So , it is true that any thought that can be put into propositional form can be put into propositional form. — RussellA

Yes. But not everything in one's mind is a thought, not everything can be put into proposition form.

Those things can be shown.

SO it would be mistaken to read Wittgenstein as here placing limits on what minds can do.

When I look at a red sunset, I am looking at a wavelength of 700nm. — RussellA

It's a troubling topic, it seems.

What you look at a sunset, you are emphatically not looking at a wavelength of light.

To do that would require some considerable laboratory equipment, and even then one could debate wether one is seeing a wavelength of light or some numbers on a screen.

Your eye is presumably being impacted by light of around 700nm, as well as other frequencies. But that is not seeing.

Further, you can see red when your eye is not being impacted by light of around 700nm, in various illusions or delusions.

Seeing red is not seeing light of around 700nm. After all, folk could see red long before they knew what frequency it is.

Now I do not think you will disagree with this. it's just me being overly pedantic, after all.

Inside my head, I may have the private subjective experience of a particular colour. — RussellA

What is it that is private here?



You and I both see the red Ferrari. You say you also have a "private subjective experience", and "No-one apart from myself will ever know what particular colour I am experiencing" - but that's not right. I know you are "experiencing red". You do not see a green Ferrari."...the actual colour that I experience in my mind, which could be green for me and yellow for you" is incoherent.

Why not just say that seeing a red Ferrari is a public experience?

However, the word "red" can refer to different objects, as long as they have the same property of redness. — RussellA

We use "red" as a noun, therefore there must be something to which "red" refers. A bit of reflection might convince you that this argument is invalid. "Santa clause" is a name, therefore Santa exists...

"But there must be something common to all the things that are red..." Well, yes - that they are called "red". Beyond that, the word garners any meaning it has from buying the green sports car rather than the red one, talking of the red sunset, not the pink one...the use to which it is put.

"But there is more to it than that" Of course there is. But nothing that can be said. It's shown. The private, subjective experience drops out in the process.

However, in common usage, I can think of a thing, such as a postbox, independently of any proposition that it may be within. — RussellA

Do you think of a postbox without any proposition? Or do you imagine it, picture it, envisage it, dream it, project it...

What Wittgenstein is doing might simply be differentiating between these other, non-propositional mental activities, and having a thought. After all, can you put your imaginings, your pictures, your dreams, into word without giving them further thought?

Can you show them? But isn't that what Witti is saying?

I will try. — RussellA

My contribution is that so far as aI understand it, this seems an accurate account:

It is plain that Bradley thinks of A and B as being like two objects fastened together with a bit of string, and he thinks of R as being like the bit of string. He then remembers that the objects must be glued or sealed to both ends of the the bit of string if the latter is to fasten them together. And then, I suppose, another kind of glue is needed to fasten the second drop of glue to the object B on the one side and the string on the other. And so on without end. Charity bids us avert our eyes from the pitiable spectacle of a great philosopher using an argument which would disgrace a child or a savage. (Broad 1933: 85)

So I'm not so pleased with it.

"...the actual colour that I experience in my mind, which could be green for me and yellow for you" is incoherent. — Banno

How do you mean incoherent? Because of a homunculean regress? Or because inescapably private? Or somehow else?

Or is "incoherent" not the criticism? "Fantastical", maybe?

It might be helpful at this point to again look at one of the great themes, perhaps the main theme, running through all Wittgenstein's work. It's the distinction between what can be said and what can be shown. The notion permeates his work. — Banno

But does it distinguish, simply, between literal, declarative statements and other kinds of symbol use (words, music or pictures), as it does for Goodman?

Or does it, for W or you, have to do with the isomorphism business? (I often wonder.)

In the Tractatus, a name is the thing it denotes. — Banno

Is this a typo? If not, then oh dear.

You and I both see the red Ferrari. You say you also have a "private subjective experience", and "No-one apart from myself will ever know what particular colour I am experiencing" - but that's not right. I know you are "experiencing red". You do not see a green Ferrari."...the actual colour that I experience in my mind, which could be green for me and yellow for you" is incoherent.

Why not just say that seeing a red Ferrari is a public experience? — Banno

The phrase "public experience" strikes me as an incoherent concept, at least in terms of subjective experiences.

Wittgenstein would probably say instead that the "private subjective experience" drops out of consideration as irrelevant; what is of grammatical relevance are only our appropriate/correct uses - or our behavioural responses to uses - of the word "red". If I order the Ferrari online, all that matters is that the one delivered to me is the same colour as the one shown in the picture you posted. It doesn't matter if the Ferrari seller and I (or anyone else) have a different "private subjective experience" wrt the colour in the picture; it only matters that we both have the same grammatical behaviour towards that colour and both call it "red". You do not know that I am "experiencing red" - at least not in the same way that you do. But our subjective experiences of seeing a colour needn't be the same in order to use colour words correctly anyway. Even a blind or colour-blind person can learn to use the word "red".

The phrase "public experience" strikes me as an incoherent concept, at least in terms of subjective experiences. — Luke

Yeah, so drop the "in terms of private experience"...

And that's the answer to .

Yeah, so drop the "in terms of private experience"... — Banno

Who has a “public experience”? Wouldnt that imply that everyone has the same experience?

Like the teacher, he probably didn't mean "thoughts" to refer to identifiable brain events that correspond or fail to correspond to propositions. It was more a matter of putting the reference of symbols in the perfectly realistic context of our deliberate efforts to make sense of them. — bongo fury

2.0272 The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact
4 The thought is the significant proposition
4.023 A proposition is the description of a fact
4.1252 Similarly the series of propositions "aRb"..............
Bertrand Russell - If we say “Plato loves Socrates”, the word “loves” which occurs between the word “Plato” and the word “Socrates” establishes a certain relation between these two words.............3.1432: “We must not say, the complex sign ‘aRb’ says that ‘a stands in a certain relation R to b’; but we must say, that ‘a’ stands in a certain relation to ‘b’ says that aRb”

Agree, Wittgenstein is defining "thought" as where meaning resides. If I walked into a room and said "dog", I would be treated as eccentric. If I walked into the room and said "My dog has fleas", everyone would appreciate the meaning of what I had said.

Hey, I'm happy not to use either, and just talk about experiences, or better, cars.

My comment was very broad brush, so I wouldn't be surprised to have chapter and verse thrown against it. But the only line there that I can see addressing my comment is

4 The thought is the significant proposition — RussellA

But I'm suggesting that, like the grade school teacher, W wants to talk in technical terms (worthy of a diagram) about the propositions and their reference, not so much about thoughts as such: as items in their own right.

I thought it was an interesting question. Can we even talk about experiences or sensations in subjective terms? Or is doing so “running up against the limits of language”? But I understand it’s probably too far off the topic of this discussion.

I thought it was an interesting question. Can we even talk about experiences or sensations in subjective terms? Or is doing so “running up against the limits of language”? — Luke

Why wouldn't you think that we can't talk about subjective sensations? We do it all the time. Moreover, we understand, for example, what people are talking about when they describe a beautiful sunset. We also understand when someone tells us the orange juice is sweet, which describes their subjective experience. There is common agreement, generally, about our subjective experiences. Everything speaks in favor of people seeing the same colors, tasting the bitterness of dark chocolate, feeling the hardness of a table, etc. I don't see how this runs up against the limits of language, unless I've misunderstood your point. It's not as though the concept needs some inner thing to latch onto, it just a use that latches onto our "form of life." Our inner experiences get their life through the way we interact linguistically or conceptually.

I would say that everything speaks in favor of common inner experiences, and generally nothing against it. Moreover, isn't this how "we know" that are inner subjective experiences are the same. If they weren't the same experiences, I believe the conceptual public use would break down.

In the Tractatus, a name is the thing it denotes. So one cannot say the meaning of a name. One can only show it, by pointing, or by using the name in a sentence. — Banno

But he gives no examples of using simple names.

He struggles with this in the Notebooks 1914-16:

And nothing seems to speak against infinite divisibility.
And it keeps on forcing itself upon us that there is some simple indivisible, an element of being, in brief a thing.[62]

If there is a final sense and a proposition expressing it completely, then there are also names for simple objects. [64]

The division of the body into material points, as we have it in physics, is nothing more than analysis into simple components.
But could it be possible that the sentences in ordinary use have, as it
were, only an incomplete sense ( quite apart from their truth or falsehood), and that the propositions in physics, as it were, approach the stage where a proposition really has a complete sense?
When I say, "The book is lying on the table", does this really have a
completely clear sense? (An EXTREMELY important question.)[67]

Our difficulty was that we kept on speaking of simple objects and were unable to mention a single one. [68]

The simple sign is essentially simple.
It functions as a simple object. (What does that mean?)
Its composition becomes completely indifferent. It disappears from view. [69]

Now when I do this and designate the objects by means of names, does that make them simple?
All the same, however, this proposition is a picture of that complex.
This object is simple for me! [70]

The world is the totality of facts, not of things. — Art48

Epistemic twist on the usual, humdrum, senses & their extension based definition of reality. Knowledge is perhaps the only real stuff the world is made of. @Gnomon's information-based EnFormAction thesis come's to mind (the world as information - from head to toe in a manner of speaking).

I recall vaguely that Wittgenstein subscribed to the correspondence theory of truth. What conclusions follow? Hard to say, hard to say.

W wants to talk in technical terms (worthy of a diagram) about the propositions and their reference, not so much about thoughts as such: as items in their own right. — bongo fury

But as Wittgenstein is identifying thought as proposition, in talking about propositions, he is also talking about thoughts.

A picturial or musical language means that the claim that thinking is a kind of language is not the same as the claim that we think in words. — Fooloso4

Music is a language is metaphorical - feelings and thoughts
We talk about the language of music, but this is a metaphor, in that music is like language, not that music is language. Music is like language in that there is a relationship between the individual parts.

When I hear a single note, this is not music. Music is the relationship between notes. We get meaning from the relationship between things. A single note has no meaning. There is only meaning in a combination of notes.

When I hear music, in the first instance, I have a feeling, which I may or may not think about. Feeling is an emotional state, whereas thinking requires judgement, reasoning and intellect.

Feeling is about a single thing, I feel pain when touching a hot radiator. It is the nature of thought that it is propositional. On perceiving the colour red, I cannot have the single thought "red". The thought must be about something, such as "this is red", "red is an attractive colour", etc. Feelings are singular, thoughts are propositional. Thinking is feeling plus a proposition.

In the first instance, music is feeling. We may think about these feelings, and in thinking about them, we express our thoughts in propositional form. Language is thoughts expressed in propositional form. It is not that the music is language, rather, our feelings about about the music may be expressed as thoughts in language.

In the TLP, language can be used to talk about the world. The world is whatever happens to be the case. If the proposition that I saw a red truck is true, then it's a picture of (an aspect) of the world. No problem.

We enter into nonsense anytime we ask about stuff that is not "in' this world, or that requires a vantage point beyond it. Asking whether there is such a thing as subjective experience is in that category.

Also, announcing that there is such a thing as subjective experience is nonsense.

Plus what I just said is nonsense.

It's not as though the concept needs some inner thing to latch onto — Sam26

This seems at odds with the rest of your post. If this is true, then I don't understand why you would also say:

I would say that everything speaks in favor of common inner experiences, and generally nothing against it. Moreover, isn't this how "we know" that are inner subjective experiences are the same. If they weren't the same experiences, I believe the conceptual public use would break down. — Sam26

If our concepts do not need "some inner thing to latch onto", then why would our "conceptual public use" break down without "some inner thing to latch onto"? It need not be that:

Everything speaks in favor of people seeing the same colors, tasting the bitterness of dark chocolate, feeling the hardness of a table, etc. — Sam26

Because it's not as though these concepts (i.e. the same colours, bitterness, hardness) need some inner thing to latch onto.

I take Wittgenstein to be genuine in saying:

272. The essential thing about private experience is really not that each
person possesses his own specimen, but that nobody knows whether
other people also have this or something else. The assumption would
thus be possible — though unverifiable — that one section of mankind
had one visual impression of red, and another section another. — Philosophical Investigations

But as Wittgenstein is identifying thought as proposition, in talking about propositions, he is also talking about thoughts. — RussellA

Loosely (indirectly, residually) of course, but he (like the grade school teacher) isn't heading towards your kind of diagram, in which thoughts or any other mental units combine or map as discrete units (in the manner of word or picture tokens). Is my point.

He's getting out of the head, into the language.

It's not as though the concept needs some inner thing to latch onto
— Sam26

This seems at odds with the rest of your post. If this is true, then I don't understand why you would also say:

I would say that everything speaks in favor of common inner experiences, and generally nothing against it. Moreover, isn't this how "we know" that our inner subjective experiences are the same. If they weren't the same experiences, I believe the conceptual public use would break down.
— Sam26

If our concepts do not need "some inner thing to latch onto", then why would our "conceptual public use" break down without "some inner thing to latch onto"? It need not be that: — Luke

It doesn't latch onto the inner thing in terms of meaning, which isn't to deny that there is some relationship between the inner and the outer public manifestation. There is a correlation or relationship between our inner experiences and how we use the words, and this, it seems to me, would be severed, or would break down publicly. The disconnect would eventually show up in our uses of the concept.

I believe we do know with a high degree of certainty that people have the same inner experiences, which is based on the public use of the concepts. The assumption, which has no standing, as far as I can tell, is that we can't know, and this seems wrong to me. Maybe we don't know with absolute certainty, but we know, again, with a high degree certainty.

Not sure if that clears it up.

It is plain that Bradley thinks of A and B as being like two objects fastened together with a bit of string, and he thinks of R as being like the bit of string.

@Banno

Broad has a rejectionist approach, challenging Bradley' scepticism about relations' ability to relate their relata. Broad argues that it is the job of relations to relate. But how exactly do relations relate. To simply say that it is the job of relations to relate is circular and unsatisfactory.

Relation is being used in two ways, Russell's Pluralism, whereby there is a relation existent in the world that is able to give a unity to separate entities, and Bradley's Monism, whereby the only relation between an aggregate of entities is in the mind.

A tree requires a relation between its trunk and branches. The Solar System requires a relation between the Sun and Earth. Relations exist universally within the Universe, such that there is a relation between a rock on Earth and a rock in Alpha Centauri.

What exactly are unifying relations. Are they abstract in nature, as some say that numbers are. It is easy to say that they exist outside of time and space, as it is easy to say that ghosts exist, but has such a claim ever been justified using reasoned argument. Bertrand Russell may describe relations as subsisting, but this goes back to having an abstract existence. Could it be similar to the Higgs boson, giving mass to matter. Are there fundamental particles named "relations" relating matter still to be discovered by the Large Hadron Collider.

For Broad to suggest that those sceptical of relations think of the relation between a rock on Earth and a rock on Alpha Centauri as a piece of string gluing them together is setting up a Straw Man argument, putting a ridiculous idea in the mind of their debating opponent and then quite sensibly demolishing it.

The existence of elementary particles and elementary forces is scientifically well established, and events in the Universe can sensibly be explained using them, whether the birth of Solar Systems or an apple falling under gravity to the Earth.

Gravitational forces between the apple and Earth are scientifically understood, and the behaviour of the system can be explained without the need for any unifying relation. The introduction of a unifying relation would result in an over-determination, ie, where a single-observed effect is determined by multiple causes, any one of which alone would be sufficient to account for the effect.

Given the choice between i) Broad's world in which relations exist but are neither needed nor explained and ii) Bradley's world where relations don't exist, it seems the more sensible to choose ii).

I could be persuaded otherwise if some scientific method was proposed whereby unifying relations could be located, measured and described. To say that they exist outside of time and space introduces mysticism and is an inadequate explanation.

He's getting out of the head, into the language. — bongo fury

There would be no public language if there were no private thoughts.

There would be no public language if there were no private thoughts. — RussellA

Username checks out.

I know you are "experiencing red". You do not see a green Ferrari." — Banno

I agree that you know that I am experiencing the public object emitting 700nm labelled "red"
You believe that I am experiencing in my mind the colour red, but you can never know, as it is not possible to know what is in someone else's mind.

As you can never know, I may in fact be experiencing the colour green, unlikely, but possible.

As you can never know, I may in fact be experiencing the colour green — RussellA

I could ask.

There would be no public language if there were no private thoughts. — RussellA

Interesting theory.

We talk about the language of music, but this is a metaphor, in that music is like language, not that music is language. Music is like language in that there is a relationship between the individual parts. — RussellA

I think it more accurate to say that the language of music is like a language of words. Both are languages but not the same language.

In the Notebooks he says:

Musical themes are in a certain sense propositions. [40]

What does he say that leads you to the conclusion that this "certain sense" is a metaphorical sense? Or is this just your assumption?

Music has a grammar, a logical structure.

Music, some music at least, makes us want to call it a language; but some music or course doesn't. [CV 62]

In several places Wittgenstein refers to the language of music.

PI 527. Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a sentence lies nearer than one thinks to what is ordinarily called understanding a musical theme. Why is just this the pattern of variation in loudness and tempo?

The right tempo is also important to understanding Wittgenstein's sentences:

Sometimes a sentence can be understood only if it is read at the right tempo. My sentences are all supposed to be read slowly. [CV 57]

Feeling is an emotional state, whereas thinking requires judgement, reasoning and intellect. — RussellA

Understanding a musical theme is not simply having a feeling.

The strength of the thoughts in Brahm's music [CV 23]

Music, some music at least, makes us want to call it a language; but some music or course doesn't. ]CV 62]

The broader issue, however, is the relation between thought and language. The earlier examples cited, such as this from the Tractatus:

3.1431 The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we imagine one composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books) instead of written signs.
Then the spatial arrangement of these things will express the sense of the proposition.

show that propositions need not be linguist, that is, a proposition need not be thought or expressed in terms of words.

It doesn't latch onto the inner thing in terms of meaning, which isn't to deny that there is some relationship between the inner and the outer public manifestation. There is a correlation or relationship between our inner experiences and how we use the words, and this, it seems to me, would be severed, or would break down publicly. The disconnect would eventually show up in our uses of the concept. — Sam26

If it "doesn't latch onto the inner thing in terms of meaning", then why would the disconnect "eventually show up in our uses of the concept". Meaning is use.

My original response to your previous post, before I edited it, was going to be that you seem to be arguing that Wittgenstein's beetle is both necessary and unnecessary to language use. Wittgenstein tells us that it drops out of consideration as irrelevant; that it cancels out, whatever it is; that the box might even be empty; and that the thing in the box doesn't belong to the language-game at all.

In your favour, I note that Wittgenstein states:

Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour — for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them. — Philosophical Investigations

However, having sensations might be considered as not necessarily a part of language use, and Wittgenstein spends much more of the book telling us how language use is not a private affair. For example:

307. “Aren’t you nevertheless a behaviourist in disguise? Aren’t you nevertheless basically saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?” — If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction. — Philosophical Investigations

It appears to me that Wittgenstein is saying that language takes its meaning entirely from behaviour, from use, and only from a third-person, external standpoint. Pain and other sensations do not refer directly to the private feelings but to the public expression of those feelings; to how you (and others) act when experiencing those sensations. Therefore, that is what a sensation is; what the word "sensation" can only refer to: its public expression.

And if that is the case - if language is entirely behavioural/external - then we cannot talk about sensations in terms of private subjective experiences or qualia or any of that. This is where we run up against the limits of language, and where Daniel Dennett is correct that qualia cannot possibly be private, ineffable, intrinsic and immediately apprehensible by consciousness. On the other hand, it seems as though we can talk about sensations and feelings directly in terms of the private subjective experiences and the sensations themselves, and not only in terms of their expression, because that is what we are doing now - or at least trying to do! In that case, Wittgenstein would be wrong about language or grammar being entirely behavioural/external.

In several places Wittgenstein refers to the language of music......................Understanding a musical theme is not simply having a feeling. — Fooloso4

Tactatus 4 "The thought is the significant proposition"

Language and music
I agree with the gist of what you are saying. Perhaps I am quibbling about definitions.

Language is defined as human communication, using words in a structured way. Words are defined as a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing. Understanding requires thoughts, and thoughts are propositional, in that propositions are relations between parts, aRb.

I sense the colour of red, I sense the sound of a crackle, I sense the pain of heat. These individual sensations are feelings. They can only be connected by a thought. Feelings are different to thoughts. Feelings are not propositional, thoughts are propositional.

We can gain both feelings and thoughts from music, but the individual notes and combinations of notes in music express feelings not thoughts. I can subsequently think about the music, but these thoughts are external to the music, not an intrinsic part of the music. Meaning can only be expressed in a proposition, such as "the apple is on the table". Thoughts express meaning and music expresses feelings. As music is not propositional, music cannot express meaning. I can say that music means a lot to me, but any such meaning is extrinsic to the music, in that I can have the thought that I enjoy the emotion I find in some music.

Language is about transmitting thoughts, and thoughts is where meaning resides. Music is about transmitting feelings. I agree that music is like language, but to say "music is language" is a metaphor.