Comments

  • Towards solving the mind/body problem
    A thing is a higher level construction.Joshs

    In what respect higher?
  • Towards solving the mind/body problem
    Are information processors, generators and experiencers also myths?Marchesk

    I'm familiar with the first, and happy to grant their existence. "Information generators" and "information experiencers" I've not heard of, but am intrigued, and ready to learn.
  • Towards solving the mind/body problem
    1. How does matter relate to information?hypericin

    Matter is what there is. Things.

    Information is patterns. Facts.

    The relation is that of choosing. Pointing out.

    2. How does information relate to mind?hypericin

    Mind is myth. Non-actual.

    The relation depends on whether or how or which mythical facts are to be interpreted as pointing out actual things.

    Translation of talk about nothing into talk about something often takes some trouble...Nelson Goodman: Sights Unseen
  • Is intersubjectivity a coherent concept?
    an answer, which is "overcoming differences of perspective". So it's useful, because it succinctly forestalls the unnecessary baggage of "subjective" and "objective".bongo fury
  • Does anyone else think ‘is’ is derived from ‘ought’?


    Agree, e.g. we ought to exclude outliers from a distribution of readings from an instrument calibrated to detect signal in a particular range. Thereby we determine what signal there is.
  • What does "consciousness" mean
    We don't study ghosts, Gods or angels...Manuel

    Except by any other name...
  • What does "consciousness" mean
    property dualism [...] substance dualismManuel

    It's moot.
  • What does "consciousness" mean


    Sure. And these particles, waves and fields, what they are, in sum, is tables, chairs and river, about which you have the powerful intuition of non-subjectivity, which seems to want to generalise to apply to fleshy animals, even against the opposing intuition. There is a choice of basis, then, for further investigation. Generalise, or not. Mono or duo.
  • What does "consciousness" mean
    I think one of the problems we tend to have when trying to understand experience, is that our intuition tells us that most things are non-experiential. We see rocks, rivers, land, the sky, tables and so forth and even (some) planets to be solid objects.

    It's a powerful intuition.

    Then we have this thing, this simultaneously abstract and concrete aspect to us, experience, which appears to be completely different from "solid" rocks and rivers. But...
    Manuel

    ... we must be mistaken... so, how?
  • Are some circular arguments reasonable? and is this an example of one?
    Are some circular arguments reasonable?forrest-sounds

    Sure. Just not deductively (formally, syntactically, mechanically, automatically).

    and is this an example of one?forrest-sounds

    So it depends on whether your circle is a tight loop, and has to have been spinning forever (unreasonable) or is more like a broth on a slow boil, added to and stirred, re-fried etc. (a culture).
  • What does "consciousness" mean
    On the other hand...

    Here is a consciousness.

    And yet, it's a certainty :grimace:
  • Aren't all inductive arguments fallacious? If not, what form does a good inductive argument take?
    Also, please make no mention of deductive argumentsforrest-sounds

    D'oh.

    But "spuriously deductive" is the only gloss of "fallacious" that you could use to plausibly incriminate all of induction.

    If not, what form does a good inductive argument take.forrest-sounds

    Sure. But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
  • Water = H20?
    Water and H2O are two different things...RogueAI

    Except where the words coextend.
  • Water = H20?
    There is no possible world in which H₂O is not water.Banno

    There is no possible world in which XYZ is not water.TwinBanno
  • Hangman Paradox
    But if the judge says you will be killed tomorrow, then how can he not know he's going to get killed, the judge said so now.Manuel

    It is notable that K acquiesces in the conclusion (wrong, according to the fable of the [eventual] hanging) that the decree will not be fulfilled. If this is a conclusion which he is prepared to accept (though wrongly) in the end as a certainty, it is an alternative which he should have been prepared to take into consideration from the beginning as a possibility.Quine - On a so-called paradox
  • Hangman Paradox
    we only had a one day week and a two one day weekend.Manuel

    The judge tells K on Sunday afternoon that he, K, will be hanged the following noon and will remain ignorant of the fact till the intervening morning. It would be like K to protest at this point that the judge was contradicting himself. And it would be like the hangman to intrude upon K's complacency at 11.55 next morning, thus showing that the judge had said nothing more self-contradictory than the simple truth. If K had reasoned correctly, Sunday afternoon, he would have reasoned as follows. "We must distinguish four cases: first, that I shall be hanged tomorrow noon and I know it now (but I do not); second, that I shall be unhanged tomorrow noon and know it now (but I do not); third, that I shall be unhanged tomorrow noon and do not know it now; and fourth, that I shall be hanged tomorrow noon and do not know it now. The latter two alternatives are the open possibilities, and the last of all would fulfil the decree. Rather than charging the judge with self-contradiction, therefore, let me suspend judgment and hope for the best."Quine - On a so-called paradox

    if he hasn't been hanged by Thursday, there is only one day left - and so it won't be a surprise [he'll know it already] if he's hanged on Friday.Manuel/Wiki

    to confuse two things; (i) a hypothesis, by K at t, that the decree will be fulfilled, and (ii) a hypothesis, by K at t, that K will know at t + n - 1 that the decree will be fulfilled. Actually hypothesis (i), even as a hypothesis made by K, admits of two sub-cases: K's hypothetical ignorance and K's hypothetical awareness of the hypothetical fact.Quine - On a so-called paradox
  • The shape of the mind


    Ok. Then I can offer: referring (as a semantically competent speaker) to its thoughts as pictures.

    To be honest, a proper (contra Chinese Room) semantics is the whole of it. Confusing thoughts and pictures is just the hard problem that isn't really.
  • The shape of the mind
    If you say so. (An app can't make mistakes?)
  • The shape of the mind
    Consciousness is a feature of an entity capable ofPantagruel

    ... mistaking its thoughts for pictures.
  • Being a Man


    Spoken like a rooster :strong:
  • Being a Man
    mayBanno

    "might" for a counterfactual.

    In a style guide I once read.

    And hell, I did.
  • Being a Man
    And which is more hell: you’ll be a Man, my son!Manuel
  • Being a Man
    And hell:BigThoughtDropper

    Ironically, I've noticed this Wayne-ism all the time just lately.
  • Is my red innately your red
    It is worth noting that ‘sound-space’ is, in certain respects at least, much simpler than ‘colour-space’. It seems that even if there were insoluble problems in the case of colour, two people a and b could agree in all their judgements about the pitch of sounds although a heard everything five tones higher than b (that is, intuitively, if a could per impossibile hear middle C ‘through b’s ears’, a would call it ‘G above middle C’). Notice that this could be so even if both a and b had perfect pitch—the ability, that is, to state the pitch of any note just on hearing it.Galen Strawson

    Cool comparison.

    Actually, the scenario depends on a and b having perfect pitch, in the sense of absolute or non-relational pitch sensitivity or recognition. Otherwise, the alleged intuition,

    that it could just be a simple unknowable fact that a’s and b’s overall experiences of sounds were five tones apartGalen Strawson

    would be hard to credit. Most of us are oblivious to the absolute pitch of sounds, and don't hear them to be (e.g.) numbers of pitch-steps higher or lower than others, except in context: relationally, indexically. For most of us there couldn't be a musical equivalent to, "ah, I see that your internal post box images are the colour of my internal banana images": at least not a scenario that is equivalent in the way Strawson wants to examine. Unlike a, we can't conceivably "hear middle C through b’s ears" because we can't recognise a middle C at all. (Me learning.) It's as though we aren't able to paint, nor later identify, our post boxes as red, but only as, possibly, redder than a (possibly green) banana we happen to have with us. If (and then I was going to say "we" but I'm too aspirational now) ordinary mortals have internal pitch sensations they don't map at all to non-relational values of sound frequency.

    We might seek an analogy between relative (relational) pitch and visual colour differences or contrasts. That's a fascinating prospect, despite an obvious disanalogy: we can't begin to identify or compare 'intervals' of colour. And we can only begin, with scant hope of consensus, to even order colours. Without, that is, the intervention of a psychologist inferring from patterns in our failures to discriminate and order. But with pitch we can, unaided, form interval-based orderings (tunes) that translate recognisably to different positions on a scale (play in different keys).

    A better parallel with colour differences and contrasts is, perhaps, pitch interval differences and contrasts. Since the better parallel with colours is pitch intervals. The steps on a musical scale may be conceived as displacements from a home or key pitch. Which isn't to deny the perceptibility of their displacements from other steps as well (perhaps encouraged by the theoretical influence of equal temperament?). But is merely to make it plausible to compare the scale-steps, so conceived, with colours. Scale : rainbow.

    But all of the comparisons here, true or mistaken, involve what strikes me as a crucial relationship: an interaction between relational and non-relational clues to identification of stimuli; the tension between atoms and whole; between trusting wavelength and trusting context. Bleeding into the identity of a colour: its barely distinguishable relations with and position relative to others. Bleeding into judgements of higher and lower pitch: the haziest sense of interval magnitude.

    Maybe "tension" and "bleeding" are metaphorical enough to, if warranted, explain belief in the occult: in "what-it's-like-ness", "internal sensation", "subjective experience", etc. Then people (e.g. ) would be right to connect these things to murky or hidden associations: with other colours, as well as variously coloured things. Belief in a "content", "quality", "character", "experience" etc. of seeing a coloured patch might be some kind of understandable confusion about the interaction of relational and non-relational clues to its identity.
  • What's your ontology?
    Fave quote,

    You may decry some of these scruples, and protest that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there are in heaven and earth.Goodman, Fact Fiction and Forecast

    Casual plagiarism.
  • Is my red innately your red
    You hear people say things like "is my red the same as your red?" but you don't so often hear someone asking if their sense of the smell of a banana is the same as your sense of it. Or if you hear the sound the same way.Razorback kitten

    Not so often, no. But expecting a parallel situation in the different modalities is common enough in theoretical talk.



    By "lack of nuance" I meant no disrespect guvnor, honest. Only, that

    that "red" is an objective reality, experienced similarly by physiologically similar individuals.counterpunch

    seems to assume without question a rainbow of internal, private sensations. Whereas even the universalist side of the linguistic debate (on the wiki page) considers the aspect of public negotiatiation (linguistic evolution), and an external subject-matter.

    Pleased to hear more detail of your theory, whatever the terminology.

    This presupposes a problematic representational theory of perception. I do not see two things - the thing in front of me and the thing in my mindFooloso4

    Well, quite. The what thing in your what?

    Although I see it differently than you do, there is no way for either of us to know that.Fooloso4

    Is this the beetle story?

    Are our beetles innate?



    You are definitely addressing innateness... possibly that of the semantics of red, rather than of the syntactic identity of red. Will get back to this.

    the same problem of what can be said?magritte

    Or can't because it's private, then? Not sure of your drift. (Tractatus?)

    Was I anywhere close, here:

    On the other hand, that may have been what magritte meant, too. "Innate" as in, our agreement as to the external extension happening to result from a corresponding agreement as to the internal extension.bongo fury

    ? By internal extension I mean the range or class of internal sensations (images, qualia) referred to (on an internalist reading) by "red".

    unless my inner-feelings, mementos and dimension differs from yours. If so and I differ, the red I see may be your green.
    ... The blue I see reminds me of waves and birds; if you were to describe your blue using mementos, how would you?
    ghostlycutter

    That's intriguing, because it isn't necessarily the usual beetle-swapping story, even though your other remark suggests it might be, for you:

    I would however suggest that the colours you see aren't different but are in different order.ghostlycutter

    But, yeah... will get back to this, too. Thanks all.
  • Is my red innately your red
    There is no necessary relationship between signifier and signified. The word for the thing, is not the thing itself.counterpunch

    Yep, yep.

    Red is a thing; a particular wavelength of light that excites particular cone shaped nerve endings in the eye.counterpunch

    Ok... or: it's a class of illumination events (stimuli) that cause that kind of excitation.

    Experience of the thing that we call red, is the same for you and for me - unless you're colour blind,counterpunch

    Here's where I'm guessing your lack of nuance on this issue (that of the OP) is connected with a naive belief in internal sensations (qualia). I suspect the two problems can be treated together.

    Clearly, I'm on the universalist side of the debate - and my joke was intended to mock the Worfian cultural relativists.counterpunch

    Yes, I was just checking that was your drift.


    Thanks all :cool: bye for now
  • Is my red innately your red
    Innately. If you and I are looking at a chair, are there two chairs? One for each of us?frank

    Why then innately, though? Especially if you are likening colour classification to furniture classification?

    :cool:
  • Is my red innately your red
    They can't see red, apparentlyManuel

    And of course they aren't able to confuse their thoughts with pictures.

    And prior to that they were friends.Manuel

    Yes, Chomsky still talks very fondly. (In at least one interview, googleable. You probably read it.)
  • Is my red innately your red
    What I am seeing,Fooloso4

    In front of you, or inside you?

    what it looks likeFooloso4

    The other things it is (colour-wise) like?

    but this is as far as we can get.Fooloso4

    Because we can't see inside each other's head? But we can infer that what goes on in there is the same confusing of inside and outside that makes our own thoughts so interesting.
  • Is my red innately your red


    Yes, but with the nuance, you get to talk about the extension of the word as a (very) fuzzy set of externals (stimuli), in our case controlled largely by language.

    Dogs have cones, but do they have a "rainbow" of distinct colours?

    StarmakingManuel

    Yes, paradoxical when set against his (seeming) eliminativism about mental entities (previous link).
  • Is my red innately your red
    Assuming everyone's senses are calibrated the same.. it's one color.Outlander

    Your views have been found acceptable, and you are free to go.
  • Is my red innately your red
    I think it's determined innately.Manuel

    Fair enough. I think innatism, which is usually assumed, and not even nuanced as indicated on the wiki page (allowing for a number of different sized rainbows) reinforces the belief in mental furniture. Contra Witty, of course. Also, more salient for me, Goodman.
  • Is my red innately your red
    I'm saying there is no way to compare. Anything that you show me would be something that I see.Fooloso4

    Ok. So it's not that I can't show you? It's that you can't compare things you are shown? Not getting it.
  • Is my red innately your red
    If I cut both of you, and you bleed, whatever word, phrase, or as it really is "sound" you assign to the color we all see,Outlander

    ... and is that one colour, or one each?
  • Is my red innately your red


    Yes, all rainbows are fuzzy going from colour to next colour. But funnily enough (as you may have noticed) each colour can act as a buffer making its neighbours mutually distinct!
  • Is my red innately your red


    Alas, that article isn't about innateness at all, in what I took to be the implied respect of its possible role in determining the extension of 'red' e.g. the border between red and, say, yellow; but about, rather, the relationship between internal and external extensions, where both are freely acknowledged.

    On the other hand, that may have been what @magritte meant, too. "Innate" as in, our agreement as to the external extension happening to result from a corresponding agreement as to the internal extension.

    And @Galen Strawson's argument does bear on the presumed innateness of a "colour-space". Just not the issue of the alleged inevitability of a particular "rainbow", the issue explored on the wiki page linked above. At least, not clearly.

    The different issues deserve separating. Happy to discuss the article. His internalist definitions are confusing, and I'm not sure it's our fault.



    I guess you are quoting your thread, not Locke? By all means edit.

    I think you are on the side of the extension of "red" (the things it refers to) being a recognisable class of things independently of learning the word? Would that be an internal or external class of things?



    You're like @Galen Strawson in not only accepting internal sensations but also an internal experience (or experiencing subject) distinct (or varyingly distinct) from those sensations?

    Do you think the red type of internal sensation is determined innately, and/or independently of learning the word?

    Physically we can only see light which comes in many shades of grey.magritte

    In what sense of "comes"? Not "reflects", I take it... Unintuitive indeed. I'm willing to learn some physics, though.

    record three slightly different black and white image framesmagritte

    In what sense "record"? In what sense "frames"?

    So, external stimuli are only red if we say so, preferably based on universal, if not then cultural agreement.magritte

    Ok, and how universal, how innate?

    would that answer the question?T Clark

    Choose a question?

    I don't know. Show me your red.Fooloso4

    You're saying I can't, because it's private?

    Or that we should compare samples of red objects?

    Boom!counterpunch

    So, innate?