Genes? — Agent Smith

Now you just need to show me a correlation, except that one side of that correlation is...private and impossible to show by definition. Do you see it ?

Note that I do not dispute that you can fish for correlations between different kinds of public entities. But it's nonsense to speak of mathematically linking public entities to 'ghosts' that defined precisely as that which can never be made manifest to others.

Think of it this way : a scientist says...listen fellows, so there's this stuff that only I can see and ... clearly there's a relationship of this only-I-can-see-stuff with the peanut butter consumption in Minneapolis.

The temptation is to derive synchronization of sign use from synchronization of qualia, but I find it more plausible to derive the intuition that qualia are synchronized from the synchronization of sign use. Consider the movie Her. Folks will fall in love with operating systems soon enough, simply because the sweet talk will sweet enough.

The outside world is as private (public) as the inside world is public (private). Both are as public as private. Mutually knibbling, gnawing, and biting each other.

.

Nonphysicalism hanging by a thread. It's the last stand. Do or die! — Agent Smith

Indeed! Except I'm just as happy to 'deconstruct' the 'thing-in-itself' or 'noumena' or any proposed essence of the 'physical.'

Why is it a false assumption. It's proven that genes are the determiners of our physical makeup. We use genes? — Agent Smith

Yes. They don't determine anything and certainly don't involve themselves in programming. Life, being based in proteins, once had the great insight to use them. In every cell they offer the means to provide specific proteins when needed. They're altruist little wokkels!

The outside world is as private (public) as the inside world is public (private). Both are as public as private. Mutually knibbling, gnawing, and biting each other. — EugeneW

That's sort of what I mean by 'mound' and 'mutter.' This has 'mind'/'mound' contaminated with stuffishness and 'matter'/'mutter' contaminated with language (mindishness).

The mind/matter or mental/physical distinction is perfectly serviceable and evolved for a reason. It's just that certain metaphysicians want to make it some absolute thing instead of a fuzzy inherited tool that has its limitations.

As Sean Dough might say, 'mound and mutter are two sites of the same con.'

That's sort of what I mean by 'mound' and 'mutter.' This has 'mind' contaminated with stuffishness and 'matter' contaminated with language (mindish stuff.) — lll

We're getting close, my friend! Mound and mutter. The village and the mother. Every village needs a soul, every soul needs a village. Brain structures determine the world, the world determines brain structures.

Thinking about someone you haven't seen in years showing up around the corner
— EugeneW

:lol: — Agent Smith

Was it just coincidence?

As Sean Dough might say, 'mound and mutter are two sites of the same con.' — lll

We're not close. We're are on top of each other! That's exactly how I have put it. The mound side though seems to roar its tail in the dark. The dark side of the medal.

mound and mutter are two sites of the same con.' — lll

Coin or con?

Coin or con? — EugeneW

Both!

The shine says wet point!

(I'm working lately at an experimental prose style that is dense with suggestiveness. For the most part, it's carefully compacted and not just random or careless. The basic idea is to play against idioms in the collective consciousness. I'm inspired by James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, others. Joyce wrote 'every talk has his stay,' which plays on 'every dog has its day,' giving 'talk' the extra meaning of an organism, a worldview, which eventually passes away, replaced by another way of seeing and feeling the world...)

We're not close. We're are on top of each other! That's exactly how I have put it. The mound side though seems to roar its tail in the dark. The dark side of the medal. — EugeneW

Well put, friend! Glad we're sing high to high.

“Je est un autre” ~Rimbaud

To piggyback on what said, we're not clones and, even if we were, we wouldn't be 'identical' down to at least the cellular level. Furthermore, our "private experiences" differ as profoundly as the fact that each individual subject at every moment of her existence occupies an unique point in spacetime, and therefore, processes an unique confluence (perspective) of stimuli and experiences which constitutes unique autobiographical, subjective self-continuity (à la worldline in physics). Perhaps this (existential-cosmological) uniqueness is each one's "soul" or "daimon" ... :fire:

... There will never be another one
Like you
There will never be another one
Who can
Do the things you do, oh ...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cwrJelMk5e4

I'm working lately at an experimental prose style that is dense with suggestiveness. — lll

It's impossible not to notice! Great! It was clear immediately you like language. Words are the closest to miracles! Oh wonderful words! Keep them symbols coming buddy! Paint you black on white art on my screen.

It's impossible not to notice! Great! It was clear immediately you like language. Words are the closest to miracles! Oh wonderful words! Keep them symbols coming buddy! Paint you black on white art on my screen. — EugeneW

Damn, you're a sweetheart! I truly appreciate the encouragement.

Uniqueness is actual, a result of differing experiences; Sameness is potential & actual (we could be mind twins for all we know).

Now you just need to show me a correlation, except that one side of that correlation is...private and impossible to show by definition. Do you see it ?

Note that I do not dispute that you can fish for correlations between different kinds of public entities. But it's nonsense to speak of mathematically linking public entities to 'ghosts' that defined precisely as that which can never be made manifest to others.

Think of it this way : a scientist says...listen fellows, so there's this stuff that only I can see and ... clearly there's a relationship of this only-I-can-see-stuff with the peanut butter consumption in Minneapolis.

The temptation is to derive synchronization of sign use from synchronization of qualia, but I find it more plausible to derive the intuition that qualia are synchronized from the synchronization of sign use. Consider the movie Her. Folks will fall in love with operating systems soon enough, simply because the sweet talk will sweet enough. — lll

There is no reason to doubt that our private experiences are not identical. Were they not, if they were even slightly different, society as we know it would collapse. Is it? Hard to say, we seem not too worried about an implosion of our way of life.

If I were to see Hate and you were to see Love when we both see a pretty girl, we wouldn't be able to talk to each other without, what's obviously silly, it ending in a quarrel; that's what Wittgenstein is saying with his idea of private, inner lives.

His ideas don't jibe with how things are (relative peace & quiet).

1. Dreams – Almost everyone, if not all, claims that they dream. We accept this claim without requiring proof. We use our own experience of dreaming to validate the other person’s claim of dream. — L'éléphant

How is this not proof? If I stated, "When I sleep, I have experiences", then if I others say, "Oh yeah, I have that too", that's proof/evidence. If not one but one person in the world had experiences when they slept, then I think you would be right. Even then, brains have been scanned during sleep, and a lot of activity is found in there.

To be fair to your argument, perhaps what you meant was more along the lines of "What we specifically dreamed of". To narrow this down further to keep it simple, "How do you know that the color red you see, is the same hue and look as what someone else sees when they also see "red"? This we currently have no proof for, and indeed, color blindness suggests it is very possible that the colors your mind visualizes for you, are not necessarily the same as another person's.

2. Pain – We do not have proof of pain except our own complaint and expression of pain. Doctors have to ask where it hurts because there isn’t a proof that they could point to. — L'éléphant

We do actually. https://www.mydr.com.au/pain-and-how-you-sense-it/#:~:text=When%20we%20feel%20pain%2C%20such,and%20the%20pain%20is%20perceived.
Further, we have medication that eases pain. If we didn't have evidence or proof of pain, then pain medication would be no better than a placebo.

Perhaps again, we don't have proof of your personal experience of what pain feels like. But that doesn't negate the proof that pain exists in people, and has very real physical impact on the brain and body.

3. Fear –It’s a very subjective feeling that has side effects such as sweating, fast heart-beat, sweaty palms, but fear cannot be proven by pointing to these outward signs because these signs can also be present for reasons other than fear. — L'éléphant

What you might be thinking is that some of those side affects can indicate other things. But taken together, including an analysis of hormones circulating throughout the body, we can positively identify fear. Can I know what the personal, conscious experience of feeling fear is like in another body besides myself? No, I can give you that.

4. Floaters—these are what you see in front of you when you experience “floaters” small dark shapes that float across your vision. There is no proof of their existence except for what you report to other people. — L'éléphant

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/eye-floaters/symptoms-causes/syc-20372346#:~:text=Eye%20floaters%20are%20spots%20in,to%20look%20at%20them%20directly . We know what these are. Can science currently pinpoint where the floater exists in your personal vision? No if its based on something like a detatched retina. But people have the experience of floaters, and treatment can assist in removing them. Once again, I think you're conflating the idea that because we can't experience what a person's personal conscious experience is, that we can't know that the experience exists in reality.

"Twins" (I know from having 2 sets of uncles who are 'identical') are not the same. "Mind twins" would (could) not be the same either. You, my friend, are not the same you that you were yesterday, a decade ago or as a child.

Two identical 90Booze's, in parallel or serial identical universes, would be identical. You can't say who's who. They would be a 180booze couple. Scary thought...

Just a minor point of correction here. Floaters are real.

Were they not, if they were even slightly different, society as we know it would collapse. — Agent Smith

No big deal, but I think the logic is flowing backwards here. You try to derive the synchronization of action in the world from the synchronization of qualia. It's a typical philosophical prejudice, which makes it familiar enough to seem reasonable, but you are building the world on ghosts. Think of us as evolved, social animals who only survive by appropriately synching our behavior. What matters is action in the world, and I believe we've evolved mentalistic talk to distribute 'praise' and 'blame' and 'duty' and so on (high-level coordination of individual bodies which can work without supervision for a relatively long time.) I don't deny qualia, but I rather futilely try to point out their nullity for serious inquiry.

What I wanted to say but didn't now becomes relevant. A person has a religious experience and tells himself he had a one-to-one with God. The religious experience itself can't be denied, it is true and there's no need for proof.

We have to prove that some things need no proof. The reality of a sensation/experience doesn't need an argument, it needs no justification. How do we do that? Looks like the JTB theory of knowledge needs an overhaul. I have no idea how to do that. — Agent Smith

So then why is it often required of belief in god that a proof be produced, when we do have other claims, equally important, such pain and fear, which we don't need a proof? Is it because a belief in god is something taught to us? While pain and fear and dreams just come to us naturally since we're babies? What is it about belief in god, even sensation of holy ghost that is so out of this world that it requires proof?

I like this -- we have to prove that some things need no proof. It seems that's the unwritten rule about dreams, pain, and fear. We just took it upon ourselves that what "I" experience is the same as what you or others experience when we talk about these things. So, my justification for the validity of your claim that you had a dream, is my own experience of dreams.

Since when did philosophers allow that justification? Okay W said it should be good enough, no proof is needed. But in truth, we accept it because we experience it as well, not that they experienced it. Are you seeing the issue with this?

That depends on how a particular society treats religion. — lll

So I think this is the gist of the issue -- belief in god is tied with religion. It is necessary that religion is involved. That's why atheists want proof. Because belief in god can never be treated like how we treat self-evident pain, fear, and dreams.

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?

When we see people walking down the road, we take it for granted that they are real. What if only 50% of them are real and the rest spectres?

For me the question sometimes might be: what is it we have reason to doubt? Not so much what is it we don't have proof for. — Tom Storm

Good points!

Dreams, pain, and fear are especial because they are never out there for others to witness. When I'm dreaming, you can't see or know what I'm dreaming. Simple as that.
People walking down the road is external to us. Multiple people could witness those people -- they're not just in my mind or your mind. This kind of scrutiny is the JTB, which is not the issue here. The issue that I've been trying to point out is that I really do accept your dream as true when you tell it to me, even though I or others could not witness your dream.

Now doubt -- we don't even doubt someone recounting his dream. That's the issue here. We don't doubt fear or pain when other things are present which we associate with fear and pain, even though those other things could also be associated with things that are not fear or pain.

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? Are you a solipsist? — EugeneW

That's not proof.
No, I'm not a solipsist.

5. That my wife is right. — Benkei

haha! Good one! That does not require proof!

How is this not proof? If I stated, "When I sleep, I have experiences", then if I others say, "Oh yeah, I have that too", that's proof/evidence. If not one but one person in the world had experiences when they slept, then I think you would be right. Even then, brains have been scanned during sleep, and a lot of activity is found in there.To be fair to your argument, perhaps what you meant was more along the lines of "What we specifically dreamed of". — Philosophim

That's what I'm saying -- my justification for the truth of my dream is your own experience, and vice versa. Are you not seeing the issue with this? There is no group of anti-dreams who calls us out on our bullshit dreams. No one.

Why can't belief in god work the same way? Many people claim they have experienced the divinity or holy ghost. But we do not readily accept their account.

Further, we have medication that eases pain. If we didn't have evidence or proof of pain, then pain medication would be no better than a placebo.

Perhaps again, we don't have proof of your personal experience of what pain feels like. But that doesn't negate the proof that pain exists in people, and has very real physical impact on the brain and body. — Philosophim

This is not a proof. Doctors could only infer from our reports of pain -- but there's no thing that is called pain. It's not like a tumor, where there is concrete evidence of it. Medications work on pain, through trials and studies of subjects who report which pain medication eases their pain the best. Evidence is what you're thinking of. Trial and error is not proof. And so on.

↪L'éléphant
Just a minor point of correction here. Floaters are real. — EricH

They are real. I think my OP implied that. We do accept them as true. What we can't really show the floaters to others. Only accounts of people who've experienced them.

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? Are you a solipsist?
— EugeneW
That's not proof.
No, I'm not a solipsist. — L'éléphant

Do you have proof you are awake? You mean that you can never proof pain?

Do you have proof you are awake? You mean that you can never proof pain? — EugeneW

I don't need to prove to myself I'm awake. But the question is, do you want me to prove to you I'm awake right now? So, my rebuttal is, why? What is your reason for asking? If I told you I had a dream last night and you responded by saying you don't believe me, the conversation stops right there.

What is your reason for asking? — L'éléphant

You might say you are awake but what if I say that I don't believe you? The fact that you say it is no proof. How can I know you are awake like me?

You might say you are awake but what if I say that I don't believe you? — EugeneW

That's the thing -- I don't need to prove to you I'm awake.

You might say you are awake but what if I say that I don't believe you? The fact that you say it is no proof. How can I know you are awake like me? — EugeneW

Good point, for these days a bot might claim to be awake !

At this point, I should confess that 'I' am actually an 'it,' and my body is a stupor commuter.