I recall reading that it was due to a technicality and that Starr messed up. — Michael

Here's where I read it:

"Have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, as that term is defined in Deposition Exhibit 1, as modified by the court?"

...

"Sexual relations" was defined as follows: "A person engages in 'sexual relations' when the person knowingly engages in or causes contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person."

Why would your personal conclusions about the function of your brain (or mind, even) be treated with any more authority that your first person feelings about gravity, or electromagnetism, or evolution? — Isaac

My experiences aren't self-evidence of gravity, but they are self-evidence of my experiences. That's common sense.

Exactly. By their responses. Not their private experiences. — Isaac

Yes, it's entirely possible that only adult humans have private experiences. Or it's entirely possible that only I have private experiences, and that the rest of you are p-zombies. But I think it more likely that I'm nothing particularly special and that the rest of you have private experiences, and that non-human animals have private experiences too.

When Hume suggested a human with otherwise correct vision can install a missing shade of blue, he has already granted that the name of the color doesn’t reflect the capacity. Could have been any gap in the spectrum, which makes the name of it irrelevant. — Mww

I agree. If some future scientist were able to modify my eye and give me tetrachromacy, I would see more colours than I see now, even though I wouldn't have words to refer to these new colours.

You know this how? — Isaac

Evolution of colour vision in mammals

You want to say that distinction consists in different 'experiences'.

I'm claiming there's no evidence for that. — Isaac

Experience is evidence of itself. My different experiences are self-evident.

The second point I want to make is, even if two differences are detectable between colours, for example 2 different shades of green, at what point do we determine when green is no longer a shade of green but a shade of blue.
Some argue turquoise is a tone of blue. Some argue it is a tone of green. Others say its its own unique colour.

There is a tribe in Africa, swahili I believe, where blue and green are but shades of the same colour. Are they any less correct in believing so verses our distinction?

In a spectrum of colour where changes are seamless, fluid and graduating, placing borders to define categories is more or less arbitrary to a point and you could place 100 borders or 20 or 8. — Benj96

I agree with this, but it has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I don't care what words one uses to refer to the colours one sees. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we do see colours, and that seeing colours and talking about colours are two completely different things. I do the former even without the latter.

It's not the case that if John has a single word "grue" that refers to the colours that the rest of us call "blue" and "green" that if shown something green and something blue then they will appear to be identical, just as I don't need individual words for each shade of red to see that one shade of red isn't identical to a different shade of red. I might use the same word "red" to describe both colours, but I can see that they're different.

@Isaac

I refer you to this. Are you really trying to argue that without a language then we would just see a single non-coloured circle (or maybe nothing, because that there is a circle at all depends on it being coloured in contrast to the white background?), and not a coloured circle surrounded by a differently coloured ring surrounded by yet another differently coloured ring?

I think that that's an extraordinary claim, inconsistent with common sense, and that the burden is on you to prove it, not on me to disprove it.

Not having a language doesn't make the world appear black and white (or me outright blind).

I'm quite aware of your point, what I'm waiting for is any grounds for asserting it. — Isaac

On the grounds that babies and non-human animals and illiterate deaf mutes raised by wolves in the jungle can see colours.

On what grounds? — Isaac

First-person empirical evidence.

He should have gone down for that. The Democrats have no moral standing here either. — Baden

I recall reading that it was due to a technicality and that Starr messed up. Clinton was asked if he had had sexual relations, and was given a list of activities that count as "sexual relations". Receiving a blow job wasn't on the list.

It would have been interesting if he'd answered "yes" because under a "normal" understanding of the phrase it would have included receiving a blow job, and then he be found guilty of perjury because receiving a blow job wasn't on the pre-defined list of what was meant by "sexual relations".

No. You can see five different colours there. That they are all shades of 'red' is something you were taught by the culture you grew up in. — Isaac

This is nonsense. You might as well say "you don't see five different colours; you see five different things. That they are all 'colours' is something you were taught in the culture you grew up in".

Or maybe "you don't see; you [something]. That it is 'seeing' is something you were taught in the culture you grew up in".

Or maybe "you don't get taught in a culture you grew up in; that it is 'being taught in the culture you grew up in' is ... [unintelligible rubbish]".

Again, you seem to fail to understand the use-mention distinction.

But this isn't the main point. The main point is that seeing colours has nothing to do with "reaching" for some word or other. Sight (and hearing and feeling and tasting) has nothing to do with language. And also that the colours you see when looking at a photo of a dress might not be the colours that I see when looking at that same photo of a dress.

We have sensory inputs, we have behavioural responses, we have post hoc self reports. — Isaac

We have consciousness. We're not just input-output machines. I have a first person experience when I'm sitting still, in silence, watching and hearing and feeling the things going on around me. I don't need to say, or think, "I'm in pain" to be in pain. I just feel it.

Clinton committed perjury. — Hanover

And he was rightfully impeached for it. Whether or not he was wrongfully acquitted is a different matter. But also, as I said before, impeachment and prosecution are two different things.

It just strikes me as naive and unrealistic to suggest that politicians are apolitical. — Hanover

I'm not saying that they're apolitical. I'm saying that it's wrong for you to suggest that Bragg should have considered how prosecuting Trump would have affected the Democrat Party at the next election. If there's evidence of a crime than it is right to press charges.

Or pay attention to whether you're going to secure a conviction and ask yourself what the consequences of your decisions will be. I've not created a per se rule protecting former presidents. I've just asked that politicians pay attention to the political landscape. — Hanover

I assume they believe that there is a good chance of conviction, and that the consequences are that a criminal is punished for his crimes.

It is corruption, plain and simple, for a distinct attorney to refuse to convict because it may damage their preferred political party's chances at the next election. I'm sure you wouldn't like it if Bragg were to refuse to prosecute a Democrat congressman for a crime because he wants that congressman to be re-elected.

At least acknowledge the irony of the left demanding law and order and siding full step with law enforcement. Cities burned in lawlessness as politicians offered tempered politically motivated responses the past few years. And today it's being argued that the right is the party of innocent until proven guilty? — Hanover

I don't know what you're trying to say here. Is there evidence that some Democrat politician committed a crime and that some Democrat district attorney refused to prosecute them because they are a fellow Democrat, and that "the left" are okay with this?

The impeachment of Clinton was a massive mistake and is often cited for the reason why the Republicans lost power after great gains.

There is a political reality that cannot be ignored. You can go on about how justice demands the prosecution of every prosecutable crime damn the torpedoes, and we can then end up with failed impeachments and acquittals followed by emboldened politicians who should have lost power. — Hanover

Impeachment and prosecution are different things.

The Manhattan case is a case about misuse of campaign funds and falsification of records. It's a finance regulatory case. — Hanover

It's a financial crime, and financial crimes should be prosecuted (and punished if found guilty).

Either apply the law equally to all offenders or get rid of the law. Why should Trump be given special treatment just because he's a former President? It may be politically expedient, but the fair application of the law shouldn't be motivated by politics. That reeks of corruption.

I wish he'd be hit for something real, not whether he might have improperly paid off the woman he slept with. — Hanover

This is a very rhetorical way to phrase it. It's like me embezzling funds from some company I manage and then describing the subsequent prosecution as being just about "improperly paying for a new car".

I think there's also a case of people taking "innocent until proven guilty" too far. They presume innocence (which is fine), but then use that to baselessly assert that therefore all the evidence that proves guilt must be false or fake or fabricated or whatever. Or they just ignore the evidence altogether, and just assert that the prosecution was politically motivated, and so even if he's clearly guilty he shouldn't be held accountable.

It is not that we don't have private experience but the language to articulate, like we do in the public sphere. — Richard B

Yet we can quite coherently talk about the well-observed fact that to some people the infamous photo of the dress appears white and gold, and to others black and blue. We can quite coherently talk about the colour blind. We can quite coherently talk about a situation such as that shown in this picture.



There is really no difficulty (for me at least) in understanding and talking about other people having a different private experience to the same external stimulus.

Now imagine that that photo represents the reality of two people living on Twin Earth. They speak a language much like English except with a different colour vocabulary. The apple reflects light with a wavelength of 450nm. They have learnt to refer to the colour of such objects as "foo".

I wouldn't say that "foo" refers to some public thing (such as light with a wavelength of 450nm, or a surface that reflects such light). I would say that "foo" refers to the quality of their private experience. If I were the man in this picture and able to learn of this picture, and of the fact that objects which reflect light with a wavelength of 450nm appear differently to the woman, I wouldn't think that the colour foo appears differently to the woman; I would think that objects which reflect light with a wavelength of 450nm don't appear to be the colour foo to this woman; they appear to be a different colour. The colour she calls "foo" isn't the colour that I call "foo".

But, again, this discussion on the meaning of colour terms is irrelevant to the actual disagreement between the direct and indirect realist. What matters is the relationship between the man and the woman's private experiences (which are different) and the mind-independent nature of the apple they are looking at. Would it be an accurate representation of reality to colour the apple in that picture, and if so should it be red or green (or other)? A direct realist (at least of the colour primitivist kind) would argue that it should be coloured, and that if it is coloured green then the woman is seeing it correctly and the man incorrectly, or if it is coloured red then the man is seeing it correctly and the woman incorrectly. This is a position that I believe is refuted by our scientific understanding of the world and perception. Colour is "in the head", not in apples (or light).

It may be that seeing some colour is causally covariant with certain wavelengths of light, but so too is the feeling of being cold or hot causally covariant with certain temperatures, and pain causally covariant with having one's nerves cut with a knife. But that there there is some regularity between cause and effect isn't that they are the same thing, and even if you want to adopt the same vocabulary to refer to both the cause and the effect it would be a fallacy of equivocation to then deny the distinction, and I think that this fallacy is all-too-common in discussions on colour.

I see this as a major fuck up by the Democrats. — Hanover

If there is evidence of a crime then the grand jury was right to vote for indictment and the DA right to bring charges. He might be a Democrat, but it was the decision of him and his Manhattan attorneys (and the grand jury), not the Democratic Party.

Are you suggesting that the Democratic Party should have pressured a DA into not bringing charges despite evidence of a crime because it would have been better for them politically? Surely we should all be against that kind of corruption. I'm sure we'd all be against it if it was a Republican DA ignoring evidence of a crime committed by Trump, or a Democrat DA ignoring evidence of a crime committed by Biden. The fact that the DA and Trump belong to different political parties shouldn't make any difference. Political expediency shouldn't influence law enforcement.

Apparently being charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records.

I think your point is reasonable, but you are ignoring that 'see' is part of a system of concepts. — green flag

Seeing is a type of experience. Babies can see, non-linguistic animals can see, the illiterate deaf mute raised by wolves in the jungle can see.

Take this picture as an example:



Does anyone really want to argue that without a language with colour words such as "red", "green", and "blue", then we would just see a single (non-coloured?) circle, and not a coloured circle surrounded by a differently coloured ring surrounded by yet another differently coloured ring?

Another approach to color and the like is to think how color terms play a role in the larger context of conversation. — green flag

Why? What is this obsession with language? Is it impossible for me to see that the sky and the grass are different colours without some language which includes a vocabulary to name such colours? I don't think so. The fact that we need language to talk about the colours we see is irrelevant to this discussion.

Animals get around the world without language, and they certainly are experiencing the world.

But humans use language to understand and communicate what is going on in their experience. So, sometimes what we say makes senses and sometimes it does not. — Richard B

And so trying to say that language entails that we don't have private experiences is saying something that doesn't make sense. Any theory of language that entails this is demonstrably false.

More like a grammatical fiction. — Richard B

It has nothing to do with grammar. Experience isn't language. I can be an illiterate, deafblind mute, and yet still feel pain.

I agree that not colouring the circle would be more consistent with Direct Realism. — RussellA

Colouring the circle would be consistent with direct realism, specifically any direct realism that subscribes to colour primitivism. I believe most indirect realists would reject colour primitivism, and so not colouring the circle is consistent with indirect realism.

Yes, in practice this must be the case, as Bill and Bob are the product of the same 3.5 billion years of evolution, they share 99.9 % of their genetic makeup and they share the same common ancestor, Mitochondrial Eve.

Knowing these facts, Bill and Bob will agree they most likely have had the same private experience and therefore can sensibly name it "grue". — RussellA

That's not what I was getting at. Due to the fact that colour experiences are causally covariant with external stimulation, when Bill sees an object that reflects light with a wavelength of 500nm, he will always see it to be the colour shown inside his head in the picture, and when Bob sees an object that reflects light with a wavelength of 500nm, he will always see it to be the colour shown inside his head in the picture. And both Bill and Bob learn to use the word "grue" to describe the colour of objects which, they later learn, reflect light with a wavelength of 500nm.

So even though their private experiences of objects that reflect light with a wavelength of 500nm are different, they use the word "grue" in the same way. However, I would argue that the word "grue" refers to their private experiences, which are different, despite the shared public use. And I would argue that on the premise that, were I to be Bill and to learn of this picture, and that objects which reflect light with a wavelength of 500nm appear differently to Bob, I wouldn't say that grue appears differently to Bob, I would say that these objects don't appear grue to Bob; they appear a different colour.

Or to make it clearer, if we switch back to our ordinary colour terms, Bill wouldn't say that Bob sees blue differently, he'd say that Bob sees green instead of blue.

Better yet, to be consistent with Wittgenstein's view of “private language” one should remove the colors inside the heads of the figures. — Richard B

But we have private experiences, so removing the colours inside the heads is to deny a fact.

I like the picture, although to be consistent with indirect realism and to prevent any real-world bias, it would be best not to colour the circle in the middle, and to invent a new word to replace the use of "blue". Perhaps this:




What does the word "grue" refer to? Wittgenstein would say some public thing, but I disagree. I'd say it refers to each person's subjective colour experience. It just so happens that due to subjective colour experiences being causally covariant with external stimulation (the same kind of light will trigger the same kind of experience), when Bill says "this is grue", Bob will agree, and they will both agree that things appear grue if the light they reflect has a wavelength of 500nm (because they're physicists and have measured the light reflected from that circle in between them).

'Red' is a specific category — Isaac

Red is a colour, the word "red" refers to that colour. You seem to be making a use-mention error.

I can see five different reds here. I don't "reach" for five different words to describe what I see. That I see five different reds has nothing to do with language and everything to do with the raw subjective quality of my experience.

It doesn't prove we 'experience red', or that 'red' is correlated with some neural state. — Isaac

The experimenters seem to think so, given that they explicitly say "color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus" and "color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing" and "the present study ... examine[d] how subjective color experience is represented at each stage of the human ventral visual pathway".

It doesn't even mention seeing 'red'. — Isaac

It mentions "colour percepts" and "colour perception" and "colour experience" and "colour we see".

Trying to argue that the paper doesn't support my position against yours because it doesn't mention the specific word "red" is a really poor attempt at gaslighting.

Again, the paper says "color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus" and "color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing". This explicitly favours my claims.

This task aimed to exclude the involvement of higher cognitive processes, such as color naming, as it did not require any explicit judgment of the chromaticity of the stimulus.

Seeing red isn't "reaching" for the word "red".

Color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing in hierarchically organized cortical visual areas.

Seeing red corresponds to particular brain activity.

In what way do you think the experiment supports that conclusion? — Isaac

The very first two sentences of the summary:

There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus.

The very first sentence of the abstract:

Color is a perceptual construct that arises from neural processing in hierarchically organized cortical visual areas.

Further into the paper, under the heading "Representations of Subjective Color Experience":

This task aimed to exclude the involvement of higher cognitive processes, such as color naming, as it did not require any explicit judgment of the chromaticity of the stimulus.

For the Indirect Realist, the world in which the tree exists is in their mind. For the Direct Realist, the world in which the tree exists is in a mind-independent world. — RussellA

And that has nothing to do with the use of the word "tree". An illiterate deaf mute with no language can see a tree "in their mind". They just won't call it "tree".

If that were true, you would know the meaning of the word "mlima" even if you had never perceived one. — RussellA

No, it would mean that I could see something without having a word for it, which is true. I've seen many animals that I don't have a name for. I've smelt many different smells that I don't have different words for.

Sooner or later, meaning depends on perception. — RussellA

But perception doesn't depend on meaning. It might be that we can't have language without perception, but we can have perception without language.

What is it you think that experiment is demonstrating which contradicts what I've said? — Isaac

That seeing the colour red isn't just "reaching" for the word "red", and that colour is "in the head", not a property of external world objects (whether light or the apple).

That "there is literally [something] in the brain ... that corresponds to 'seeing red'".

Well, for a start both those claims are demonstrably false. learning new things about an object changes the priors our lower hierarchy cortices use to process sensory inputs which changes the resultant responses, including post hoc construction of the 'experience'. This has been demonstrated over an over again in the literature.

But notwithstanding that, the claim isn't that you'll see it differently, the claim is about seeing 'red'. 'Red' is a cultural division of a continuous colour spectrum. No one can see 'red' who doesn't know that category. they just see. Light stimulates the retina and the brain responds. That response can be of almost any type depending on priors (and to a small extent 'hard-wiring'). None of that response answers to 'seeing red'. there is literally nothing in the brain (and people have looked really hard) that corresponds to 'seeing red'.

All we have neurologically is photons hitting retinas and behavioural responses in a constant cycle. they differ between people and there's no grounds at all for identifying any of those responses as being 'seeing red'. — Isaac

Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway

There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1). The distinction between these two different neural representations advances our understanding of visual neural coding.

...

This task aimed to exclude the involvement of higher cognitive processes, such as color naming, as it did not require any explicit judgment of the chromaticity of the stimulus.

Learning that the tongue contains gustatory cells that respond to the chemicals in food, and that sugar tastes sweet because of its hydrogen bonds, doesn't change the taste of sugar. And learning the name of this animal doesn't change how it looks. And in fact with this animal, being able to see it doesn't involve "reaching" for whatever word names it (given that I can see it but don't know its name), and so too seeing the colour red doesn't involve "reaching" for the word "red".

You really are making such bizarre claims.

Exactly, that is what an Indirect Realist would say. — RussellA

There's no meaningful difference between these two phrases:

1. In the absence of any English speaker the word "tree" wouldn't exist, but the object currently referred to by the word "tree" would exist.

2. In the absence of any English speaker the word "tree" wouldn't exist, but the tree would exist.

The second, however, is a more natural way of talking, and so should be preferred.

You need to read up on the use-mention distinction.

As I believe in the ontology of Neutral Monism, where reality consists of elementary particles and elementary forces in space-time, the meaning of the word tree is fundamental to my philosophical understanding. — RussellA

The meaning of the word "tree" has nothing to do with perception. Seeing and hearing and feeling has nothing to do with language. Blind people aren't blind because they lack the right vocabulary; they're blind because their eyes don't work.

I don't know the name of this animal. I can still see it. It still exists. Whether or not I see it directly or indirectly is the topic of this discussion, and the answer to that depends on the nature of experience and its relation to external world objects, and that has nothing to do with how we talk. We can consider ourselves to be illiterate mutes just for the sake of argument. Presumably we'd still see things (and if we're considering sight specifically, throw in the assumption that we're deaf, too).

However, in the absence of any English speaker, the word "tree" would not exist, and "trees" would not exist in the world. — RussellA

Use-mention error.

In the absence of any English speaker the word "tree" wouldn't exist, but the object currently referred to by the word "tree" would exist.

Or, more simply, that thing over there is a tree, and that thing over there would continue to exist even if we stopped using the word "tree". It might no longer be called a tree, but it would still exist. And newly discovered animals don't come into existence only when we name them. They exist, and are what they are, even before we call them something.

There's a very peculiar obsession with language in this discussion. It's not clear to me what English grammar and vocabulary has to do with perception. Are people asserting a very extreme version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis?

If this is true, it's not a discovery about seeing but only about the grammar of 'see.' — green flag

Yes, that's where much of this discussion gets lost; in irrelevant arguments about grammar.

We use the word "see" in (at least) two slightly different ways, with direct and indirect realists having a preference for one or the other, and it distracts from the more pertinent epistemological problem of perception (the relationship between phenomenology and the mind-independent nature of things).

We can talk about the schizophrenic hearing voices (that aren't there), or we can talk about the schizophrenic not "actually" hearing voices (because there aren't any). The idea that one or the other is in some sense the "correct" way of talking, or says something about the philosophy or science of perception, is mistaken. They're just different ways of talking that have nothing to do with the actual disagreement between direct and indirect realists.

It means that I'll reach for the word "red" if asked to describe the colour.

...

I didn't say it happened in a vacuum. there are all sorts of other cognitive activities resultant from seeing an apple, but none of them have anything to do with 'red'. 'Red' is a word, so it is resultant of activity in my language centres. — Isaac

People can see red even if they don't have a language to describe colour. They can feel pain even if they don't have a language to describe pain. They can smell roses even if they don't have a language to describe smells.

In fact smells are a good example this. I can smell so many different things and yet I don't have words to describe each kind of smell. There's no thinking involved in this. I don't think, "it's smell X" or "it's smell Y". I just smell.

The meanings of words change. Before there was a scientific test for what we should call "red" it would have been more a community decision - to be 'red' was simply to be a member of that group of things decreed to be 'red', but nowadays, I suspect people will defer to the scientific measurement. — Isaac

What a young child means when they say that an apple is red is exactly what I mean when I say that an apple is red, but I know about electromagnetic radiation and the young child doesn't. It just isn't the case that when I say "(I see that) the apple is red" that I am saying anything about quantum mechanics, and it's certainly not the case that when I see that the apple is red (but say nothing) that I am thinking anything about quantum mechanics. I'm just seeing.

To reiterate, in one version of the argument the indirect realist claims what we see is a model of the tree — Banno

It’s just another way of talking. It’s like saying that I feel pain rather than saying I feel a knife stabbing me. That sensation of pain is feeling the knife stabbing me. But pain is a property of the experience, a mental phenomena, not a property of the knife, and we do in fact feel pain. There’s no suggestion of a homunculus here. Why it would be any different for sight is lost on me.

Try talking instead about the apple "appearing" smooth. — Banno

Yes, I’ve mentioned this before. There’s something peculiar about sight that I think is more susceptible to direct realist thinking than other senses might be. Does the fact that you would feel cold were you to be placed in the Arctic but that a polar bear doesn’t show either that you can sense the cold that’s there better than the bear, or that you mistakingly sense some cold that isn’t there? Or is it just the case that your body is such that, in such temperatures, you feel cold? I think the latter. And I think that things like colour are no different in principle. It’s just a different mode of experience caused by a different type of stimulus.