Where have I ever used the word "means"? You keep bringing it up, despite me repeatedly saying that I am only arguing that the word "headache" refers to a private sensation. — Michael

Then the disconnect is clear. You are not addressing the claim that meaning is use at all.

You are not offering a theory of meaning. YOu are offering a causal or scientific point about the origins of sensations. No one in this discussion has denied that internal states exist or have causes.

The issue was never whether headaches have an internal basis. The issue was whether appeal to a private sensation contributes anything to meaning. It doesn’t.

So if you’re explicitly disavowing any claim about what words mean, then we’re simply not having the same argument.

You are not addressing the claim that meaning is use at all.

You are not offering a theory of meaning

...

then we’re simply not having the same argument. — Hanover

Yes, I have explained this so many times now. I am concerned with perception and colours and smells and tastes and headaches. I don't give a damn about language because this isn't a discussion about language. It is you and Banno and others that seem to think that language and Austin and Wittgenstein have any relevance here. You can't refute indirect realism or the claim that colours and smells and tastes and headaches are private sensations by saying "nuh-uh, meaning is use and so words like 'red' and 'pain' can't refer to private sensations". This matter is a matter for physicists and physiologists and neuroscientists and psychologists to resolve, not linguists.

C1. Therefore, the word "headaches" refers to private sensations — Michael

Seems clear.

If people had no private sensations - having a headache, feeling pain, feeling hot, smelling something, seeing something, tasting something, etc - then there would be no public language.

A public language only exists because people have private sensations.

Words, such as "headache", would have no meaning if people had no private sensations, such as headache.

This matter is a matter for physicists and physiologists and neuroscientists and psychologists to resolve, not linguists. — Michael

Of course, so what is your thesis here, that philosophy is science? Mine is that science is not philosophy.

You can't refute indirect realism or the claim that colours and smells and tastes and headaches are private sensations by saying "nuh-uh, meaning is use and so words like 'red' and 'pain' can't refer to private sensations". — Michael

That's so not the argument.

You can't refute indirect realism — Michael

That wasn't suggested. It was that whether it's true or not leaves meaning unaffected and so it has no philosophical role.

Of course, so what is your thesis here, that philosophy is science? — Hanover

That our scientific understanding of the world very clearly supports the indirect realist's account of perception over the direct realist's.

It was that whether it's true or not leaves meaning unaffected and so it has no philosophical role. — Hanover

That conclusion doesn't follow. If indirect realism is true then indirect realism is true and direct realism is false. Two competing philosophical accounts of perception have been tested, with one shown to be correct and the other incorrect.

P1. Headaches are private sensations
P2. The word "headaches" refers to headaches
C1. Therefore, the word "headaches" refers to private sensations — Michael

P1: accepted
P2: rejected

We must distinguish between what a headache is (a private sensation) and what the word "headache" does in our language. The word "headache" is not used to pick out a private sensation. It is used to pick out a condition people complain of, treat, excuse themselves from work because of, and diagnose. The sensation realizes the headache, but it is not what gives the word "headache" its meaning. How could it? How could something that you've described as being "essentially private" serve as a standard for correct and incorrect use in an essentially public practice (language)?

P1: accepted
P2: rejected — Esse Quam Videri

This is incoherent. If a) headaches are private sensations then b) the word "headaches" in (a) is being used to refer to things which are private sensations — those things being headaches. That's what makes (a) true. If the word "headaches" in (a) is being used to refer to something else (e.g. cats) then (a) would be false.

It is used to pick out a condition people complain of — Esse Quam Videri

That condition being the private sensation that they are experiencing.

The sensation realizes the headache — Esse Quam Videri

The sensation is the headache.

How could something that you've described as being "essentially private" serve as a standard for correct and incorrect use in an essentially public practice (language)? — Esse Quam Videri

Why would it be a problem? I don't need to see Genghis Khan for the name "Genghis Khan" to refer to the man who led the Mongols to conquer Asia, so why the insistence that if our experiences are private then our words cannot refer to them? Clearly the phrase "private experiences" does, else you'd have to argue that the phrase "private experiences" is incoherent, and so that there are no such things. It's really not difficult. When I say "I have a headache" the word "headache" is being used to refer to a sensation that I claim to have and when I say "you have a headache" the word "headache" is being used to refer to a sensation that I claim you have (and which I assume is much like mine).

That conclusion doesn't follow. If indirect realism is true then indirect realism is true and direct realism is false. Two competing philosophical accounts of perception have been tested, with one shown to be correct and the other incorrect. — Michael

That doesn't follow because it assumes a grammatical theory of direct realism speaks at all to the a scientific view of indirect realism. They operate in seperate categories.

The strawman naive realism isn't argued anywhere. To the extent you've proved indirect realism, it was never challenged. The question was philosophical (or so I thought) as to what statements, like "I see a boat" meant. You're just telling me how retinas bend light.

That doesn't follow because it assumes a grammatical theory of direct realism speaks at all to the a scientific view of indirect realism. They operate in seperate categories. — Hanover

Which is another thing I have repeatedly argued. The traditional dispute between direct and indirect realism concerns phenomenology. The new semantic direct realism has reappropriated the term "direct perception" to mean something else — something that prima facie does not contradict indirect realism. I haven't been arguing that semantic direct realism is false; I have been arguing that phenomenological direct realism is false and that indirect realism is true.

See all the way back to the first page.

It is you and Banno and others that are using semantic direct realism or something like it to argue that indirect realism is false.

The Direct Realist has the untenable position that i) John cannot possibly feel the same private sensation when sitting in “hot” water that Jane feels when sitting in “cold” water and ii) John must feel the same private sensation when sitting in “hot” water that Jane feels when sitting in “hot” water.

That’s just not true. When someone has severe hypothermia they can get so cold that their blood rushes to the surface in a last ditch effort to warm the body, and they begin to feel hot; so hot, in fact, that they often strip off their clothes. This occurs precisely when their body is losing heat at fatal levels. So it is just a natural phenomenon that someone can feel hot when they are measurably cold.

I have a friend with severe neuropathy in his legs. One time he rested his foot on a heater of some sort and burned his foot. He said he noticed his foot burning only when he could smell his burning flesh. He never felt the sensation of heat but his foot became so hot that it burned.

These types of occurrences are well known and I’m not sure anyone holds the position you claim they do.

The fact that one feels hot when freezing, or not hot when burning, is a sign that something isn’t working in their body and it’s time to seek a doctor. We can understand that the hypothermic man feels “hot” but he is in fact cold. We can understand that a person with neuropathy can feel nothing but is in fact hot. We understand that it is a problem of the perceiver and not the perceived.

How could something that you've described as being "essentially private" serve as a standard for correct and incorrect use in an essentially public practice (language)? — Esse Quam Videri

The sensation is private, but the associated behaviors (furrowed brow, clutching the head, expressions of distress) are not. These behaviors, like the word 'headache', indicate the private sensation without being it.

Words that refer to private sensations are comprehensible because we all share these (presumably similar) experiences. By linking past experience with another's present behavior, it is possible to understand what headache means. Whereas if someone had never experienced a headache they might never understand what people are complaining about.

Do you agree with this last point? If sensation-words don't refer to private experience, then why does it seem that having the private experience oneself is necessary to understand the word?

This is incoherent. If a) headaches are private sensations then b) the word "headaches" in (a) is being used to refer to things which are private sensations — those things being headaches. That's what makes (a) true. If the word "headaches" in (a) is being used to refer to something else (e.g. cats) then (a) would be false. — Michael

There is a difference between truth-makers and referents. Private sensations can act as truth-makers, not referents. Reference does not float free of meaning. In order for something to act as a referent, it must be able to contribute to fixing the correctness conditions of a word's usage. Private sensations cannot fulfill that function. Hence, they cannot act as referents.

Why would it be a problem? I don't need to see Genghis Khan for the name "Genghis Khan" to refer to the man who lead the Mongols to conquer Asia, so why the insistence that if our experiences are private then our words cannot refer to them? — Michael

Proper names like "Genhis Khan" refer via public anchoring mechanisms like historical records, testimony, chains of communication and and shared criteria for re-identification. The word "headache" is not like this. It is not publicly identifiable. There is no independent criterion for checking whether reference succeeded.

Clearly the phrase "private experiences" does, else you'd have to argue that the phrase "private experiences" is incoherent. It's really not difficult. — Michael

The phrase "private experience" does not refer by pointing to a private object. It refers by functioning in a public contrast. It's meaning is fixed by how the phrase is used, but not by anyone having access to someone else's experience. Ironically, we can only talk about private experiences because meaning is not fixed by private access.

When I say "I have a headache" the word "headache" is being used to refer to a sensation that I claim to have and when I say "you have a headache" the word "headache" is being used to refer to a sensation that I claim you have (and which I assume is much like mine). — Michael

Notice what is doing all of the semantic work here: claiming, assuming, inferring from behavior. None of that is fixed by the sensation itself. Again, an essentially private "entity" can't act as a public standard of correctness.

If sensation-words don't refer to private experience, then why does it seem that having the private experience oneself is necessary to understand the word? — hypericin

Because the word "understanding" has more than one sense. Having the experience may be necessary for empathetic or imaginative grasp, but not for semantic competence. The meaning of “headache” is fixed by public criteria; private experience enriches our appreciation of what those criteria track, but it is not what makes the word meaningful.

Because the word "understanding" has more than one sense. Having the experience may be necessary for empathetic or imaginative grasp, but not for semantic competence. — Esse Quam Videri

But in this sense, ChatGPT understands "headache" just as well as we do, at least in the purely verbal domain. But this cannot be the relevant sense in a discussion on direct realism, can it?

But in this sense, ChatGPT understands "headache" just as well as we do, at least in the purely verbal domain. But this cannot be the relevant sense in a discussion on direct realism, can it? — hypericin

There are two things to keep separate here: (1) semantic/linguistic understanding and (2) phenomenal acquaintance. ChatGPT has the former without the latter. This actually proves the point rather nicely that semantic competence does not require phenomenal acquaintance.

You are right that direct realism is not a thesis about semantic competence or linguistic meaning. The reason we got onto this topic is because the indirect realist needs private "entities" (sensations) to do explanatory work as perceptual intermediaries. That commitment raised questions about how such items are individuated and talked about. At some point in the discussion it was stated that sensations do not satisfy public criteria for "objecthood"—re-identifiability, persistence conditions, independent checkability, etc.— and, therefore, are not best understood as "entities" in any robustly ontological sense. Pushback was given and hence the subsequent discussion about meaning and reference.

It is you and Banno and others that are using semantic direct realism or something like it to argue that indirect realism is false. — Michael

Point out where I argued indirect realism is false. I've consistently taken an a-metaphysical stance. I've argued it's irrelevant from a perspective of meaning.

That commitment raises questions about how such items are individuated and talked about. At some point in the discussion it was stated that sensations do not satisfy public criteria for "objecthood"—re-identifiability, persistence conditions, or independent checkability— and, therefore, are not best understood as entities in any robustly ontological sense. — Esse Quam Videri

And yet, I can talk about my headaches just fine (which is not talk of behaviors, norms, etc). Whereas, ChatGpt simply cannot. ChatGpt can perfectly reproduce the verbalization of someone talking about their headaches. But, it cannot talk about its headaches, because it has none.

If I can talk about my headaches, and ChatGpt cannot, there seems to be something I have that I am talking about, that ChatGpt will always lack. If that something can be discussed, and it is mine alone, this seems enough to talk of this something as an entity, if not a physical "object".

Quite right. To my knowledge no one here denies that we have something ChatGPT lacks. The question is whether this "something" is an "object" or a "mode of access". Humans can have first-person experience that ChatGPT lacks without that experience being a privately identifiable entity. What ChatGPT lacks is subjectivity, not a hidden "object" to refer to.

The idea here is that objects of perception like trucks, people and virtual game-objects satisfy public, normative criteria of ontological objecthood— identity conditions, persistence, affordances, counterfactual structure—that phenomenal qualities do not. Phenomenal qualities are real, vivid and describable, but they are not the objects of perception in the same ontological sense as trucks and people. They are the manner in which an object is given in perception, not what is given. Phenomenal qualities characterize the episode of perceiving (salience, articulation, affective grip, etc.). They are not ingredients added to the world, but dimensions along which world-directed perception is organized.

If I can talk about my headaches, and ChatGpt cannot, there seems to be something I have that I am talking about, that ChatGpt will always lack. If that something can be discussed, and it is mine alone, this seems enough to talk of this something as an entity, if not a physical "object".

That something is the your body. After all, it is the only object under discussion in any of these matters.

Rather, It is the nominalization of abstract terms in combination with the grammar that is leading us astray, since we know, just by looking, that when your “head aches” it does not thereby produce an object called a “headache”.

So I fear that the whole effort of indirect realism is to prey on the cognitive error of reification so as to rescue a waning subjectivism and idealism, finally in its death throes.

If I can talk about my headaches, and ChatGpt cannot, there seems to be something I have that I am talking about, that ChatGpt will always lack. If that something can be discussed, and it is mine alone, this seems enough to talk of this something as an entity, if not a physical "object". — hypericin

That we can talk about your headaches doesn't suggest the meaning of "your headaches" is underwritten by those headaches, nor does it mean your head doesn't hurt nor that ChatGpt has an ache in the head it doesn't have.

The very fact I can talk about your headache is proof I am not talking about something available only to you.

Private sensations can act as truth-makers, not referents. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes they can, they're doing it right here. You're using the term "private sensations" to refer to things that you say can act as truth-makers but can't act as referents. It's incoherent. What exactly do you think "reference" means in this context?

The very fact I can talk about your headache is proof I am not talking about something available only to you. — Hanover

It is available to me directly, and to you, indirectly. To me, it is immediate, to you, it is accessed through discourse and behavior and your own prior experience of headaches.




.

Point out where I argued indirect realism is false. I've consistently taken an a-metaphysical stance. I've argued it's irrelevant from a perspective of meaning. — Hanover

What is this "a-metaphysical stance" other than the stance that metaphysical stances are false? This is a discussion about perception, not meaning, so why bring up Wittgenstein and Austin at all unless you think that their analysis of language proves or disproves either direct or indirect realism?

The indirect realist claims that we only have indirect perception of distal objects, mediated by direct perception of other things like mental phenomena — with things like colour and pain being types of mental phenomena — and you respond by saying such things as "[internal states don't] offer explanatory power". What is this response saying if not that the indirect realist's account of perception is false?

So either you're arguing that indirect realism is false or you're interjecting with a red herring and fabricating a conflict that doesn't exist.

Either way, my position is that "indirect perceptual realism is broadly equivalent to the scientific view of perception that subjects do not experience the external world as it really is" and that "[colors are] a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights" — as I have made very clear since the first page. If you don't think that either of these claims are false, what are you objecting to?

What exactly do you think "reference" means in this context? — Michael

For me, reference is a normative achievement: a term refers only insofar as its use is governed by standards of correctness within a public practice. Whatever counts as a referent must therefore be capable of fixing such standards. The question, then, is whether private sensations can play that role. My answer is no—private sensations cannot fix standards of correctness in a norm-governed practice, and therefore cannot function as referents.

Yes they can, they're doing it right here. You're using the term "private sensations" to refer to things that you say can act as truth-makers but can't act as referents. — Michael

The use of the term "private sensations" in my sentence was an example of mention not reference. For a term to qualify as a "mention" is for it to satisfy the norms that govern the correct usage of that term. However, satisfying those normative requirements does not imply that there is also something in the world that satisfies the additional normative requirements of being a referent. This is what allows us to correctly use terms like "private sensations" without achieving reference.

If just one word refers to private sensations then this argument that you and Hanover keep pushing that meaning is just public use, that private sensations must drop out of consideration because we can't know each other's experiences, etc. is shown to fail. — Michael

The meaning if "headache" is not fixed only by some collective for private sensations. It is found in behaviour, avowals, characteristic causes, typical remedies, patterns of use in diagnosis, excuses, and so on. It's not private in the sense that is required.

But further, there's something your account seems not to acknowledge. Your headaches differed markedly from being cold or being red, in that while we can check the truth of what you claim about the latter, yet the claim you have a headache is much the only evidence we have that you do indeed have a headache. The grammar for headaches is quote different to that for looking, touching, smelling.

The argument about “meaning = public use” never claims that words cannot be about inner states. It claims that reference to an inner state cannot be what fixes meaning.

Understanding is displayed in correct use, not in possession of a matching quale. This is demonstrated by the fact that someone who has never had a headache may nevertheless use the term correctly.

The use of the term "private sensations" in my sentence was an example of mention not reference. — Esse Quam Videri

"private sensations" is an English term that refers to private sensations.

The first (quoted) use is an example of mention, the second (unquoted) use refers to private sensations. And the above sentence is true.

Much like: "cats" is an English word that refers to cats.

It claims that reference to an inner state cannot be what fixes meaning. — Banno

I haven't claimed this. For the umpteenth time, I am only saying that the word "headaches" refers to headaches, and that headaches are a sensation.

I am only saying that the word "headaches" refers to headaches, and that headaches are a sensation. — Michael

First, can you see that the grammar of "headache" and the grammar of "cold" are very different?

Either way, my position is that "indirect perceptual realism is broadly equivalent to the scientific view of perception that subjects do not experience the external world as it really is" — Michael

But doesn't indirect realism suggest that there is no unmediated account? And therefore truth is going to be relative to life form?

For instance, cats see in conditions humans would call "darkness.". So is the room dark? It depends on what life form you are.

If there is no unmediated account, there's no unmediated truth.

I’ve been explicit about how I’m using “reference,” “mention,” and “referent”—they are components of a semantic theory on which reference is a normative achievement within a public practice. Simply insisting on a thinner, grammatical use of “refers to” doesn’t engage that theory; it just declines it.

But declining it isn’t yet an alternative. The standing issue is still unanswered: how, on your view, can something essentially private function as a standard of correctness within a public practice? Until that role is explained, the appeal to “reference” does no explanatory work.