Just to be clear, no rudeness intended in that last post.

The point is that semantic norms are what link us in a 'space of meaning.' Our brains store our training, but the normal use of the signs is (primarily) independent of any given individual. When 'I' think, it's just as much the impersonal language system thinking, since even inferences have a normative basis. From P, one derives Q. 'I' think (the individual thinks ) only in the sense that we give the hardware credit for the algorithm --- and, crucially, in the sense that the individual is tracked for claim coherence.

A concept, a word becomes alive with meaning when a community has a use for it. — Richard B

:up:

A stop sign is treated a certain way. One stops at a stop sign. One [das Man] is the personified form of life, what Everybody knows performs.

And why not? — sime

Jj asdoin asdmoi valfm capicasdjknca p spdmcsd l sd p p m[ o [o,asdcvvdflmvdf.

If you have any thoughts on the Chinese Room, I'd be glad to hear them. How is understanding Chinese 'more' than (in this context) reliably translating it ? Searle seems to just assume that the instruction book can't contain intelligence, though it's obviously the brains of the operation.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

======================================QUOTE

Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese.

Searle goes on to say, “The point of the argument is this: if the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.”

You seem to saying language is necessary for somethings existence. — Andrew4Handel

I don't see how you are getting that. Perhaps you can quote and I will explain.

AI doesn’t need to represent the real world by design. It is only a machine and not an intelligent dissipative structure as we supply both the bottom up metabolic resources and the top down telos. We build the data farms and power grids. — apokrisis

What about the virus metaphor then ? AI tempts us to make more of it.

The words have visceral meaning for us. — apokrisis

Of course I'm tempted to say of course, but there's something elusive about meaning. Wittgenstein wrote: it's not how the world is but that it is that is the mystical. But he also saw that this was an empty tautology. Does the hard problem lack sufficient meaning ? Is it a lyrical confusion ?

The agony of being bounced about in the realm of your own thoughts, chasing the core of being that thus becomes precisely the mysterious absence, etc. — apokrisis

This is some of what I'm getting at. What do we think this core of being is ? The thereness of the there ? The pure witness ? the givenness of the given ? a glowing plenitude ineffably present ?

It is all a hollow charade if you are talking about actual consciousness. — apokrisis

That's just it. What do/can we mean by calling our own consciousness actual ? For some (clearly not you), it may be tempting to project a divine spark on the machine. For others (for me) , the status of that spark is itself put in question.

If one ignores this 'actual' consciousness, is there another way to defend the gap ? Is electronic silicon life impossible in principle ? What would change your mind, etc. ?

Can we segue back to Zizek by noting AI are brains minus the need for Lacanian psychoanalysis and therein lies the relevance of such gobbledeygook? The symbolic escaped its hairy cell and fully alive in blissful self-ignorance? — Baden

So the issue is what is it in us and not in them (if anything) that needs or is addressed by Zizek's Lacan ? Are the bots the self-ignorant ? What happens if communities of them are allowed to interact and reproduce ? Could there be a competition for electricity and memory that encourages a model of the self-world relationship ? We could also ask about qualia (the stuff, if any, 'under' concept).

Without private meaning and private concepts there would be no public meaning and public concepts. — RussellA

There are no private concepts.

But I think I know what you are trying to say.

We give a damn. We're alive. We feel things in some elusive sense. So we create norms together. People write weird poems. Memes can catch on. So a private experiment can be promoted. I'll give you that much.

I'm not saying there isn't a beetle in your box. I'm just saying the concepts are public. You don't get to make up your own language and your own logic ---and that's what oxymoronic private concepts would entail or mean (inasmuch as I can parse the phrase at all.)

I have no idea what grunge meant and I was there. Nirvana, I take it? Don't know any of their music. — Tom Storm

First things first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWh2lA1m-c

And so it’s easy to understand, both in principle and in practice, that the sensory experience you call red isn’t the sensory experience that I call red. — Michael

I guess, if one is careful (we are verging on the ghost here.) Perhaps a colorblind person would use a detector to answer the question or answer 'gray.'

I grant that different people can report different colors (fill out surveys) upon being presented the same object. And it's safe enough to use 'sensory experience' in the ordinary way.

No objection --- until folks start to say that meaning is private and hidden, because (among other reasons) it's a lurch into irrationalism (which is easily overlooked.)

You might find this interesting.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf

Very kind!

Therefore the "unity" you refer to, is nothing but a false premise, — Metaphysician Undercover

You are appealing to inferential norms.

This renders formal logic as inapplicable to a wide aspect of reality, — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not talking about formal logic. I'm talking about largely tacit norms that govern what follows from what as a way to understand meaning.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/Inferentialism_Normative_Pragmatism_and.pdf

Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning and conceptual content. The modern Western philosophical tradition has taken representation to be the key concept of semantics. To understand the sort of contentfulness characteristic of sapience, that tradition counsels us to focus on the relation between pictures and what they picture, between signs and what they are signs for. The master-idea of semantic inferentialism is to look instead to inference, rather than representation, as the basic concept of semantics. What makes something meaningful or contentful in the sense that matters for sapience (rather than the mere sentience we share with many nonlinguistic animals) is the role that it plays in reasoning. The primary vehicle of meaning in this sense is declarative sentences. Those are symbols that can be used to assert, state, or claim that things are thus-and-so. The kind of content they express, “propositional” content, in the philosopher’s jargon, is what can both serve as and stand in need of reasons—that is what can play the role both of premise and of conclusion in inferences.

(the freely willed choice for example) — Metaphysician Undercover

That to me is an unclear and uncertain concept. Selves are normative entities. I'll give you that. We are held responsible. But that's all the 'freedom' I'm confident about at the moment.

Like any technology, these systems exist as extensions of our dissipative interests. They amplify us rather than replace us. — apokrisis

I don't find something like replacement impossible. It's not that computers are so great. It's that we are not so wonderful as we wanted to believe. I mean we are fun primates, but why couldn't we create a synthetic brain better than ours ? And we have in some ways already, it seems. These bots know more than any single human.

But what do they want ?
But what did we ever want ?
Codes that outreplicates is code that hangs around, whatever it does or doesn't tell itself about what it wants or is.

.

They can’t be “conscious” or even intelligent in any autonomous sense until they are in a modelling relation upon which their moment to moment existence relies. — apokrisis

Would this be easy to see ? I can imagine some analogue of evolution. We clone (with modification) the ones we like as if they were dogs or sweet sweet corn. Maybe DNA and source code will use us as moist robot labor.

I agree that such terms aim at personal experience, but their meaning is public.

What do we make of inverted color spectrums ?

I reject the Chinese room argument. I can tell you that much.

words like "red" and "sweet" can refer your concealed sensory experience. — Michael

Yes, within inferential limits. Stop signs and firetrucks and blood are red.

'I can't make out that sign, but it's not red, so it isn't a stop sign.'

'I was afraid I started my period early, but then I noticed the stuff on my pants was blue. '

It's like toy blocks that we are only allowed to stack in certain ways. It's like a hyperdimensional game of inferential chess.

Words can intend private states (her feelings rather than mine), but their meanings are public (manifest in which inferences involving them are allowed.)

I find this neorationalism beautiful. We philosophers were right along to obsess over logic.

That's not the point. The point is that I can talk about your first person experience even if your first person experience is hidden from me, whether in practice or in private. — Michael

Yes, I think you can intend my private experience (manifest image talk). You can speculate about my concealed feelings. Such concealed feelings make sense (I claim) inasmuch as they can function in inferences.

'He's late for the meeting, so perhaps he resents me forgetting his birthday, even though he's too proud to come out and say it.'

If we can talk about something that's hidden from us in practice then we can talk about something that's hidden from us in principle, and so even if there is such a thing as hidden-in-practice first-person consciousness/qualia, we can still talk about it. — Michael

Yes, though the last part is tricky.

The point is that the norms for applying concepts are impersonal, public.

'I fucking hate getting wet, so I ran naked into the rain' does not make sense, does not compute. We would think the person did not know English.

5. Therefore, other people can talk about things which are in practice hidden from them — Michael

I never denied this. Of course. I can talk about the dark side of the moon.

I'd just say that I don't think we can talk sensibly about anything inferentially isolated.

This is why Kant's 'thing-in-itself' stuff doesn't float.

I didn't mean to accuse you of the fallacy. I just wanted to use the metaphor system, which was linked a fallacy.

So how does that affect his reasoning and your view on language? — Michael

This is what I mean by Motte and Bailey. Ryle doesn't use that metaphor, but he covers the confusing shift between casual mentalist talk and the metaphysical kind that goes 100% ghost.

Our ordinary mentalistic talk is fine [the motte]. This happens in what Sellars calls the manifest image. It's a world of people and marriages and motives that we reason about constantly. 'He didn't call me back, so he must still be pissed.' No problem whatsoever with this. We can't help doing folk psychology. As an inferentialist, I think these inferences are where typical mentalistic talk gets its genuine meaning.* The convention of the normative-discursive self lives here, though it takes a Brandom to make it explicit.

But if one leaves the zone where inferences make sense [into the bailey], there's just no grip. That's what Wittgenstein attacks, though frankly he doesn't make it clear in that parable. The inverted spectrum, the Chinese room, etc. They touch on the weirdness. We can go into that if you want. Both Wittgenstein and Heidegger seem to value such talk in their own way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

*Note that logic pretty much is the way we happen to do things. Not God but the weight of convention, presumably tested by time and life like ordinary language.

Wittgenstein's para 293 of Philosophical Investigations and the beetle in the box analogy may be able to answer your question better than me. — RussellA

I'm familiar. That's where he shows those with eyes to see that meaning is public, concepts are norms. Beetles don't supply meaning. Back then, it made more sense to think Wittgenstein was crazy. Now we have bots smarter than the average person in many ways. Either they have access to Platonic Meanings or meaning is there [ materially , embodied ] in the linear structure of chains of words.

But it is hidden away in practice, given that you don't look inside people's heads and examine their neural activity. — Michael

I don't see atoms with the naked eye either, but I reason about them. For context, I lean toward inferentialism. I think concepts get their meanings from the inferences in which they are involved. Norms govern in their blurry way which inferences are allowed.

So claims (judgments) are semantic 'atoms.' Concepts are more like protons in this analogy. They mean nothing without judgements / claims made by a social entity like one of us.

These aren't mutually exclusive. I feel pain and I feel the fire. I feel cold and I feel the Arctic air. I see shapes and colours and I see the cat. — Michael

I get that we are tempted to talk about qualia, the raw feels, the utterly subconceptual thereness of sensation.... It's not how but that the world colors exist that it the mystical.

The point is that him feeling enraged is a real thing that happens, independent of any overt action he may perform as a consequence. — Michael

:up:

Yes. It's in his body. It's 'material.' It is a disposition. It's all connected to the rest of the world, not hidden away in some box which is causally and logically isolated.

I don't know if we even could talk anything but nonsense about something isolated in such a way.

Which is why your argument that we talk about trees has nothing to do with the epistemological problem of perception. — Michael

That doesn't sound right.

I claim that it's better to talk of seeing cats than to talk of seeing internal images of cats.

I see the cat and not an image of the cat.

I talk about the cat (in the world, our cat) and not my cat (an internal image.)

Just to be clear, this isn't mathematics. We are appealing to current semantic norms in order to apply leverage to those same norms, both arguing for different strategies.

The latter is a consequence of the former. — Michael

:up:

That's the point. Anger is caught up in the inferential nexus.

Was this not you agreeing with me that I don't directly see the cat (because it's hiding under the covers)? — Michael

You don't see the cat at all.

Yes you can refer to it, thought you cannot see it. We are referring to it now, though it is only a fictional entity.

A surgeon uses his hands, wields a scalpel.

A metaphysician 'introspects' and talks about 'Experience' and 'Representation,' which are understood to be private and immaterial and impossible to see from the outside.

How did this seems-like-mysticism catch on ? There are reasons. But how does it remain so popular ? It's not like no one is calling attention to its problems around here.

WHy? From what little I've seen he seems to fall into the same problems. — Banno

He's uneven but really great at times. A happy, horny, humanist. Here's a little sampler.
==============================================================
Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual.
...
Thought comes from being, but being does not come from thought. […] The essence of being as being [i.e., in contrast to the mere thought of being] is the essence of nature. (VT 258/168)
...
To say that something exists in actuality is to say that it exists not only as a figment of someone’s imagination, or as a mere determination of their consciousness, but that it exists for itself independently of consciousness. “Being is something in which not only I but also others, above all also the object itself, participate” (GPZ 304/40).

A FRIENDLIER GERMAN EXISTENTIALISM

Feuerbach urged his readers to acknowledge and accept the irreversibility of their individual mortality so that in doing so they might come to an awareness of the immortality of their species-essence, and thus to knowledge of their true self, which is not the individual person with whom they were accustomed to identify themselves. They would then be in a position to recognize that, while “the shell of death is hard, its kernel is sweet” (GTU 205/20), and that the true belief in immortality is

a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself. (GTU 357/137)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/#EarlIdeaPant

Makes me think of Adorno's one: "only exaggeration is true". — Jamal

:up:

Exactly, which is a true exaggeration itself !

We can investigate specific instances, such as life after death, theism, fairies, the soul, etc. I would need to take an evidentialist approach to these kinds of claims. — Tom Storm

:up:

Right. And probably the terms would be better defined as the case was made.

Yes, the failed definition is also a success. It's a metaphor. As a matter of style, it's offered exclusively. But perhaps the speech act should be interpreted as a gift, as a good place from which to peep at a complex phenomenon for a moment.
***
Earlier I was thinking about people who'd say 'nothing is true.' I use to like this kind of radically open-minded aphorism. Is this really self-cancelling ? Only if we are crude enough to take it as a theorem and not as an efficient hyperbole. The right tone / context saves it. [ I know you dislike pragmatism, but I used to love it (still like it), and ideas are just tools is not the worst position (understood charitably.) ]

I also find it hard to make sense of 'supernatural.' I have a model of reality, of my self in relation to the world. If weird stuff happens, I update the model. That model is nature. Of course we tend to work together and build a common model. We keep one another sane, cancel out each others's blind spots, call out careless overstepping.

I'd like to be shown what publicly warrants the OP's problematic assumption that human beings can have "supernatural experiences" (which are more than just drug / psychosis-induced hallucinations). — 180 Proof

Recalling my youth and those around me then, I'd say that the supernatural mind tends (I'm not denying clever exceptions or exquisite sublimations) to not really be aware yet of rational norms. They just don't live in our secular world on this particular issue.

Right. So what I mean is finding the right grip on our language. We 'are' language in the sense that we often take our 'host' for granted. Philosophers and scientists are machine elves working on the blockchain, stacking insight cubes in the noosphere. It's all 'material,' just to be clear. There's not mind but minding. Brain's the legs, mind's the dancing. A dance is not unphysical because time is involved.

That might be what confuses people, an insistence on something frozen. God is frozen, unmoved, can't have the bastard wiggling.

I'm not persuaded that 'memetics' explains much. — 180 Proof

It does seem vague.Yet language is our killer app. So perhaps it's a matter of finding the right grip. Timebinding looks central to me, and it's not just infrastructure. It's knowhow compacted into symbols, an extension of our nervous system, Popper's World 3 or something.