I consider it 'consulting the experts' in a way. — dan0mac

There are hardly any professionals here, a few well-read dilettantes, — SophistiCat

Well they did put scare quotes and say "in a way".

In philosophy, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence, where "meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning.” --wikipedia — frank

Yes, but @Banno keeps on explicitly disavowing this definition. His definition is truth-apt statements. (Hooray.) I.e. syntactical not semantical objects.

Then the semantics via truth, of course. But you have to go via the T-schema (boo), which needs statements. That's why people can't tempt him to stretch "beliefs" to be about [to have as "content"] more than just the meanings of statements. He doesn't believe in such things. (Hooray.)

Edit: Frank... Meh. Context favoured "statements".

A world of zombies would not include talk of colors, tastes and pains. — Marchesk

How on earth not? How are the blessed creatures expected to agree policy toward the myriad stimuli if not by ordering and classifying them?

But of course the paradox is rather easily resolved if we recognize that having words in mind or thinking silently in words no more implies that we have anything called a mind with words in it than having peace as a hope implies that we have anything called peace or a hope. — Goodman, On Thoughts Without Words

:rofl:

True. :smile:

Philosophy as dentistry. — Banno

Point counterpoint.

T-sentences set this out as clearly as possible: — Banno

If only.

The left hand side is about words, ... — Banno

More specifically, the left hand side raises the question whether the quoted sentence has succeeded in pointing the word "white" at snow. So it's about both.

... the right hand side is about the world, ... — Banno

More specifically, the right hand side raises the question whether snow is such as to be pointed at by the word "white" (in English, else by "weiß" etc.). So, both again.

... and truth is what brings them together. — Banno

No longer makes sense.

The stuff on the right hand side is in unmediated contact with the world; — Banno

Is as mystical as the 'mediated' version.

that is, it just says how things are. — Banno

How they are organised by language.

And it does this simply because that is what words do. — Banno

Hand waving.

I can describe my cat's actions in terms of its beliefs; — Banno

Anthropomorphically, sure.

So the physical representation changes, while the meaning is invariant. So how could the idea it carries be physical? — Wayfarer

Quite. But why can't it be fictional?

Some things are practically intractable. — Marchesk

This isn't necessarily one of them. Just saying.

but we will never be able to reduce psychological explanations to physical explanations - — Banno

With that attitude.

I merely think I understand Hume to have pointed out that justification (or reason or logic or derivation or inference) is sometimes deductive but just as often inductive (habitual or associative).

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/331201 — bongo fury

In my view, this aspect has been largely ignored in philosophy -- with the exception (in my reading) of Aristotle's Ethics. — Xtrix

Hume.

Day 24, 13.50: Slightly flat.

Yikes, 22.05: Good.



Day 25, 07.45: Slightly flat.

13.05: Semitone sharp.

21.00: Good.



Day 26, 08.30: Good.

11.25: Good.

18.35: Sharp, about half a semitone. Hurried.

20.55: Flat this time. Too hurried again. (Plausibly.)



Day 27, 07.05: Good.

12.50: Good.

15.20: Good.

20.20: Sharp.

21.35: Good.



Day 28, 09.50: Good, maybe slightly sharp, was aware it might be; couldn't (gave up on it) get the image a fraction (rather than the whole) of a semitone flatter. Which happens sometimes. Probably never achieve anything more precise than a flattening or sharpening by some entirely uncertain fraction.

14.40: Same again.

17.20: Slightly flat. (Hurried.)

20.15: Good.



Day 29, 08.05: Good.

12.10: Good.

14.10: Semitone sharp.

15.30: Tad sharp.

22.00: Good.



Day 30, 08.35: Semitone sharp.

11.05: Good.

17.20: Bit flat.

21.55: Good.



Day 31, 15.15: Good.

17.45: Bit sharp.

23.45: Good.



Day 32, 11.25: Good.

17.45: Bit flat.

19.00: Semitone flat.

20.45: Slightly flat.

00.27: Slightly flat.



Day 33, 08.55: Good.

22.10: Semitone flat.



Xmas Eve, 16.20: Half a semitone sharp.

21.30: Good.



Xmas Day, 12.30: Slightly sharp.

15.40: Good.

19.25: Good.

22.35: Good.

00.20: Good.

I'm attempting to provide an adequate evolutionarily amenable account of all conscious experience from non linguistic through metacognitive. — creativesoul

Interesting. What's your present view of the non-linguistic phase? Those of us inclined to agree with this,

consciousness is the ability to attribute meaning. — creativesoul

... might assume there wasn't one?

Haha, it's almost that mystical. Still. Need to speed it up. But wrong when I do.

Day 23, 10.35: Slightly sharp.

14.45: Good.

16.40: Good.

18.55: Semitone sharp.

20.30: Good.

Off topic. Did you go here yet?

Too poetic — Banno

He he.

... leads to conflating pre-theoretical language less conscious experience, pre-theoretical linguistically informed conscious experience, and theoretical linguistically informed conscious experience. — creativesoul

Fair enough, but if the goal is to distinguish "conscious experience" from a non-conscious variety of something or other (experience?), and all three of your sub-categories fall on the positive side of the distinction, what exactly is the point of the proposed sub-division? Ah...

Only the first of the three consists entirely of directly perceptible things. — creativesoul

Ok, I'm curious to know in what way you aren't offering to help @frank here to,

Clean away the strawmen piled in the idea of phenomenal consciousness, — frank

?

Just interested.

For you, maybe.

Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism. — bongo fury

In your case perhaps qualism more than dualism.

Ok then,

science IS NOTHING BUT representation of reality by minds.
— Olivier5

Or is it the creation of texts and pictures by organisms able to play a social game of agreeing to pretend that these symbols point at the world, according to principles of pointing that differ in interesting ways from those of art, music and literature? — bongo fury

See? No minds.

But the philosophical challenge is to then get literal again. Lest your poetry be seized on. — bongo fury

You [too] want to settle: for different levels of description, not literally commensurable. Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism. — bongo fury

Minds do not come into existence... — Banno

At least, not literally.

their EM wavelength! — Marchesk

The objects (or illumination events) not the light rays. (Are what we see.)

With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum!

Why not have him complain:

with eyes designed to order and classify objects according to only a tiny fraction of the variation in their EM reflectivity!

Because they designed him to be a dualist? :wink:

If that was the case, science would have no authority and no effectiveness. And yet it works. — Olivier5

Hence induction.

Clean away — frank

Ah.

science IS NOTHING BUT representation of reality by minds. — Olivier5

Or is it the creation of texts and pictures by organisms able to play a social game of agreeing to pretend that these symbols point at the world, according to principles of pointing that differ in interesting ways from those of art, music and literature?

But the philosophical challenge is to then get literal again. Lest your poetry be seized on. — bongo fury

The main issue for me is that a description of a human being at a physical level should not contradict descriptions at other levels of abstraction. — Andrew M

Ok, it seems you can't agree about the philosophical challenge. You want to settle: for different levels of description, not literally commensurable. Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism.

Day 23, 11.05: Silly amount of time waiting for high-low feels in (as it were) "response" to "images". But eventually reasonably sure, and tested positive.

13.40: Good.

17.20: Good.

20.26: Good.

00.05: Good.

Sure. Pretty much as you did there. Just never thought of whistling. So it's generally an internal "image", which I then check against the target here:

https://youtu.be/PuFwt66Vr6U. — bongo fury

(Sorry that important point was burried several posts in.)

I've found myself humming, but noticed that that may or may not be massively distracting, since I'm an octave down from the piano tone targeted. Another can of worms!

Cool stuff :smile:



Day 22, 10.50: Good. ... D'oh! Of course, turns out you were in G for yours. Although not for the subsequent jam. Although I replayed the test. And then some more jam. (Before my own test.) No telling, of course. (Whether there was influence.)

13.15: Good.

15.15: Just noticed at the last moment that my choice of pitch was undeniably influenced by the tone (an octave or two down) of the washing machine, which I didn't register as a potential musical context, but which immediately showed its influence when I tried to bring the image a semitone or two flatter. Which was doable, but very hard to get "feels" (of too high or too low) for. Lost track now, but I'll try my best against the backdrop... Haha, tried roughly a semitone down, but the washing machine had it after all.

21.35: Good

24.00: Semitone flat.

Internal qualia bad.

External qualia good.

Yes, I think discussion of this or a similar report a couple of years ago helped kindle my current intrigue.

60 per cent is high, but I was surprised by 14 for the westerners, too. But my surprise is irrelevant. I should go to Wikipedia. Soon...

Another curiosity: their example of,

means "mother" when the vowel is a constant high pitch, but means "hemp" when pronounced with a rising pitch. — Don Monroe

hardly implies an absolute rather than relative sensitivity. (Except in respect of a very broad and fuzzy division into high-class and low-class, which is not to be discounted altogether). Which I would assume was crucial. Unless...

it's the use of pitch per se — Daemon

So relative as well as absolute? Maybe not what you meant.

I don't know anything (or like you I've forgotten) about tonal languages but I would assume until corrected that their chief distinction from other languages like ours were in their marshalling of pitch intonation towards lexical as well as (as also for us) pragmatic distinctions (e.g. question vs statement). And then some of them would marshall absolute pitch and some of them (as do we for our merely pragmatic distinctions) only relative pitch. And I would have expected that a tonal language implicated in the acquisition of absolute pitch would be of the absolute rather than relative kind. Hence my curiosity about their example and your comment.

I think I'm gradually developing absolute pitch, only because when I think of a recording and then listen to it I often get the key right. — Daemon

So to the extent that you are bothering to compare the two absolute pitches (of the thinking of and the listening to) rather than looking straight past that, to the matching of step 1 to step 1, step 2 to step 2 etc., i.e. to the matching according to relative pitch, you are indeed striving to acquire. To the extent that you proceed as a proud relative pitcher, ignoring absolute in favour of relative, your progress refutes my hypothesis (OP) that the one (relative) is at the expense of the other (absolute).

Absolute pitch is no use to me anyway. Being able to identify and immediately play intervals is what I need. — Daemon

Was always my view too. The can't beat them so might as well join them comes partly from knowing (or failing to remedy) my limitations. Which are, mainly, losing track around modulations, some more than others obviously.

I knew a musician with perfect pitch who said it is a bit of a curse, a lot of music sounds out of tune. He said the piano with its tempered tuning irritates him. — Daemon

Sure, and then some that are happy with tempered are unsettled by the historical drift in standard, as related by @SophistiCat.

I think if I did want to improve my absolute pitch, I would use recordings of tunes or songs. — Daemon

Yes. Fingers crossed.

a whole new can of worms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Haha, no kidding.

I think that person is probably hearing music in fewer different keys, at least if a keyboard is involved. That could reduce the amount of equating of transpositions. And that could aid acquisition according to my hypothesis (OP).

That's exactly what I meant about how I think you see it. I hope that was clear.

Anyway, as I say, I think it's a promising area in which to offer you reasonable cause for doubt, all the same.

Dialog, by definition, is a conversation between two or more people. Inner dialog extends this idea in a metaphorical way. — Andrew M

But the philosophical challenge is to then get literal again. Lest your poetry be seized on.

Inner dialog (and music) is a good place to be literal about thinking, as it is relatively easy to recognise as being supported, even if not utterly constituted, by neural shivering. In the extreme, we might catch our lips (fingers) moving; but plenty of more central neural/neuro-muscular twitching is also noticeable.

Such recognition may not threaten anyone's intuition of purely phenomenal "sound" events, even if they begin to notice that shivering at some level always accompanies them. After all, perhaps the alleged theatrics are something weird emerging from the bio-physics of the more central shivering.

But it's a good place to start.

I wonder if this has to do with the perfect/absolute misnomering.

Plenty of truth (overdue for discussion) in the cross-modal association speculation. Will return to that soon.



Day 20, 08.35: Semitone flat.

11.40: Noticeably flat.

12.10: Maybe sharp.

15.15: Good.

21.35: Noticeably sharp.



Day 21: 07.15: Interesting to see whether this clear and convincing first choice image is caused by @Banno's "pain and pleasure" or is determining the pitch at which the latter is crashing the Cartesian concert hall... Turns out the image is half a semitone sharp of the target (the Ravel). But likewise also midway between semitone scale steps (I failed to register which steps i.e. whether the pattern had drifted far) of the other. So, more likely the second alternative.

17.25: Tempted again to test a first image on account of its vividness, but also aware it felt too low. Compared a semitone up, compromised, tested, was good.

20.20: Couldn't get sure at all. Over a semitone flat.

21.35: Good.

But the goal is to produce the pitch without the specimen or feedback. Do you have a strategy toward this end? — Metaphysician Undercover

The obvious answer would be "training". But that would depend on your question being a bit silly. I've probably misunderstood.

but what method would you use to distinguish one pitch from another, within the image? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't quite understand. If you mean relative pitch comparisons within an image then, as you say,

Once you can produce a specific note on demand, the rest is a matter of learning the intervals, musical training. — Metaphysician Undercover

But this would be like ungrounded logic, you could have a complete scale in your mind, with nothing to connect it to reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

You get that the grounding is through feedback against a target specimen?

The actual "pocket compass" I'm using is youtube on my phone, specifically G4 as announced in the first chord here: https://youtu.be/PuFwt66Vr6U. — bongo fury

To you there is no fundamental difference between the way a human thinks and how a computer operates? — leo

I think Searle identified precisely the fundamental difference between the way a human thinks and how any contemporary model of a Turing-test-aceing computer operates. We have a proper semantics, while the computer might be relying on syntax.

This essay says it much better than I ever could https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
— Wayfarer

Great essay against the old, pre-connectionist, symbolic computer model of brain function, which I shall cite next time (and it won't be long) that I want to scorn the ancient myth of pictures in the head. Not an essay espousing the existence of ghosts (in machines), though. — bongo fury