Just so it's not missed on anyone, there is a large part of the country that would have had no inkling the ad was offensive (me, for example) had offense not been expressed, and so what is newsworthy is that someone would be offended by it.

Teachers aren't social workers and schools aren't community support systems. They are for educating kids.

I say this even if I bought into your idea that the government should offer such a high level of support for families. That is, if you want the government to do all this, do that, but don't ask teachers to do things other than teach. They didn't sign up to raise other's kids or fix the world's problems.

Especially with the sycophantic stuff- people have been and will continue to be extremely deluded. But they can be useful if used with care for some topics. — Manuel

The new ChatGPT 5.0 is much better at being honest. That was part of their major upgrade. I used to work around the old one by characterizing my posts as being presented by my opponents so that I could get a more honest response.

It's the name, yes - although he was buried as a Catholic... — Banno

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363461506070780#:~:text=Most%20accounts%20of%20Wittgenstein's%20life,.%20.%20.

Maybe not BECAUSE, they are logically consistent, provable. But you can probably formulate them into coherent sentences. You can probably correct people who assign belief to you that you do not hold - all of that takes discussion and reasoning. — Fire Ologist

I don't have a good explanation for theodicy. I admit that, yet I persist in my beliefs.

I cannot come to know any person by reason alone. Not you, not Banno, not my children. I cannot come to know many things by reason alone. — Fire Ologist

That does an injustice to the Trinity. The mystery of knowing the Trinity is not akin to the mystery of truly knowing the nuances of me, Banno, or a fine wine.

We don't have official declarations that we can't know each other. The Trinity is not just a routine complicated thing.

I'm struck by how much this resembles the roughly Wittgensteinian view — Banno

"Wittgenstein." Sounds like an MOT to me. https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/319

None of that has much to do with consensus. There is a Christian consensus on the Trinity, and it is based in the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople (325 and 381). — Leontiskos

98% of Christian denominations accept the Trinity from a doctrinal point of view, yet only 16% of Christians actually accept it. https://www.arizonachristian.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AWVI-2025_03_Most-Americans-Reject-the-Trinity_FINAL_03_26_2025.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

What this means is that there is a distinction between self avowing as a Christian and being a part of the institution of Christianity. Such is common among religions, particularly large ones.

I see myself less indoctrinated into analytic thought, particularly the Wittgensteinian approaches, and portraying this as a tension between old school and new school analytics and Christians defines a battleground that doesn't really exist.

I have always thought Christians were polytheistic, not as a criticism, but just a fact, not having any reason to particularly care to save them from it. I found Mormon belief clearer and just more forthright, but, again, there were no consequences for my view. I might as well have been studying the Greek gods.

My point here is that I can fully understand preposterous views, like a snake talking to Eve, but you're arguing from incoheremce. While you may say it all makes sense if you think about it long enough, it really doesn't.

This is the official view of the Catholic Church:

"The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith…” (CCC §234)

“The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense… We cannot come to know the Trinity by reason alone.” (CCC §237)

This is a direct nod to mysticism. While you might use reason to get at it somewhat, ultimately it's "a mystery."

I do note in the Creed that it refers to "we," which could simply mean human reason cannot be used as a basis to understand the Trinity, and it would follow also that it can't be used to reject the Trinity. We can neither come up with reasons to prove it exists or that it doesn't, but we accept on faith that it does.

If Christian, confirmation bias is dogmaticaly imposed and it eliminates the possibility of disproof and it entails belief regardless. You can understand then the feeling that there is no value in the debate. Your mind can't be changed by operation of law, so to speak.

You're therefore not in a battle with the analytics or the users of reason. You're in a battle specifically with non-Christians who reject your demand of acceptance of Church dogma and refuse to humbly accept their human rationality cannot comprehend divine rationality.

This therefore has nothing to do with secularism versus theism or analytics versus whatever. This is just whether one is willing to be Christian or not. If true Christians tied to doctrinal belief (98%) constitute the authentic Christians, then this is just about being Christian or not, and not about being an Analytic, a rationalist, a theist, or whatever.

My belief holds, for example, that death is mourned because the opportunity to perform God's law has ended. Heaven, in all its glory, is not sought after, but is brought to earth by good acts. We seek to bring God here, not to go to the heavens for God. It's a this worldly religion based upon what you do. It's not a religion centered around eternal rewards.

My point is that you probably find that profoundly wrong, and you may find issues within it unresolvable, but why should I pretend to care. I don't hold my views because they are logically consistent, empirically provable, or factually credible. I hold them for meaning, purpose, comfort, morality, sense of community, sense of beauty, utilitarian benefit, belonging, etc etc.

I guess I'm asking, why the grappling in the muck with the non-believers when you've got enough reason to believe even if some of their academic objections can't be readily overcome?

was looking through your posts to try to understand where you are coming from. Maybe part of the problem here is that you are depending on Mormon sources. At least the second sentence of your article is candid: — Leontiskos

The source was openly an LDS source, That's why @frank provided the picture of the Mormons on bikes. @Banno then cited another article describing other views on the Trinity. The point then was just to point out there wasn't Christian consensus on the Trinity.

Atheism is a very different thing to analytic method. It is surprising to me that this needs mention. — Banno

Thinking about this, we have some unclarity regarding the analytic method as we're using it here with some degree of equivocation.

To the extent we're using it just to mean adherence to deductive logic and the avoidance of formal fallacies, we have to commit to that else fall into incoherence. @Leontiskos's suggestion that analytic philosophy is overly restrictive when evaluating the Trinity because it demands logic is difficult to accept, especially given Catholicism's reliance generally on Aristotelian logic.

To the extent we're referencing the analytic tradition as elaborated by Wittgenstein and Davidson, particularly with their dispensing with the idea that meaning is based on an internal referent, I see Leon's point. If the soul is an entity and the love one has for God is a true thing in one's heart, it's entirely inadequate to suggest these words refer to just their use and not some mystical entity.

And we've got to keep in mind that the linchpin of Wittgenstein's enterprise is in denying private language, which is a metaphysical impossibility to the theist because his internal state is publicly shared by God. That is,a theist might see Wittgenstein's theory as a brilliant reductio that proves without God you are limited to an absurdly restricted system of language. Of course, the secular analytic embraces this conclusion and runs with it.

I recognize there are plenty of fully analytic philosophers (in all ways that word is used) who are theists, and I appreciate this spin in negating private language by insisting God speaks within us is my own. But I like it, so there's that. I fully commit therefore to a language game between God and his children, as it were.

But then I disagree with Leon in his hesitation to accept that logical thought (which here I mean logical reasoning, which includes analogizing and the use of precedent as authority) by itself is not a religious act. Fundamental to Jewish orthodoxy (see, e.g., Rav Soloveitchik) is the sacredness of assessing a priori Mosaic law (as it is accepted as divinely given) against a posteriori events. In fact, Yeshiva learning is considered prayer-like even when the assessment of law is upon purely hypothetical situations without any practical application because it advances an understanding of holy law.

The Judaic reliance on logic is, to be sure, beholden by analytic principles, but it goes far beyond just that with its legalistic precedential reliance and its considerations of worldly situations and what law might be implicated. It is of a very different logical feel than what you see with Catholic thought that can at times be entirely syllogistic, as in the logical arguments for God's existence and the Trinity, but to be fair to my Catholic brethren I suspect some degree of Judaic type analysis occurs as well. But, broad strokes, it's different.

The point being here that likely any of these systems (secular, theistic, analytic, formally logical) can work internally, but I don't think it's correct to suggest the Trinity struggles because it's unfairly subjected to Wittgenstein's restrictions on metaphysics. I think it struggles if it's subjected to basic logical demands (e.g., law of identity, law of non-contradiction, etc.). I appreciate that great lengths have been made in Catholic theology to save the Trinity from logical defeat and it would fly in the face of these efforts for a Catholic to admit the Trinity is contradictory or fails under the law of identity.

But does this not mean that Banno is not wrong to subject the Trinity to this logic, even if it shouldn't be subjected to greater Wittgensteinian analysis?

The Analytic, with his tiny set of norms, must ultimately admit that pretty much everything passes muster, at least on Analytic grounds. — Leontiskos

The sanctification of rules results in their analysis being a pursuit of the divine. The point being that the analytic tradition need not be atheistic. If we assert the Talmud a hinge belief, for example, you create a framework for an analytic theology. Analysis becomes a form of worship.

I just point out that both sides to our hearty debate are being myopic if they think analytic thought entails atheism. What entails atheism or theism is worldview, which relates to form of life.

Both analyze, yet one calls it secular philosophical reasoning and the other calls it prayer. Very different languages they're speaking.

I agree that it's not my job to tell other people what kind of relationship they should have to religion, but somewhere short of actually getting offensive, challenging a belief can shed light. Maybe it doesn't shed light on strict philosophical issues, though. Maybe it's more about psychology. — frank

I think you have to challenge a belief from within the dictates of the belief system. I think both sides have said it here a number of times, which is to stop telling me how your belief system (whether it be anglo-analytic versus Christian or whatever) says things are. From a Catholic perspective, you have the Trinity entirely wrong, and your opponents have it entirely wrong from your perspective.

I'm not arguing relativism here. You can debate on a meta-level if you want what is the best episimological system (which, by the way, need not be the one that best discovers "truth" in some ontological sense, but it could very well be the one that imparts the greatest meaning), but that is an entirely different argument. It would actually be about hermaneutics generally.

The point here is that none of us care to argue the esoteric points of Catholicism to determine whether the trinity is sustainable within the dictates of that logical system and to otherwise point out the tensions from within that system. That's the stuff of seminary school. By the same token, no Catholic really needs to prove the trinity works from a secular perspective. They may stubbornly insist it does, but it's hardly relevant if it doesn't. They're still going to mass on Sunday (or at least on Easter and Christmas).

I guess what I'm saying is that you're about as likely to shake lose their viewpoint by the sheer force of your conviction as they would yours to theirs. And to be sure, they want you to come to their position far more than you really care about them coming to yours.

Are you homo religiosus? — frank

No. I see that leading to asceticism, austerity, seclusion, and, you know, other monklike shit.

I believe in doing right because it is right and watching myself and the world becoming right. Spiritual uplifting from doing, living.

The other option is cognitive man, who lives by reason and observation alone. Boring fuck.

He's interested in the methods theologians use to reach their conclusions, but even that isn't a very strong interest for him. For the most part, Banno couldn't care less. He's just good at creating interesting discussions.

So consider taking the Catholic Church at its word, and accepting that the Trinity is beyond comprehension. It's not logical. Does that really mean we have to rule it out? Think about it — frank

Yes, these threads have very little value when folks just want to tell us what their beliefs are. It's even more frustrating/annoying/time consuming to hear others' views as if they are authoritative, as in "Christians believe..." or "God requires..." These comments suggest anyone cares what another's theology is or that they think someone might accept that there is a single monolithic view on what God is or what any religion demands for authentic belief.

Here's an interesting quote I came upon:

“The image of homo religiosus is that of a man who craves to flee from the concrete, empirical world and escape into the realm of eternal being.”

I like this because it immediately implicates true philosophical issues. It's describing a person with a different form of life with such a distinct epistimological system that he relies upon neither empiricism or even reason, but he seeks meaning in an eternal being. They would play a most confusing word game, but a legitimate one nonetheless.

I think that's what your last comment was simply asking be recognized. The Trinity isn't stupid, worthless, or even nonsense, but it's not philosophical. It's not this worldly so to speak. It's not an insult to say that. What is problematic is in refusing to admit that. And along these lines, if one wants to argue that one ought or ought not be homo religiousus, that sounds like we're fading back to personal theology that we need to avoid.

It goes without saying, I am an AI-booster. I embrace artificial intelligence in order to supercharge my life. But I think the same can be true for anyone, especially competent philosophers. — Bret Bernhoft

By "AI-booster" I don't know if you meant that you make AI smarter, but you do. That is, if you have a deep coversation about a particular topic where you add to the discussion, that is added somewhere else out in the web universe to the general body of knowledge and discussion.

I have found AI extremely useful in bouncing ideas off of. You have to aware of its sycophant leanings, phrasing issues so that it doesn't just agree or confirm, but I do find it helpful. It's also a very powerful search engine that directs you into where the mainstream areas of debate might lie and that allows for deeper research on other sites.

I also found it very helpful in understanding dense philosophical and scientific articles, where I uploaded the article and had it provide paragraph by paragraph explanation and analysis. Doing this also allows asking it questions, like "explain that for a lay person" or " I still don't understand that, please give me examples." I would imagine if I had it availble when I was back in college, I could have shown up in class far more prepared for discussion because I would have essentially spent hours already discussing the material and refining the arguments by the time I showed up in class.

I see AI as other advancements in information transmission. It's like if you bring a new library to town that didn't previously have one. Those who read the books get smarter and those who don't stay where they are, resulting in greater disparity between the informed and not informed. Before the library, everyone was much closer together, but now with the library, that changes.

But if all you do is parrot what AI tells you, you're no different than the kid who copied straight out of the encyclopedia (remember those?) for his research project.

A

Again, you are confusing identify relations with predication. When I say "The Son is God" I am not referring to something analogous to "S = G". — Bob Ross

1. Yahweh is God. Jesus is God. The holy spirit is God.

2. . Hanover is a person, Bob is a person, Frank is a person.

3. Hanover is Banno. Bob is Banno. Frank is Banno.

Is 1 like 2 or is 1 like 3? Clear this up for me.

If 1 is like 2, then you have three things that fit into a single category.

If I is like 3, then you either have 1 person with 3 names or a 3 headed monster.

This is me and Hanover riding around trying to convert people to Mormonism. — frank

Which one is me?

The trinity is three entirely seperate personages, not a single entity. They have a common purpose, and they're referred to as the godhead. Such is true Christian theology. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/article/do-latter-day-saints-believe-in-the-trinity

When you say "the Christian narrative" and then start going on about the Nicene Creed which was arrived at 325 years after Jesus' death, you're just taking about your peculiar brand of modified Christianity.

God sent His Son out of love so that He can be both just and merciful. God is not wrathful: I don’t know why the OT describes Him that way, but the NT makes it clear He is not. — Bob Ross

Instances of God's wrath in the NT:

Matthew 3:7
Luke 3:7
Matthew 21:40–41
Matthew 25:41
Romans 1:18
Romans 2:5
Romans 5:9
1 Thessalonians 1:10
Revelation 6:16–17
Revelation 14:10
Revelation 19:15

I have no problem if you want to create a hermeneutic that demands an always loving God, but while you're at it, apply it to the OT God as well, and pretend there is only one God referenced in the OT as well.

Nothing I'm saying here is anti-religious. It just forces an admission that belief is not the product of brute force logic and rationality (and the same holds true atheistic beliefs).

To the OP, which asks why folks believe in Christianity, I'll respond by telling you why I believe in Judaism. It's because I explored all the world religions one by one and I chose it after a lifelong search. Yeah, right. Amazing coincidence that I searched the world over and found what my parents had been teaching me was right and true in my own house.

I think we'd all gain a bit of credibility to own our biases and even to unapologetically celebrate them. To those who might want to tell me they are too open minded to accept religion. Save it. You're just a parrot from a different teacher.

Kabbalah. https://stljewishlight.org/arts-entertainment/understanding-hebrew-numerology-and-the-secrets-of-the-torah/

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? Or will the text remain indecipherable forever? — hypericin

This a hermeneutics question, asking if there is a single correct perspective for linguistic interpretation. The aliens' interpretation scheme is based upon their culture and life and is only valid to earth culture if earth culture adheres to the hermeneutic that we are to interpret alien langauge as if we were alien.

In this example though we have limited knowledge of alien life to consider.

"To understand a text always means to apply it to ourselves and thus to find its meaning.”
— Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method

First of all, you're showing that this is not about private language as Witt understood it. There's nothing intrinsically private about "burj," or at least I don't think there is -- that's why I've been so concerned to understand the circumstances in which it's introduced. It got a little confusing because, by telling us that it refers to a somewhat ineffable feeling on the part of the speaker, you incline us toward believing that it is private in Witt's sense, but the subsequent details don't bear that out. "Burj" is merely a potential new word in a public language. It would make no difference to the case whether "burj" referred to a somewhat ineffable feeling or a type of perfectly effable tree. — J

Alright, I went back and re-read myself. I think I see where the confusion arises, which is likely in my presentation of the thought experiment. You read what I literally said, not what I was thinking, which is ironic in a way.

In #1, burj was a word.
In #2, bujr was not a word.
In #3, burj was a tape recording of the word at #2 when it was not a word.

I said #1 was at T-1 and #2 was at T-2, leading you to understandably believe that the word that was at T-1 couldn't have unbecome a word at T-2. I want you therefore to erase from your memory banks #1 at T-1. It never happened. I had presented it as just an exemplar case of common word creation, but it wasn't to suggest that burj had been a word and now was un-worded once I started using it only in my brain without public use.

Is that where some confusion lies? Kill #1. It's dead. Now consider everything I said as if some of the things hadn't been said.

is the difference between stopping an active shooter and then beating them viciously; and stopping the active shooter and then trying to rehabilitate them with love. — Bob Ross

What about respecting their decision as a free agent and not trying to impose upon their will by modifying it through rehabilitation, but instead giving them their just dessert? One ought be rewarded for bad behavior and good.

As C.S. Lewis says, "To be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ought to have known better, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image."

The divide between woke and not is so large I still am not sure if people are actually upset about this ad or whether this is American Eagle contriving outrage for publicity, with perhaps a few confused people buying in.

Is this truly an upsetting ad for more than a handful of people?

Ontologically information is state divorced from substrate. — hypericin

I have a leaf. In list A itemize those parts of the leaf that are information. In list B itemize those parts that are substrate.

Information is not physical. — hypericin

Is data stored in a computer "information," or are you referencing the meaning a conscious being imposes on it?

For example, does the red leaf contain non-physical information that autumn has arrived, or is the red itself physical information?

What about that situation is 'physical'?

Magnus Carlsen plays against 10 people while blindfolded — Wayfarer

If I were watching a computer play another, which part is physical?

Just the part I see, or would it also include the most significant part, the computations I don't see?

OK, sorry if I'm like a dog with a bone here, but . . . if we dispense with the referent, as Witt suggests we can, are you arguing that the word itself at T-2 is now like a quale -- something personal and not yet "used," but still meaningful? Is that the case you're illustrating against usage as meaning — J

To be specific, I'd say Witt doesn't suggest no internal, mental referent, but argues it is incorrect to seek that referent because meaning isn't derived from it. It is derived from use. The understanding of meaning comes from interaction within a community of users. Accepting that as true, we conclude in 2 there is no language.

We then go through my time rigamarole and we say "Hang on! The private mutterings within 2 have now satisfied the public use demands, particularly the adherence to clear rule following.

We then reassess and say within 2 we in fact had language. It was determined to be language at T-3, but it was known at T-2, which means we were wrong at T-2 to say it wasn't language. Turns out it was.

So, what existed at T-2 was (a) some sort of internal state and (b) a then unknown logical rule based coherence.

My conclusion is to suggest that since ontological state 2 was whatever it was at T-2, and T-3 cannot change what really existed in the world at T-2, then it was as much language from T-2 to T-3. This means that it was (a) that is the critical element for language, which I call a "quale " The issue isn't (b) as we have shown that whether the language actually follows a rule matters, not whether it is known. That means we need not subject a word to public use to make it lingual. A private word is just as much a word as a public word. There might be epistemic challenges at T-2 to know if it's language, but that doesn't impact ontology.

This is what I meant by saying that "our way of constituting the physical world may be simply that -- our way." — J

Reference here is to form of life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_life

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him"

When you say that a quale is like "burj" at T-2, do you mean the word "burj" or the reference of the word, i.e., a feeling about the park? I had been taking you to mean the word itself, but in replying I realized that a lot hinges on that interpretation, so I'd better check it out. — J

Well yes, that's the crux of this. I'm challenging the Wittgensteinian model that dispenses with the referent and relies upon use by suggesting that with my time shifting we can isolate the quale.

Usage theories depend upon public rule creation and enforcement which was lacking in scenario 2, so we had no language then. But in 3, viola, we imposed public games playing retroactively by discovering the hidden videotape.

So if we subtract 2 from the 3, we isolate our quale.

Or so the argument goes.

No doubt burj is a word when it is publicly used.

No doubt it's not when it's not.

My test case was what about after it's not but while it's not?

Making sense of that last question: it was not publicly used at T-2, but at T-3, we found a tape of it, so it was publicly used at T-2 just not known to be publicly until T-3.

the picture is coming a bit more in focus. Is my role at T-1 mute, though? Am I meant to be understood as simply listening, just as I do with the video at T-3? Can we assume that, among other uses of "burj," you define it for me? — J

You're muteness isn't necessary. You may speak. I just made you quiet because I prefer people not talking. It's my story, so I made it more pleasant.

The critical aspect is the community of speakers who are able to obtain consistency in usage and enforce rules, else it'd be a private language.

If you can't speak, like if you were a cat, then that'd be a problem for the language game to occur. However, if you were a cat, my story would be better all things considered, but I digress.

I need to get a little clearer about these circumstances before I can hazard an opinion on what is missing, so to speak, during the crucial T-2 events, which take place with neither a present nor a future auditor. — J

Your caution is appreciated, although curious, considering I tend toward a more stream of consciousness methodology.

But to get back on the rails here, if you begin with a system that demands public validation, the test to be imposed seems like it must be to how that occurs. My test, to the extent valid, plays with the timing of it, validating ex post communicato as they would say in Latin if it were spoken today as yesterday, which I think speaks in the present from the past like in my example. Again.

But for real, I do think I'm onto something here, so you're thoughts are appreciated.

" I think you owe us a story about how the mutterings are conveyers of meaning, which in turn can be analogous to qualia. I took you literally, to be referring to the sounds themselves. Isn't the question (of what [and how] they could mean) at the heart of the thought experiment? — J

Scenario #1: T-1

So, I'm walking through the woods, and I get this feeling I fully identity with personally. It reminds me of my youthful walks in the woods. I say to you, I'm feeling burj. I use this word often. While neither can show one another's feeling, I use the word consistently. This is public use, full fledged language

Scenario #2: T-2

Same thing, except this time, you're not there. I'm alone. I use that word often, out loud, saying it, using it in sentences, even describing it. No one ever hears me ever. .Burj is not a word. It is not publicly used.

Scenario #3: T-3

Same as #2 except you find the video of me talking to myself all those years that no one had ever seen before. You confirm I followed rules.

What we have here is retroactive public language. It's removing you from Scenario #2 at T-3 and inserting you into scenario #1 at T-3.

If we hold that in Scenario #3 burj is language, but the exact usage at Scenario #2 it was not, then we need a word for burg at T-2. That word is qualia.

Hang with me in this maze. Tell me where it's wrong.

The people who introduce doubt about qualia are usually aiming for eliminative materialism. They're basically saying we're like robots who claim to be more than robots, but we're wrong, we're just robots. — frank

This does not follow. Wittgensteinian linguistics is metaphysically agnostic because it refuses to speak of it. It does not hint one way or the other what lurks within. It talks about language and what can be expressed through language.

How could his theory possibly hold sway if it were defeated by simply pointing out we all have internal feelings? What he's getting at is the futility in discussing that which cannot be discussed.

but no, the mutterings are not what we properly call qualia. They may share the feature of being private by virtue of "no community", but qualia are sensations or individual subjective experiences, not words or behaviors. Allegedly. — J

The meaning underlying the mutterings are the references to qualia. That's the point of the thought experiment. They were non-linguistic and therefore meaningless due to lack of public rules until retroactively

@Banno


Thoughts on Private Language:

And I could be wrong, so feel free to say so because I don't just speak this for myself, but I do so to understand it through my community of speakers. See what I did there?

I discuss private langauge in this thread because it is the content of private language we discuss here, which we call "qualia." If there is no private language, there is no qualia, but if there is, there is.

The problem with the privacy of qualia doesn't lie in its inaccessibility, but it lies in its insulation from community rules. It is not its location within your head that insulates it from rules. It is its removal from the community of rulers that insulates it. That is, if the community were in your head, you inner states would not be private states. Odd example, but that matters.

The reason others must rule you and you not rule yourself, is that if you are the authority as to what the rule is, you can change the rules from second to second. You cannot meaningfully obey or disobey the law if you are given unbrideled power to change it and to rule upon it.

A thought experiment: Assume the feeling I have when I'm at the park I self refer to as "burj." I speak this word commonly to myself, often out loud, but no one ever hears it. What this means is that I cannot check for my consistency in use of the word and it cannot be verfied that today's feeling of burj is yesterday's. I engage in ten years of this self-talk of burj, and on year 10, it is discovered that the park had audio-taped my coversations unbeknownst to anyone.

On this day, a community listens to my recorded speech and it decides I have used burj consistently and subject to a rule. It is now a word retroactively. Before, not.

This makes the point again: The reason "burj" was not a word yesterday isn't because it was simply isolated in my head. What made it not a word was that no community had evaluated it. In this thought experiment, the community did not get into my head, but it was the usage of the word that fell into the previously silent world. Use arrived late, well after the word spoken, but its use made the non-word of yesterday the word of today once it was used.

The provocative question: Were the mutterings prior to the tape recording being heard what we properly call qualia? It, to be sure, had ontological status. Why not name it?

EDIT: The bold I used made my post look AI-ish, but, trust me, AI is smarter than this.

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? If a qual is the taste of milk here, now, why not just talk of the taste of milk here, now? — Banno

Two reasons: The Wittgensteinian one and the non-Wittgensteinian one.

The Wittgensteinian one: Words have varying uses and they are rarely truly synonomous. A quale has a particularized use, not one that you would expect, for instance, a child to use ("Mama, I need a milk quale in my mental constitution"). That term is used in philosophical contexts to reference limitations of language and considerations as to whether private language might exist. It is also used as an example by its opponents as a superfluous descriptor that ought be subject to elimination. (Note the use of "use" over and over).

The non-Wittgensteinian one: It is the referent to internal feelings, like pain and to representations of reality, as in, it is the conscious experience of the light wave that emits from my computer screen. It references the metaphysical. It is something not necessarily rejected by Wittgensteinian thought as non-existent, but instead as a conversation that cannot take place within a language game because it refers to non-linguistic entities, creating a category mistake by speaking about that which can't be spoken about (or so the argument goes). That is, a quale doesn't get the respect to be told it does not exist. It is told it makes no sense.

My thought after thinking too much about this is that Wittgenstein says truly and completely nothing about metaphysics. Not to overly summarize, but all he seems to be saying is that non-linguistic things cannot be spoken about. That is, if I have an internal language that sorts my internal thoughts, that is my private language, and I have no reason to share it because you won't know what it means. If you do know what it means, it's obviously not private. We're just talking about what we can't talk about. A language no one speaks is hardly a language at all.

The reconceiving of the nature of language as an openness, rather than a closed finitude, brings into language terms many in philosophy do not approve of. — Astrophel

I will say that if there is no private language, then what Wittgenstein states related to the limits of language follows. And this should be obvious as you think about it. All things within the private mental state (i.e. qualia) are necessarily off limits because the antecedent of the conditional is that "there is no private language." And so that's where the challenge has to be made, which is to attack the enterprise of private versus public language (if that's your mission).

So what is qualia to Wittgenstein? It is the predictable behavior that surrounds the use of that term, just like any other term. I say "ouch" to pain, so we now know what pain is. But to be clear, "pain" is a word. We don't speak of mental states.

If I say "I'm experiencing qualia," qualia is that thing I say when I perhaps express confusion at my state or I simply mean to say that I'm having a non-descript mental state, not to be confused with the actual mental state. That is "I'm feeling qualia" is known by how I use it. Mostly it's a term used in philosophy forums when other words like "consciousnessess," "Wittgenstein," "mental objects," "silence" and other sorts of words get used.

This looks interesting, but I can't relate it back to some previous post or comment. Could you expand? What's the pain/"pain" distinction? — J

Cats have no language (thus "in a universe only of cats"), the cat would still have pain regardless of whether anyone could talk about it ("the cat's pain is qualia"), but he would not have "pain" (in quotes, indicating it is a word), but he also wouldn't have pain (without quotes) if you say "pain" and pain are inseperable (meaning you can't discuss pain without language; it makes no sense to do that), which would lead us to the conclusion there's no pain and no qualia (that is the conclusion: you can't discuss something without language).

It's just a silly game (a language game).

This is just linguistic philosophy. It says nothing of the cat's internal state. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's that we can't discuss it. It's beyond the language game.

I say it's silly because of course the cat has an internal state of pain that is worthy of consideration without language. It's metaphysically real and it is subject to discussion.

In a universe only of cats, the cat's pain is qualia, but not his "pain," unless you say pain and "pain" are inseparable, in which case there's no pain and no qualia.

It's just a silly game. We're talking just about talking as if nothing is without words. One would think this reductio would result in abandonment of the theory, but alas, they double down.

There are no private mental states because private mental states can't be confirmed and aren't language and can't be discussed.

Got it.

It admits an internal referent? "Hanover's hate of coffee"? No, it doesn't. Very much no. — Banno

I was referencing the implication of your question as to whether Hanover really liked coffee. What was your use of "really" meant to convey other than what was "real" in terms of my "liking"? Liking is an internal state. Real is an objective state. What have I missed?