@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

I include as evil self harm, not just that harm to others, including subjecting yourself to degradation or humiliation. " — Hanover

I do not. You regard the severely depressed as morally similar to sadists and abusers?

When you have catastrophic loss of animal and insect biomass, ecosystem collapses, extinction rates comparable to historical extinction events, then maybe, just maybe, this time is different.

When you have multiple "Once in a century" weather cataclysms wrecking havoc multiple times per year, and it will only get worse, much worse, then maybe, just maybe, this time is different.

When you have scientists chaining themselves to buildings, the us army predicting it's own immanent collapse, then maybe, just maybe, this time is different.

But, no. Y2K didn't happen, 2011 didn't happen. Therefore, this is just more hype, you can safely ignore it.

Now I'm glad I had no knowledge of this word, nor its depressing meaning. — jgill

Is the collective turning our heads away the true irrationality, the enabler of this crisis? — hypericin

Living on high ground in the Southern Hemisphere will be sustainable for centuries at least — 180 Proof

Curious about your source on this.

And it's not like I aspire to mere survival. The world as a whole is the greatest artistic masterpiece there will ever be. It is daily being defiled and degraded, shit smeared on it's canvas. I want to experience a small slice of its beauty before it is completely gone, and its people before their lives are totally consumed by continuous crisis and stress.

First off, it's rather intriguing that your response to the end times is precisely what a person diagnosed with cancer would (decide to) do. — Agent Smith

Yes, in both cases the future is seen as an illusion. For cancer it is just the individuals, here it is everyone's, but the effect is largely the same. For me.

. What I find odd is that with or without a fatal illness/global catastrophe, death is certain and yet to "spend away my savings travelling, extracting what joy and fulfillment in life remains" isn't on your average Joe's to-do list. — Agent Smith

Except, it is. We all want to to do the things we've dreamed of, and typically defer these dreams. There will be time, later. All of a sudden, you realize: time is running out.

Evil is to act without regard for the well being of the other. This is epistemically objective to the degree motivations can be objectively determined.

Sadism is a perverse evil, that cause pain and permanent damage to gratify a psychic or sexual need.

Narcissism is evil, because the narcissist acts with only their benefit in mind.

Sadistic narcissists are the most objectively evil humans we've got *cough* Trump *cough*.

To be moral is just to treat moral agents justly. Our concept of justice is largely built in and intuitive. What has always been at issue is who is worthy of the status of moral agent. The reason that outrages like slavery can exist is the wholesale denial of moral agent status to groups. This is how moral outrages always happen.

So the question is, who is worthy of being moral agents? Is there an objective criterion? I think so, it can only be consciousness. To be a moral agent is to be conscious. Why? To be conscious is to feel, to have goals and interests, to have a sense of self, to be in the most important respect similar to all other moral agents, that is, all other conscious beings. (Consciousness is not an absolute, if a being is minimally conscious, it is minimally a moral agent.)

Therefore, to enslave people or animals is objectively immoral, as this is treating moral agents, that is , conscious beings, unjustly.

But abstract objects are often said to lack causal power. The number 2, on its own, can’t cause anything to happen in the physical universe. But if The Maltese Falcon is indeed an abstract object, then an abstract object can have causal powers. For instance, the novel can entertain, cause me to feel suspense, happy, sad, etc. — Art48

But, the Maltese Falcon, on it's own, cannot do any of these things. It must be encoded in some way to exert causal power.

I have had similar thoughts. I came to the conclusion that the world is comprised of both material and information. They are never isolated; physical objects embody information, informational objects cannot exist without a physical "host", if only a mind. .

"Objects" don't hold any special privilege, their boundaries are largely human drawn. With that in mind there should not be a problem in admitting informational objects to your ontology.

Computer programs and genetic codes are great examples of informational objects which have causal effects on the world.

Yes, at best it can only be sold as a failed war aim. Earlier in the war Russia had opportunities to secure Ukraine's neutrality, which it ignored.

My argument is against the tankie delusion that the war was somehow a defensive response to NATO encroachment.

I don't understand your last sentence. — Manuel

"Retreat" is only weakness if the aggressor did not obtain what they want. If they achieved everything, "retreat" is not even the right word.

If forcing Ukraine from NATO was truly the aim, Russia could have had that easily, early in the war or before. And if they gained that, their withdrawal would not be a "retreat", and it would not be a show of weakness, they would have gotten what they through raw force.

Only by acknowledging that NATO is not their true aim, that all of Ukraine is their goal, does Russia's withdrawal in this scenario turn into a "retreat".

f they retreated as soon as they invaded, that would convey weakness, not power. — Manuel

From the way you talk you are already aware that NATO has nothing to do with Russia's aim. If it was, and they got what they wanted by military force, it would have been a brutal show of raw strength. Only if their actual aim was Ukraine itself would their leaving be a "retreat" and a show of weakness.

Not because he's less bad, but because he doesn't have the same amount of power. — Manuel

Total non sequitor.

the negotiations were rejected, and then as soon as it was launched, they would've stopped and retreated? Really? — Manuel

Obviously. They would have been negotiating from a position of power, and gotten what they wanted. But what they wanted is nothing less than Ukraine.

Politicians, by definition, are liars, so of course proven liars must negotiate. — Manuel

Yet you are holding Zelensky to this unrealistic standard while he negotiates with one of the greatest liars in politics.

I'm positive I remember Zelensky offering to abandon his NATO bid immediately before the invasion. But I cannot find this anywhere. Did I hallucinate this?