This is where it gets interesting. How divergent can someone get with their apparent language of colors... — Richard B

Very divergent, e.g. in the case of synesthesia. Whereas most of us only see colours in response to light, some also see colours in response to sound (chromesthesia).

I start from a principle that features of human physiology evolved within a system where their cost did not exceed their survival benefit. In such a system, it would be practically impossible for the huge amount of calories mental processes consumes to be justified if all it did was detect internal states of the same system, I can't see the survival advantage.

So I'm asking you what the survival advantage is, or what your alternative meta-biological theory is. Without either I can't see how you can sustain the model with such glaring holes in it. — Isaac

Theories need to fit the facts, not the other way around, and it is a fact that the pain I feel isn't a property of the fire that causes me to feel pain.

So either there is a survival advantage to feeling pain, or feeling pain just happens to be a deterministic effect of something else that gives us a survival advantage (e.g. a complex brain that is able to effectively respond to stimulation).

Here's a model of pain...

1. an external state (light) stimulates a nociceptive nerve ending
2. that signal (among hundreds of others) travels through an hierarchical system of prediction engines which attempt to output a response appropriate to reducing the uncertainty of that external state (either by manipulating the external state by acting on it, or by refining the model by further focussed investigation)
3. one of those outputs is to alter the release rate of certain hormones which in turn influence the output of other prediction engines (shifting their priors slightly in favour of certain types of output)
4. This state of affairs, this hormone affected setup, if you were to report it (either to yourself, or to others) you would use the expression "feeling pain" to describe.

If the above were the case then how would it clash with what you claim here to "know" about your feeling pain. If the last thing your brain does, after going through the process of predicting the state of external nodes, is to render a self-report which you respond to as a 'feeling of pain', then how would you distinguish that from the actual functioning of your brain in response to external stimuli? — Isaac

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. It appears that this accepts that pain isn't a property of the external state that stimulates a nociceptive nerve ending, but is an "inner" state. I agree with the principle of that, but would extend it to other things, such as "seeing red", e.g.:

1. an external state stimulates the rods and cones in one's eyes
2. that signal (among hundreds of others) travels through an hierarchical system of prediction engines which attempt to output a response appropriate to reducing the uncertainty of that external state (either by manipulating the external state by acting on it, or by refining the model by further focussed investigation)
3. one of those outputs is to alter the release rate of certain hormones which in turn influence the output of other prediction engines (shifting their priors slightly in favour of certain types of output)
4. This state of affairs, this hormone affected setup, if you were to report it (either to yourself, or to others) you would use the expression "seeing red" to describe.

The key point is that red, like pain, isn't a property of the external stimulus.

I might go further and say that feeling pain and seeing red isn't just a "hormone affected setup" but is some supervenient mental phenomena, but as a first step we need to at least agree that red and pain aren't properties of external world objects before we can progress further.

Right. So what's the point of it?

If what we're sensing is not a property of anything external to the system doing the sensing, then why is that system sensing anything at all? Why is it only detecting properties it itself has made up? — Isaac

I don't understand your question. I don't know much about why putting my hand in the fire cases me to feel (in the former) sense pain. I just know that it does.

I'm not getting anything of the meta-biological framework your theory sits within.

This isn't my theory. It's what science has shown to be the case. You stimulate my nerves (or my brain) a certain way and I feel pain. That pain is in my head, not out in the world to discover.

Yes. Primarily 'feeling' is a term we use for multiple meanings, one of which is a summary of your mental state "how are you feeling today?". So "I feel pain" and "I feel the grass" have two different meanings. The former being used in the sense of describing a state of mind, the latter in the sense of touch-sensation.

You specifically wanted to talk about the problem of epistemology with regard to perception and not want to get caught up in semantics. Given the, it is only this latter sense of 'feel' we're interested in here, the one which is about you sensing the external world with your nervous system. — Isaac

The epistemological problem of perception concerns the relationship between the phenomenology of experience and the mind-independent properties of external world objects. The indirect realist argues that what we feel in the former sense is a mental representation of what we feel in the latter sense; that what we feel in the former sense is not a property of what we feel in the latter sense.

In the case of the dress, some people see in the former sense white and gold and others see in the former sense black and blue. The white and gold that I see in the former sense are not properties of the dress that I see in the latter sense, but are mental phenomena that result from brain activity in response to stimulation by the light reflected by the photo.

Given that it is what I see in the former sense that determines how I understand and describe what I see in the latter sense, and as what I see in the former sense is not a property of what I see in the latter sense, there is an epistemological problem of perception. That I can see in the former sense that the dress is white and gold tells me nothing about the dress I see in the latter sense (except the trivial fact that it causes me to see in the former sense white and gold).

But perhaps you need to have brain activity that succeeds in associating the red ball with red surfaces generally, and the blue ball with blue surfaces generally?

Having red or blue mental images in the brain, to meet that purpose, is kind of having a ghost in the machine.

Having the brain reach for suitable words or pictures, isn't. And, even better, it suggests a likely origin of our tendency to imagine that we accommodate the ghostly entities. — bongo fury

I'm not totally averse to saying that mental phenomena just is brain activity. What I'm averse to is the claim that being in pain has something to do with saying or thinking "I am in pain" or taking aspirin or performing some other activity that other people use to judge me to be in pain, or the claim that pain is a property of the external world object that causes me to feel pain.

But if you said, “I can see that one is green, and one is yellow”, can you be said to being seeing at all. — Richard B

Yes, I'm just not seeing what you're seeing. Much like with the case of some people seeing the dress to be white and gold and others seeing it to be black and blue.

To quote my favourite book (Dune):

Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?

It's not unreasonable to assume that there is some organism in the universe that has some sense that we don't.

How would you go about learning what it's like to have such a sense? Is being told that apples are X and bananas are Y going to help you know what it means to be X or Y, and what it's like to experience X-ness and Y-ness?

I certainly don't think it would help me. I'd just know to repeat the supposed fact that apples are X and bananas are Y, which I think is all that ever happens in the case of the blind describing colour. They're told facts about colour by the sighted and repeat them. Much like me repeating facts about science that I don't actually understand at all.

Real understanding requires actually having such a sense.

Or to give a more grounded example, I don't know what it feels like to lose a child because I've never lost one (or had one). I've seen (on TV at least) people who have lost a child, and the public expression of their grief, but the claim that I therefore know how they feel is ridiculous, because I don't. And I never will unless I lose a child.

Bornblind people can tell you that an object can't be all red and all blue at the same time. — green flag

OK? I can tell you that a particle can't be both positively charged and negatively charged. It doesn't mean that I know what either of those things mean. They are quite literally meaningless terms for me. I just know of them, and that, whatever they are, they're incompatible, because that's what I've been told.

Repetition of facts isn't real understanding.

Wait a minute, though. So they learn what 'pain' means from other people ? But haven't you been saying (basically) that it's label on something internal ? That it refers to a state of an immaterial ghost ?
But how could a parent ever check if the child was labelling states of the ghost correctly ? The whole theory of the ghost as the ground of meaning is like the idea of phlogiston or the ether. It plays no real role. 'Pain' is a mark or noise that a little primate might make to be comforted or medicated. — green flag

I burn my hand. I feel pain. I am told by my parents that I must be in pain. I learn to associate the word "pain" with the feeling.

I don't understand what's difficult to understand about this.

Imagine a person is not acting and still insists, while smiling and laughing, that they are suffering 'excruciating pain.' If they 'have' to be acting or not understanding English, that just supports my point. — green flag

I don't see how it supports your point. As I said before, nobody would ever learn to associate the word "pain" with the feeling that causes them to smile and laugh. If anything our common use of the word "pain" supports my assumption that other people feel the same thing I do, and is how I am able to talk about and understand their private experiences. Even though they're radically private, they're not radically different.

Although I admit it might not be evidence that they feel the same thing I do; it's only evidence that what they feel causes them to react in the same way as me.

If you stopped at the light because you saw that it was red, seeing was the cause and stopping was the effect. How can the effect be part of the cause? That appears to be an abuse of language. — frank

Exactly that. I take aspirin because I'm in pain. It's not that me being in pain just is me taking aspirin.

You seem to be hinting at truth apart from language, but to me that's a round square. Statements are true sometimes. Or we take them to be true...to express what is the case, etc. — green flag

Not really. I'm simply saying that it can be appropriate to say one thing, given the evidence available to us, even though that thing is false.

If someone is crying it is appropriate to say that they must be sad. But we're wrong, because they're just acting.

What if we cut out the middle man ? 'Seeing red' is acting accordingly, etc. We wise others decide that you saw red because you stopped at the light. (Stopping at the light is part of seeing red.) — green flag

This is the kind of Wittgensteinian nonsense that I just don't get.

You put a red ball and a blue ball in front of me. I can see that one is red and one is blue. I don't need to do or say anything that you can interpret as me "seeing red" or "seeing blue". Me seeing red and seeing blue has nothing to do with you or your judgement. It only has something to do with me and what's going on in my head.

But I insist that we have public criteria for when it's correct to assert someone is in pain. — green flag

This is misleading phrasing. "Correct" in this sense means "appropriate" or "justified", not "true".

But on your view we couldn't say that. Because your view allows for that person's pain to be what we call ecstasy. — green flag

Not really. If someone feels what I call "ecstasy" in response to cutting or burning their hand, they'd never learn to use the word "pain" to refer to it. If such a child burns their hand and laughs, they won't be told by their parents "you must be in pain", they'd be asked "why are you laughing?".

Here's what doesn't make sense : "It really hurts to chew broken glass, so he stuffed another handful in his mouth." — green flag

Ambiguous use of the word "sense" here. The sentence is meaningful and internally consistent, even though we might not understand the motivation of such a person (maybe he's a masochist, or filming a new season of Jackass).

"You can't know if my red is your red because seeing is private experience." — green flag

Which is true. I know for a fact that the term "red" covers a variety of different shades. I don't know that what I see to be one shade of red is what you see to be another shade of red.

And by extension, I don't know that what you see to be shades of red is what I see to be shades of orange, or green, or blue.

Let me try to paraphrase this. If 'pain' does not refer to different private experiences but rather to the same private experience, then I can sensibly talk about your pain, because it's the same as my pain.

How is this not a version of : if I happen to be right, then I happen to be right ? — green flag

I don't quite understand the question.

Consider this statement: your brother is older than you.

If you happen to have a brother then I am talking about him, and if he happens to be older than you then what I say is true.

I don't need to know that something is the case to talk about it, or be right about it.

So by the same token, even if I don't know that you experience something like my pain, if you do then I can (truthfully) talk about it.

I think this is a motte and bailey situation, where the motte is the ordinary use of 'pain' and the bailey is the dualistic metaphysical version. — green flag

If something like dualism is true and the pain I feel is some essentially private thing then there is no distinction between the "ordinary" use and the "dualistic metaphysical version". The "ordinary" use of pain is to refer to that private, mental phenomena. So this accusation seems to beg the question.

Indictment

34 counts of "falsifying business records in the first degree".

The defendant ... with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise...

Statement of Facts

1. The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.

2. From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects. In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.

3. One component of this scheme was that, at the Defendant’s request, a lawyer who then worked for the Trump Organization as Special Counsel to Defendant (“Lawyer A”), covertly paid $130,000 to an adult film actress shortly before the election to prevent her from publicizing a sexual encounter with the Defendant. Lawyer A made the $130,000 payment through a shell corporation he set up and funded at a bank in Manhattan. This payment was illegal, and Lawyer A has since pleaded guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution and served time in prison. Further, false entries were made in New York business records to effectuate this payment, separate and apart from the New York business records used to conceal the payment.

4. After the election, the Defendant reimbursed Lawyer A for the illegal payment through a series of monthly checks, first from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust (the “Defendant’s Trust”)—a Trust created under the laws of New York which held the Trump Organization entity assets after the Defendant was elected President—and then from the Defendant’s bank account. Each check was processed by the Trump Organization, and each check was disguised as a payment for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement. The payment records, kept and maintained by the Trump Organization, were false New York business records. In truth, there was no retainer agreement, and Lawyer A was not being paid for legal services rendered in 2017. The Defendant caused his entities’ business records to be falsified to disguise his and others’ criminal conduct.

You are assuming that 'pain' is like a label somehow pinned on something simultaneously understood to be radically elusive and ineffable. — green flag

It’s hardly elusive. When I’m in pain it’s pretty obvious. I have a private experience which is immediately apparent to me and I refer to it using the word “pain”. I then assume that there’s nothing special about me and that you experience something much the same, and refer to that experience using the same word.

Now it’s entirely possible that there is something special about me, and that whatever you feel when you burn yourself is nothing like the pain I feel when I burn myself, in which case you don’t feel pain (as I understand it) but instead feel something else that you happen to also call “pain”. But that it’s possible isn’t that it’s true, and if it’s not true then it is both the case that I can talk about and understand your pain and the case that your pain is private to you.

Yes, that's part of the grammar of the word. — green flag

It doesn’t have anything to do with grammar. I can be in pain even if I don’t have a language. It’s not as if pre-linguistic humans never had headaches.

I really don’t understand this devotion to Wittgenstein and this obsession with language. It just has nothing to do with whether or not there are private, first-person experiences (or whether or not the external world is coloured).

Perhaps you are implicitly assuming that I have the same pain beetle in my box, but assumption is parasitic on ordinary criteria for being in pain, such as talking about it or taking aspirin. — green flag

I can be in pain without talking about it or taking aspirin. I assume you can too. Maybe I’m wrong, but the idea that I can’t talk as if I’m right just makes no sense to me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-65167017

Following his arrival at court, Donald Trump is now formally under arrest and in police custody ahead of his upcoming arraignment.

19:15 for those of us living in the One True Timezone.

As I see it, the problem is assuming some kind of a dualism and then 'deriving' some limitation of science. — green flag

It’s not a case of assuming dualism, just as it’s not a case of assuming materialism on the other side.

It’s the case that either one finds a physicalist account of one’s first person experiences convincing or one doesn’t. And I’m not convinced by the claim that my first person experience of pain just is some particular arrangement of atoms (and other particles).

It might be that my first person experience of pain depends on and is caused by such an arrangement of atoms, but it doesn’t then follow that they are one-and-the-same.

My central point is that 'metaphysical' consciousness is semantically indeterminate and even paradoxical. — green flag

Something like Wittgenstein's argument against a private language? I'm not convinced by it. I made a passing comment about it here.

I'd say that your interior monologue is still bodily. Technology is being developed that can read your thoughts by little motions in the throat, etc. — green flag

There are studies that show that decision-making is unconscious, and that conscious decision-making is post hoc. So it could be that the technology you reference is reading that pre-conscious decision-making, not consciousness itself.

I would say that consciousness causes (some) behaviour, not that (some) behaviour is consciousness. As I mentioned before, I can think many things that I never "manifest" in behaviour.

Without merely assuming some strange and elusive entity that is essentially the same in all of us ? — green flag

That is indeed what we assume. Whether or not it's reasonable is a separate issue. The skeptic who questions the existence of other minds might argue that such an assumption is unreasonable.

I don't really understand your comments. I accept that consciousness often determines behaviour, and so that behaviour can indicate consciousness. But it doesn't follow from that that consciousness is behaviour. As you even say yourself "much of our behavior, I would say most, is not driven by consciousness" and so clearly they are two different things.

Why do you say it is a fact and it is true? — Richard B

Because I believe it to be so.

First, you will need to make some acknowledgements to the points made before answering your question. I don't want to address the same claims again and again. — Nickolasgaspar

Depending on your answer to my question, the other points are irrelevant. Almost nobody denies the causal relationship between brain activity and mental phenomena. It's accepted that we feel pain because of such-and-such brain activity, and so can infer how someone feels by examining their brain and other bodily functions.

That the neuroscientist can explain that such-and-such brain activity causes the first-person experience of pain isn't that he can explain how or why it does so, or the nature of first-person experience itself.

You said this is a fact. Is that because you have testified to this, and thus, it is a fact because you say so? — Richard B

No, I'm saying so because I believe it to be a fact. And because it is a fact, what I say is true.

The word "Natural" can be used as an umbrella term when we want to make a distinction between mental and physical properties of matter. — Nickolasgaspar

If there's a distinction between mental and physical properties then you accept that a) the mental is non-physical, that b) mental things exist, and so that c) non-physical things exist.

If you do not like verifiability, how does this fact establish its truth or falsity? One can make claims, but we do need to know how to establish whether it is a fact or not. — Richard B

I don't understand the question.

It is either a fact that intelligent, extra-terrestrial life exists or it isn't.
It is either a fact that private experiences exist or they don't.

Whether or not intelligent, extra-terrestrial life or private experiences exist has nothing to do with what we can or can't verify. The world just either is that way or it isn't.

Well it depends form the meaning of the word. This is why I always use the term "natural". — Nickolasgaspar

What's the difference between "natural" and "physical"?

IT is physical since the mechanisms are physical, the emergent property is Natural (mental property). — Nickolasgaspar

So are you arguing for property dualism?

Of course it is, just look at the huge bibliography on the phenomenon...Scientific books and papers can not be written without analyzing the actual phenomenon. — Nickolasgaspar

There are lots of scientific papers on brain activity and behavioural responses. This does not prima facie say anything about first-person experience.

Much of the science on first-person experience depends on taking for granted what people self-report, which is why the issue of animal consciousness is problematic (they can't tell us anything). But someone saying "I am in pain" is not the same thing as that person's first-person experience of pain, and so that there is scientific evidence of the former isn't that there is scientific evidence of the latter.

The phenomenon is mental but it is physically induced. — Nickolasgaspar

If the phenomenon is mental, and if the mental is non-physical, then the phenomenon is non-physical.

That it has a physical cause isn't that it, itself, is physical.

The other problem with your claim is that a personal experience....is a personal experience! So accusing science for not being able to experience "your experience" is like accusing a tuna sandwich for being slow in a 100m race. — Nickolasgaspar

I don't know what you mean by science experiencing something.

Either my first-person experience is susceptible to scientific analysis or it isn't. So which is it?

If it isn't then either a) my first-person experience isn't a physical phenomenon or b) some physical phenomena are not susceptible to scientific analysis. So which is it?

But, in principle, this claim cannot be verified as either true or false, so we are not talking about facts here. — Richard B

I don't think facts depend on verifiability. It just either is or isn't the case that private experiences exist.

I suppose some anti-realists might disagree, but then I don't think anti-realists are going to be direct realists anyway.

That is not the point, you are avoiding to consider the evidence in favor of its physical nature by using a bad excuse (science can not experience our personal experience) — Nickolasgaspar

It's not a bad excuse.

The argument is:

1) all physical phenomena is susceptible to scientific analysis
2) we have first-person experience
3) some aspect of first-person experience is not susceptible to scientific analysis
4) therefore, some aspect of first-person experience is not a physical phenomenon

The argument is valid, and so to reject the conclusion you must reject one of the premises. But you've previously accepted premises 2) and 3), and I assume you also accept 1), so it's irrational to then reject 4).

Secondly nothing in your "if" statement takes our current scientific evidence in to consideration! — Nickolasgaspar

Obviously, that's the point. If some aspect of consciousness is non-physical then there can be no scientific (physical) evidence of it.

Arguing that because there is no scientific evidence for it then it doesn't exist is to beg the question and assume that if something exists then there is scientific evidence for it.

-So why are you doing this? — Nickolasgaspar

Because the purpose of this discussion is to assess the evidence either for or against the neuroscientist's claim that consciousness can be exhaustively explained by brain activity (or other physical phenomena). It is perfectly correct not to beg the question and assume either materialism or dualism from the start.

You really do sound like some kind of evangelist. It seems @bert1 was right about you in the OP.