if you decided to create one, you would not be able to understand any of its non-ostensive terms except by translating them into your native, public language — Janus

True enough, which mandates that if I create a private language, its terms must directly correspond to their respective antecedents. Which they will, or the creation of that which represents a range of my subjective activities is impossible.

You, of all people, may understand the schema of conceptions are entirely the product of imagination, which is sufficient reason for justifying that I can name any perception of mine, any damn thing I want.

Ontological anti-realism is just some level of skepticism about ontology in general. — frank

Ok. I grant ontology in general, so I guess I don’t have some level of skepticism about it. I’m certainly skeptical that my knowledge of things is complete or true. Which is a metaphysical condition, I would say.

If, as you say, there are intrinsically private mental phenomena — Banno

I never said any such thing. Don't even know what intrinsically private means... There are things that are not said, by convention. Speaking about them is not proper, not done, or it hasn't been done yet. There are also things that people would rather not say about themselves, things they would rather keep private. It doesn't mean that it cannot possibly be made public by some absolute logical impossibility.

This is soft ontological anti-realism:

Ehhhhh.......whatever is, is whatever it is, the nature of its being given immediately to me upon my knowledge of it, which follows seemingly from my own internal reality. In general, epistemology holds the more fundamental metaphysical domain, than ontology. Doesn’t matter what the ontology of a thing is, if a valid methodology for knowledge doesn’t precede. Plus....I prefer to keep my -ologies and -isms as plain and simple and few as possible. — Mww

"Anti-realism" isn't a specific view. There's moral anti-realism, bovine anti-realism, etc.

What's your take on reality? Is it a social construct?

My point was, to give an example, you make up novel words (sounds and a script to represent them) for objects, and be able to determine their meaning by visualizing the objects, but how would you determine the meanings of your new terms for words like 'and' 'the' 'this' 'that' 'how' 'why' 'what' etc, etc without referring to those words in your native, public language? If you cannot do without referring to your native language, then your made up language does not qualify as fully private. — Janus

Yes. I basically said this to Mww, but it's not the PLA.

What's your take on reality? Is it a social construct? — frank

Large parts of it are, things like language, the economy, science, or art are evidently of a social nature, and therefore co-constructed. But other things, like planets or stars or other living species, existed before us, I think. In fact they were there long before any Homo sapiens started to name anything, so they can't be depended on human cultures.

But other things, like planets or stars or other living species, existed before us, I think. In fact they were there long before any Homo sapiens started to name anything, so they can't be depended on human cultures. — Olivier5

So realism for both subjective and objective narratives. :up:

Both realist in the general sense, that I can and must conceive of a mind-independent reality, that whatever is the case is the case, irrespective of what we may think of it; and sceptic about human beings' capacity to see this reality as it is. We are very good at projecting our mental categories onto the world, and some of that is useful but one has to guard against the tendency.

There IS a territory. But the map is NEVER the territory.

May I ask, what does "intrinsically private" mean in this context? Can anyone try and define it? And what is the connection with public discourse? — Olivier5

The sort of question that come's up now and then is "How do i know that my experience of red is the same as your experience of red?" The answer to this is not that we agree which things are red. And because of this, "my experience of red" becomes intrinsically private, because there is no access whatsoever to it by anyone else. It might be 'like' your experience of green, or your experience of conservatism, or your experience of cats. and nobody could ever possibly know.

This is of course utter tosh. But the reason it is tosh is that no one has "an experience of red", they merely experience things as red, or as not red. Ask a silly question, and you get an intrinsically private experience.

no one has "an experience of red", they merely experience things as red — unenlightened

What’s the difference?

have you ever seen red by itself?

What would that be like? Just the one colour over your entire visual field?

have you ever seen red by itself?

What would that be like? Just the one colour over your entire visual field? — Banno

Not that I can recall, no. Why do you ask?

I find this an entirely agreeable explanation, except that I take it one step further, and say that things that make absolutely no difference should be treated as non-existent. — unenlightened

This is a mistake. If it can be recognized by you as a thing, then by that fact, it has made a difference, and cannot be excluded as non-existent. In other words this is willful ignorance, denying the existence of something you recognize as existing. It's nothing more than saying I have recognized the existence of this thing but since it makes absolutely no difference to me (I care nothing about it), I can claim it as non-existent. The problem being that whether or not something makes a difference is a subjective judgement, and the fact that you don't care about it doesn't mean that no one cares about it..

I wonder if it is what @unenlightened has in mind,

I don't see why having "an experience of red" necessarily implies "seeing just the one colour over your entire visual field". Therefore, I still don't understand how having "an experience of red" differs from having an "experience [of] things as red".

...no one has "an experience of red", they merely experience things as red, or as not red... — unenlightened

Which requires knowing which sorts of things we call "red"; knowing how to use "red". Such experience cannot rightfully be called "subjective" or "private" in any sensible way for experiencing red things as such cannot even happen without intersubjective public language use. If personal experiences are to count as subjective and/or private, then they cannot be existentially dependent upon intersubjective and public things like knowing how to use "red", and/or knowing which sorts of things are called "red".

Therefore, I still don't understand how having "an experience of red" differs from having an "experience [of] things as red". — Luke

AH, well. just so long as you are not seeing red. That't be idiomatic.

My point was, to give an example, you make up novel words (sounds and a script to represent them) for objects, and be able to determine their meaning by visualizing the objects, but how would you determine the meanings of your new terms for words like 'and' 'the' 'this' 'that' 'how' 'why' 'what' etc, etc without referring to those words in your native, public language? If you cannot do without referring to your native language, then your made up language does not qualify as fully private. — Janus


Yes. I basically said this to Mww, but it's not the PLA. — frank

No, I don't think so. It's about rules that only you know about. — frank

I wasn't suggesting that this is explicitly the way the PLA is laid out. But, think about it: it being impossible that there be rules only you know about is the same thing as the impossibility of having non-ostenstive words that are not understood in terms of a public language in a purportedly private language. The best that could be done then, would be to have private names for objects that can be pointed to, which doesn't really amount to much of a private language.

You, of all people, may understand the schema of conceptions are entirely the product of imagination, which is sufficient reason for justifying that I can name any perception of mine, any damn thing I want. — Mww

Right, so as I said above it is not possible to create a private language (one constructed entirely in private terms) but it is possible to have private names for things that can be pointed to. We seem to be in agreement.

But the map is NEVER the territory. — Olivier5

Can maps be more or less adequate to the territory?

Hey, @frank - what's your take on reality?

I think it an odd question; perhaps your answering it will make clearer what it is you are after...?

That the map is not the territory does not render the map wrong.

This reads like a Sex Ed class. Everyone is talking about it but no one wants to spell it out. The forbidden word. Qualia. :rofl:

Fine.

The reference to Popper was interesting. I'd forgotten he used the term, so I retrieved LSD and Against Method from their place on my shelf for a bit of reminiscing. Popper gives due credit to Kant, Feyerabend gives some rather nice examples. Cheers.

Qualia are only one example of the problem.

...

"my experience of red" becomes intrinsically private, because there is no access whatsoever to it by anyone else. It might be 'like' your experience of green, or your experience of conservatism, or your experience of cats. and nobody could ever possibly know. — unenlightened

Okay, or "how it feels to be a bat". Indeed a rather immaterial, speculative question.

I believe your red is my red, because the underlying mechanism to produce those tints is biological and biology is very conservative, it change very very slowly and cannot be parametered at will like, say, a digital computer. We have more or less the same basic metabolism that bacterias, molluscs and bats have. Your and my metabolism are very similar, so chances are that we see colors more or less the same way, because those color are metabolic in nature. (Baring color blindness in one of us)

Of course there's no way to check that empirically, so it remains hypothetical. But I don't lose sleep over that.

Seems to me that every conscious sensation can be made "public" by throwing some words in the public space about it. It doesn't mean we share our real, actual sensations this way, only words for them.

That's because the practice of "sharing" through language is not at all like sharing a meal or sharing a car. I cannot literally put my sensations on the table and share them with you as we would share a meal. Words are not the things they denote but mere tokens for them. So when you express yourself in words, you are of course not sharing the actual things that happened to you, only a symbolic representation of them, more or less precise, more or less faithful, that the listener will decode more or less well, and it will evoke some ideas in his mind hopefully not too dissimilar to what you tried to say.

Problem is, we have no way of quantifying the impact of brainstates on Xs and Ys. — khaled

I don't see how that's at all relevant. You're positing that there's some epiphenomenal effect (X or Y) which is a physical consequence of some particular brain state, but the phenomenological associate of which is identical in each case (otherwise we'd be able to access it by introspection). So Xs and Ys don't have properties, they are properties - properties of brainstates X1 and Y1. If X and Y had properties, then you'd be positing either epi-epiphenomenon, or you'd be arguing that X and Y are, in fact, physical.

we have no way of detecting whether you're having XXY, ZZR or KKU — khaled

We do. We can detect brain states and XXY, ZZR and KKU are directly, inseparably linked to different brain states, so we know exactly which you're having.

there is no practical difference between you having XXY or ZZR or KKU. — khaled

There's the difference in fMRI scan.

someone having XXY and someone having GGR will act the exact same way. — khaled

But will show a different fMRI image. So we do know. It's just that XXY and ZZR become highly technical terms in neuroscience. Which, having no impact on ordinary life whatsoever, is where they should stay.

This is a mistake. If it can be recognized by you as a thing, then by that fact, it has made a difference, and cannot be excluded as non-existent. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not a mistake. because it cannot be recognised as a thing. "I see a red apple" means I see a thing in the world that is red. There is nothing in my interior world that is red. But "an experience of red" suggests that the red is in my head in my interior world (whatever that is). But I don't see colour in my experiences, because I never look at them - my eyes point outwards not inwards. It is a linguistic construction that is mistaken for a thing The experience of seeing cannot be seen and thus cannot be coloured. Only what is seen is coloured and never the experience of seeing.

I believe your red is my red, because the underlying mechanism to produce those tints is biological and biology is very conservative, it change very very slowly and cannot be parametered at will like, say, a digital computer. — Olivier5

As you see above, I do not think I am red or have a red or a red experience, and I don't believe you do either. I see red things, and rarely I see red illusions which are errors of seeing. But my seeing experiences no more have colour than they have smell.

My point wasn't to define subjectivity, only to point out that it is not identical to privacy. — Luke

Odd. So there could be something publicly shared yet which is entirely subjective? I'm not following you.

The dictionary offers this relevant definition: "dependent on the mind or on an individual's perception for its existence." — Luke

That seems a reasonable definition, but then it would make my phones example not so terrible after alll. You said

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain. — Luke

But not, it seems, because your pain is intrinsically private and so inaccessible to be, but simply because your pain takes place in your mind (the mind you own), and if (via @Banno's arm-wiring experiment) it actually took place in someone else's mind, it simply wouldn't be your pain anymore, buy virtue entirely of whose brain it was in. Like phones. My phone is 'my' phone entirely by virtue of whose legal possession it is in, no property of the actual phone. Your pain is 'your' pain entirely by virtue of whose mind it is in, not any property of the actual pain.

So what on earth would 'intersubjective' mean? Something which takes place in multiple minds at once? Not sure where that model leaves intersubjectivity.