Simply declaring it doesn't have anything to do with subsequent activity is begging the question. I'm claiming it does. I'm saying that, since we don't have any locus for a 'representation' of red (and yet 'red is meaningful, as in the ripe berry), our best theory is that it is our response that constitutes 'red' (our reaching for the word, our eating the ripe berry, our categorising according to our culture's rules...), and that absent of any of these responses, there's no 'seeing red' going on at all.

You counter that you think you see red without any response at all, and that because you think it, it must be true. — Isaac

I can see without any overt response recognisable by other people who might be around. I am quite capable of sitting still, saying nothing, and seeing the objects in front of me. It just isn’t the case that I’m blind, or that nothing I see is coloured, unless I do or say something.

If you can't accept this then our fundamental viewpoints are so diametrically opposed that we're never going to agree.

I counter that we don't have an apparent mechanism, nor locus for such a thing and looking at the way the brain works doesn't seem to allow that (it seems to go straight from modelling aspects (likes shade and edge) to responses (like speech and endocrine system reactions).

Then what’s this and this?

So it's a crucial issue of semantics. Should the psychology admit internal representations, as well as external representations and internal brain shivers? — bongo fury

I think it’s a non-issue. I feel pain. I feel the fire. Both are correct ways of talking. The painting is made of paint. The painting is of a woman. Both are correct ways of talking. I speak into my phone’s microphone. I talk to my parents over the phone. Both are correct ways of talking.

And I've mentioned before that I don't really like the word "representation". Pain isn't a representation of fire, it's just a consequence of that kind of stimulation. The same with smells and tastes and images.

To eat the red berry and not get sick because it's ripe. — Isaac

So someone who doesn't eat the red berry can't see the red berry (correctly)?

I disagree with this. I don't need to eat something to see it. I'm asking you to explain what it means to see something's colour correctly. That has nothing to do with any subsequent activity.

All you seem to be saying is that if someone sees something correctly then they will do this. I'm asking you to make sense of the antecedent.

Yes it is, because indirect realism posits this 'representation' of the object (which we have no cause to consider even exists) to which we respond. — Isaac

You appeared to accept this in the case of pain. Putting my hand in the fire causes pain. That pain is not a property of the fire, but an inner, physiological state. It is because of that pain that I am made aware of the fire and respond accordingly, pulling my hand away. The person with something like congenital insensitivity to pain doesn't feel pain when putting their hand in the fire and so is less likely to, or at least slower to, react.

Why are you unwilling to extend this principle to other sense modalities such as smell, taste, or sight? Do you think that there's some fundamental difference between nociception and photoreception (beyond the trivial case of it being a different sense receptor responding to a different stimulus)?

You'll have to quote a direct realist saying such a ludicrous thing for me to believe this isn't just a straw man. — Isaac

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#NaiRea

Consider the veridical experiences involved in cases where you genuinely perceive objects as they actually are. At Level 1, naive realists hold that such experiences are, at least in part, direct presentations of ordinary objects. At Level 2, the naive realist holds that things appear a certain way to you because you are directly presented with aspects of the world, and – in the case we are focusing on – things appear white to you, because you are directly presented with some white snow. The character of your experience is explained by an actual instance of whiteness manifesting itself in experience.

This is the position that indirect realists argue against. Instances of external world properties do not "manifest" in experience. It is just the case that external world properties are causally responsible for experience, and the qualities and properties of this experience are qualities and properties of the experience, not of the external world stimulus.

Our modern scientific understanding of the world, along with the arguments from hallucination and illusion, have shown that the naive realist conception of colour (and other) experience as described above is untenable.

The subsequent argument over whether or not we should describe perception as "seeing representations" or "seeing the external world stimulus" is an irrelevant issue of semantics. It's like arguing over whether we feel pain or feel the fire. These are just different, equally valid, ways of speaking that mean slightly different things with an emphasis on one aspect of perception or another.

I think that we can apply such concepts, and I think we can do that now with pigs being treated badly in processing plants. The baby could be hungry or in pain, yes. Why not ? So could the pig. "We should stop creating pork this way, because pigs suffer, because it's wrong to cause unnecessary suffering." — plaque flag

And when we say that the baby is in pain or scared or hungry, what are we referring to? What does it mean for it to feel something?

What does it mean to attribute pain ? — plaque flag

I’ve given my answer. Pain is a type of experience that occurs irrespective of any overt expression recognisable by other people.

Does immateriality add anything? — plaque flag

I’m not sure what you’re asking here. If experience really is immaterial then the claim that experience is immaterial is true. But again, at this point I’m not really arguing this point. I’m happy to say that consciousness and experience is reducible to brain activity.

So assume in some post-apocalyptic wasteland the only thing to survive is a newborn baby. Given that it has no sense of self and no language it isn’t conscious and can’t feel pain or be hungry?

I don't think the self makes sense as a present-at-hand object. It's temporally stretched, socially constituted. It's more of a dance than a dancer. — plaque flag

I’m sorry but I don’t do well with metaphor.

What I will say is that I don’t need a second person for me to be conscious. It is both logically and physically possible for me to be the last man alive.

It's not too outlandish to think technology will become powerful enough to know our socalled insides better than we do. — plaque flag

Yes, that’s implied by my assumption here that consciousness is identical to a particular kind of brain activity.

If you want to pretend that 'pain' has a different grammar than it does, we can try to play that game and see what happens. — plaque flag

I’m suggesting that we assume that what we think of as first person experience/consciousness is reducible to brain activity. I wasn’t assuming anything about the grammar of “pain” at this point.

I just think immaterial references don't make sense — plaque flag

We’re assuming brain states here, not immaterial stuff.

That's roughly how we learn to use "headache" and "pain" -- in terms of what implications are thereby licensed — plaque flag

People have headaches even if there’s no aspirin. We invented painkillers because of pain.

Why not ? — plaque flag

Because we wouldn’t need to. We’d just look to their behaviour. But behaviour isn’t enough. There really is stuff going on in people’s heads that we don’t know about, and when we ask about things like pain we’re asking them to tell us about this stuff going on in their heads.

To be sure, the grammar of the word 'pain' could change, but currently (as far as I can make out) it's more about behavioral dispositions than brain states. — plaque flag

If that were true then we wouldn’t ask people if they’re in pain. Or for related feelings, whether or not they’re happy or sad or have a secret crush.

I can understand not believing in non-physical mental phenomena and “raw” sense data. I can’t understand this devotion to the idea that words can only refer to some publicly verifiable activity.

As I mentioned in the other discussion, I take aspirin because I’m in pain. It just isn’t the case that taking aspirin is being in pain. If it were that simple then I’d just never take aspirin and live a pain-free life.

If that disagrees with Wittgenstein then Wittgenstein is so self-evidently wrong that I struggle to believe that anyone believes him. I can only assume that you’re all just pulling a prank on me.

The grammar of 'pain' would allow for anomalies like reports of pain that were not accompanied by the expected brain activity. — plaque flag

That’s true of every word in every circumstance. I can report that it’s raining when it isn’t.

Immaterial private referents are problematic. — plaque flag

Assume for the sake of argument that first person experience isn’t immaterial or private. Assume that it is reducible to the physical. The feeling of pain is identical to a particular kind of brain activity. Is this a problem? Can the word “pain” refer to this particular kind of brain activity?

and the latter because it seems to posit some kind of ultimate reality that we are approximating towards which is similar to the problem of mind-independence in that since it cannot be known we cannot know we are approximating towards that reality, and therefore we have no reason to claim our knowledge has any relation at all to that notion. — Moliere

Is it a problem that we only know about black holes by observing the effect they have on light and matter?

What he meant is that the crime of falsifying business records is a misdemeanour, but the indictment says that because they were done to commit or conceal another (unspecified) crime, they are felonies. The indictment doesn’t specify what this other crime is.

I do find it strange that he wasn’t indicted directly for this other crime.

One potential crime would be a violation of federal campaign finance laws — Bragg has no jurisdiction over federal proceedings. The Department of Justice does, but it has already passed on this case, as has the Federal Election Commission. — yebiga

There’s a New York state law against committing a crime to benefit an electoral candidate and I believe Bragg alluded to that in his statement. What isn’t clear is if that law can apply to a federal election, and is likely the best target for a legal challenge so I wouldn’t be surprised if the charges are reduced to misdemeanours. But even misdemeanours should be prosecuted.

Well yes, one might take it to be analytically true that a prediction is future-referring. — sime

Then what else is to be said?

But in that case, the future-contingency of the prediction cannot mean anything about the world in itself — sime

Not sure what you’re saying here. Is it just that predictions don’t talk about the world as it presently is? That is, as you say, analytically true. Not sure how that entails that they don’t talk about the world as it will be in the future.

As a matter of interest, do you consider ChatGPT's responses as future-referring? — sime

If it says something about the future then yes.

What makes B a future-referring proposition, in contrast to A that is merely a present observation? — sime

The fact that they mean different things, with the first referring to the present and the second referring to the future.

Well, certainly I can accept that the word "future" has sense to you, as it does to me, but one can dispute that the word has reference — sime

I think it quite straightforward that it refers to the future.

The set {all things inside this box} is not the same as the things inside the box. The set could be empty. Just like the set {6,7,8,9} is neither 6, 7, 8, nor 9. The set {all things which are both A and not-A} has no members, one ca refer to the set, but one cannot refer to the members of it, since there are none. — Isaac

If I say “the thing inside your box has wings” and there’s nothing inside your box then this phrase doesn’t refer to anything. Or if there’s more than one thing inside your box then it’s ambiguous as to whether or not it refers to anything. But if there is a single thing inside your box then it refers to that thing, and is true if that thing has wings and false otherwise.

Much like the phrase “your oldest brother is older than you”. Even though I know nothing about whether or not you have a brother, I am in fact referring to him if you have one.

I don’t need to see something or know something about it to talk about it.

That 'red' is a label given to a property in the external world and when we correctly see red, it is that we are detecting that property. — Isaac

What does it mean to correctly see that property? I don't think it correct that 500nm light looks the way it does to us. I don't think it correct that 500.5nm light looks exactly the same. I don't think it correct that 400nm light looks different. I don't think it correct that 1nm light doesn't look like anything. It just happens to be that, given our physiology, things look the way they do (or don't look like anything).

And it’s not incorrect that things look different to something with a different physiology, e.g. the colour blind or the human tetrachromat or animals.

It is that we are detecting a property of the external object, not that we actually possess a copy of that same property in our own brain. — Isaac

What does “detect” mean? If it just means “responds to” then it isn’t inconsistent with indirect realism.

And phenomenological direct (naive) realism says something exactly like this. They don’t just say that we respond to external world objects. They say that external world objects are as they are seen, e.g. that the colour property in the experience is the colour property of the apple. And they don’t just say that a copy of the property is in the experience, but that the exact token instance of the property is in the experience. That’s what they mean by experience being direct. If it were a copy then it would be representative realism, i.e. indirect realism.

We understand pain not because we have access to each other's private experience's through language but that it is a concept that allows through its nature a public shared conceptualization. — Baden

I would say we understand pain because we experience our own, and we’re smart enough and sympathetic enough that we assume that other people experience much the same thing. We’re very good at projection.

But let's take it a step at a time, do you agree with that much? — Baden

No, I think that when I talk about what I am feeling I am referring to what I am feeling, and that you cannot feel or see or smell or taste my feelings. They are hidden from you. That's why you have to ask me what I am feeling, or thinking.

if you have a locked box that I can’t look inside, the phrase “the hidden contents of your box” refers to the hidden contents of your box.

I don’t understand why you and others think I must be able to see something to talk about it. The blind can talk about things just fine.

then there's something wrong with firstperson experience as a metaphysical concept. It's as elusive as the meaning of being. — green flag

I wouldn’t say it’s elusive. I’d say that my first person experience is the most self-evident thing there is to me. And I have no reason to believe I’m special, so I assume others have it too.

I’m sorry but I just don’t understand what you’re asking.

These are all physical events. — schopenhauer1

And it might be a physical fact that a sufficiently advanced brain will cause first person experiences.

How does this not avoid the homunculus fallacy though? The ghost is already in the machine. That is the very thing to be explained though. It's too "just so" or "brute fact" perhaps? — schopenhauer1

I don't understand the issue. If I say that it's an unavoidable, deterministic consequence that heating an ice cube above 0 degree celsius will cause it to melt, am I committing an homunculus fallacy?

One problem with this privacy talk is the implied possibility of a p-zombie. — green flag

Certainly a logical possibility. Maybe not a physical possibility. It could be that first-person experiences are an unavoidable, deterministic consequence of a sufficiently advanced responsive organism.

If AI gets good at reading your mind, will that change your mind ? — green flag

Depends on how it works. If we ask people what they feel when this area of the brain is activated, and they say pain, and then we feed this information into an AI, then that the AI is able to check to see if that area of the brain is activated and tell me that I feel pain isn't "mind reading" at all.

If it could know that I'm in pain despite not knowing anything about how brain activity correlates to self-reported feelings then that would show evidence of mind reading, and would suggest that first-person experiences are reducible to physical phenomena, and so not essentially private.

then ordinary means of referring that appeal to a causal linkage between another speaker and my experiences are ruled out. — sime

I dispute that requirement. I can talk about the future.

If experience is truly private, than it is presumably impossible to even refer to someone else's experiences in the literal sense of "someone else". — sime

How so? I don’t need to experience something to talk about it.

Consciousness, whatever it is, doesn't extend beyond the brain, and so it's physically impossible for an apple and its properties to be "present" in my conscious experience. It might be causally responsible for conscious experience, but that's all it can physically be.

This is the “illusion” of experience (and in particular sight), and is I believe the driving force behind direct realism. It seems as if external world objects are “present” in my conscious experience, but our scientific understanding of the world and consciousness (as much as we do understand it) shows that this isn’t the case.

We might nonetheless want to say that the experience is of external world objects, but then what do we even mean by this? What is the word “of” doing here? What does it mean to say that the painting is of Lisa del Giocondo, or that I’m talking about my parents? It’s certainly an interesting question to consider, but I wonder if it actually has anything to do with the epistemological problem of perception. It seems to be an unrelated issue of semantics that isn’t prima facie incompatible with indirect realist theories. The painting is of Lisa del Giocondo, and yet the painting is made of paint and canvas, which are not features of Lisa del Giocondo herself. And so it could be that the experience is of an apple, and yet the experience is made of something like brain activity or sense data or rational inferences, none of which are features of the apple itself.

Notwithstanding that conceptual confusion, I'm not disagreeing that colour is a construction of the brain's processing systems, I'm denying that it is thereby not a property of external nodes. — Isaac

But the stuff that's constructed by the brain's processing isn't stuff that's in or on the apple. And I mean that in a very real, physical sense. My brain isn't the apple. They are located at separate points in space, composed of separate pieces of matter (and energy). So at the very least you should accept that the word "colour" when referring to the stuff constructed by the brain's processing means something different to the word "colour" when referring to some property of the apple.

Perhaps you might argue that even if the stuff constructed by the brain is a different token to the stuff in or on the apple, they are of the same type? But then we should be able to measure the apple and measure my brain and find the same type of physical stuff going on. But that's certainly not the case. When we measure the apple we find that it reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm, but when we measure my brain we don't find that it reflects light with a wavelength of 700nm.

And that's why I've said before that there's an element of equivocation in the direct realist's argument. That we might use the same word to refer to both cause and effect isn't that they are the same thing. Colour experience is one thing, and apples reflecting light is a different thing entirely.

You're going to have to explain the connection there. What does not being able to access something have to do with not being able to talk about that thing? I can't access the contents of your safe, but I can talk about the gold bullion locked inside.

The full quote was this:

This is a basic problem first of even knowing whether similar/the same phenomena are experienced the same way because the experience is private and only accessible first-person.

Seems pretty clear that he's only saying that because we can't experience another person's experiences we can't know what it's like to experience as they do. Doesn't seem to say anything about what we can or can't talk about. It may be that his pain is nothing like my pain, but that's not to say that we can't talk about his pain being like, or not like, my pain.

That's the problem with Andrew4Handel's proposal that "the experience is private and only accessible first-person" - it implies that only he can talk about such an experience. — Banno

This is where you equivocate. To say that an experience is private is just to say that no-one else can experience it. It says nothing about who can or can't talk about it. There's no prima facie connection between not being able to experience something and not being able to talk about that thing. I don't need to see something (like the beetle in your box) to talk about it. The blind manage just fine in that regard.

Yep. That's why your pain is not just a thing inside your head that only you can refer to. If it were, no one else could talk about it. — Banno

I didn't say that only I can refer to it.

Pain is a thing inside my head that we can both refer to.

It is, in Wittgenstein's example, the label given to the box. — Isaac

I'd say it's the label given to the contents of the box. That's why we use the word "private" in the phrase "one's own private thought". If it was a label given to the box, which is public, then the phrase would be "one's own public thought".

Or, to use Wittgenstein's example, the phrase "the contents of the box" refers to the contents of the box, not to the box itself.

And I don't see why we can't coin a single word that refers to the same thing as the phrase "the contents of the box". How about "beetle"?

As in, If only you can refer to your pain, then I cannot refer to your pain. — Banno

I'm not saying that only I can refer to my pain. You can refer to my pain as well.

My feeling of pain is private in the sense that only I can feel it. But it's "public" in the sense that we both can talk about it.

And the beetle I see inside my box is private in the sense that only I can see it. But it's "public" in the sense that we both can talk about it.

Of course you can. So it's not private. That's the point.

A private language is one only you understand. — Banno

Again you seem to be equivocating. I'm not saying that there's a language that only I can understand. I'm saying that words can refer to things that only happen inside our heads. The word "pain" for example refers to a thing that happens inside our heads. It doesn't refer to some public expression of pain, like saying "I'm in pain" or taking aspirin.

What I don't seem able to do is give a similar account of what using a word privately to refer to one's own private thought might be. — Isaac

Why not? If a phrase like "one's own private thought" can refer to one's own private thought, then why can't a word? Is there some bizarre condition that a single word can't refer to a private thought but a multiple word phrase can?