Now fuck off, both of you. :razz: — Banno

"eff off" is the preferred usage in this thread.

Neither Banno or me are saying those are the same. If I'm reading @Banno correctly at least. — Moliere

ep. So for you adding "ride the bike" to the instructions is just a way of completing them. — Banno

If they are not the same (which they are obviously not), the words "ride the bike" won't complete anything, when what is needed is riding the bike.

It's not ineffable. It's "ride the bike". — Banno

As if "ride the bike" were the same as riding the bike. :roll:

Reading "ride the bike", the effable part, will not add an iota of knowledge of how to ride the bike. One has to ride the bike.

Without such grounds there's no reason we ought take even a 0.000001% risk of nuclear war to help them get it back. — Isaac

The war in Ukraine perhaps represents the most significant offensive use of nuclear weapons since WW2. Not in their hot use, but in the terroristic threat of their use, in support of an unprovoked war of aggression. This is the world we now live in. Russia may have blundered themselves into a position where their terrorist threats of nuclear war is the only reason they should get to keep Crimea and the Donbass. How to put that genie back in the bottle? There are no easy answers, but submitting to the threat would set a deadly precedent.

Moreover, no state can afford to let the seizure of their territory go uncontested. Unless one side is defeated decisively, the war might continue indefinitely.

constructed from words and the concepts they define. — Isaac

Sure sounds like:

3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components — Isaac

You are almost there. You almost grasped the circularity of defining red as the sensation of red. — Banno

You are almost there. You almost made a substantive reply.

Kidding, not close.

What is it that you suppose is named here? — Banno

The sensation of red, of course.

If it, or anything, is ineffable, then you would expect circularity: "Which sensation? The red one. What is a red sensation? Redness. What is X? X-ness." Once the ineffable is reached, description stops, and its name can only be recited.

I concede I may be interacting with an automation or a p-zombie, with no notion of sensations, and so all this will be incomprehensible. If so, you can rest assured (whatever that may mean for you) that this incomprehension is a result of sensation's ineffability.

For a start, my insults are funnier. — Banno

The problem with your insults is that you use them in lieu of arguments. They are not particularly clever either, but to each his own.

And if a textbook explanation suggests the blind have visual experiences... what does that suggest for your belief that the blind can't talk of red? — Moliere

Sure, if they have the experience. The real world medical condition of blindness is a red herring. What I was going for was "An individual who has no experience of color".

I think what you're asking is how does dialogue communicate experience? -- which I'd agree is a good question I don't quite know the answer to. — Moliere

The words for sensory experiences like color can only be learned by pointing, which links the experience with the associated word. You can then happily use these words with others who have learned these same associations, avoiding the impossible task of actually describing what it is like to have these experiences.

It goes...

1. {some collection of neural firing events} ->
2. "I threw a red ball" experience ->
3. (if necessary) - abstraction of 'red', 'ball' and 'threw' from that experience (2) according to the social rules around identifying those components — Isaac

So you have moved from "experience is a social construct" to "the conceptualization and verbalization of experience is a social construct"? (Which we all knew.)

Do you now agree that the sensory experiences of 2 are ineffable, and are only communicable at all to those who have had the same experience?

Now you're saying there's no 'the'. So which sensation did you learn to associate with the word red as a child? — Isaac

There is not one single red sensation, it is a family. I learned to associate a spectrum of color sensations corresponding to a spectrum of light centered around 700nm or so as "red".

The linguistic association between this set of sensations and a word is of course socially mediated, that is no great insight. But this is not to say that the sensation itself is somehow socially mediated, or somehow doesn't exist.

So 'red' is a social construct.

From where do we learn that the wine and the post box are of similar enough colour for the experience they produce to be the same 'red experience'? Language. Culture. — Isaac

The concept of red, as in a grouping of similar colors under the rubric of a single word, is a social construct. But this is trivial, this is just how language works, there are only so many words. Other cultures divide the colors among their limited allotment of color words differently. So what. None of this has bearing on your radical and unsupported claim that the phenomenal experience of red is an illusory social construct.

No one can describe such an experience, no-one can pin down such an experience — Isaac

It's ineffable.

there's no mechanism in the brain which could account for it, there's no cortex in the brain which could process it — Isaac

You must possess a preternatural understanding of what the brain can and can't do.

there are no tests for it... and every test that's ever been done to try and identify such a thing has failed utterly. — Isaac

No tests and all the tests fail, things are looking grim for team experience.

There's absolutely no evidence for it. — Isaac

Don't believe your lying eyes.

Which one? The one you experienced with the red post box, or the one from the red wine, or the red rose, or the red car...which of them is the 'red' one? — Isaac

No "the", these are all "red experiences". Is this going somewhere?

Consciousness is a mystery, to which sticking your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist is not a solution.

Have you guys discussed this article yet? It argues that the war in Ukraine amounts to genocide. I am hard pressed to disagree. Yet it doesn't even go into the destruction of power infrastructure, which I am worried will lead to mass civilian casualties.

a private sensation is nicely pummelled by Isaac's asking which private sensation...

...why, the red ones, of course...

It's a quite vicious circularity. — Banno

Cool, that is exactly what one would expect of something that cannot be described, only named.

@Isaac @Joshs

Babies begin to see red after a few weeks... long before any of this social construction guff might have had time to take hold. And certainly long before they learn to correctly use the word, despite @Banno's ludicrous insistince.

What say you?

Which sensation? — Isaac

Redness, the visual sensation I experience when an object or light source designated "red" enters my visual field .

When was the last time you had an experience of red and how did you know that that's what you were having at the time? — Isaac

Maybe I last experienced it when I was looking at a bottle of hot sauce. How did I know? When I was a small child I learned to associate this sensation with "color", and this variety of color sensation with "red".

A blind person could, of course -- because they have that experience. — Moliere

I don't know a blind person to ask. In fact this suggests they do indeed have visual experiences.

But my point is, how would you determine what they experience by asking them? They may describe their experiences using sight words, but they may or may not be referring to something totally other than what we know as sight experiences. Similarly, our own inner experiences may be identical or totally dissimilar from one another's, and we would never know it. When we hear sensory words we map them to our own inner experiences, without ever knowing how others map those same words. Because we can never express inner experiences without using sensory words that map in totally unknown ways in the listener, inner experiences are ineffable.

So if you want to make a case that such a thing exists, make that case. — Isaac

I have experiences of red, therefore I have knowledge of what it can be like to experience red, therefore such knowledge exists. As a human with functional eyes and occipital lobes, you may consider me to be a domain expert.

I have experiences of pain, therefore I have knowledge of what it can be like to experience pain, therefore such knowledge exists. As a human with functional peripheral and central nervous system, you may consider me to be a domain expert.

If you want to tell me that I don't experience red or pain, that's some heavy lifting, but go for it. Thus far you have done none of it.

A computer can learn how to use the words correctly yet know nothing of what it's talking about.
— hypericin
A quick shift of the goal post in order to avoid falsification.
But this is now kicking a puppy. — Banno

Arrogant bluster aside, you really aren't very good at this. Perhaps you have forgotten already?

That's the sort of grammatical problem that comes from supposing that seeing red is some sort of private experience, as opposed to learning to use the word "red" — Banno

Yet computers have learned to use the word red without seeing it. I guess lacking any response, one can only yap and whine about goalposts.

Isaac, here we have the illusion, encouraged by phenomenology, that there is a clear distinction to be had between red and the-sensation-of-red or the-experience-of-red. And we find folk making claims that relate to Stove's Gem, such as that we really never see red, but only see experience-of-red or sensation-of-red. — Banno

"Red" can refer to many things. A word, a range of wavelengths of light, a class of pigments with absorptive properties, and a set of subjective sensations. Are you unable to discern these differences?

You have evidence of something more? — Isaac

Yes. A blind person would understand all those words and yet know nothing of the sensation of red.

Banno has already disabused you of this misunderstanding. You could and would know exactly what I'm talking about by learning how to use the words correctly. — Isaac

He certainly has not. A computer can learn how to use the words correctly yet know nothing of what it's talking about.

Take pain as a less loaded example. Suppose someone was born with no sensation of pain. They can certainly learn to use "pain", "ouch!", Etc correctly, yet have no knowledge of what pain is like.

This tells me a quality of the sensation (vibrancy), another color sensation it reminded you of(blood), and how it later made you feel(calmer). But nothing about the sensation itself. I can understand your account only because I experience the same color sensations. If I did not, if I were blind, or an alien, I wouldn't know what you were talking about, no matter how immersed I was in your culture.

What you're calling your 'experience of red' is a socially mediated construction. Therefore it is bound up with the language your culture uses and so can be reiterated in that language. — Isaac

Then please, demonstrate so. Unless you claim you have none?

How can I close my eyes and easily imagine the color red and green, divorced from any object? You will have to point me to the research that is informing you. But the question of whether color can be considered in isolation from objects seems tangential to this thread, and for it's purpose I am not committed either way. Both the experience of red in the abstract and red as a property of an object are equally incommunicable.

Redness is always experienced as an attribute of a particular. Voilà, I said something about the experience of redness. — Heracloitus

And yet our blind friend is none the wiser to it.

No one can say anything about the experience of red, not because it's ineffable, but because it doesn't exist. Experiences are constructed by the brain post hoc, way, way after any processing associated with the wavelength of light reflected off an object. — Isaac

Even if it were true that conscious experiences are epiphenomenal, this is not to say they don't exist.

We experience a red postbox, a red car, a red rose. No one experiences just 'red'. — Isaac

What is the difference between experiencing a red apple and the identical but green apple? The experience of redness and greenness, about which we can say no more.

You have my sympathy. — Banno

You misunderstood, the frustration was at your mental block, not mine.

A blind person cannot see that the cup is red. But your claim was that there is something they cannot say - something sighted folk can say but not blind folk. — Banno

Again, you misunderstand. No one can say anything about the experience of red. It is ineffable.

I don't think you can, and again, that's because seeing red is something that we do, not something that is sayable. — Banno

There are a million things we do, the experience of which is perfectly communicable. I can describe perfectly well what it is like to fly in an airplane, so that someone who has never done so will have at least a rough facsimile of the experience. But not so of red, or of qualia in general. We cannot even begin to communicate their experience.

That's the sort of grammatical problem that comes from supposing that seeing red is some sort of private experience, as opposed to learning to use the word "red" — Banno

So you are committed to the claim that a computer, LaMDA for instance, that is trained to use the word red appropriately is "seeing red"? Maybe in your English, but not mine. I think most would agree that seeing red is absolutely a private experience.

You can take it as frustration at what must be a mental block of some kind.

I'm blind. Please explain to me in terms I can understand what it is like to see red. If you cannot, you must concede that the experience is ineffable.

the experience of color cannot be communicated.
— hypericin

Yeah, it can. The cup is red. — Banno

:rofl: :roll:

This says the cup is colored red, but nothing about the experience of the color red.

Merely mouthing words is not enough. By your logic this thread is a non-starter, for as soon as anything purportedly ineffable is merely mentioned, it is no longer ineffable.

You can endlessly verbalize about the experience of color. Moreover you can endlessly use color words. Nonetheless, the experience of color cannot be communicated. That is what makes it ineffable.

There is something blind folk cannot do, not something they cannot say. — Banno

Yes. Per my example, it is something they cannot do, and we (sighted) cannot say, to them. We cannot say the experience of sight, it is ineffable.

And yet folk who are blind do use colour words, correctly. — Banno

The blind can use color words as labels (red ball vs. blue ball).
They can discuss the optical properties of different colored light.
They can use color words as metaphorical proxies for emotions.
The one thing they can't do is know the subjective experience of colors (assuming they didn't lose sight after birth). Because, not only do they lack this experience themselves, but this experience is completely incommunicable through language. It is ineffable.

To be sure, blind folk are able to talk of the warmth of red and the chill of blue. They can use colour words in much the same way as the sighted. But what they cannot do is to choose the correct word for some object that is before them, to say if it is yellow or it is green. — Banno

Anyone can use any word. By pattern recognition anyone can use any word in a plausible sounding way. What the blind cannot do re color words is know what they are talking about.

And since we do talk about our experiences, they are not ineffable. — Banno

Our experiences are effable. What is beyond discourse is the elementals of our experience, your beloved, qualia.

if we can't accurately convey parts A, B, and C of an experience, I see no reason why we should think we could accurately convey D, E, or F, meaning the entire experience and all experiences are ineffable. If there are portions of the experience that are capable of being perfectly conveyed, I'd like to know what those portions are and why. — Hanover

Experience itself cannot be conveyed. Yet, it is possible via language to project the speaker's experience into a similar experience imagined by the listener.

I cannot experience your red, it may or may not be the same as mine. We would never know precisely because the content of this experience is beyond language. Yet by saying "red" I am projecting my experience of red onto yours.

Is this communicating my experience? Both yes and no.

It is the familiar problem of explaining color to the blind person. In vain you will fumble with the heat of red and the chill of blue, the lush verdancy of green. This gets you exactly nowhere.

The same is true for all the senses, and for emotions as well. You cannot explain love or anger to one who has never experienced them.

The content of primary sensory experiences are utterly beyond language, they are the ineffable. They can be referred to, but never described.

Everything else is, in principle, communicable, owing to language's universality. Every sensation can be referred to by a word, and our thoughts are themselves either words or sensations. Only primary sensory experiences stand beyond language.

You are implicitly reifying morality, then complaining that it does not meet your absurd requirement.

Humans are cooperative animals. Morality is a conceptual framework which facilitates cooperation, by prescribing cooperative behavior (behavior that benefits others, especially at one's expense) and proscribing uncooperative behavior (behavior that harms others, especially at one's benefit). For a moral claim to be"true" just means that it is consistent with cooperative behavior.

So, torture is unproblematically bad if done for mere sadism, as it is harming others for your benefit. If done for a purported "greater good", more sophisticated moral arguments must be deployed showing why this is or isn't cooperative.

But to require that the claim is True in some deeper, perhaps platonic sense, is just absurd.

I'm not decided, which is really why I posted. Why did you do it? Where did you go?

I can do some remote work to make up for some budgetary deficitst, so it's possible I can travel indefinitely.

What motivates us are... something else that doesn't need to be defined, because defining it will already put it under the rubric of reason, and I'd generalize to say that reason is not our human-creature motivation. — Moliere

Yes. Reason doesn't ever motivate. Rather, we perform motivated, driven reason. Our drives are animal, dressed up with reason after the fact. Reason is a tool to fulfill our drives.

But... if only it were so simple. We are blessed and cursed with the feedback loop that makes thought possible. Thoughts are cyclical.. we think them, then we react to them, by feeling, and by thinking. And then these feelings and thoughts are reacted to, and so on. These feedback loops can drive an anxious mind to distraction.

the collapse is still preventable and probably won't effect people who have decent work right now. — Moliere

Both quite doubtful imo.

We have no knowledge of the future, really. We have good predictions, but it's happened so many times now that basically anything we believe could turn up to be wrong. — Moliere

Except, we do. Science is all about making models that predict. Predictions are never completely certain, but they can be certain to a high degree. true, climate predictions are quite difficult, as they are modeling a chaotic phenomenon with multiple uncertainties and feedback loops. And yet, they have done well so far... https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/

Deliberately introducing new constraints, psychological or otherwise, to ensure you are miserable enough to match your fears for the world does seems irrational to me — Baden

Am I introducing new constraints? Working until retirement is a massive constraint, the expenditure of the bulk of life, and is predicated on having a livable retirement to work for. This presumption is at least called into question now. My state of mind is that I have only a few goodish years left, which is, as points out, the mental state of a terminal cancer patient. The feeling that I am squandering these few precious good years has become overwhelming.

Focus on the locus of your control and control what you can. — Baden

I have no control over grand events, but significant control over how I spend my time. That is why I am preparing to quit my job and make the most of my (in my mind) handful of years left. If it turns out that this cataclysm is a mirage that moves forward in time along with us, and I run out of money, I will just have to go back to work, likely at a significant pay cut, and work longer in life than I would have liked.

Note that I have anxiety disorder, and have since early childhood. So, this looming doom affects me more than others. I wish it didn't, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Thanks for the reply.

There are two definitions:
* Belief Independent
* Authentic

Conflating them will only lead to confusion