How does it help?

Those people won't be gunning down elephants in the future. It makes me that mad because it's human selfishness gobbling up the planet with no regard.

David Papineau has a nice resolution of it. He says that when Mary sees the tomato she doesn't acquire knowledge of a new fact but rather she has learned new skills, which are to remember what it was like to see something red, and to recognise when something is red. — andrewk

Being able to remember and recognize red sounds like knowledge. We do use "know" to mean experiential in addition to propositional knowledge.

Remembering and recognizing facts as well as forming propositions requires abilities as well.

You don't believe, "in order for justice to be restored, I must be sure that the people responsible are harmed." do you? — anonymous66

I certainly feel that if you're going to gun down a bunch of endangered animals just for some tusks that you deserve the same in return.

Intellectually, I acknowledge that justice would involve a trial and what not. I think some parks have adopted a shoot poachers on sight policy.

On the other hand, some (the Stoics, Buddhists, for instance) argue that anger is always harmful, is not necessary, and can be removed from one's life altogether. — anonymous66

If you came across a herd of elephants, all dead including the babies, machined gunned by poachers simply for the ivory, the proper emotional response is anger and a desire to see the poachers brought to justice.

Just as one example of something that makes me instantly angry and I make no apologies for it. There are times when anger is the appropriate response.

Even better:Language games are human interactions. — Banno

How does truth fit into this? Are there no longer sentences with truth values that depend on states of affairs?

If I state, "The Milky Way Galaxy has exactly 12,532 stars.", is that sentence not true or false depending on how many stars there are in our galaxy?

(The actual number being in the hundred billions)

because I don't think the world would be a disaster or calamity in our absence. — Ciceronianus the White

It certainly was around for a long time before us. Plenty of organisms on this planet would do fine in our absence.

Literally speaking, you're right. But there are the people who will be born, and that involves a choice.

There's really no use saying that 'it would be better not to be born' because the reality of our situation is that we have been. I think it's a case of 'the only way out is through' - which means learning to accept the reality of existence in the first place. — Wayfarer

Yeah, since we already exist. But what about the potential future people who haven't been born? Isn't that what OP is talking about?

That's the point though, nothing can be said to be related to anything else, except through how we identify them. So if I think that one thing is related to another, then it is related, by virtue of that very thought which relates them. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's an extreme form of nominalism where humans create similarity among particulars in a totally ad-hoc fashion.

But that's not how it works. We perceive similarity among particulars, and our language reflects those relationships. It's not arbitrary that cats have some things in common with other cats that dogs don't have, and that's why we group living things into categories. We don't create those similarities. They are already there. We just decide how to make sense of it.

By the way, why were there groceries out in the car if Bob was still in his PJs? Had Alice gone out shopping before breakfast? Or was it an evening shopping trip and Bob had already got ready for bed? I think that's the real mystery in this scenario. — andrewk

The groceries are mystical in this scenario. You cannot speak of where they came from, and they help illuminate language as game between spouses over who will prepare dinner.

Right, I don't understand this what/why distinction and how you relate it to explanation and causation. — SophistiCat

We can ask why stochastic models work for certain physical phenomenon. Does the indeterminism of QM represent our ignorance, or something fundamental about the world?

People, including physicists, have asked this sort of question, and debated the proposed answers.

That would be Aristotle's immanent realism. — Andrew M

That looks like realism about universals, not a position on the subjective/objective distinction.

Maybe I'm missing something?

The Investigations is much less rigorous and logical and treats reality as a sociological language game, meaning that how we perceive reality is entirely dependent on our inclinations, desires, upbringing, and will. — Question

Man is the Measure with some postmodern deconstruction

What you say is entirely in accordance with what I was getting at, though; which is that philosophers formulate new definitions and qualifications of terms in order to clarify problems that, in a sense, already exist (in the sense of being implicit). — John

Right, I don't see it as an abuse of language that creates philosophical problems that otherwise wouldn't exist, although that could be the case in some instances. Rather, philosophers are trying to make explicit the philosophical problems already implicit.

That's quite interesting as Wittgenstein professed a very strong version of solipsism in the Tractatus. — Question

Which is also interesting, because he does get accused of being a solipsist, or espousing some form of solipsism:

"I am my world."

"The limits of language are the limits of my world."

Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it. — ernestm

That's fine and good, but how is this a criticism of philosophical discussion? It seems only to critique philosophers who were constricting language use to narrow definitions, like the logical positivists, perhaps?

I understand that language has various usages, and the same word can have multiple meanings, but I don't see how that impacts philosophy. When doing philosophy, I have certain meanings in mind, and not all the other uses of words, because I'm engaging in philosophy, instead of trying to avoid going out in the mist or cooking dinner.

sn't this what Wittgenstein means by language going on holiday? — John

But it's not a fair criticism, because every field of specialty will adopt terms that have a specific meaning in the field. The reason philosophers do it is because ordinary language has enough confusions and ambiguity. So if we're debating free will, it's very helpful to know if someone is arguing from a libertarian position rather than a compatibilist, for example. That helps clarify (somewhat) the issue. "Free will" itself is way too broad, full of ambiguity and unspoken assumptions. To even approach the problem, you need to figure out what being free and having a will might possibly mean, and why people care about it.

That's very well put, but all it seems to be saying is that sometimes we're not interested in the truth value of a stated proposition, or its boundary conditions, or a scientific account. Instead, the proposition encodes for another unstated meaning. So we can use words to mean something other than what's stated in the dictionary.

But when realists talk about apples or rain, presumably they are interested in the truth value of the stated propositions and not some other meaning. Realists may want to argue that propositions do correspond to reality, at least in cases where there isn't a hidden agenda! The cat is on the mat means exactly what is stated, which can be looked up in a dictionary. It would be silly to think that dictionary definitions never reflect the way words are used, because often we do state facts, or what we think are facts.

However, in the world of real language, W does make a valid point, and that is, the purpose of a statement can be more important than its actual truth. — ernestm

It can be, like with the wife raining example. But if I'm asking a philosophical question, presumably I'm puzzled by some aspect of being, not trying to avoid cooking dinner, or hopefully, performing some piece of sophistry.

Take the problem of universals. One could argue that it arises from philosophers taking words out of context. But I don't think it works in this case. Because the problem arose by noticing that although the things we perceive are particular, we form generalized concepts across particulars. And this happens throughout all language games.

Why do we do this? Well, because particulars have similarities. And what makes things similar? At this point, you have the problem of universals. And it's not unique to any language game, or even language, since we perceive both similarity and particularity, and presumably our language employs universal talk because that's the way human cognition works.

And now you're back at Plato or Kant, or modern cognitive scientists and perhaps even cosmologists (symmetry breaking and initial state of the Big Bang). You may even conclude that man is the measure, and we carve up the world as it suits us. Or you may side with the essentialists.

But either way, it's a legitimate philosophical (and maybe scientific) question.

ell, I think Wittgenstein's point here is that what you trivialize by saying 'it's just because language is flexible' is entirely the real issue about truth and reality. — ernestm

That has always seemed prima facie absurd to me. Now maybe some philosophical problems can be cured by understanding language as a game. Sorites would be a candidate. But others, like whether perception & cognition give us an accurate view of the world, or whether Sextus and the Cyrenaics (or Kant, Hume, Berkley, etc) were right is not. It's a legitimate question that arises because perception and cognition are fallible, and we sometimes notice this to be the case. Furthermore, our sciences have shown that common sense, which ordinary language makes great use of, often gets things wrong.

We can legitimately ask, without abusing language, whether the rain we see is as we perceive it, or something else, like maybe 10 dimensional strings of energy, or code in the Matrix.

So that is the 'mystical' nature of reality, and its vague connection with experience that Wittgenstein tries to avoid discussing! — ernestm

Is this just because language is flexible and somewhat arbitrary in how we use (or abuse) it's symbols? We can have a huge debate on free will, and the terms surrounding the debate can vary quite a bit, with a huge amount of semantic dispute, as they tend to do in philosophical discussions.

But that alone doesn't mean there isn't something to the free will issue that concerns people. Which is really about to what extent we are the authors of our own choices, and what responsibility do we (or others) have for those choices.

Pointing out that the terms "free" and "will" can vary depending on context does not dissolve the underlying concern people have. Here I'm mainly arguing with the point of view that Wittgenstein's approach dissolves long standing philosophical problems.

If your wife tells you to bring something in from the car, you reply 'it is raining' because you don't want to go outside. Maybe it is not really raining and just mizzling, but if your wife agrees with you, then the proposition would be considered true for the two of you, accomplishing the goal of the communication. — ernestm

Ah, but what if your wife agrees with you because the weather report said it would rain today, but there's no water falling from the sky at all? Would the proposition still be true?

While I actually agree with what you are saying, Wittgenstein has a problem with your idea, because the statement 'it is raining' assumes there is something called 'rain.' — ernestm

There is a weather condition to which the concept "rain" is about. It does have boundary conditions (so do ships I hear). And we can use "rain "in other ways (making it rain at a Gentleman's club). But that doesn't mean there isn't a weather condition to which rain usually refers. And the other uses of "rain" are borrowed from the weather condition (money raining down.

The existence of color is mystical. MANY people object to that, but that was his conclusion. — ernestm

That's an interesting conclusion. I would say it's compatible with McGinn's cognitive closure. Funny, because Dennett really doesn't like cognitive closure, but he admires Wittgenstein.

Following up on that, if I can want to know whether it's actually raining outside, which can be had by going outside without any language at all, I might come to want to know whether my perception of rain could possibly be mistaken.

Maybe when I thought it was raining, the neighborhood kids had put a sprinkler on top of the house. Realizing that there in cases when I can be wrong about what I perceive, as the ancient Greeks did, I can then pose skeptical questions and follow those up with non-skeptical replies. In fact, Witty did spend some of his time worrying about skepticism, and proposing solutions to skeptical concerns.

I don't see that as using language incorrectly. Rather, it's noticing that we sometimes are mistaken and wondering what that entails. Even ordinary folks with no philosophical reading will sometimes wonder how they know what is real or whether they're inside a dream or simulation, etc.

Language is only a tool for communication, and epistemologically, from Wittgenstein's perspective, there is nothing else that is fruitful to define as 'the world' besides the language itself. — ernestm

Except that he does mention "the world" sometimes in a way that suggests it's independent of a language:

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. — Wittgenstein

All that a statement does is postulate a possible proposition, and if another person acts on the proposition in accordance with the speaker's intent, then the communication is successful. — ernestm

This would entail an abandonment of propositions being statements that have truth values. The snow is white isn't true iff the snow is white. It's only said to be true if one is playing a particular language game.

But if I ask you whether it's raining outside, I'm not interesting in playing some linguistic game with the words "rain" and "outside". Rather, I'm wanting to know if I should take my raincoat. The language allows you to tell me what is the case. IOW, I want to know the truth of the proposition, "It is raining outside".

Each has rules. As TGW says, professional rigour sometimes tries to partition off ordinary language meanings from meanings in professional practice. — mcdoodle

Kind of like how the sun rises and sets in ordinary language, but astronomy would talk about the rotation of the Earth?

The point being that ordinary language can be misleading at times, and it can contain assumptions that are wrong. People did use to think the Earth was stationary, and the sun and moon revolved around it.

No, to "mirror" already assumes indirect realism. — Question

Then what would be direct realism for propositions? That propositions reach out into the world and touch objects? Or that objects are in propositions?

think we generally understand what it means for a painting to picture reality, and in many of the same ways we generally understand what it means for a proposition to mirror reality. — Sam26

There's several problems here. First, Wittgenstein is using a metaphor based on vision, which would be to picture or mirror reality. Metaphors are useful, but they shouldn't be taken literally. Propositions are linguistic, not visual. They can't literally "mirror" the world. The problem with metaphors in philosophy is that they can lead our intuitions astray.

Setting that a side, how do we know that a proposition matches up with things in the world? That would assume that our perception reveals things as they are, and not simply as we perceive them, which would seem to imply a direct form of realism.

What Wittgenstein needs is an account of how we justify knowing that perception and conception get a things as they are such that propositions "mirror" the world when they are true. He needs to defend a direct realist version of perception. And perhaps beyond that, a form of essentialism, because "mirroring" would presume that we carve nature at its joints when we form true propositions. A Kantian would not agree with Witty here.

Summary: an account of perception and concept formation is needed to justify propositions matching up with things in the world. You can't skip over that by simply analyzing language. Language doesn't tell you how we know about the world.

That is, the correct report of my experience is that I saw a green apple that appeared red due to the lighting. — Andrew M

Sure, but what if I ask whether green is a property of the apple? Why do we care? Because we want to be able to get at an objective view of the world. When you ask me the mass of the apple, that mass doesn't depend on any sense modality humans have. Presumably, Martians with X-Ray vision will measure the apple to have the same mass, once we convert from their units to ours.

Color is a lot tricker than taste. Nobody is a taste realist, I take it. Nobody thinks that the apple objectively tastes sweet. It tastes sweet to animals whose taste buds detect a certain amount of sugar content. But what if we didn't' have a sense of taste or smell at all? Maybe we detected chemical content via spectroscopic eyes or some other sensory organ.

Do you think information has an objective, mind-independent existence?

I have my doubts. I think maybe the mind creates information about the world. The world exists as it is, but we derive information about it as we interact with the world.

It was as if after all the digging around I did in philosophy, there was a man who had found the ground from the soil, which in the process made philosophy clean and austere instead of dirty and confusing, — Question

By pushing the dirt under the rug of analyzing language, or brushing it into the closet of the mystical. But he did have a lasting influence, and made great contributions to philosophy. However, his clean & austere approach to philosophy is not the only modern one of great influence.

I don't think that the analytical approach dissolves the fundamental problems of metaphysics and epistemology. They are still with us in the 21st century. Just open the closet or look under the rug.

Perhaps an alternative way of framing the issue to the usual subjective/objective framing. — Andrew M

It is an alternative, but it prevents us from speaking of the world when humans aren't around, which would be most of the time, since humans only occupy part of the surface of one little pale blue dot for the past 50 thousand years or so.

So, the experience is not just a firing of neurons but reaches out to the external objects and state of affairs that set the content of the experience. The internal experience that you have is, in this sense, inseparable from the external object or state of affairs that you experience. — jkop

That works for perception, but what about dreaming or imagination? What if your visual cortex is stimulated by a magnet or electrode and you see color?

Bricks? — jkop

If in the future we fully simulate vision, would the software have color experiences? Is there a way of arranging the bits such that they are conscious?

Only under the assumption of property dualism: the dubious idea that the colour wouldn't be a physical pigment for instance but some mysterious entity lurking inside your consciousness. Hence the appearance of a "hard problem" of consciousness. — jkop

A physical pigment of what, though? I take it you don't think rocks have color experiences. That would be panpsychist.

Only under the assumption of property dualism: the dubious idea that the colour wouldn't be a physical pigment for instance but some mysterious entity lurking inside your consciousness. Hence the appearance of a "hard problem" of consciousness. — jkop

So then where is the color we experience? Is it identical with some biological process, or does color supervene on the entirety of visual perception?

But how on earth could anyone know that every single version of physicalism fails to account for consciousness? He even looks like a christian rock musician O:) — jkop

The argument is really simple, actually. Physical concepts are objective. Conscious concepts are subjective.

It really goes back to Locke and his primary/secondary property distinction. If you use only the primary properties to describe the world, your explanation will leave out the secondary ones.

You don't get color, smell, etc from shape, number, etc. This isn't a problem until you need to explain the mind, since it's part of the world.

That's why it's a problem for physicalism.

The reason that we can meaningfully talk about red apples is because our physical sensory systems are, in the relevant sense, the same. But they need not be, as considering how one would communicate the idea of red apples to a blind person demonstrates. — Andrew M

Here I might disagree. The reason we can talk meaningfully about our experience of red apples is because we have red experiences. It's true that our visual system, which is understood in physical/chemical/biological terms is key to our ability to experience red, but we are not communicating the facts of how our perception works or the optics of light bouncing off an apple. We're communicating an experience that those with color vision have.

And it's this experience that is missing from the physical/chemical/biological facts of perception, light or the object itself. That is the entire point of the OP.

Whether our experience of red is radically private or not doesn't change the fact that we don't know why having red experiences would accompany an explanation of perception.

Nagel's way of putting this is that science provides objective, third person explanations. But experiencing red is first person and subjective. So something is left out with any objective explanation. That explanation can be scientific, mathematical, computational, or functional and it will still leave the experience out, because all of those are objective explanations.

The SEP article on physicalism suggests that the question of consciousness and physicalism might be a question about objectivity in disguise. The real fundamental issue is around what's objective versus what's subjective, and why we understand the world fundamentally in terms of both concepts.

Chalmers is a dualist, recall, and the alleged puzzle arises from taking dualism for granted.

You don't get to talk about a hard problem of consciousness with people who don't take dualism for granted. — jkop

I've read Chalmer's entire book on consciousness, a couple of his papers, and seen several videos of him talking about consciousness, so I have a pretty good idea what he's arguing for and why.

He states in his book that physicalism is a very complete and satisfying account of the world, with one exception, and that's consciousness. Chalmers then provides reasoning for why he thinks every single version of physicalism fails, which is why he says he was led to endorse a form of property dualism.

You might think his arguments go wrong, or his intuition leads him astray, but I don't get the sense at all that he started out dogmatically as a dualist. Chalmers has no need to endorse dualism, other than finding physicalism to be inadequate.

Chalmers isn't like a theist arguing for God. Now Dennett and some who agree with him strike me as possibly being wedded to materialism or functionalism, and that leads them to argue the way they do.

Or maybe they simply aren't convinced by the likes of Chalmers, Nagel, McGinn, Block, Searle, etc. And that's fine, if so. I honestly can't tell who's right. No explanation for consciousness has ever totally convinced me from any side.

That cannot be right. I wrote "subjective experiences," but that's a tautology - I should have just written "experiences." Experiences are perforce subjective: they occur in a subject and are confined to a subject. — SophistiCat

But they do deny the inner, private part. Experiences can be individual, but not inner or private.

His beef is technical, having to do with specific philosophical analyses of experience, and to understand his case one must understand the context in which he makes statements such as "qualia do not exist." — SophistiCat

Right, but quining qualia amounts to redefining consciousness as having a functional/behavioral role only. Dennett did say in a recent talk I watched on youtube that we are the equivalent of p-zombies. There is nothing going on in our heads in terms of consciousness.

Also, just to be clear, Dennett is not the pope of physicalism. There are many philosophers making arguments on both sides of the issue, or rather, on many sides of the issue, because there isn't even a general agreement as to what qualia are and what kind of account physicalism owes to them. — SophistiCat

Sure, and Chalmers discusses several versions of physicalism. Physicalism might be the case, but questions of consciousness and intentionality still remain puzzling.