For touch, the middle man (by analogy, rather than "this is my position") is the nervous system, surely?
— AmadeusD

Can this be filled out? Would you say that you don't touch the wall, you touch your nervous system? That doesn't seem right. — Banno

To keep on adding to this point:

Let us imagine a case where a scientist would like to understand how the nervous system works when a subject interacts with an everyday common object. The scientist proceeds to "hook up" a subject to a machine, gives the subject a ball, and records the activity of the nerves to the brain. The scientist solicits a reply from the subject that he is in contact with a ball. Next, the scientist uses the information from the prior experiment to stimulates the nervous systems of a blind-folded subject that results in the subject saying, "I am in contact with that ball again."

In both cases, the scientist basically replicates what they observed in the nervous system in the first experiment. The subjects nervous systems(their brain) is stimulating them to saying "I am in contact with a ball." Thus, whether one is in contact with a ball or not does not depend on one's state of their nervous system, but if and only if one is contact with a ball or not.

They say DNA is the blueprint for a human being. Well let's look at this idea of "blueprints" and maybe we can exorcise some of these essentialist demons.

We plan to construct a building. We will name it the "Nakatomi Tower". Before we begin we draw our design plans of Nakatomi Tower. In the course of planning we develop three plans, Blueprint A, Blueprint B, and Blueprint C. Each design is slightly different, maybe more rooms, different plumbing, etc. One plan has an extra floor, and another has one floor less. All three Blueprints are for the building we plan to construct and name "Nakatomi Tower." The plan location will be at the corner of 5th and Main. At first we settle on Blueprint A and began construction. However, we began to run out of money quicker than we thought, so we have to take some elements from Blueprint B and C as well as eliminate some floors al together. Finally, after years of construction the building was finished. At the opening ceremony, the owner of the building announced the name of the building "Nakatomi Plaza." After many decade, many new additions to the building were added, modifications were performed, and eventually the building took on the name of just "The Plaza".

As Wittgenstein said in The Blue Book, "Philosophers very often talk about investigating, analyzing, the meaning of words. But let's not forget that a word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of the word of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what a word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it."

Well, he wants to diagnose why anyone would have taken Zeno's problem seriously - and, by the way, Zeno also took this problem seriously in that he believes that all change, including motion, is an illusion. — Ludwig V

Yes, Zeno's problem is purely theoretical not, in some sense of the word, real. Which is why it is so tempting to simply declare the winner. — Ludwig V

I do not believe Ryle should have taken this paradox serious, nor anyone else for that matter. And if we are going to talk about "temptation", it should be to ask why would anyone be tempted to take this serious to begin with. Just because one presents a picture that is cogent does not mean it has any application in the real world. And it was Ryle who describe one kind of dilemma as "In the simplest cases, their solutions are rivals in the sense that if one of them is true the others are false." Here I argue that that this is a simple case of one line of thought as "true" and the other "false". How can anyone argue it has any application to the world we experience? Why is the appeal of our experiences not the deciding factor that drive us to say that this is a simple case that easily decides on "which is true" and "which is false"? Do weneed Ryle to take the extra step to "clarify the language" that this is actually an "abstract platitiude"? We can't trust our experience to dismiss Zeno, we need the extraordinary insight of Ryle to show us out of the fly-bottle so to speak.?

If I show Ryle a film of a race between Achilles and the Tortoise in which the Tortoise gets a lead, and by strategic camera angles and editing shows the Tortoise winning even though Achilles looks faster. The film certainly is not a logical impossibility. Do I need Ryle to help us understand that there should not be any confusion with what actually happens in such event?

Lastly, to say Zeno's problem is purely theoretical, I think is a bit incomplete. Zeno's argument is to show that all change/motion is an illusion, but this is not some fantasy world for Zeno, it is the actual world around us that seems to have change but is illusionary.

All I am saying is experience settles some questions not just lingustic analysis. And in this case, experience should be arbiter.

Nice summary.

This is my reaction to Lecture III.

Ryle writes at the very beginning of Dilemmas, “One familiar kind of conflict is that in which two or more theorists offer rival solutions of the same problem. In the simplest cases, their solutions are rivals in the sense that if one of them is true the others are false.” It is strange that Ryle would not include the conflict found in Achilles and the Tortoise as an instance of rival theories having a clear winner. He says on p 36, “It is quite certain that a fast runner following a slow runner will overtake him in the end” and “Nothing could be more decisively settled” if you consider the speeds of each contestant and the ground in which they cover. How closer to the truth must we get? Our experience of such an event as well as our mathematical description of such an event is decisive. Clearly, we have an answer to the problem of who will win the race between Achilles and the Tortoise.

However, Ryle has something else in mind. He says, “Yet there is a very different answer which also seems to follow with equal cogency from the same data.” But what “data” is that? Surely not the data experimentally collected by watching a race between two such opponents. He must mean the data generated based on the hypothetical of an infinite number of steps bisecting and never reaching unity. Now if Ryle stopped here, I could understand because in a way one theory is beholden to an outcome of an actual race, while the other is beholden to the thought experiment where coherence and consistency rule the day. So, this goes along with Ryle’s idea that “There often arise quarrels between theories, or, more generally, between lines of thought, which are not rival solutions of the same problem, but rather solutions or would-be solutions of different problems, and which, none the less, seem to be irreconcilable with one another.”

So, why did Ryle not just declare a winner and be done with it? I believe Ryle is committed to showing that Zeno’s paradox does give us some kind of knowledge, although a more rationalistic kind. However, during this analysis, Ryle seems to oscillate between rationalism and empiricism. For example, take his interesting example of dividing up a cake, p 39:

“But now suppose that the mother of a family chooses instead to circulate an uncut cake round the table, instructing the children that each is to cut off a bit and only a bit of what is on the plate; i.e. that no child is to take the whole of what he finds on the plate. Then, obviously so long as her instructions are observed, however far and often the cake circulates, there is always a bit of cake left. If they obey her orders always to leave a bit, then they always leave a bit. Or to put it the other way round, if they obey her orders never to take the whole of the last fragment, a fragment always remains untaken.”

What is Ryle referring to here? To actual cake, or some abstract object call “a cake”? This is where I think Ryle presents a confusing picture. From p 40, “The plate never stops circulating. After each cut there remains a morsel to be bisected by the next child. Obviously, the children’s patience or their eyesight will give out before the cake gives out. For the cake cannot give out on this principle of division.” In one breath he seems to present an example that should reflect actual reality of bisecting a cake by children and is practically limited by the child’s eyesight and patience. Yet, in the very next sentence talks about “a cake” that cannot give out on this principle of division. However, if it was an actual cake, and depending on how heterogeneous the cake was and how easily it can be divided, each morsel may not be the cake anymore, but a piece of fruit, sugar, salt, etc. At some point, it may become the actual ingredients we used to make the cake to start with. So, from this perspective, “the cake” gives out on the principle of division. But an idea of “a cake” that represents the general concept of “object” may be another story. Similarly, to how I described the Zeno paradox “dilemma”, one is beholden to the concept of division, and the other to the experiment of cutting up a heterogenous mixture of stuff.

Ryle concludes his analysis of the Zeno paradox with “…nor can he grasp the other abstract platitude that the portions cut off something at no stage amount to the whole of that thing. (p48)” So, I guess we ended up in the same place in that Zeno is not answering the question “who will win the race.” But Ryle wants to say something additional, Zeno is putting forth an abstract platitude. But I say Zeno parades a metaphysical fiction disguised as a scientist hypothesis.

I can't say this thread is working very well, but if two or three people are interested and actually reading the book, I'm perfectly happy to continue — Ludwig V

Certainly if one can introduce these lectures succinctly and clearly express what Ryle’s main point is, this may help a little with engagement. His particular style of writing feels like a lot of foreplay without a crescendo.

Here is a common attempt:

Determinism is true. So folk cannot be responsible for their criminal actions. Thus, we ought not punish folk for their criminal actions.

Not a knock-down case, but Austin, of course, was writing without the benefit of access to Wittgenstein's work, so it is no surprise that he doesn't place much emphasis on distinguishing one's own case from the communal case. It probably did not occur to him that folk might read it as you have. — Banno

Not bad. However, I am not convinced of your or my argument. There is a nice youtube video titled “John Searle on Austin and Wittgenstein.” One rather humorous story Searle recollects was when he discussed the private language argument with Austin. From Searle's point of view Austin did not understand Wittgenstein’s point when the beetle in the box was brought up. Austin’s response was something like, “see the beetle is a something and a nothing, a clear contradiction.” It is a short video but funny and shows how very different these two philosophers were as people.

It seems perhaps Malcolm is creating his own opponent, but I don’t think it is Austin. — Antony Nickles

Malcolm is not creating his own opponent, but is addressing an assortment of historical figures, for example:

Descartes, "all the same thoughts and conceptions which we have while awake may also come to us in sleep"

Aristotle, "'the soul' makes 'assertions' in sleep, giving in the way of example a dream that 'some object approaching is a man or house' or that 'the object is white or beautiful'"

Kant, "In deepest sleep perhaps the greatest perfection of the mind might be exercised in rational thought. For we have no reason for asserting the opposite except that we do not remember the idea when awake. This reason, however, proves nothing."

Moore, "We cease to perform them only while we are asleep, without dreaming; and even in sleep, so long as we dream, we are performing acts of consciousness"

Russell, " What, in dreams, we see and hear, we do in fact see and hear, though, owning to the unusual context, what we see and hear gives rise to false beliefs."

All of these quotes are from his book Dreaming.

So, should we count Austin amongst this very esteem group? Let's take a look at another quote about dreams from Sense and Sensibilia, pg 42

"And we might add here that descriptions of dreams, for example, plainly can't be taken to have exactly the same force and implications as the same words would have, if used in the description of ordinary waking experiences. In fact, it is just because we all know that dreams are throughout unlike waking experiences that we can safely use ordinary expressions in the narration of them; the peculiarity of the dream-context is sufficiently well known for nobody to be misled by the fact that we speak in ordinary terms."

In this paragraph, he states the we "know" dreams are unlike waking experience, and we know "the dream-context" sufficiently to not be confused. As stated before, in "Other Minds", he states, "There are recognized ways of distinguishing between dreaming and waking..." But the problem here is that he does not specify these "recognized ways". This has not gone unnoticed by a Barry Stroud, in his book, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism, "Austin does not say much about what he thinks the 'procedures' or 'recognized ways' of telling that one is not dreaming actually are. He seems content with the idea that there must be a procedure or else we would not be able to use and to contrast the words 'dreaming' and 'waking' as we do".

What could be these 'procedures' or 'ways'? I think it would be useful to understand how we come to learn such a concept as 'dreaming'. Malcom describes it as such, "If after waking from a sleep a child tells us that he saw and did and thought various things, none of which could be true, and if his relation of these incidents has spontaneity and no appearance of invention, then we may say to him 'It was a dream'. We do not question whether he really had a dream or if it merely seems to him that he did." and "That this question is not raised is not a mere matter of fact but essential to our concept of dreaming."

I believe Austin may be thinking that we know the concept of dreaming from 'one's own case'. From 'one own case' we know, somehow, that this case cannot be the case of a waking experience. However, Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigation attack this notion that one learns what thinking, remembering, mental images, sensations, and so on, are from 'one's own case'. Malcolm says the following:

"One may think to overcome these difficulties by allowing that the descriptions that people give of their private states provides a determination of what those states are and whether they are the same. But if one takes this line (which is correct) one cannot then permit a question to be raised as to whether those descriptions are in error or not-for this would be to fall back into the original difficulty. One must treat the description as the criterion of what the inner occurrence are. 'An "inner process" stands in need of the outward criteria' (Wittgenstein, PI 580)."

However, could Austin believe that the 'recognized way' of knowing comes from remembering how we learned "dreaming' in the first place. That we wake up with the impression of having done certain things, and understanding that they are not true. But is anything really being compared here? Are we contrasting the dream experience with an awake experience, or are we simply applying the concept of dreaming in the way we learned it?

However it seems to me that there is a difficulty in Malcolm's notion of consciousness, or rather unconsciousness. As I understand, he envisions consciousness as either on or off. That's not my experience, nor what I understand from others. — Banno

Just to clarify what Malcolm actually examines and says in his book, "Dreaming". One, he is mostly examining the use of "I am asleep" or "I am dreaming". He spends less time considering "I am unconscious", and views this sentence as different than the aforementioned sentences. He says, "Here there is a similarity between 'I am asleep' and 'I am unconscious': neither sentence has a use that is homogeneous with the normal use of the corresponding third person sentence. It would not occur to anyone to conclude that a man is asleep from his saying "I am asleep' any more than to conclude that he is unconscious from his saying 'I am unconscious', or to conclude that he is dead from his saying 'I am dead'." Two, he does provide some further clarification of the relationship between dreaming and a conscious experience. He says, "I was inclined at one time to think of this result as amounting to a proof that dreaming is not a mental activity or mental phenomenon or a conscious experience. But now I reject that inclination. For one thing, the phases 'mental activity', 'mental phenomenon', 'conscious experience', are so vague that I should not have known what I was asserting." He goes on further to explain, "If a philosopher uses the phrase 'mental phenomenon', say, in such a way that dreams are mental phenomena by definition, then obviously no argument is going to prove to him that they are not. I avoid this way of stating the matter. What I say instead is that if anyone holds that dreams are identical with, or composed of, thoughts, impressions, feelings, images, and so on (here one may supply whatever other mental nouns one likes, except 'dreams'), occurring in sleep, then his view is false." And lastly, "And someone may have as his grounds for classifying dreams as 'conscious experiences' the fact that we speak of 'remembering' dreams, or the fact that in telling dreams we say that we 'saw' and 'heard' various things. There is nothing wrong with these decisions, if they do not cause one to be mislead in other respects."

While Malcolm gives a little here, there is not much left over to compare whether a conscious experience of a dream is "qualitatively" similar or different to a conscious experience of being awake.

Check out these Ngrams, just out of interest. — Banno

Neat stats, if it was just reverse maybe we would have had less talk of Qualia.

The life of philosophy is debate, which requires a puzzle or a question. — Ludwig V

I think linguistic philosophy tends to be less about debate and more of this:

Show this use, and this use, and this use, and this use, etc… now give up all your talk of sense datum. No? look at how we learned these words…now give up all your talk of sense datum…No? see these words have no contrast…now give up all your talk of sense datum…No, don’t you find your philosophical worries dissolve away?

If the linguistic philosopher gets lucky, their analysis goes places where they make “final” proclamations such as “this is nonsense” or “this is incoherent”.

n conversations, I found a reluctance to take scientific research on board. The problem here is partly that being a scientist does not make one immune from philosophical mistakes. What makes it even more difficult is that the distinction between ordinary language and science is distinctly permeable. REM is in some ways a technical, theoretical concept, but in others is a common sense observation. — Ludwig V

In "Dreaming" Malcolm does not ignore scientific considerations regarding dreams. He says the following:

"The interest in a physiological criterion of dreaming is due, I believe, to an error that philosophers, psychologists, physiologists, and everyone who reflects on the nature of dreaming tends to commit, namely, of supposing that a dream must have a definite location and duration in physical time. (this is an excellent example of what Wittgenstein calls a 'prejudice' produced by 'grammatical illusions') It might be replied that a dream is surely an event and that event must have a definite date and duration in physical time. But this gets one nowhere, for what justifies the claim that a dream is an event in that sense?"

But Malcolm takes this one step further, and suggests that maybe scientists are just proposing a new concept of "dreaming". What would be the consequences of this stipulation, that REM means that a human was dreaming. One, "...if someone were to tell a dream it could turn out that his impression that he dreamt was mistaken-and not in the sense that the incidents he related had really occurred and so his impression was not of a dream but of reality. The new concept would allow him to be mistaken in saying he had a dream even if his impression that he had seen and done various things were false. Another consequence is that it would be possible to discover that a man's assertion that he had slept a dreamless sleep was in error; and here one would have to choose between saying either that he forgot his dreams or that he had not been aware of them when he dreamt them. People would have to be informed on waking up that they had dreamt or not-instead of their informing us, as it now is."

He ends his chapter in a rather un-antithetical view of science when he says, "Physiological phenomena, such as rapid eye movements or muscular action currents, may be found to stand in interesting empirical correlations with dreaming, but the possibility of these discoveries presupposes that these phenomena are not used as the criterion of dreaming."

I understand folk like to say Malcolm is denying that we have experiences such as dreams, but I think we one needs to understand he is studying how we understand the concept of "dreaming" and what we can and cannot say about such a concept.

The fact that ways to distinguish are possible is proof of Austin’s claim. Descartes was trying to pull the same stunt in setting the goal before investigating the field. — Antony Nickles

Austin seems to be saying that we somehow know the dream experience is "qualitatively" different than the waking experience, because as he says "How otherwise should we know how to use and contrast the words. He further inserted a footnote saying "This is part, no doubt only part, of the absurdity in Descartes' toying with the notion that the whole of our experiences might be a dream." But Malcolm is saying that this idea that dreaming is an experience where we question, reason, perceive, imagine is an incoherent one, so there is no sense to say we are comparing experiences to determine they are qualitatively similar or not.

had the same feeling about this. Malcolm's take on dreaming has not been popular. Indeed, it has largely met the ultimate rejection - being ignored.

I would be delighted to indulge in a conversation about this, but I'm not inclined to think that he's not quite right about these cases shows that his overall argument is wrong. — Ludwig V

I think you could say the same thing about Austin. His arguments have been largely ignored because the philosophical community continues to talk about qualia, what-it's-like-ness experiences, or the ontological subjective.

My main point in this post is to show how two linguistic philosophers supposedly analyzing the same ordinary language we all use, seemingly coming up with some fundamentally different conclusions.

When I read chapter 5, it troubled me; especially when I came to the following sentence, "If dreams were not 'qualitatively' different from waking experiences, then every waking experience would be like a dream; the dream-like quality would be, not difficult to capture, but impossible to avoid. It is true, to repeat, that dreams are narrated in the same terms as waking experiences: these terms, after all, are the best terms we have; but it would be wildly wrong to conclude from this that what is narrated in the two cases is exactly alike."

After a little contemplation, I remember where I got this sense that something is just not right with this passage. From another linguistic philosopher, Norman Malcolm, in is book Dreaming, Chapter 18 "Do I know I am Awake", he says the following:

"'There are recognized ways of distinguishing between dreaming and waking (how otherwise should we know how to use and to contrast the words?)...'(Austin, p133, "Other Minds") I thing Austin says this, not because he knows of any 'recognized ways', but because he assumes he can know he is awake and so must have some way of doing it. His question, 'How otherwise should we know how to use and to contrast the words?', assumes we do know how. This is partly right and partly wrong: we know how to use the words 'I am awake' but not the words 'I am dreaming'. To speak more exactly, we know that 'I am dream' is the first person singular present indicative of the verb 'dream', and that dreaming and waking are logical contraries, and therefore the 'I am dreaming' and 'I am awake' are logical contraries. In this sense we know how to use the sentence 'I am dreaming'. On the other hand, considerations previous mentioned bring home to us that is can never be a correct use of language to say (even to oneself) 'I am dreaming'. In this sense we do not know how to use those words."

In the book, Malcolm shows that saying something like "I am dreaming" or "I am not awake" while asleep is an absurdity because the one who utters such a sentence is demonstrating that they are not asleep. (Note: Malcolm is not saying such sentences as "Am I dreaming" or "I must be dreaming" do not have actual uses, for example, to express surprises, or question whether something is as it seems). He goes on to say that nothing counts for or against the truth of such a sentence, so nothing counts for the truth of a sentence like "I am awake". "If one cannot observe or have evidence that one is not awake, one cannot observe or have evidence that one is awake." What about observation? Could you know by observation? Well is this not a contingent fact, so if by observation you should know if you are awake or not awake. But you cannot observe yourself "not awake" because if you did, you are "not awake". Malcolm goes on to explore the possible of saying "I am awake" could correctly identify my state at the time of uttering the sentence. He says, "there are various states of oneself, each having a name. "Awake" is the name of one of them, 'fear' of another, 'drowsy' of another, and so on. When I apply 'awake' to myself I pick out one state from others having different names. In order to pick it out I must take note of it, I must see it. I think we go wrong in supposing that, when I answer 'I'm awake', I apply the word 'awake' correctly to my state at the time-although that sounds unexceptionable. For what would it mean to apply that word incorrectly to my state at the time? When we say 'I'm awake' we are not distinguishing between states. It is not a matter of 'picking out' anything. When you say 'I'm awake' you are not reporting or describing your condition. You are showing someone that you are awake. There are countless other way of doing this (one way would be to exclaim "I'm not awake'); but the conventionally correct way of doing it with words is to say 'I am awake'.

So for Malcolm, the force of the perplexity from the question 'How can I tell whether I am awake or dreaming?' get it power from two errors:

1. That dreaming and waking might be exact counterpart (qualitatively the same) comes from the confusion of "historical and dream-telling senses of first person singular psychological sentences in the past tense."

2. The idea that one must be able to know, to see, that one is awake.

Austin thinks we must be able to know how to make this determination because we are able to make this distinction in our everyday language. But Malcom tries to show that this has nothing to do with knowledge if one looks at how we use and learn these words.

Does this show that Austin drifted from the pure faith of linguistic philosophy? Or, that he may have other philosophical presuppositions hidden in his closet?

To give myself a different challenge, I like to take on Austin's linguistic philosophy. More specifically, with an attack developed by Ernest Gellner. In his book, Word and Things, he defines the Four Pillars of Linguistic Philosophy as follows:

1. The Argument from the Paradigm case - This is the argument from the actual use of words to the answer to philosophical problems, or from the conflict between the actual use of words to the falsity of a philosophical theory.

2. The habit of inferring the answer to normative, evaluative problems from the actual use of words.

3. The contrast theory of meaning, to the effect that any term to be meaningful must allow at least for the possibility of something not being covered by it.

4. The doctrine I shall call Polymorphism. This doctrine stresses that there is very great variety in the kinds of use that words have, and that with regards to any given word, there can be great variety in its particular use.

To start, I would ask, would you characterize Austin's philiosophical approach as Gellner does?

What I feel remains to be explored further is the process of "finding our feet with them", say, as a matter of imagining ourselves as them, getting at why one might want to judge as they do. Maybe: in taking them seriously; allowing another's reasons to be or become intelligible; respecting their interests by taking their expressions as a commitment of their self, their character as it were (what "type" of person they are). I take this not as a matter of critique, but of letting them be "strange" to us without rejection (tolerating but not assuming/resigned to difference); with open curiosity, (cultural) humility (that my interests and context are not everyone's). In a sense: understanding as empathy; understanding in the sense of: being understanding (Websters: vicariously experiencing the [interests] of another; imagining the other's attitudes as legitimate; the imaginative projection of [myself] into [the other] so that [they] appear to be infused with [me, being a person]). — Antony Nickles

I am a little unclear what you mean by "Wittgenstein's strange people", but based on the cited paragraph, it could mean people who you may find difficult to understand.

In "On Certainty", sprinkled through out the book, Wittgenstein imagines meeting with all sorts of "strange" people. In these passages, the people hold positions, reasons, beliefs, ideas that differ or conflict with the positions he holds. Here are just some I came an across: 85, 92, 106, 108, 231, 239, 336, 338, 430, 608-612, 667, and 671. In these examples, the positions under examination are fundamental to how one looks at the world, that guides how one acts and reacts in the world. For example,

OC 92 "However, we can ask: May someone have telling grounds for believing that the earth has only existed for a short time, say since his own birth? Suppose he had always been told that, - would he have any good reason to doubt that? Men have believed that they could make rain; why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him? And if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way. Remember that one is sometimes convinced of the correctness of a view by its simplicity or symmetry, i.e. there are what induces one to go over to this point of view. One then simply says something like: "That's how it must be."

or

OC 231 "If someone doubted whether the earth had existed a hundred years ago, I should not understand, for this reason: I would not know what a person would still allow to be counted as evidence and what not."

In both of these cases, it is difficult to comprehend how empathy is going to lead to understanding. How we view the world, how we react to the world and to others, how we make judgments in particualr circumstances, can differ dramatically. Understanding through language would be almost or just impossible in these scenarios. But what about "understanding as empathy"? The problem I see here is if I am to picture myself in the other person's "shoes", what am I to think about the picture? I can't utilize my concepts to articulate what I think, they may have no application whatsoever. What we have here is simply a conversion to another way of life. We would need to start over again, as a child who is born into this world, to wipe the slate clean so to speak and start anew.

That someone has a “mind” is not the picture of the other I am arguing for; what I am doing is continuing on from Wittgenstein’s investigation into why philosophy looked at it that way, and from Cavell’s reading of him that that desire (for knowledge to be the “answer”) actually shows something about our situation as humans and thus affects our ordinary relation to other people. — Antony Nickles

One area I believe we can agree on is Wittgenstein's pointing out the importance "of natural actions and reactions that come before language and are not the result of thought." From Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View, Malcolm says the following:

"A leading problem of philosophy for many centuries has been the existence of other minds. Here it has seemed that it requires very sophisticated reasoning for a person to assure himself that those other 'walking and speaking figures' have minds and souls, just as he himself has. But in fact a normal human being does not have this doubt that those other creatures, which resemble him, might be automatons; nor does he go through subtle reasoning to remove doubt. Wittgenstein dismisses the famous 'argument from analogy':

'You say you take care of a man who groans, because experience has taught you that you yourself groan when you feel such-and-such. but since in fact you don't make any such inference, we can abandon the argument from analogy' (Zettel, 537)

Instead of this supposed reasoning, which could be carried out in language, Wittgenstein calls attention to natural actions and reactions that come before language and are not the result of thought.

'It helps here to remember that it is a primitive reaction to tend to treat the part that hurts when someone else is in pain; and not merely when oneself is - and so to pay attention to the pain-behavior of others, as one does not pay attention to one's pain behavior.'(Zettel, 540)

The notion that those people around me might be automatons without minds or souls cannot get a foothold with me. I react to the expressions in their faces of fear, joy, interest-without the mediation of any reasoning."

However, Wittgenstein goes on to see that the workings of our relationship to others is not one of knowledge, but that the desire (for our relation to be based on something other than me) is a basic human response to (the fear of) the fact that we are separate from others, that this is part of the human condition (and not just an intellectual problem). — Antony Nickles

I like to make a couple points here. First, Wittgenstein is not commenting on the human condition, but focuses on the intellectual problem the philosophical minded get themselves into. For example, from On Certainty 467, "I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy." Notice, he did not pull this "someone" over and explain, "hey, this discussion we are having, it is really important to understand, it leads to the truth of skepticism, and because of that we just have to accept an unknowable world and acknowledge other minds." Second, how this idea of "our relationship to others is not one of knowledge" that Wittgenstein supposedly puts forth, is a bit misleading. For example, from On Certainty 10 "I know that a sick man is lying here? Nonsense! I am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face.- So, I don't know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question nor the assertion makes sense." Again, this is another clue that Wittgenstein is not accepting "the truth of skepticism." What he is doing is showing how the concept "to know" does not make sense in this circumstance. Additionally, I do not think he is carrying out some sort of psychological investigation that when people are faced with the truth of skepticism of other minds that they will become detached from their fellow human beings, he is performing a philosophical investigation.

Imagining Wittgenstein somehow “solves” skepticism or dismisses it, does not take into account that his investigation destroys everything that is built in response to it only to see that part of it is true. There is no fact that will stop things from going sideways, from us turning out wrong about what we thought was right, in following a rule yet still being guilty because whether a rule was followed doesn’t take into account who we are. — Antony Nickles

This "skepticism of meaning" is a sickness of the philosophical minded whose intelligence is bewitched by means of language. Wittgenstein is neither solving it nor dismisses it, but through demonstration dissolving the puzzlement the philosophical minded have created.

Because we have agreement in definition and in judgment, we have a means of communication, this is called a language. This does not mean, at times, things will not go "sideways.", but in principle, must work most of the time. If this agreement does not mostly occur, we do not have a language at all; thus, there is nothing to be skeptical about.

From On Certainty 115 "If you tried to doubt everything, you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty."

and Cavell’s basic claim is that Wittgenstein shows that skepticism haunts us all the time. — Antony Nickles

If "us" refers to humanity, well I think this is a bit of an overstatement about what Wittgenstein is claiming. We can gain some insight if we take a look at a misunderstanding another philosopher had concerning this skepticism.

In the book by Norman Malcolm "Nothing is Hidden", Chapter 9 "Following a Rule", Malcolm presents Saul Kripke's view of the Private Language Argument with the following quote, "Wittgenstein has invented a new form of skepticism. Personally I am inclined to regard it as the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date." Furthermore, Malcolm goes on to say, "According to Kripke this new form of skepticism carries the astounding implication that 'there can be no such thing as meaning anything by any word.'" Malcolm believes Kripke put forth this idea that Wittgenstein's "new form of skepticism" can be found in PI 201 in which Wittgenstein presents the paradox: "no course of action could be determine by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule." But for Malcolm, Kripke seem to ignore what follows when Wittgenstein continues with "It can be seen that there is a misunderstanding here from the mere fact that in the course of our argument we give one interpretation after another; as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another standing behind it. What this shews is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is a not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying" the rule" and "going against it" in actual cases. Hence there is an inclination to say: every action according to the rule is an interpretation. But we ought to retract the term "interpretation" to the situation of one expression of the rule for another." So is Wittgenstein capitulating to this "new form of skepticism"? Malcolm would say No. Malcolm says, "If an interpretation is not sufficient to fix the meaning of a rule, what more is required? Wittgenstein's answer is that what fixes the meaning of a rule is our customary way of applying the rule in particular cases. There is a way of acting that we call 'following the rule'. Indefinitely many other ways of acting are possible: but we do not call them 'following the rule'. Who is this we? It is virtually all of us who have been given the same initial explanation and examples. It is a fact that everyone, almost without exception, will apply the rule in new cases, all agreeing that this is the right way to apply it....If there was no we - if there was no agreement among those who have had the same training, as to what are the correct steps in particular case when following a rule- then there would be no wrong steps, or indeed any right ones."

Malcolm presents further analysis saying that Kripke was incline to think Wittgenstein endorsed this form of philosophical skepticism because he was working under the conception that "when one applies a rule, or a word, one is guided." He quotes Kripke "Normally, when we consider a mathematical rule as addition, we think of ourselves as guided in application of it to each new instance." But the "we" for Malcolm and Kripke is referring to people "when they are engaged in philosophical reflection about rules." Malcom continues "Kripke is trying to do something which, according to Wittgenstein, it is necessary to do in philosophy, namely 'to give a psychological exact account of the temptation to use a particular kind of expression' (PI 254). But as Wittgenstein also says: "Being unable - when we surrender ourselves to philosophical thought - to help saying such-and such; being irresistibility inclined to say it- does not mean being forced into an assumption, or having an immediate perception or knowledge of a state of affair. (PI 299)."

In summary, Wittgenstein is not addressing humanity but the philosophical minded. This "skepticism" is the result of the philosophical minded puzzlement and search for deeper explanations. But all is well with humanity. Because they keep talking, acting, and judging in similar, expected, and harmonious ways; we have meaning and understanding.

As for what is beyond the possible forms of experience - who knows what types of experience are possible? The human psyche is still a vast uncharted ocean, with realms of possibility that we might never dream of. I think it's a mistake to deprecate the imagination, after all, Einstein himself said imagination was more important than knowledge. He discovered the theory of relativity mainly through thought-experiments.

Overall I think it's a mistake to dismiss metaphysics. — Wayfarer

I am quoting myself from the Brain in the Vat thread, I think it is applicable:

The role of imagination in scientific theorizing is not in question. Also, I certainty would not say that philosophy cannot offer insights to a scientist. In nice article by John Norton, "How Hume and Mach Helped Einstein Find Special Relativity", provides a nice summary how these two philosophers, belonging to the empiricist/positivist traditions, influenced Einstein's abandonment of the idea of absolute time and simultaneity. However, even in this article, Einstein echoed what I have been saying. In section 3.1, titled "Concepts Must be Grounded in Experiences", he quotes Einstein, "‘Similarly,’ Einstein continued, ‘with the concept of simultaneity. The concept really exists for the physicist only when in a concrete case there is some possibility of deciding whether the concept is or is not applicable."

So while imagination is important, I would say it should be characterize as a fiction until its successful application. This, in turn, tells us something about this world.

So remember, this was specifically a critique of the Private Language argument. Wittgenstein's contention is that the foundation of language is communal, but this doesn't exclude the potential for internal reflection. Nonetheless, if we accept that meaning in language comes from communal understanding and practice, a misinformed or mistaken community could indeed perpetuate misconceptions and faulty language use indefinitely, mirroring the scenario where each individual might harbor a private language incapable of self-correction. — schopenhauer1

But there is more to language, consider PI 242: "If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so.-It is one thing to describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain and state results of measurement. But what we call "measuring" is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement."

I believe you are describing a scenario where we are not talking about a language at all. Will there be mistakes in use, according to the community, of course. Could some mistakes remain hidden, at times, and perpetuated, of course. But to say, if it becomes all encompassing, as the skeptic would, is not to describe an inaccurate language, but to not describe a language at all. And that is similar to the problems with a private language as well, notions of "judging", "mistakes", "accuracy" lose their sense when applied to the private realm. So why even call this a language at all.

don't think this gets past this critique:

Just using Wittgenstein against himself perhaps, what if every person in the community had an idea wrong such that every correction was actually never correct. How would you know any differently than the private sensation case? Diving in further in skepticism, how do you know that every supposedly public correction is not distorted by one’s own view? At some point you can keep drilling downward and you start getting to Decartes Demon again. Using public or practice or community as a way out doesn’t suffice. — schopenhauer1

So am I to assume that you would agree with my characterization that I must trust your personal testimony that whatever you are doing in the hidden recesses of your mind, it is a language and all sort of judgments are occurring. This sounds more like a philosophical mystic preaching his Word from Divine revelations, then serious philosophical discourse.

To address the "past critique", which I must confess, I don't see its relevance to my point, I will say the following:

1. I think this example may be hiding your philosophical assumption. Is this community going around using words, using them to act on, and seeing and judging that it is being used correctly, but somehow never using it correctly. But how is this "never using it correctly" being presented here. That there is a correct use that is established outside the community and if they could just tap into this method of determination they would see that even though there public use is correct, they would come to see it is incorrect. But how? Thru private introspection of "meaning" of words?

I think two Wittgenstein quotes would be useful here from "On Certainty":

204. "Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game."

613. "If I now say "I know that the water in the kettle on the gas flame will not boil", I seem to be justified in this "I know" as I am in any. 'If I know anything I know this".-Or do I know with still greater certainty that the person opposite me is my old friend so-and-so? And how does that compare with the proposition that I am seeing with two eyes and see see them if I look in the glass?-I don't know confidently what I am to answer here.-But still there is a difference between cases. If the water over the gas freezes, of course I shall be astonished as can be, but I shall assume some factor I don't know of, and perhaps leave the matter to physicists to judge. But what could make me doubt whether this person here is N.N., whom I known for years? Here doubt would seems to drag everything with it and plunge it into chaos."

The public language is founded on private languages — RussellA

How can you call what is happening privately “language” ? Your assurance that you are using it the same way as the language you learned in the public realm? If you agree to this characterization, I would say you face a similar problems as describe in this scenario:

Imagine I produce a bunch of what appears to you as random symbols. And I proceed to tell you that this is a language. If you ask, “how do you use these symbols”, and I reply, “I cannot tell you how to use them, but rest assure I know how to use them in similar ways as how you use your language, and thus it is a language.” I believe you can rightfully say that I have no idea what I am trying to say or express. This also goes for these claims of judging private activities within the mind.

The past criteria of judgement upon whether a word is correctly used (even if it is the individually learned collective wisdom of a community), and the judging itself, is had within a person's internal mental space. — schopenhauer1

But Wittgenstein is going further here. What sense can we make in saying that an individual is “judging” something in internal mental space. This, in principle, cannot be learned from the collective wisdom of a community. There is no criteria to teach someone how to do this. So why even use this terms like “judging” or “using criteria” to try to express anything at all for this private activity.

Imagine I produce a bunch of what appears to you as random symbols. And I proceed to tell you that this is a language. If you ask, “how do you use these symbols”, and I reply, “I cannot tell you how to use them, but rest assure I know how to use them in similar ways as how you use your language, and thus it is a language.” I believe you can rightfully say that I have no idea what I am trying to say or express. This also goes for these claims of judging private activities within the mind.

That is to say, does this mean all theorizing stops now because, welp, it's just language games? I think the next move is to present his idea of "No wait, he gives you an out! He gives us the idea of Forms of Life!". But that then seems to indicate all we can do is study the community of language users and their use of words, and not the concepts themselves. — schopenhauer1

Not sure if you are familiar with the book "Words and Things" by Ernest Gellner, but he provides similar arguments you are suggesting in your post. For Gellner, there is a great desire/importance to theorizing, and so he takes great offense that he needs Wittgenstein's therapy. Take for example,

"If these principles(linguistic philosophy) come to be generally respected, the result would be inhibition of all interesting thought.”

or

“It(linguistic philiosophy) is an attempt to undermine and paralyze one of the most important kinds of thinking, and one of the main agents of progress, namely intellectual advance through consistency and unification, through attainment of coherence, the elimination of exceptions, arbitrariness, and unnecessary idiosyncrasies.”

Additionally, Jerrold Katz, in "Metaphysics of Meaning", presents a theory of meaning that tries to resist the many criticism of Wittgenstein. He believe that Wittgenstein criticism mainly addresses those theories proposed by Frege, Russel, and those presented in Tractatus,

"For Wittgenstein to be successful in his radical critical purpose, he has to show how to eliminate all theories of meaning on which metaphysical questions are meaningful.”

For those interested in comprehensive criticisms on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, these two books I would recommend.

To theorize or not to theorize, that is the question....

Perhaps I see more value in considering thought experiments than you do? Einstein's thought experiments played an important role in human understanding of relativity theory. Suppose we consider the merits of thought experiments, as a technology for stimulating human minds to look at things from a different perspective? — wonderer1

The role of imagination in scientific theorizing is not in question. Also, I certainty would not say that philosophy cannot offer insights to a scientist. In nice article by John Norton, "How Hume and Mach Helped Einstein Find Special Relativity", provides a nice summary how these two philosophers, belonging to the empiricist/positivist traditions, influenced Einstein's abandonment of the idea of absolute time and simultaneity. However, even in this article, Einstein echoed what I have been saying. In section 3.1, titled "Concepts Must be Grounded in Experiences", he quotes Einstein, "‘Similarly,’ Einstein continued, ‘with the concept of simultaneity. The concept really exists for the physicist only when in a concrete case there is some possibility of deciding whether the concept is or is not applicable."

What scientist are you referring to? Under this scenario your belief in scientists would be a function of what the mad scientist (god to you) is feeding you in the way of perceptions, so any beliefs about brains that you have would be a function of the virtual reality presented by the mad scientist tending your vat.

The mad scientist might have fed you sensations that resulted in you having a notion of a brain that is utterly unlike what is in the vat. You don't have knowledge of what is in the vat or even the physics of vat world, so you can't have a scientific proof of the impossibility of the thing in the vat in vat world. — wonderer1

How about this scenario: I can imagine a witch that can cast a spell in which they make some poor soul believe that they are experiencing a world I which they are an autonomous agent thinking for themselves. Is this a logical possiblity? If you say no because it does not fit in with our ideas of causality and scientific world view, this can just be turned around by skeptic where they say "well that's because the witches's spell is making you think that." I would like to say that while this can be imagine it is not possible based on our understanding of causality and scientific world view. For the BIV example, the same goes, if we come to find that the BIV is physical impossible, meaning it can't function like we think, not only is it physical impossible, it would be impossible in general. Basically, experience and testing would show that the idea was ill formed. Whether BIVs, dreams, evil demons, witches, etc., any of these used to demonstrate some radical skeptical position is at its core faulty, useless thinking. This thinking resembles what authors do when they produce fictitious narratives, borrow from their real life experience and make up fantasy tales with no intention of claiming that they are talking about real life events. This type of philosophical thinking is doing the same, but with the delusional attempt in trying to potentially say something of the world we live in.

Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" said it best, "505. It is always by favor of Nature that one knows something."

his is not to say that it is metaphysically possible that you are a BIV , but how could you justify the proposition that it is epistemically impossible? — wonderer1

How does it show that you’re in 2 and not 4? — Michael

1. Simply, if the scientist showed that it is physically impossible to have a functional BIV, BIV is not possible. This demonstration might be carried out by use of experiments in which actual brains are studied. These would be the same kind of brains we have studied empirically to understand the role they have biologically in the interaction with the world. This knowledge of the brain is then used by philosophers to construct their thought experiments based on the idea of how brain's function. But if philosophers want to make a claim that the brain placed in an artificial enviorment could function in such a way that would produce simulations, they are obligated to submit themselves to the scientific criticism that comes with the territory.

2. The problem I am seeing here is the philosopher wants to talk about ideas but they also want it to be about the world. So they pull a fast one, they talk about real world objects like brains and vats, accept our empirical understanding of the function of the brain, then use this language to come up with imaginary experiments and suggest all sorts of fanciful outcomes that they claim could really be true.

3. Consider this scenario: An individual claims they have designed a machine that can create energy. When he plugs the machine in he claims that when 100 Joules is inputed to the machine, he will get 200 Joules as output. He claims this is possible based on his design. He plugs it in and the output was 50 Joules. He says to himself, "I guess it was not possible for this machine to create energy." Upon hearing this, a scientist chimes in and says, "this was never possible because it would have violated the law of conservation of energy." Just because you could imagine a design of machine with potential outputs of energy, does not mean it is possible to be realize in the actual world. But some want to insist in saying, "but it is logically possible!" I want to say it is not possible at all but feel free to imagine what you like.

4. I like to say that the idea of BIV is vague at best or nonsense at worst. Basically, what is the scientist suppose to figure out if the idea is too vague and/or nonsense? If you say the scientist is suppose to create a lifetime of a human simulated in the brain, what does that mean? Who are you suppose to talk with to understand this request? If you say the scientist should create an artificial world exactly like our real world, are you comparing an inner world that was pick out by inner ostensive definitions to some external world? But how does this occur? Are we not moving in the territory of what Wittgenstein calls grammatical fictions?

5. Our understanding of the world comes from our use of language in a human community. We have common expressions/reactions to the world. We make similar judgments about objects and events in the world. And language is our vehicle to understand this world. All of this is accomplished through our interactions with other human beings. It is not by observing neuron activity in brains of our fellow human beings. The BIV treats brains like tape recorders, grey matter is the material we record bits of information and play back when we feel like. We don't believe tape recorders, film projectors, computers have rich inner lives, nor should we believe the grey matter in the BIV would also.

Another interesting perspective regarding BIV is psychological.

There is a disorder that is called “Thought insertion.” Wikipedia defines it as such, “ Thought insertion is defined by the ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) as the delusion that one's thoughts are not one's own, but rather belong to someone else and have been inserted into one's mind. The person experiencing the thought insertion delusion will not necessarily know where the thought is coming from, but makes a distinction between their own thoughts and those inserted into their minds.”

Even more fascinating is the therapy. Again from Wikipedia, “In other words, the patient would speak his thoughts out loud in order to re-give themself the feeling of agency as he could hear himself speaking and then contributing the thought to himself.”

I wonder if such metaphysical reasoning around BIVs could bring on such a disorder as Thought Insertion.

We can’t have empirical evidence that rules out 4. — Michael

I disagree. When one demonstrates that BIV is physically impossible, scenarios 3 or 4 were never a logical possibility. What was conceptualize from actual functional brains was demonstrated to be false.

Just because one can say or imagine something does not make it possible.

But as a fictitious narrative, one does not need to worry about the support of empirical evidence.

If a neuroscientist gave you evidence that a brain could not be stimulated in such a way so as to produce simulated percepts, would you be convinced that the brain in a vat hypothesis is impossible? — NotAristotle

Many are willing to accept the scientific evidence of what the brain does to kick start the thought experiment that we could be BIVs. But as soon as you discuss the possibility of introducing scientific evidence to show that a BIV is not possible, it suddenly is “begging the question”, or that evidence was somehow fabricated in the scientist’s mind.

I would agree that the act of saying "ouch" names a behaviour, but I would not agree that the word "ouch" names a behaviour. — Luke

I agree that the word "ouch" has to be in context. It could be the Organisation for the Understanding of Cluster Headache, a BBC website reflecting the lives and experiences of disabled people, a term in the dictionary or a speech act from someone having a rock dropped on their foot. As Wittgenstein said "The question is: "In what sort of context does it occur?" — RussellA

I think Norman Malcolm in "Turning to Stone" helps clarify what is being discuss here. He says:

"Wittgenstein's argument has established that there is an essential connection between the meaning of first-person psychological language and the primitive expression of fear, anger, pain, in human behavior. But how does this connection make its appearance in the teaching of language? Wittgenstein puts the question like this: 'How does a human being learn the meaning of the names of sensations?-of the word "pain" for example"(PI 244). In a familiar passage he suggests what seems to be the only possibility:

Words are connected with the primitive, the natural, expression of the sensation and put I'm their place. A child has hurt himself and cries; and now the grown-ups talk to him and teach him exclamations and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behavior.
'So you are saying that the word "pain" really means crying?' On the contrary, the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it (PI 244)

The suggestion does not mean that adults get the child to identify sensation of his as pain. This would only reintroduce the untenable notion of 'inner ostensive definition'. Nor does the suggestion mean that the word 'pain' stands for or refers to crying-which would be a form of behaviorism. What the suggestion says is that the adults coax the child into replacing his crying with words such as 'hurts' or 'pain'. The crying was a primitive expression of pain. The uttered words, by taking the place of the primitive expression, become an expression of pain. Uttering those words becomes, for the child, a new form of pain-behavior; and for others it serves as a criterion for the child's being in pain."

But of course if we are brains in a vat then it may be that “real” physics isn’t exactly like the fabricated physics that we are being programmed to experience, and so one cannot really use physics to disprove the physical possibility of brains in a vat without begging the question. — Michael

Is the unseen scientist fabricating you to think that this is plausible, or the unseen scientist fabricating me to say it is not plausible to fabricating these thoughts? But this sounds strange, are you saying that we are not free agents making rational arguments for or against this idea of the BIV? Sounds like we are mere tape recorders for some unseen entity. This entity can fabricate physics and fabricate logic, I guess what follows would be that it would difficult to have a conversation with such an entity. Damn, never mind, that was fabricated too.

To use the world we experience as empirical evidence that brains in a vat are physically impossible is to beg the question and assume that we are not brains in a vat. — Michael

Nicely put, but I would have to disagree here. If a physicist says it is physically impossible for something to travel faster than the speed of light, are they begging the question? In this scenario, the scientist is not assuming we are not brains in a vat, they would be empirically demonstrating that the idea of a brain in a vat cannot function the way a brain in human does with its natural environment.

It is the philosopher bringing in its own metaphysical baggage that gets them all tied up in a knot. The scientist is trying say something of this world, the philosopher is pretending to, but in the end they are just creating fairy tales.

think it may even be physically possible. It is in principle much like a Boltzmann brain, and physicists seem to accept that they are physically possible.

But of course if we are brains in a vat then it may be that “real” physics isn’t exactly like the fabricated physics that we are being programmed to experience, and so one cannot really use physics to disprove the physical possibility of brains in a vat without begging the question. — Michael

I will not address the Boltzmann brain (as there is another thread for that) but go with the current scientific theory that human brains are a product of millions of years of evolution. What if scientists biologically demonstrate that the BIV cannot function like a brain with a human body (the brain just degrades when artificially stimulated). However, as you put it, this does not refute the possibility that this experience of “scientists demonstrating the BIV cannot function” was not fabricated in some BIV. But why should we say logical possibility trumps physical impossibility? Ours ideas are derived from our experiences of physical brains. The manifestation of a functional brain is a human being who articulates what is possible and impossible against a background of an external world. How should we think of an idea that says, “it was fabricated in a BIV to think it was fabricated in a BIV.”? This idea has all the qualities of a fiction, not either true/false or possible/impossible. This is where this type of metaphysical reasoning fails, it starts out trying to say something about the world in which we live in, but quickly degrades into phantasm where it logically excluded any verification, falsification, confirmation gathered by our experiences.

I am reminded of a quote from David Hume from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; where he thoroughly criticizes the metaphysical design argument for the existence of God, “A total suspense of judgment is here our only reasonable resource.”

I do not believe BiV is possible. I believe semantic externalism doesn't prove that BiV is impossible; I think BiV is impossible for other reasons. — NotAristotle

And what are those reasons?

For Wittgenstein:
1) The word "ouch!" replaces a behaviour.
2) Naming means attaching the word "ouch!" to a behaviour, ie, the word "ouch!" names a behaviour.
3) Therefore, "attaching" a word to a behaviour means "replacing" a behaviour by a word. — RussellA

This is not what Wittgenstein is saying. “Ouch” is an expression of pain, not naming the behaviors that commonly associated with pain. If my arm is stabbed, I do not grab my arm and look at my face wincing in a mirror and say “that behavior is ‘Ouch’. Alternately, I may just say “Ouch” without any of the pain behaviors, or the behavior varies from event to event.

If BiV is phenomenally the same as not-BiV, then I don't see how semantic externalism can do any work. Even someone who is not-BiV would not know what they meant by real and not real. — NotAristotle

Given that if metaphysical realism is true then something like us living in the Matrix is possible, Putnam's argument is that metaphysical realism and semantic externalism are incompatible, and because he believes that semantic externalism is true he concludes that metaphysical realism is false. — Michael

To be the same principle the body would in some way need to be silenced, or asleep, or unconscious, as in the movie Matrix. Of course, in these states he wouldn't be seeing or hallucinating anything, but dreaming. If the rest of the body is included, awake, and in full working order it would notice that it is in a vat, that it cannot move, is suspended in some sort of liquid, and so on, and his words could directly refer to the environment. — NOS4A2

I am curious, do you all believe that a "BiV" is possible? If so, why do you believe it is possible? Just because you can imagine it?