," and can't be defined further, at least not in a way that's relevant to the phenomenology.

So what if we pick "square" instead? This term has a simple definition, and doubts about possible squares are easily and publicly resolvable. Would you want to say that the extension of Square X simply is what we mean by (or define as) a square?

Would you want to say that the extension of Square X simply is what we mean by (or define as) a square? — J

Perhaps bead eight is square. In that case, and given that our domain is just the beads, "...is square" and '...is eight" are extensionally equivalent, and whatever is extensional the case with square things will be extensively the case with bead eight.

So it does not look as if the choice of red is an issue.

Take note that "red" and "square" are not proper names.

Part of what is shown here is the poverty of phenomenological approaches that is simply bypassed by the extensional treatment. We don't need the messy thinking that accompanies trying to explain if and how what you see as red and what I see as red (...or square...) are the same. So ling as we agree that {1,2,3} are red and {8} is square, we can get on.

A whole philosophical quagmire avoided.

Thanks, that makes your point clearer.

So type theory can be used to give a clear account of what is analytic and what is synthetic. This is different to what is necessary and what is possible, the concerns of modal logic. So we now have formal tools at hand with which we can make distinctions that were not available to Quine. Quine rightly dismissed the analytic/synthetic distinction as too vague, and consequently also dismissed modality, which he understood as closely related. Subsequent - or perhaps even consequent - developments have shown us ways to revive these ideas.

Perhaps bead eight is square. In that case, and given that our domain is just the beads, "...is square" and '...is eight" are extensionally equivalent, and whatever is extensional the case with square things will be extensively the case with bead eight.

So it does not look as if the choice of red is an issue. — Banno

Here is the difference I see between "red" and "square". If someone is in doubt about "red", they aren't going to say "But what does 'red' mean?" They're probably not even going to ask, "How do you define 'red'?", though if they did, a definition of sorts is available, involving wavelengths. But people used "red" correctly long before this definition was known, so it's not a helpful response. The point, then, is that "red" does seem to be the sort of thing that has to get pointed to; it can't otherwise be explained or defined (phenomenologically).

"Square" is different. The doubtful geometer can and does ask, "What does 'square' mean?" and receives a definition that is phenomenologically relevant and simple -- check the sides and angles. For me, the conclusion is irresistible that, in addition to various extended things that are square, there is also an intension for "square", a meaning or definition that can be appealed to in doubtful cases, and that we would certainly use in teaching a child about squares.

This doesn't yet constitute a full-fledged defense of "meaning," but are you with me so far?

@Banno, @sime

Quine rightly dismissed the analytic/synthetic distinction as too vague, — Banno

I know I've pointed this out before, but I think it's really important to keep in mind: Quine accepts the analytic/synthetic distinction when it comes to what he called "logical truths":

If we suppose a prior inventory of logical particles . . . then in general a logical truth is a statement which is true and remains true under all reinterpretations of its components other than the logical particles. — Two Dogmas, section 1

It is the second kind of alleged analyticity, typified by "No bachelor is married", which requires synonymy, that is the focus of Quine's objections.

Obervation sentences are stimulus-synonymous for a speaker if their stimulus meanings are the same for him. But whereas one’s stimulations and their ranges are a private affair, stimulus synonymy makes sense socially. Sentences are stimulus-synonymous for the community if stimulus-synonymous for each member. This still does not work between languages, unless the community is bilingual. — Quine, Pursuit of Truth

I'm not seeing a difference. Won't you also have to explain what a side and an angle are? How would you do that? Is your point that red is a simple and square, a construction? Is "angle" a simple or a construct? What about "side"?

Yep, tautologies are true because they remain true under substitution - and that is becasue of the very definition of extensionality. So a=a or p v ~p are analytic because no matter what you substitute in to a, it remains true. Same for any tautology.

But a Batchelor of Arts need not be married, and a bachelor might be married to his work.

That is, Quine accepts the analytic/synthetic distinction when it can be given a firmly extensional definition.

So far as I understand the sort of formal systems @sime has in mind, analyticity is defined in terms of construction rather than substitution. The identity a=a is always constructible, without the need for external verification. Not so for "p v ~p". Nor for "Bachelors are unmarried".

So yes, synonymy requires verification - "witness".

I'm not seeing a difference. Won't you also have to explain what a side and an angle are? How would you do that? Is your point that red is a simple and square, a construction? Is "angle" a simple or a construct? What about "side"? — Banno

I think you're pointing to the fact that any definition will ultimately have to consist of simples. But why would that mean it wasn't a definition, or meaning? My suggestion is modest: anything which can be defined in terms of simples is therefore different from a simple itself. Thus, this may lead to an explanation of why we have a pretty good idea what "square" means, much less so for "red."

It's important that we don't get this mixed up with using these terms. Here, of course, we do fine with both "square" and "red," but to say that this settles the issue of meaning is to beg the question, surely; the question at hand is whether meaning is use.

BTW, if either one of us resolves this satisfactorily, I will write it up and send it to a major journal -- Breaking news! 20th century conflict settled! Wittgenstein proved right (or wrong, as the case may be)! :wink:

It's not that meaning is use. Explanations in terms of meaning invariably reach a point were one asks the meaning of "meaning" or some such, running against the limits of that sort of approach. The admonition here is to stop looking at meaning and look instead at what one is doing - to look instead at use. This transcends the discussion of meaning, replacing what is said by what can be shown.

Wittgenstein already won this particular game by pointing out that it is not so much what we say as want we do that is of import.

Wittgenstein already won this particular game by pointing out that it is not so much what we say as what we do that is of import. — Banno

I guess I never understood why this was supposed to be obvious, or even true. Why is doing more important than saying? Certainly we want to know what we're doing with words, but what we're trying to express with them has usually been taken as extending well beyond what we may do. Is there a way of expanding the above maxim with some argument or demonstration, rather than claiming it's something we can simply "point out" as a game-winning move?

Why is doing more important than saying? — J

Saying is a doing.

I win.

:wink:

Saying is a doing. — Banno

But only on a particular interpretation of what it means to say something -- which is the very interpretation we're examining.

Draw? :wink:

I win — Banno

Not really, I settled this like a month ago... showing Quine uses set theory to inform on linguistics which I infered from studying ordinals and Quine's detailing you cant reference words or substitute them through different modalities because the total set of receptors aren't the same. And some how that confused you greatly... because you obviously never read Quine except for like a few pages.

Reference via different modalities is generally fallacy of equivocation. Plain and simple. Not sure how this got a month of discussion to not even figure that out yet.

No - you are leading me astray here. A fundamental tension in my own account is between language as use, after Wittgenstein, and the truth-functional approach of Davidson, after Quine. I've been allowed to mix the two up over the last page or so, and so have not had to face the strain between these two approaches.

That is, in using Wittgenstein against Quine I've neglected the problems that might cause for Davidson.

So this hasn't finished.

And I still need to sort that last argument, from the final paragraph of the article.

OK, I like what you're saying here. Please do share any thoughts on the tension between Witt and Davidson. My own reservations may turn out to be similar, though I'm not sure. Something to do with the ambiguity of "saying"? Are all sayings speech acts or utterances? In other contexts, we've been careful to separate utterance from assertion. In some very rough way, isn't this the same issue as use vs. meaning and extension vs. intension? It might even go as deep as "physical act vs. mental event". Seems that, if assertions are correctly understood in the Fregean way (which we know has been doubted recently), they shouldn't be reducible to any specific utterance. They are "World 3."

Wittgenstein already won this particular game by pointing out that it is not so much what we say as want we do that is of import.

Saying is a doing.

I win.

So the winning move reduces to: "it's not so much what we do as what we do that is of import?" :rofl:

I wonder if part of the problem lies in the choice of "red". I thought that picking an irreducible quale would help us see what's going on with "meaning," but maybe not. In a certain sense, "red" is like a proper name, in that it's "just there," and can't be defined further, at least not in a way that's relevant to the phenomenology.

Do you think it is possible today to give an accurate (if perhaps still imperfect) account of why different people experience all red objects as red?

The (radical) empiricist wants to demand that many aspects of human experience are "off limits" for philosophical, or at least epistemic consideration. However, my view would be that, if we are able to understand the metaphysics and physics of sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge, then there is no reason for us to exclude phenomenology, quiddity, etc. from our analysis.

Anyhow, I would just note that it is easy to go further than Wittgenstein and begin throwing up radical empiricist critiques of him as well, to go "full behaviorist" (and "full eliminitive materialist") and to demand that language be reduced to use, which is actually just stimulus and response. After all, what else is "observable?" The challenge is thus: "Show me an observation of a 'language community' that cannot be explained in terms of stimulus and response and mechanistic causation? You cannot."

This would give us conclusions like "LLMs use language appropriately, so LLMs are language users," etc., and "LLMs are conscious so long as their behavior makes us refer to them as such. There are no "facts of the matter" about consciousness. In a way, it's the Cartesian view of animals expanded to include man.

The objection here is generally that: "the hyper empiricist is leaving out a whole swath of human experience, indeed the very arena where knowledge and understanding occur for us."

But I always find it ironic that this charge gets leveled at the hyper empiricist by the (less) radical empiricist.

Do you think it is possible today to give an accurate (if perhaps still imperfect) account of why different people experience all red objects as red? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. This problem has been around for a while, as you know. "Maybe Jesse's 'red' looks like my 'green'?!!" But that doesn't stop us from being able to define "red": "the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–750 nanometres," according to our friends at Wikipedia. This is what I meant by a phenomenologically irrelevant definition. We can accept the definition and still be unable to use it to judge the quale. So, what we can't "define" (if that's even the right word) is the subjective experience itself.

Fortunately, it only matters if we require absolute certainty here, which we shouldn't. It seems to me wildly unlikely that evolution would have selected for "personalized qualia" while retaining the same mechanisms for brain processing of the same available wavelengths for each person. That would be expensive and useless. Like the sun rising tomorrow, we can stop worrying about it, despite lack of certainty.

The challenge is thus: "Show me an observation of a 'language community' that cannot be explained in terms of stimulus and response and mechanistic causation? You cannot."

This would give us conclusions like "LLMs use language appropriately, so LLMs are language users," etc., and "LLMs are conscious so long as their behavior makes us refer to them as such. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Actually, I'd be comfortable with the first conclusion, precisely because being a "user" tells us nothing about what's going on mentally. (In the case of the LLM, nothing.). The second conclusion would never be made by a "full eliminative materialist," though! They're not interested in what might or might not be conscious. For us, assuming we believe in consciousness -- then yes, we'd reject the notion that simply referring to something as conscious because it appears to pass all the tests is the same thing as being conscious. We'd also raise two eyebrows at the idea that we know what these tests are, anyway.

I'm somewhat surprised that you attempted to answer 's question, at your accepting the presumption that being red is an "experience".

Ah well. Yet anther discussion of the phenomenology of colour will only help the length of my thread.

This would give us conclusions like "LLMs use language appropriately, so LLMs are language users," etc., and "LLMs are conscious so long as their behavior makes us refer to them as such. — Count Timothy von Icarus

LLMs upset Douglas Hofstadter as he states his whole theory behind GEB is wrong or LLMs are conscious...

That last paragraph in the article. Quine advertises it as "a final sweeping observation", but it seems to be claiming littler more than that truth functionality requires substitutional transparency.

Hence over to Davidson, and interpreting natural languages in formal first order terms, as truth functional. And we arrive at the nineteen eighties.

I'm somewhat surprised that you attempted to answer ↪Count Timothy von Icarus's question, at your accepting the presumption that being red is an "experience". — Banno

I thought you'd be on board with that:

I suppose you agree that, if I ask you to close your eyes and imagine "red," and then "green," the two color patches or whatever you come up with will look different in your imagination. That is because (I would say) "red" and "green" have different meanings, at least as far as "meaning" is commonly understood. Are we on the same page so far? — J

Ok. So you are looking to divorce "red" and "green" from individuals that are red or green — Banno

But maybe your "Ok" wasn't assent. I agree about not prolonging this with color phenomenology and Mary the Color Scientist and all that, but . . . do you assent that the imagined red and green are different experiences?

do you assent that the imagined red and green are different experiences? — J

No. Red and green may be experienced, but they are not experiences - not qualia, becasue nothing is.

It's not just that the red in my imagining might be the green in yours, but that the comparison cannot be made. Red and green, like all words, are inherently communal, not private.

I agree about not prolonging this with color phenomenology — J

Too late.

That last paragraph in the article. Quine advertises it as "a final sweeping observation", but it seems to be claiming little more than that truth functionality requires substitutional opacity. — Banno

A typo, I think? You meant "truth functionality requires that there not be substitutional opacity," no? Or else I really got lost!

Fixed - thanks for spotting it.