doubt must have a reason. — Agent Smith

Consider that taking the metaphysical subject or Cartesian ego for granted with its qualia and Inner Light and other such mystified fireworks led to mountains and oceans of confusion. I don't deny qualia but point out (1) their uselessness for what they are supposed to be good for and (2) their tendency to confuse us about all kinds of related issues.

My primary objection is to the (what I'd call a) superstition that meaning can be founded upon them.

Given that we're all human, we all have the same genes, genes that determine, at the very least, our general physical structures (including the brain), does it make sense to say our private experiences could be poles apart? — Agent Smith

I've thought about this objection before, and it's a good one. It's tempting to grant your point, but...It doesn't make sense to say either that they are poles apart or just the same. We have no data. None. You can say that similarity of structure implies similarity of qualia, but such a claim (also to quote @180 Proof) is 'evidence free.'

That's a 'logical' or 'grammatical' point which goes against my 'intuition' that 'of course' my little mammalian heart experiences the same love for them that my wife and my pup and my kitty feel for me.

The facts are such that living beings have evolved. They could easily have been otherwise, but we would never have been around to discuss it. — Wayfarer

I agree that a relative stability of physical laws so far makes sense with the rest of what we know, but this is no proof of necessity. I see how one can make a case that the law of gravity has held for centuries, but I don't see how that case can be extended to the future. Only a circular argument comes to mind (the future will resemble the past because the future resembled the past in the past.)

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But let me also observe that the notion of necessary truth is unpopular - because it seems to suggest, or be underwritten by, the notion of a necessary being, which is of course a no-go idea for naturalism. — Wayfarer

To me it makes more sense to speak in terms of a restlessness with brute facts. To find necessity is to find causal linkage, possibly exploitable. The PSR is perhaps more an expression of human curiosity than some primordial cosmic logic. We want to know why why why. This makes sense as an evolved trait, too, since it's presumably useful to always sniff around for correlations and 'handles' (places where small effort leads to great reward) and not be satisfied with 'useless' or 'meaningless' or 'brute' presence. The idea of God makes every single detail of the world meaningful and justified.

Whereas natural laws, principles and so on - could not have been other. That’s what makes them ‘laws’. — Wayfarer

I think the 'law' metaphor just expresses our expectation that the pattern will hold. It's logically possible that the 'laws' could change. With computers it's easy to simulate alternative worlds with different laws, such as a world where gravity is an inverse cube law.

What's your take on telepathy? Is it real? If it is, what are the implications vis-à-vis qualia and consciousness? Can I get inside your head? — Agent Smith

I'm not aware of any evidence for it.

My bias is that my 'thoughts' (minimally muttered strings of tokens) are not fundamentally private. I speculate that it's possible, in principle at least, to read someone's so-called 'mind,' at least in simpler scenarios. I happen to be watching the show Lie to Me at the moment, and it's scary how we give ourselves away (assuming the script is somewhat science-based.) I'd rather the so-called 'soul' be an inviolable fortress but don't find it plausible.

The most careful way to express what I'm speculating is the prediction of public behavior that includes the emission of tokens (words.) Note that only the unity of the body is presupposed here, for the body is an uncontroversial public object, unlike (for philosophers at least) that old ghost 'consciousness.' As I see it, the problem with 'qualia' is 'grammar deep.' I could never 'be sure' I was telepathizing your experience, for the grammar suggest to me (ambiguously) that only the 'official' possessor or victim of these qualia could not be wrong. How does one test telepathy ? By calling the jack of spades? But that's not qualia but only a public event that suggests some kind of transmission.

We made them private and inaccessible. — EugeneW

How so? By simply not talking about them? What I have in mind is that I'd confuse people if I talked about 'co-dreaming' with my brother in California (far away). The grammar or logic of dreams (as a flexible rule) doesn't allow that. Of course meanings (habits of public use and associated norms) can drift.

We both hear him. Likewise we both have dreams. — EugeneW

I'm tempted to say 'yes, we both have dreams.' I think this is because our uses of the word 'dream' conform simultaneously to both of our grammatical expectations. If, on the other hand, you tell me that you had to wipe some dreams off your toothbrush, I'd wonder if we were still speaking the same language, if you knew what a dream was, if you had dreams.

Sensations aren't exactly perfect when it comes to conveying Wittgenstein's point for they have secondary public correlates (facial expressions, body language that is). — Agent Smith

I know what you mean by correlates, but, strictly speaking, the 'private experience' grammar/logic implies (in my opinion) an empty data set. If we take philosophy to share some of the virtues of science, then we need to be able to look for correlation between two public entities. In the case of qualia, the data is missing 'in principle.' I can't correlate anything at all with the hole in your donut or the beetle in your box, for it is 'invisible by definition.' Of course we can have correlations of measurements of facial expressions and the use of tokens like 'pain' or 'joy.' (This is why I chose the donut. We do have a cluster of correlations of public events, but the obscure 'thing itself' at the center of these events, the guest of honor, has somehow lost its invitation to the party. )

What all of us do with "Yahweh"? That's public meaning, oui? In Wittgenstein's universe, that's about all the meaning a word can have; any private meaning, as he said and you pointed out, "drops out of consideration and becomes irrelevant". — Agent Smith

Exactly. That's how I see Wittgenstein see it and I agree.

By the way, I had no dreams tonight that I remember now. I could have had them though, and probably had. You'll have to take my word as proof. — EugeneW

I believe you.

Not sure I understand what you mean by "sign pain". What you mean? — EugeneW

I simply mean the written or spoken word 'pain,' as distinct from what it is supposed (assumed) to refer to.

Well, I guess an idealist would argue that everything we see, we take for granted as real when it is actually a product of mind. Does that count? — Tom Storm

One interesting thing about this plausible idealist is that 'his' vision or 'dream' of his own skull would also be a 'product of mind.' A skeptic might ask 'him' how 'he' is so sure that 'he' is some kind of singular or unified interior monologue that gazes and listens upon a world without eyes or ears (for these too are mere illusions 'products of mind,' if you ask 'him.') ('His' genitals and gender are also products of mind, as well as the concept of mind of course.)

If you hear people talking in their sleep you have proof of the dreaming. Likewise for animals. You might even put me under a brain-scanning machine. Then you could see if I dream when asleep. What proof do you need more? — EugeneW

This to me is more of the donut metaphor. The 'dream itself' is 'logically' (grammatically) inaccessible. We talk around it when it's time to make the donut. But for the 'sign' to have a meaning requires its connection to other public events entangled with the expression of the token 'dream.'

It's a relief to me that someone groks the 'uselessness' of qualia I'm trying to sketch. It's so 'obvious' eventually and yet so absurd on the face of it. For 'of course' my private experience is that which is closest to me and the last thing in the world to doubt, because, you know, 'logic' (which is just, in my view, contingent grammatical habit.)

It's actually nice that philosophy has surprises in store for those who hang in there. The later Wittgenstein only seems boring to those who aren't ready. What say you?

I think pain is the donut tasting like shit. The hole is just empty space. — EugeneW

The 'raw feel' is generally understood to be radically or perfectly private. So only you have access to your pain and only I have access to mine. The pre-philosophical theory is that the 'sign' pain gets its meaning from such private experience. So maybe, this theory implies, the word 'pain' has different meanings for us. But I think it's better to look at the way this sign 'pain' is traded publicly.

How much does precision determine the validity of scientific theories? — Agent Smith

Any mathologers around here who could help? — Agent Smith

I'm a mathologer myself. You ask a deep question. But I think it's safe to say that Newtonian physics seemed so convincing because the speeds and masses involved meant that the Newtonian map/model was good enough to seem like more than a map.

I can't vouch for this source, but this example is what I was hinting at. Such anomalies might be written off as a noise or due to some subtle unseen cause, at least until a more comprehensive and/or more accurate theory comes along.

As seen from Earth the precession of Mercury's orbit is measured to be 5600 seconds of arc per century (one second of arc=1/3600 degrees). Newton's equations, taking into account all the effects from the other planets (as well as a very slight deformation of the sun due to its rotation) and the fact that the Earth is not an inertial frame of reference, predicts a precession of 5557 seconds of arc per century. There is a discrepancy of 43 seconds of arc per century.

This discrepancy cannot be accounted for using Newton's formalism. Many ad-hoc fixes were devised (such as assuming there was a certain amount of dust between the Sun and Mercury) but none were consistent with other observations (for example, no evidence of dust was found when the region between Mercury and the Sun was carefully scrutinized). In contrast, Einstein was able to predict, without any adjustments whatsoever, that the orbit of Mercury should precess by an extra 43 seconds of arc per century should the General Theory of Relativity be correct.

https://aether.lbl.gov/www/classes/p10/gr/PrecessionperihelionMercury.htm

Indeed, to understand randomness at all scales, one has to go its source, the level where it's most conspicuous, most apparent, most obvious - particles. — Agent Smith

And does that not just piss brute fact over inch and pore of us? Making havoc of explanations? If memory serves, there was a moment of hubris where some leading scientists thought that reality was pretty much explained. Ah but we just didn't have equipment that was sensitive enough. We were fooled by low resolution and the law of large numbers...

Think about this: why should nature obey to the ridiculous logic, miserable mental frames, poor schemes, petty rational systems, created by humans? — Angelo Cannata

Especially when we seem to be merely a piece of that same nature, its 'creation.'

We can’t avoid interpreting. Interpreting means that we cannot find anything objective, because whatever we consider is automatically filtered, adapted, changed, by our action of interpreting. The very ideas of logic and randomness are human interpretations. — Angelo Cannata

Another nice one!

When we are able to predict the behaviour of an object, or an animal, this does not mean that the object, or the animal, is behaving according to our human extremely limited, I would even say stupid, logic. It is the opposite: we have built a logic that we adapted to what we observe in phenomenons, in order to gain some understanding and some mastering on those phenomenons. — Angelo Cannata

Well put! Our oversimplifications are useful but not constraints on what we model.

Sophists offer us beautiful dead women as if we're necrophiliacs, philosophers offer us beautiful alive women who we can have a decent relationship with. — Agent Smith

Nice!

As the old man put it, a living dog is better than a dead lion.

Unless the dino-exterminator asteroid was a planned event. — Agent Smith

I was thinking of randomness on the level of particles, which must play a role in mutation and add up to whether a rock falls on the head of a critter or even (eventually) whether an asteroid smashes into our blue planet.

Wittgenstein seems to be/is using experience (can't find a better/right term), pain to be precise, in the same ways as Descartes uses thinking (cogito ergo sum). Both become the foundation of knowledge i.e. they can be employed to exorcize philosophy of skepticism. — Agent Smith

Not to be contrary, but I think Wittgenstein's beetle analogy shows the semantic uselessness of sensation. 'Pain' gets its meaning from the public corona of the supposed 'raw feel.' The pain itself (the quale) is like the hole in a donut. That hole 'seems' or is habitually understood to be the source or ground of the meaning of the token 'pain,' but it turns out that such a theory falls apart. It's the non-hole dough that 'informs' the token.

If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.

Now of course 'pain' does have a use in our language. A dentist asks about your 'pain' and your answer helps her drill the right tooth. Or your mom gives you aspirin, or you accept your wife's 'headache' and entertain yourself otherwise. The big idea here is that the 'meaning' of pain is its relationship to other tokens (words) and practical activities, all of them public. 'Nothing is hidden.' (One does not have to deny qualia to show their epistemological and semantic uselessness. Once this realization clicks, it seems amazing how easy we are all taken in by an absurdity, a philosophical earworm. )

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Furthermore, as Carl Sagan once put it, if you rewind the clock of evolution and let it run again, there's no guarantee that humans & intelligence would evolve. Something totally different could happen. — Agent Smith

Excellent point. Dawkins and Dennett also stress this. Randomness plays an essential role. So beyond the brute fact of the most general pattern there's the 'micro' version where brute fact is understood as a goo on every grinding gear.

Even if we knew all the causes of how the brain produces conscious experiences, this still seems to leave untouched the question of why the brain produces conscious experiences. — Luke

One understanding of an explanation of an event is that the event is shown to be derivable from a familiar 'law' or pattern which is itself (for the moment) taken for granted. The strange is linked to the familiar and we move on, forgetting that the familiar itself can be questioned.

Along those lines, I can imagine some pattern/law being established from which what gets interpreted as conscious experiences can be derived. But then either this law is contingent ('true for or no reason') or one can climb up the chain to the most general pattern which is currently accepted and find contingency there. To me this suggests a necessary lacuna in human inquiry (perhaps as @apokrisis mentions we are always between the impossible poles of contingency and necessity.) A nice metaphor is the diagonal argument that proves the uncountability of infinite sequences of bits. Our inquiry always casts a shadow.

So, you think since the god topic is an all important life situation that we must require proof, whereas, other things in life could pass as not requiring proof. — L'éléphant

That depends on how a particular society treats religion. The modern way is to treat it as a kind of choose your own therapy. Kierkegaard writes about Abraham being told to sacrifice his son and then going on to almost do it. Note that this son was a miracle gift from God in the first place, since his wife gave birth as a very old lady. A suicide bomber manifests the same conspicuously irrationality. But most religion is sitting around in a building, eating some crackers, not eating this or that, perhaps protesting in front of clinic or passing out brochures. As soon as religion goes against the dominant meta-religion of liberalism, it's shoved back in its place as a kind of lifestyle choice (which I don't object to, really.)

Organized religion makes no sense in Wittgenstein's philosophy if god is a religious experience (private). There may be 2 billion Christians on earth but each one of them could be using "Yahweh" to mean totally different things. — Agent Smith

Good point. I take Wittgenstein to show that the meaning of the 'Yahweh' is not inside each of its users but rather in the outside in the way the mark 'Yahweh' functions along with other worldly objects. If you want the 'meaning' of 'Yahweh,' look for it as you might look for the 'meaning' of money. See what people do with the little pieces of paper, how they fit in with other things people do.

then should it be held at a higher standard than other private sensation such as dreams and pains? — L'éléphant

Another problem with qualia or sensation as a channel for God is the strong arguments that Wittgenstein has made against the possibility of giving a meaning to terms by attaching them to some kind of meaning-making 'primal stuff' (such as sensation or 'direct' intuition.) Basically it doesn't matter if your red is my red as long as we call the same things red.

What I meant was, proof that we accept as epistemologicaly sound-- so it could be empirical proof (which includes scientific proof) or logical proof. Heck, even induction is acceptable as philosophical argument. — L'éléphant

These are important, but what about intermediate theories which remain blurry and plausible? The 'crisp' thesis is an ideal we strive toward perhaps, but largely (seems to me) we work within hazy metaphorical frameworks. For instance, the Cartesian ego can be elaborated endlessly. What exactly was he talking about? Did he even know? The words pour out of us as we turn the crank on ye old smoke machine. Our sloppy gang of noises and marks has evolved perhaps with just enough resolution or specificity to keep us feeding and breeding. Ask us what we mean and we'll offer yet more words, trying to assure ourselves and others of our mastery of some infinitely proximate Content.

And, I would expect the ones who made the effort to study them to have a better understanding, and be more capable of discussing those principles. Do you have difficulty with this? — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't pretend to take astrology or numerology seriously, yet I have no doubt there are those who are stuffed with knowledge of these things. Others may have memorized the Book of Mormon or the later scribbles of L. Ron Hubbard about Xemu.

I enter philosophical conversations with the prejudice that the human tendency toward self-flattering delusions is well known. The philosophical project is (so runs my dream) climbing out of such muck as much as possible.

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I just really meant philosophical proof. — L'éléphant

We might look at the written and unwritten 'rules' or 'heroic self-image' of philosophy. How is a philosopher different from a prophet or a mystic or a physicist? Philosophers themselves continue to evolve this image, but generally making a case for claims and responding to criticisms seems central. As I see it, it's an essentially social endeavor. As a philosopher, I try to figure out what's true not just for me but for the whole tribe. Many philosophical claims are too abstract or foundational to be falsified (pre-scientific or super-scientific, if you like), so their are evaluated for consistency, coherence, practicality, decency, etc. The norms for such evaluation are themselves up for debate. This 'self-eating' of philosophy reminds me of an infinite hall of mirrors.

Real freedom lies within the mechanism of withdrawal, I can be argued, for when I turn the key to the ignition, and nothing happens, I withdraw from the engagement. There is the moment of indecision, of "indeterminacy" that is instantly filled with possibilities regarding the battery, the engine, who to call, and so on. — Constance

I think you are on to something, though the word 'real' is perhaps unnecessary. As I see it, one task of the philosopher is to reveal so-called necessity as a congealed and disguised contingency which hides in plain sight. 'That which is ontically nearest is ontologically farthest.' Trapped in the illusion of necessity, deviation is not yet even conceivable. Possibility languishes unborn. Along these lines, the philosopher has an intensity of withdrawal that allows the too obvious to finally become questionable.

it can be argued that this "I am" is existential, a true presence "behind" the utterance, which is called for since the transcendental ego does show up: Even if "I am" is an empirical social construction, "who" is this actual witness that can stand apart from the role playing? — Constance

I speculate that this 'one' is just reason or language, which is a unified system of concepts and a communal possession. The softwhere is one.

but it does lead to a deeper issue, which is the digression toward the determinative self, the final self that is not the social model, but the one experiencing the social model. — Constance

Why must it be 'one' experiencing the model? What if the singularity of the ghost of the soul is part of a contingent and inherited model inspired by the perceived unity of its containing body? 'One is one around here.' 'One' can imagine a society where each body is understood to host several or seven souls, one for each day of the week, each learning to ignore what's not its concern on its six days off per week. It may be something like the unity of 'reason' that's projected on the body which is given a soul for its little prison palace.

I suspect we go easy on some stuff for practical reasons. Our culture doesn't make much of dreams, so we don't care enough to challenge them. The God issue is connected to bloody wars and issues like abortion and assisted suicide. As one might expect, claims that 'God told me X' are held to far more scrutiny. It's not just the supernatural though. If I try to sell a cancer-curing concoction without making a case for its effectiveness, I might get a visit from the government.

A bit of tangent, but I think metaphysics is such a jungle of disagreement because the rubber never meets the road (or only very indirectly and inconclusively). We can have wild disagreements about metaphysical entities and both drive safely and not punch strangers on the contrary cut of their jibs.

The grammar of sensation and pain is a bit special. In general, we do not question or doubt such statements. One 'cannot be wrong' about 'appearance' or 'what things seem like.' This grammatical habit is too readily taken as some great logical principle or discovery.

We should note exceptions though. How many doctors have doubted claims of 'back pain' from claimants who clearly want opiates? If you tell me that you dreamed vividly of 'round squares' but refused to draw one for me, I might doubt you.

So, going back to the “I” of consciousness, it turns out that the “I” is not primordial or primitive in our view of the world. It is the “We”. The “I” came about later in our thinking. We could not have posited the “self” or the “I” without having the understanding of “we”. — L'éléphant

Well put. The 'self' depends upon an 'other,' and language ('interior monologue') depends on a tribal language.

I see the elements of reason, numbers, logical laws, scientific principles, etc, as the constituents of reality - because reality is not something that exists outside of or separate to our being. I think physicalism fails because there is no coherent definition of what 'physical' means - all it amounts to is 'faith in science', that science will 'one day' join all the dots. It's a cultural attitude, more than a philosophy as such. — Wayfarer

I relate to much of this, especially the blurriness of the word 'physical.' Wittgenstein asks in On Certainty when exactly a child learns that their are physical objects. I think you'll agree that there's seemingly or plausibly some vague postulated 'stuff' that preceded and 'grounds' our species, 'stuff' which is mapped and modeled in a framework that includes 'quarks' and 'energy.' This 'stuff' might just be a sort of point at infinity, indicating the tendency of a certain kind of mapmaking toward impersonality.