I know which of my feelings/sensations are associated with 'pain' because I was taught the language and the use of the word. I make my own association between this feeling and the concept. — Luke

You have a whole range of constantly varying feelings at any given time. How did you know which ones were associated with the public concept 'pain' and which ones were unrelated feelings you just happened to be having?

The point is: When the cone cells process the same wavelength don’t they produce the same epiphenomena? Can’t that be the commonality between red things? — khaled

Yep.

The fact that we have a similar epiphenomena when looking at red things is caused by the fact that the physical reaction to red things is similar (same wavelength getting processed). — khaled

Agreed.

they’ll produce a similar experience in exposure to similar wavelengths. — khaled

Yep.


So the content of that experience (the one just caused by your cone cells responding to 600nm wavelengths) can't have anything whatsoever to do with your big toe can it? No signals resulting from your cone cells responding to 600nm wavelengths were sent to your big toe and we're carving up the relevant experience as being {the one which results from your cone cells responding to 600nm wavelengths}. You may well have a signal sent from your big toe at the same time, which may well form part of your holistic experience. It may well be common to both the red post box and the red letter A, but if it were it would be because my shoe happened to be too tight on both occasions, or something like that.

We know exactly what physiological conditions relate to the experience of 'red' because the only way we're dividing the experience of 'red' from everything else going on at the time is by restricting it to that which is caused by your cone cells responding to 600nm wavelengths.

It makes sense to some of us. Those of us who think there's something to being conscious, and not all conscious experiences are the same across sensations, people and organisms. — Marchesk

Well, as I said, I don't want to open that can of worms again, but I think it's obvious from the length of that conversation last time that it's not as simple as it making sense to some and not others.

So the answer is science cannot completely show us the conscious experiences of other people. Or bats for that matter. — Marchesk

Why not? I don't get that from what I just said. Science can't show us now. But nothing in what I said precludes science from showing us in principle - which is what we're talking about here.

Yes, but the animal knows what a mate smells like, what food tastes like, and what kind of brightly colored pattern a poisonous animal is likely to have. — Marchesk

You have some evidence for this?

Of course it's usually in the form of object recognition like mate or foe, so there is complex cognition going on for many animals that combines sensations into things in an environment. — Marchesk

Right. Which undermines what you just said. They need not know "what a mate smells like, what food tastes like, and what kind of brightly colored pattern a poisonous animal is likely to have" What they evidently 'know' is what to do in a range of circumstances.

The point is other animals carve up the world successfully without language. — Marchesk

As you admit above, it is far from evident that they do this in any way other than a holistic assessment of the entire set of signals at any given time.

do you not think that prevention is even better than cure? — unenlightened

Yes, by a very large margin prevention is definitely better than the cure.

Therapy can sometimes have the social function of making social problems into personal ones, in rather the way cholera treatments of old failed to address the sanitation problems of crowded living in cities, that led to the frequent epidemics. — unenlightened

Can it? Is this just a suspicion of your, or do you have any evidence to support it?

There are two aspects to this -

Firstly, you're right. If we successfully treat those who are damaged by the way we've set up society, then it has the effect of making it appear as though that damage is remediable and so less concerning - but what's the alternative - let people suffer deliberately so that we force them to martyr themselves to the greater cause - that seems a little harsh?

Secondly, as the article says, depression is often a response, but it also causes behavioural changes which have an impact on the environment of others. It's possible (in fact I think it personally very likely) that the very reason why we're not making any improvements in the way our society functions is because of the damage living in it causes to our mental health. Addressing that damage may well be a step toward removing the conditions of its cause.

many people who have complex traumatic history get given the label of borderline personality disorder. Have you come across this approach to trauma in the labelling by some professionals? — Jack Cummins

I don't do clinical psychology, but in what limited experience I have it's certainly something I've encountered more than once, so unless that's a coincidence my guess would be that it's quite prevalent, yes.

From what I understand, however, PTSD isn't the right diagnosis either, as CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a separate condition with different neurological symptoms, different manifestations (which are partly responsible for the misdiagnoses) and therefore requires different therapeutic treatment. But I'm not an expert in this field.

I know which feelings are associated with 'pain' because I was taught the language and the use of the word. — Luke

How would that work, if your feelings are private?

I can't be sure that other people have an identical feeling to mine — Luke

Then how do you know those non-identical aspects have anything to do with the public concept 'pain'?

if you know how to use the word, then the experience/feeling should already be defined. So why does it require any further research/definition? — Luke

To establish the neural correlates of those feelings, so that therapies can be devised for those suffering from pathologies in those areas.

It doesn't get discovered by being able to see how red looks to Richard. It gets discovered from his behaviour, including his inconsistent use of the word. — Luke

Yes, that's what I said.

How red looks to Richard is private and subjective. — Luke

It doesn't get more convincing by repetition.

we’re talking about something unmeasurable in principle. — Wayfarer

You are. I'm not. I'm asking you why you think it's unmeasurable in principle. Specifically I'm asking you in what way a verbal report that you feel it does not constitute a measurement of it.

My claim is that science is primarily or even only concerned with what is objectively measurable — Wayfarer

OK.

But I’m arguing that this account leaves something important out. When you say ‘what is that?’, the response is, something that is not objectively measurable. — Wayfarer

Yep, and I'm asking why you think it's not objectively measurable. All you've said so far is that any such measurement is prone to error, but that's true of all measurement.

No - you haven't measured it. You will simply have to take my word for it. — Wayfarer

All measurements come with error margins. If measurements which might be false don't count as measurements then we can't measure anything!

There is no sense in trying to analyze or categorize this one further. An inability to experience joy, with feelings of dread requires intervention. — Tom Storm


Turns out, 80% of depressions can be cured by not having a war where you live.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/people-in-war-torn-countries-are-five-times-more-likely-to-develop-anxiety-of-depression-320553 — unenlightened

That's not the conclusion of the study cited. Even a cursory read shows that. The very first sentence is "People living in countries that have experienced armed conflict are five times more likely to develop anxiety or depression", which means that 80% of depression/anxiety could have been prevented by not having a war. The study says nothing about curing it.

PTSD is without doubt caused by trauma. Does not having that trauma anymore cure it?

You're doubtless aware of 'eliminative materialism', right? in fact, you'd be one of the advocates of this school on this site, right? So what is it that 'eliminative materialism' seeks to eliimate? What does it deny the existence of? Why does Daniel Dennett say 'the hard problem' is actually a problem at all? — Wayfarer

I'm not sure how any of that answers my question, but... The SEP has a better answer than any I could give (I've no qualifications in Philosophy).

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind. — SEP

But you'll have to explain the link between that and my question as I'm not seeing it.

How do you know that the experiences you have when you injure yourself are the same as everyone else's experiences when they use the word "pain"? — Luke

Visual behavioural similarities.

Again, how are you distinguishing 'pain' from the entire milieu of experience at any given time without the public definitions? — Isaac


I acknowledged in my last post that pain is defined by the public concept. I'm talking about the associated feeling that goes along with it. The same associated feeling that you acknowledge is the study of neurology. — Luke

Right. Well, the same question to that then. How do you know which of your thousands of responses/feelings are the ones associated with 'pain' and which are associated with the room you happen to be standing in, or your mood, or some fleeting memory, or...

Witt actually says: "It’s not a Something, but not a Nothing either! The conclusion was only that a Nothing would render the same service as a Something about which nothing could be said." — Luke

I think that still makes the same point.

Isn't your position that the public concept completely defines the experience? If so, then why do you agree that we need neuroscience "to tell us exactly what feeling(s) corresponds to what set of neuronal activity"? If the public concept completely defines the experience, then shouldn't we already know which experiences map to which behaviours - and shouldn't it be the same for everyone who uses the word? — Luke

Here, you're equivocating on your use of 'behaviours' Previously you'd said that neural activity counted as a behaviour. If so then it's not true to say that "we already know which experiences map to which behaviours". We only know some of which experiences map to some macro-scale bodily behaviours.

What is the purpose of further research and how can Richard be colour-blind if he uses the word "red" correctly? — Luke

He doesn't consistently use the word 'red' correctly. There are shades which can't be distinguished even from the intensity of saturation, and edge cases will have poorer contrast. If this were not the case, then how would we ever know anyone was colourblind? How would we ever have found out the function of cone cells if no public language could distinguish their proper functioning from their restricted one?

Yes, I'm allowing that the intelligence which makes decisions may not be determined by any antecedent processes. Obviously that cannot be proven just as it's denial cannot. — Janus

Of course it can. We've never, ever encountered any macro-scale physical event which is without physical cause despite many thousands of years searching for it. That is what we call proof in science. You can't prove anything at all to any higher degree than that (pace Hume). Not only that but there's no plausible mechanism. You seem to be suggesting that every single concept, idea, or theory is on an exactly equal footing with every other (regardless of evidence or plausibility) simply because none can be proven outright.

To me the most obvious thing is that we are free and morally responsible. — Janus

What has what seems obvious to you got to do with it? Why do so many people expect the actual nature of the universe to be revealed to them by their introspection? We're not Gods.

And all objects you can refer to with the word "red" do not share anything at all in your experience? Not even a vague resemblance? I find that hard to believe. — khaled

No, they share the experience of me thinking 'red' is the right word to use to describe the colour.

Would you be able to guess its color? I find that likely. Even though you never heard the color of that object being uttered before. — khaled

How could I possibly guess it's colour if I didn't know the name of it's colour? What would my answer consist of?

Although those are also commonalities of red things, they are not the commonalities we use to distinguish them in everyday life. — khaled

Why not? We have cell capable of making such a distinction, those cells are linked to cells in language centres. Why on earth wouldn't we use wavelength? We might not be epiphenomenologically aware of doing so, post hoc, but I don't see how that impacts on matters.

When I ask you what the color of something you've never seen before is, you don't pull out an optic wavelength meter. You can just tell by looking at it. You don't need to know the wavelength emitted. — khaled

Looking at it is pulling out a wavelength meter. They're called cone cells and they're situated in my retina.

So the thing common to red things that you use to tell them apart must be in the experience produced when we look at them. — khaled

You're undermining your own position on epiphenomenology. Just because the experience accompanies the physical activity in the brain, doesn't mean it is the cause of it. The experience might not include a readout of the wavelength in nm, but that's just post hoc narrative. The actual process of telling them apart almost certainly is carried out (in part) by assessing the wavelength, that's why we have cells capable of doing so.

the way we tell is by finding common aspects in our experience as I show above. But the contents of the experience need not be the same. — khaled

I was asking you about the nature of that content, but you seem to have avoided the question.

You're talking about carving up our experiences into meaningful categories. That would be true of the world outside the body as well. — Marchesk

Yes.

With public epiphenomena we have the arbitrary (and loose) linguistic boundaries, with their 'props' of set membership. — Isaac


But animals can perform color and other sensory discriminations without language. — Marchesk

Indeed. I'm not disputing that different wavelengths can have different causal effects within the brain. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Animals know when they're in pain. Pain would be a useless sensation if an organism couldn't recognize that something was causing potential damage. — Marchesk

An organism only need to respond appropriately to stimuli. It need not group aspects of that response. Fighting for a mate involves pain, but the animal continues nonetheless, standing on a sharp thorn involves pain but the animal desists immediately. 'Pain' doesn't cause some pre-programmed response. The entire set of environmental stimuli at the time does.

The problem is that human language is relatively recent ability added onto much older nuerological abilities that handle experiencing things like pain so that the organism can respond appropriates. — Marchesk

As above, the organism responds to the entire set of environmental stimuli, not just a single delineated aspect of it.

But what if someone's neurology is atypical? Can I know what it's like to be Hellen Keller? — Marchesk

No, because "knowing what it's like" doesn't make any sense. But lets' not open that can of worms again.

Will science tell us exactly when someone lies? — Marchesk

It's possible, yes.

Perhaps we'll get a printout of their inner dialog, or hear them in our earbuds. — Marchesk

Possible too.

the right chemicals will be released in our brains so we can have their feelings. — Marchesk

Feelings are not generated by chemicals so I don't see this working. To have someone else's feeling in a neurological sense, you'd have to have a sufficiently similar set of neurons firing during the time period of assessment. This would certainly require the same availability of neurotransmitters in the same proportions, but it would also require the same set of axon potentials prior to the assessment period.

I figure that other creatures are not so different to myself, whereas materialism wants to treat them, and me, as objects, saying that the sense of subject-hood can simply be eliminated. — Wayfarer

That's just describing the two positions. You said that something was missing from the materialist account that was not directly observable. I was asking you what that is. Is your answer that it's the "sense of subject-hood"? Presumably this is a feeling you have of some sort? So if I ask "Do you have a sense of subject-hood - yes [ ] , no [ ]" will I not have just measured it?

Neuroscience doesn't work with behaviours, it works with neural activity, — Isaac


Isn't neural activity some set of physical behaviour(s) of the human body? — Luke

Yes, fair enough, I didn't think that's what you meant.

but that aside, what is 'the feeling itself'. Are we talking dualism, epiphenomenalism...? — Isaac


I'm hoping to avoid putting a label on the mind-body relationship, if possible. You know what the feeling of pain is, don't you? — Luke

No. Not by any means other than the public language. I have experiences when I injure myself, but which of them are 'pain' I wouldn't know how to distinguish privately.

The sufficiently advanced neurologist would see the neural activity, not the behaviours — Isaac


What distinction are you making here? — Luke

An unnecessary one given my misunderstanding above.

the subjective aspect of pain, even though this is largely what we consider to be what is important about pain. — Luke

Again, how are you distinguishing 'pain' from the entire milieu of experience at any given time without the public definitions?

the sensation object which "drops out of consideration as irrelevant" to the language-game. This is what's private: how pain feels, how the colour red looks to a colourblind person, how the colour red looks to a normal person, 'what it is like' to have perceptions and thoughts, qualia, etc. — Luke

None of this is distinguishable from the general milieu of experience by private means. That's what I take to be Wittgenstein's point. That's why he calls it a 'something'.

Why do you need to introduce to the discussion the concept of a "sufficiently advanced neurologist"? Presumably, their knowledge must be "sufficiently advanced" regarding the relationship between the behaviour of neurons and our corresponding feelings. Maybe a neurologist that is "sufficiently advanced" will be able to tell us exactly what feeling(s) corresponds to what set of neuronal activity, closing the gap and eliminating the possibility that any feeling can remain truly private to the person who has it. But I take it that we are not yet this sufficiently advanced. — Luke

Yes, that's exactly the point.

I think you are begging the question if you assume that all feelings can in principle be publicly known like this. — Luke

How so? Our current models would suggest so. I don't think adhering to successful models until they're contradicted by evidence constitutes begging the question. It's a standard scientific approach.

For the time being, at least, you must admit that there is an element of privacy to our sensations. — Luke

I do, yes.

No they won’t they’ll just be delayed in saying blue. I did some stroop test research 1st year undergrad. It’s very rare that participants straight up make a mistake. — khaled

See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0193%281998%296%3A4%3C270%3A%3AAID-HBM6%3E3.0.CO%3B2-0

I'm talking from a neurological perspective here.

but no distinguishable components. — Isaac


Hint: There may be something similar about the post box and the red letter “A”. — khaled

Yes, they're both objects I can refer to the colour of with the word 'red'.

I’m more curious what you meant by this though:

With public epiphenomena we have the arbitrary (and loose) linguistic boundaries, with their 'props' of set membership. — Isaac


What is a public epiphenomena? — khaled

One whose boundaries are created by public criteria. The reason for the 'slice' is public.

None of them pretends that one can always predict any and all active transport. — Olivier5

Inability to predict is not lack of determinism. It's lack of sufficient modelling accuracy. Lack of determinism would need to propose a randomising mechanism.

Is there nothing at all similar in your experience each time you want to describe something you see as red? — khaled

Not that I can distinguish, no. The experience of seeing a red postbox seems very distinct from the one of seeing a red letter 'A', but no distinguishable components.

If you ask someone what colour the word 'RED' is (when printed in blue ink), they'll usually say 'red'.

Because I studied physics, chemistry and biology, and those foundational sciences are currently underterministic. — Olivier5

OK then, let's have the nearest thing. What's the undeterministic theory of active transport across a cell membrane?

Sure but epiphenomena X is the one always preceding saying red. That’s what I meant. — khaled

There's no pre-identified slice that always precedes saying 'red'. Your entire life thus far precedes saying 'red'.

You tell me, — Olivier5

What? You said...

Modern science has got passed this belief, and is resolutely undeterministic — Olivier5

Now you're saying you've no actual examples of modern science that are nondeterministic in this field? So how have you come to the conclusion you have, without any contributory evidence?

X is an experience that makes you communicate by saying “red”. — khaled

Experiences as epiphenomena can't 'make' us say red, only neural activity can do that.

The point is, the experience that you communicate by saying “Red” need not be the same for everyone. — khaled

No, but the point I'm making is that no 'experience' causes you to say 'red'. You simply say 'red' as a result of the sum total of all your experience to date. the only reason we can chop it up in anyway at a neurological level is by setting artificial boundaries around signal strength emanating from the detector of choice (in this case retinal cone cells). Without the cone cells, we've no reason at all to follow one line of neural activity and not any of the billion other lines. With public epiphenomena we have the arbitrary (and loose) linguistic boundaries, with their 'props' of set membership.

Unless you can propose such a boundary for these private epiphenomena, there's no way of distinguishing the 'slice' of epiphenomena associated with red, form the entire epiphenomena of existence to date.

Modern science has got passed this belief, and is resolutely undeterministic — Olivier5

Oh, I didn't know that. So what's the non-deterministic account of decision-making in neurological terms?

That's precisely what is missing in the materialist/physicalist account of living organisms - it is the one attribute it can't recognise, because it's not directly observable. — Wayfarer

Then by what means did you learn that...

all animals strive to survive — Wayfarer

?

Because it's always possible to fit some curve to any data, it's just a question of how complicated a formula it takes to do so. — Pfhorrest

Not if the data is dynamic. Then it's impossible to fit a curve to it.

If you guys want to buy into misplaced scientistic dogma, — Janus

In what way 'misplaced'?

I appreciate the effort, but I still don't see anything in there that's more than just saying there is such a distinction, rather than explaining how it manifests.

The wiki article you directed me to says "In various areas of mathematics, isomorphisms have received specialized names, depending on the type of structure under consideration". Which seems to confirm my previous (very superficial) understanding of isomorphism, which is that it is preservation of some particular structure, not just structure sensu lato. To have isomorphism the objects at hand have to have relational properties which can be kept constant. So, in the example given, isometry preserves the distance between elements, in homeomorphism it is the topology, geometric isomorphisms might preserve angle, vertex number, function between vertices...

In physiological isomorphic experiences, the property being preserved is (for colour) relational retinal cone stimulation in a sequence of perception events - say red, red, red for the colourblind, as opposed to red, red, green for the normally sighted

I'm asking, in your epiphenomenological experience isomorphisms, what is the property being preserved over what sequence?

Even to sufficiently advanced neuroscience? — Isaac


Neuroscience, like language, cannot get at the feeling itself; it can only work with the behaviours. — Luke

Neuroscience doesn't work with behaviours, it works with neural activity, but that aside, what is 'the feeling itself'. Are we talking dualism, epiphenomenalism...?

You'll argue that it's not 'your' pain because it's not taking place in your body, but that makes 'pain' into the set of physiological activities (being the only part fixed to your body). — Isaac


I don't see how this follows. — Luke

Your body is made up of cells (and some fluids etc). Even as an epiphenomena, something like pain would have to have a physical cause in the action of these components. Full blown dualism is the only way you could have something like a pain, distinguished by being in your body, but not correlated with properties of your body.

The sufficiently advanced neurologist would see only the behaviours, not the feelings. The feelings are not directly accessible; in other words, private. The idea of a "sufficiently advanced neurologist" begs the question. — Luke

The sufficiently advanced neurologist would see the neural activity, not the behaviours. If 'pain' is not defined by the public concept (and so private that way) then it's only refuge is neurological activity. Otherwise you have private language.

Your use of content and structure is becoming problematic as you relate it to conceptual matters such as experience. Physical things have a content (component parts) and a structure (spatiotemporal positions of those parts in relation to one another). You seem to have imported this language into pure concepts (experience) with making it clear what the correlations are.

I thought you were treating response events as the equivalent of component parts and sequence (temporal) as the equivalent of relative spatiotemporal position). But...

The toe size is a content-determining difference, not a structure determining one. — khaled

...doesn't make any sense in that context. So (for tomorrow, as I have work today) could you explain again the difference between structure and content as you're using the terms in the context of experience?

By seeing how others use the words.

Finding the commonality between every instance of someone saying "red". — khaled

How does that tell us where to cut the continuous and unfiltered 'experience'. If my X response (as opposed to your Y) might be caused in part by my big toe (but I can't know that so as to tell other people), then how can I know that the commonality is not our big toes (rather than the wavelengths of light)?

Their contents are ineffable and private. But the cuts aren't. The cuts are cultural, biological, and sometimes personal. — khaled

How can we know where to cut then?

I was attempting a description which allows one to feel pain without showing it. — Luke

Even to sufficiently advanced neuroscience? What form would this pain take if it had no physical expression whatsoever?

It seems that you could then turn around your claim above to say "people can experience your tokens of pain, via your expressions of pain" — Isaac


People don't experience the feeling that hurts when they experience my expressions of pain. — Luke

To understand my objection to this you'd need to read my post above https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/503932

Something as simple as the activity of mirror neurons can cause me to feel your pain via your expressions of pain.

You'll argue that it's not 'your' pain because it's not taking place in your body, but that makes 'pain' into the set of physiological activities (being the only part fixed to your body). I have no problem with labelling it that way, but it's then not intrinsically private, any sufficiently advanced neurologist can see it.

You'll argue that it's not exactly the same as your pain (intensity, memories and responses unique to you...). But that falls foul of the problem I referred to in my post above - These are not 'pain' either, they are just the sum total of your experience at any given time. Once you decide to chop that up and filter it into parts you're engaging in a language game which is public. If I can't feel your pain, then you can't talk about 'pain' at all.

I can say to myself "raise my arm" as many times as I like and unfailingly my arm will rise (if nothing is physically restraining it). No evidence of any causation anywhere gets any better than this. — Janus

No you couldn't. And contrary to your ad hoc guesswork, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary.

For a start, in many cases we can see that the action potential for raising an arm precedes awareness of an intention to do so.

Secondly if the premotor cortex becomes disconnected from the primary motor cortex, you'll move your arm around quite freely and competently but without any feeling of having initiated such movements.

Thirdly, Lesions in the posterior parietal cortex will result in you being able to move your arm with direction but loose any sense that it actually moved (if blindfolded - for example). A consequence of such a condition is often a rejection of ownership over the movement.

Are you claiming that decisions have no physical correlates? If they do, then where is the problem? Accepting that a decision has a physical correlate (which it should given that it is a brain activity) then a decision can be the efficient cause of an act. — Janus

If a decision has a physical correlate, that that physical correlate must sit within a mechanical causal chain (or break Newtons laws of thermodynamics). You cannot on the one hand claim that your decision is the initiating physical cause and then on the other invoke an underlying chain of physical events as correlates. Why are the preceding points in this chain not 'causes'?

The notion of determinism works in understanding (most) observable physical processes, but the assumption that all neural processes (or even all physical processes) are fully determined by antecedent processes is just that, nothing but an assumption; a matter of faith. — Janus

So everything is 'just an assumption' no matter the strength of evidence? Bullshit. Who do you ask for the weather forecast, the Met Office or the soothsayer?

The keys exert power, no matter what’s written on them. — NOS4A2

Obviously not. The keys with the code numbers produce a different response to the ones without, otherwise the lock wouldn't work, if all the keys had the same reaction no matter what numbers were written on them.

there are in fact connections between one recognising symbols and ones actions. This isn’t controversial, there are plenty of studies and research to support that idea. If it seems fanciful and absurd to you it’s because you are ignorant of how these neurological processes interact with words and information. — DingoJones

Exactly.

You have a single neuron (or possibly a cluster - it's not yet clear) which fires in response to the word cat. When it receives signals from the particular ganglion cells to which it is connected, it will fire. The written pattern 'cat' will cause such signals. The written pattern 'car' will not. The same with sound (only a little less direct, but that's not relevant). The sound wave pattern 'cat' will trigger the neuron, the sound wave pattern 'car' will not.

It's irrefutable that the patterns 'cat', in either written or spoken form cause a different physical event (the firing of a neuron) than the patterns for 'car'.

If you want me to refer you to a good text book or pop-science introductory book on this, I'm happy to.

...

Once initiated, that neuron has potential energy in the form of an ion gradient across its membrane. Newtons laws of thermodynamics tell us that this energy cannot be created or destroyed...

...In order to do anything (speak, rake leaves, turn your gaze, even raise your heart rate in anger), you need energy. To make these elements move (muscle cells, other neurons) a similar ion gradient has to be created and, since it's going against the diffusion gradient, it needs energy to initiate. Again, as per Newtons laws of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created... so from whence does it get this energy?

...remember our loose end from earlier? Our hanging bit of energy which cannot be destroyed?

Nothing mystical or sorcerous about it, just science.

If you want to contest the idea that a word causes a particular set of responses in the brain, you'll have to contest one of those points in the chain that's been established. What you 'reckon' doesn't have a place in that discussion.

↪Isaac

Is there a reason you did not respond to my latest post? Oh well, never mind. — Luke

My apologies. I'm not getting notification for some posts (it's been that way for some time and no-one seems to be able to fix it), @khaled reckons the reply function is more reliable than the quote or @-mention function, but I've not tested it yet.

We must firstly recall the distinction between having pain and expressing pain. Having pain is your experience of the feeling that hurts; whereas expressing pain is your physical reaction to the feeling that hurts, such as screaming, wincing or saying "ouch". — Luke

Here we have a problem in the way you've laid this out. If expressing a pain is a physical reaction, then that requires it have a physical initiate (otherwise Newtons laws of thermodynamics have been broken). Yet with an intrinsically private experience (ie one that is not accessible even to suitably advanced neuroscience) I can't see how it could cause such an initiation.

Nobody else can experience your tokens of pain in any way, except via your expressions of pain. — Luke

What does 'via' matter here? It seems that you could then turn around your claim above to say "people can experience your tokens of pain, via your expressions of pain"

on what grounds are we saying that your X and my Y are even similar? — Isaac


That we use the same words. — khaled

And yet words are somehow insufficient all of a sudden when distinguishing them?

The artifice here is partly that we can chop up and distinguish elements of 'experience' - a continuous, homogeneous, and post hoc artifact, as @Banno says above - and I think that's the main contention.

Further to that, however, I'm making the point that if we are to artificially chop up and distinguish elements of 'experience', we do so using public notions - 'pain', 'colour', etc...

What's baffling to me, is how, having done so, having sieved and diced this thing, having taken it to the academy, shown it around and agreed where it should be cut and what elements belong in what category,... people then what to claim that the remaining diced and filtered sections are all-of-a-sudden ineffable again, private... This thing, which a minute ago we were publicly dissecting, has somehow turned to fairy dust in our hands.

You've misunderstood the point I was making - which is understandable, as reading back, it was terribly written.

You're proposing one has experience X in response to something red, but another might have experience Y, yes?

I said that there's nothing about 'experience X' which intrinsically makes it recurrent the next time you are exposed to something red. Without some categorisation, all we really have is a long continuous, experience of our entire environment (and body). To call anything 'experience X' requires us to both artificially divide our experience into chunks, artificially relate one of those chunks to one aspect of the environment at the time (in this case colour) and artificially group differing recurrent chunks on the basis of some arbitrary points of similarity (as any two experiences of red - however we determine them to be 'of red' - are going to be the same).

To say that your X and my Y are similar (same reason for division, same relation to environmental features, same features we're focussing on to group such chunks of experience) - we have to know something about the relationship between X (or Y) and the environment. If we didn't, then on what grounds are we saying that your X and my Y are even similar?

Edit - for further clarity (I hope). I look at a red box and get experience Y, you look at a red box and get experience X. How do we know that my Y-ness is not caused by the box and not the red? If I could (and I'm not saying we could here, just following your line of thought) separate out the 'red' bit of the experience by focussing on similarities in 'red box', 'red train', 'red cup' - I would be relating some detail of my experience to the environment. I don't see how you can then go on to say that we've no way of knowing what environmental difference relates to the subset of my experiences. Why can't I do the same thing? Whenever I stub my toe the quality of my experience of 'redness' changes - aha! something about my experience of 'redness' must be related to my toe.

Does that matter? Similar enough to be called "red". — khaled

Yes. Two distinct (but similar) things can be determined 'the same' for some purpose by seeing similar features. To use the example I just used with Luke (save me having to think of another), two phones are two different objects, but we might say "you have the same phone as me" by picking out certain characteristics (make and model). If, instead we focussed on history, or scratches, or data content, we wouldn't make such a comment. There's no real or right way on which the two phones are similar/dissimilar, it just depends on what we focus on.

But each feature has been caused physically. the scratches, the data, the history, the make, the model...all have unique physical causes. so when we focus on a specific feature (like make and model) we also focus on specific causes. We would not expect make and model to vary as a result of history, or data use, we know that those features vary when the company they're made by varies.

So with your posited epiphenomena, by focussing on the similarity in the features relating to colour, we know that those features change in correlation mainly with changes in lightwaves hitting the retina. They don't generally change for any other reason. So when we look for the physical cause of such a change we know it has to be a route triggered by lightwaves. We know how they enter the brain, so we can trace them from there. Somewhere in that trace has to be the physical trigger for the particular feature of the epiphenomena you're focussing on. Without that, you couldn't even distinguish one feature (colour-related) from another feature in order to say A and B are similar enough to called X in that particular aspect. How would you judge otherwise?