You have evidence of something more? — Isaac
Banno has already disabused you of this misunderstanding. You could and would know exactly what I'm talking about by learning how to use the words correctly. — Isaac
I simply must understand why oh why we are born to suffer and die. And this goes metaphysical in an instant. — Constance
A blind person would understand all those words and yet know nothing of the sensation of red. — hypericin
A computer can learn how to use the words correctly yet know nothing of what it's talking about. — hypericin
Suppose someone was born with no sensation of pain. They can certainly learn to use "pain", "ouch!", Etc correctly, yet have no knowledge of what pain is like. — hypericin
What you're calling your 'experience of red' is a socially mediated construction. Therefore it is bound up with the language your culture uses and so can be reiterated in that language. — Isaac
I don't agree that there exists a 'sensation of red'. — Isaac
I can understand your account only because I experience the same color sensations. If I did not, if I were blind, or an alien, I wouldn't know what you were talking about, no matter how immersed I was in your culture. — hypericin
And neither does there exist a socially constructed notion of red that is completely shared within a language
community. It would at best be only partially shared, continually contested and redetermined , slightly differently for each participant, in each instantiation, relative to purposes, context and capacities. — Joshs
I am sympathetic to this. What are your thoughts regarding the variations within a shared understanding? While it seems accurate to say that people have different understandings of red, do you consider those differences are sufficient to warrant being seen as incompatible. — Tom Storm
No, I didn't. I was making use of irony. Here, let me do it again:You misunderstood, — hypericin
And yet...No one can say anything about the experience of red — hypericin
What is the difference between experiencing a red apple and the identical but green apple? — hypericin
Apparently that is too great a task.Banno has already disabused you of this misunderstanding. — Isaac
A quick shift of the goal post in order to avoid falsification.A computer can learn how to use the words correctly yet know nothing of what it's talking about. — hypericin
@Isaac, here we have the illusion, encouraged by phenomenology, that there is a clear distinction to be had between red and the-sensation-of-red or the-experience-of-red. And we find folk making claims that relate to Stove's Gem, such as that we really never see red, but only see experience-of-red or sensation-of-red. perhaps holds some similar view.But nothing about the sensation itself. — hypericin
Thanks for that.The parts of the brain which process colour are way back on the chain of processing they're not even consulted by the time we're constructing the difference between a red apple and green apple. — Isaac
This is still given to the understanding in only the way thought can do this, but it is the residuum of experiential presence that sustains through to the end of the interpretative reduction. — Constance
The practical upshot of this is, well, extraordinary: Our ethical entanglements have a gravitas beyond what can be said. — Constance
I am not sure 'why' questions are of much use when applied to life but, as you suggest, there are plenty of baroque 'answers' available such questions. My favorites are mundane: nihilism and naturalism. We're back to the ineffable it seems. For my money there is nothing 'true' we can say about life when questions of meaning arise. There's a few thousand years of speculation and superstition no one can agree upon and it's all of no use in finding a plumber on a Saturday night when the sewerage is backed up. — Tom Storm
Isaac, here we have the illusion, encouraged by phenomenology, that there is a clear distinction to be had between red and the-sensation-of-red or the-experience-of-red. — Banno
Depends on the meaning. Do you mean dictionary meanings? — Constance
Take a "spin" (it can be dizzying) in a deconstructive analysis, and you will find the concepts never find their grounding in something a-conceptual and Rea — Constance
It seems that red as a color qua color losses all meaning when contexts are withdrawn — Constance
'll have to take your word for it. But as Isaac pointed out, there's more to red than "a complex constructive activity of perception". It's a social construct, and not private. — Banno
redness is the product of a complex constructive activity of perception, rather than some irreducible primitive sensation. — Joshs
Language is embodied, — Joshs
Consider, from Culture and Value:The sorry state is, that this is pretty much Wittgenstein's point in turning his chair. Somehow you seem to have misunderstood what he was doing. — Banno
Yep. What I’ve been advocating. There’s even an example of what something like that would be. Those cannot be named as existents, simply from the thesis that our manner of naming things could not possibly be applied to them. It is tacit acknowledgement that we have no warrant to claim our intelligence is the only possible kind of intelligence there is, from which follows that we cannot declare such things are impossible in themselves but only that they are absolutely impossible for our kind of intelligence. And it isn’t because we don’t know how, but that we are not even equipped for it.
What would be the point in believing in the ineffable then?
— Metaphysician Undercover
I can’t think of one. If a thing is already impossible, what’s the point in calling the same thing something else? — Mww
But then, philosophy is not telling you how to live. It doesn't care, I would argue. It is analysis at the most basic level and nothing more. — Constance
Ok, why are you arguing when you should be bracketing. Why are you trying to convince someone, when you should be detecting the pure presence of phenomena. — Richard B
Of course not. But why do it then? And the analysis is itself replete with confusions, omissions, contradictions, contortions and, perhaps, the odd glimmer of understanding. And Christ knows who can tell what's what? — Tom Storm
Religion is mostly bad metaphysics and story telling. — Constance
I put the matter simply: why are we born to suffer and die? — Constance
I think it is a fair question, given how impossibly important such a thing is. — Constance
Not you alone. It's one of questions most people seem to ask themselves. It's at the heart of Buddhism. I hear this question often when working with people who are experiencing suicidal ideation. — Tom Storm
How did you determine this was an impossibility? We really have no way of determining if this is the case. It may seem it from our vantage point (our particular kind of inferential thinking) but given the erroneous and tentative nature of much human thought... who knows, right? — Tom Storm
...he was contradicting himself.
— Luke
So set out the contradiction. I'll address it. — Banno
...suppose we had a list of the instructions for riding a bike, to whatever detail we desire. Would we then know how to ride a bike? Well, no. So what is missing? Just, and only, the riding of the bike. — Banno
Isn't it better just to assume that everything is potentially intelligible to the human mind, and keep us trying to figure it all out? — Metaphysician Undercover
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