How so? I don’t need to experience something to talk about it. — Michael

I can only interpret you as referring to something, in relation to an understanding of what your referring consists of. If my experience is private in the sense meant by philosophers, then ordinary means of referring that appeal to a causal linkage between another speaker and my experiences are ruled out. In which case, how I am supposed to interpret a speaker as referring to my experiences?

then ordinary means of referring that appeal to a causal linkage between another speaker and my experiences are ruled out. — sime

I dispute that requirement. I can talk about the future.

John Fowles, The Aristos — Wayfarer

Love John Fowles. Is "The Aristos" worth reading. It's not available electronically. It's been so long I can't remember how to turn pages. I keep getting cuts.

@Michael

Insofar as referring is a meaning-making activity, it's inherently public. You can't then refer to "your pain" if it's purely private because you can't complete, by definition, the circuit required to make meaning, which subsists in the public space of language. You can't refer to a private beetle because your beetle only becomes a beetle through public confirmation. It is as if you think what's in your box somehow can define what's in everyone else's box. You can map the inherently public concept of "pain" onto any subjective experience you deem appropriate but you cannot refer to a purely private experience for the reasons outlined. When you say "pain" you can only mean pain in the sense which is publicly accessible and is therefore not private because that is how meaning-making works.

if you have a locked box that I can’t look inside, the phrase “the hidden contents of your box” refers to the hidden contents of your box.

I don’t understand why you and others think I must be able to see something to talk about it. The blind can talk about things just fine.

Is "The Aristos" worth reading — T Clark

I took it out of the library decades ago. It is his meditation on Greek philosophy with a large collection of Heraclitus’ aphorisms, that one has always stayed with me.

It is as if you think what's in your box somehow can define what's in everyone else's box. — Baden

:up:

This might be the unjustified (yet automatic?) assumption that causes all the trouble.

The blind can talk about things just fine. — Michael

But doesn't the fact that the bornblind can talk about color support the thesis that meaning is public ? They don't need an 'internal' referent for 'red.' Meaning looks to be 'out there' with stopsigns and handshakes.

I don’t understand why you and others think I must be able to see something to talk about it. — Michael

You're being overly literal with the analogy and misusing it. The point is that you can't refer meaningfully unless you have a shared basis for referral and a purely private experience cannot, by definition, provide such a basis. (Whether you're blind, deaf, mute or unimpaired is irrelevant. Anybody with access to a linguistic community through whatever mode qualifies). But let's take it a step at a time, do you agree with that much? You seem to be confusing a private experience of mapping with the necessarily public act of referring.

if you have a locked box that I can’t look inside, the phrase “the hidden contents of your box” refers to the hidden contents of your box. — Michael

To me the problem is we don't have a semantic grip here. It's not that I don't relate to what you and those in your camp are saying. I get it. But I've been convinced by certain books to rethink what seemed so obvious back then. We 'are' our past in the sense of taking for common sense now what was once an invention.

An analogy would be Michael saying "I am feeling what I'm feeling' and claiming that since he had a private experience of feeling pain, he was referring to that private experience when actually he was just expressing an empty logical truism. Again, that which we refer to is not purely private because it takes a social space for meaning to tango, otherwise we're dancing in the dark. We understand pain not because we have access to each other's private experience's through language but that it is a concept that allows through its nature a public shared conceptualization.

My issue is that we can't describe things that are mental.

We do not have the language to accurately describe everything we experience.

This doesn't matter in the case of something like human anatomy where we can see body parts without needing to describe them and we can see causal relations occurring.

The problem is that we do have a box with contents hidden to other people and then we try and describe to some extent what is happening inside us.

Language may continuously mislead us because we are using the wrong words and definitions and language is a tool to manipulate and deceive not to just transmit accurate information.

My primary concern is that there are mental states that only we experience that can never be compared to any kind of model or to other peoples also private mental states.

Language is very flexible. People like Einstein developed new revolutionary ideas be manipulating pre-existing words ann forms. In that sense his language initially referred only to his self generated private ideas. I don't think language is all private or all public. It can start off publicly than become solely private with private mediation of a solitary walk.

Such inversion problems might be more complex than you suppose.

I would go with their being behaviourally undetectable, after Wittgenstein. That is, if your red is my blue, and yet we use the same words in the same situation, the difference is irrelevant.

Here's the rub: colour words do not stand for our subjective sensations. If what I see as red is what you see as blue, and yet we both use the words "red" for red things and "blue" for blue things, then "red" and "blue" cannot be referring to our sensations, since our sensations are not the same.

And yet we do talk about our symptoms. They are not private.

My issue is that we can't describe things that are mental. — Andrew4Handel

Again, and yet we do.

We do not have the language to accurately describe everything we experience. — Andrew4Handel

And that is not the same as not being able to describe anything we experience. Again, we do describe things.

The problem is that we do have a box with contents hidden to other people and then we try and describe to some extent what is happening inside us. — Andrew4Handel

The beetle argument shows this to be a poor analogy. It works on the assumption that words are all labels for things; they are not.

This is the basis of the criticism of our assumptions about language found in the latter Wittgenstein, who advocated not looking for what our words refer to, but instead examining how they are used.

My primary concern is that there are mental states that only we experience that can never be compared to any kind of model or to other peoples also private mental states. — Andrew4Handel

I think Wittgenstein's analysis can help you untie this knot.

But we do talk about red and pain, so they are not private. — Banno

Red and pain are somewhat mysterious because they are qualia.

Descriptions of the nervous system and electromagnetic spectrum do not allow us to know what pain and colour are if we haven't experienced them.

I don't know what conclusion to draw from this but it is hard to imagine how colour and pain could exist without consciousness.

In this sense when we are talking with others about something, we may just be talking about an experience or idea/concept and not referring to something in the external world. These ideas can be grasped by reference to one's internal states.

What is private is the sensation like redness or pain that is not captured in the physical description of body parts.

But let's take it a step at a time, do you agree with that much? — Baden

No, I think that when I talk about what I am feeling I am referring to what I am feeling, and that you cannot feel or see or smell or taste my feelings. They are hidden from you. That's why you have to ask me what I am feeling, or thinking.

What is private is the sensation like redness or pain that is not captured in the physical description of body parts. — Andrew4Handel

But that's not peculiar to mental phenomena. My use of "Andrew" does not "captured in the physical description of body parts". Your use of "Paris" does not include an account of the sewage system. Words do not haver to show everything in order to show something.

So while one might not be able to say everything, it would be wrong to conclude that one can therefore say nothing...

Think on this for a bit: Tell me what there is that you cannot put into words? And notice that even as you tell me, you are putting it into words.

The world is all that is the case.

My issue is that we can't describe things that are mental.
— Andrew4Handel

Again, and yet we do. — Banno

That is what I am questioning here. I am suggesting we are giving a superficial unsophisticated accounts of complex mental states.

I gave the example of memory earlier and how it turns out to refer to a diverse range of things.

When we ask people. "What do you remember" We tend to be referring to autobiographical memories.

But people remember how to ride a bike, play the piano, what words mean and where the kettle is. When you see how many diverse things actually include memory it becomes unclear what memory is referring to. (Images? Words? Motions? Emotions? The lexicon?)

Neuroscience theories of memories rely on fairly naive analyses of memories to be mapped onto neuronal spikes with the slogan "neurons that fire together wire together" But when the complexity of defining a mental state is revealed that mapping becomes somewhat meaningless. My memories of my grandmother are complex multifaceted, temporal/chronological, emotional etc not suitable to be mapped onto the hypothetical "Grandmother neuron". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_cell

So I think we need to have a meaning for something like memory that truly maps a detailed and accurate but private) mental state onto the brain. The problem I have is with how accurate a mental definition can be and how it can be validated and compared.

I think the reason we have a shared concept of memory is because humans have a complex society and we have a lot of analogies to create words for mental states. Memory (etymologically) derives from a concept of history. Humans record events chronologically and we apply that to the mind in some way it seems. So I think we are using external analogies for internal events.

(apologies if I am being long winded).

Tell me what there is that you cannot put into words? . — Banno

Everything.

I am using words to transmit ideas and concepts not to transmit my veridical experiences.

As I mentioned with Blue versus Green. My green could be your blue the word doesn't transmit the sensation or qualia of seeing the colour. It is a concept. With words we are always struggling to communicate and make sense of life. (I am anyway)

That said I do believe that there may be some naive realism transmitted through language. We may be referring to the same thing in the external world but based on our own perceptions and network of beliefs.

Sciences model of a tree is far more detailed and sophisticated then what we consider a shared perception.

it takes a social space for meaning to tango — Baden

:up:

I think the temptation is to think that we all meet in our depths, in some kind of shared immaterial-internal space, where the same 'pure' pain ('under' the concept) is right there for the labelling. Even if one denies this shared internal immaterial space, Aristotle's assumption, stressed by Derrida, seems equivalent: Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.

It seems more plausible to me that we make such an assumption is a 'logical illusion' that's based on just how good we've become at organizing cooperation with public concepts.

I think we actually rule out or disbelieve a lot of what people tell us. (On a more light hearted note)

I have had people tell me about speaking to God, seeing ghosts and witnessing miracles. Conspiracy theories. Implausible life stories. Crazy moral beliefs.

So I don't think we take language as true and literal and accurate. And other people don't take us or me seriously.

That is interesting because it suggests we don't treat language as just truth bearing and serious and literal.

That person who thinks he is being stalked by aliens may be telling the truth!!

...refer... — Andrew4Handel

...referring... — Andrew4Handel

...referring... — Andrew4Handel

You are using that terms a lot. I'm sugesting that it might be misleading.

I am using words to transmit ideas and concepts not to transmit my veridical experiences. — Andrew4Handel

I don't think you are. As it, transmitting ideas and concepts is not the whole of what words do. Rather, we do things with words. So my green could be your blue, and yet you still manage to hand me the green cup when asked. So something more is going on here.

It seems you are working with a theory of meaning that says words stand for things. The suggestion is that this theory is the source of the problems before you.

Everything. — Andrew4Handel

Sure, you cannot say everything. But that does not mean you cannot say something.

We understand pain not because we have access to each other's private experience's through language but that it is a concept that allows through its nature a public shared conceptualization. — Baden

I would say we understand pain because we experience our own, and we’re smart enough and sympathetic enough that we assume that other people experience much the same thing. We’re very good at projection.

So my green could be your blue, and yet you still manage to hand me the green cup when asked. So something more is going on here. — Banno

That suggests we have shared concepts.I think our concepts about our internal world are less shared.

I am certainly not arguing it is impossible to communicate them but it is difficult. The examples I have given is a sighted person who doesn't dream in images like me and My mother who hasn't had a headache. They can use the words "dream" and "headache" without referring to the same thing.

That said yes we appear to communicate successfully in various scenarios. But I think language in itself is a profound mystery. How do symbols and sounds represent and carry meaning?

People used to believe gods created language and imbued meaning into things/symbols.
Theories of language I have seen try to root themself onto some very basic primary sensations like colours or basic concepts. The theory is we might build language up from some basic universal concepts and then meaning escalates to more complex concepts.

But what these basic perceptions might be is controversial and as has been said congenital blind people use language effortlessly without being able to refer to basic visual properties.

I think my point might not have been clear enough. I don't think we share concepts, because a concept is just the way we use a word, and not a thing that can be shared.

Again, there is a model of communication, ubiquitous outside of philosophy, that holds that words stand for things. It's wrong.

But I think you are using it.

And I think it has led you to the problems you are addressing.

.

we’re smart enough and sympathetic enough that we assume that other people experience much the same thing. We’re very good at projection. — Michael

:up:

But is this assumption logically justified as a foundation for meaning ? Or is this projection encouraged because we successfully learn to cooperate in the context of trading signs ? I agree that love feels universal. I 'just know' that my cat loves me as I love her. But I predict this will happen with lovebots too, and we will steer their evolution to ensure it. Will they be 'conscious' ? People will fight in the streets over this.

I am certainly not arguing it is impossible to communicate them but it is difficult. The examples I have given is a sighted person who doesn't dream in images like me and My mother who hasn't had a headache. They can use the words "dream" and "headache" without referring to the same thing. — Andrew4Handel

Here you say it’s difficult to communicate one’s experience, but as support for this you give the fact that your mother can talk about experiences she hasn’t had. I would think this shows rather that the barriers to communication in these cases are not too high at all.

I'd say it's the label given to the contents of the box. That's why we use the word "private" in the phrase "one's own private thought". If it was a label given to the box, which is public, then the phrase would be "one's own public thought".

Or, to use Wittgenstein's example, the phrase "the contents of the box" refers to the contents of the box, not to the box itself. — Michael

The set {all things inside this box} is not the same as the things inside the box. The set could be empty. Just like the set {6,7,8,9} is neither 6, 7, 8, nor 9. The set {all things which are both A and not-A} has no members, one ca refer to the set, but one cannot refer to the members of it, since there are none.

. In which case, how I am supposed to interpret a speaker as referring to my experiences? — sime

You can't. Language may be shared but meaning is not. Each word has different and nuanced meaning and associations depending on who you ask.

So the same sentence is conceptualised/interpreted differently to different people. That is subjectivity.

Therefore any communication between minds is an approximation. Perfect communication (Thought, articulation, receipt and interpretation) could only ever occur between 2 identical minds following the same perfect logic/coding. And even then the distance (external environment) between the speaker and the listener may interfere with the information.

dispute that requirement. I can talk about the future. — Michael

Well, certainly I can accept that the word "future" has sense to you, as it does to me, but one can dispute that the word has reference beyond the immediacy of one's present. For whatever thoughts one presently identifies as being of tomorrow, one will presumably no longer regard them as being of tomorrow once tomorrow arrives...

The set {all things inside this box} is not the same as the things inside the box. The set could be empty. Just like the set {6,7,8,9} is neither 6, 7, 8, nor 9. The set {all things which are both A and not-A} has no members, one ca refer to the set, but one cannot refer to the members of it, since there are none. — Isaac

If I say “the thing inside your box has wings” and there’s nothing inside your box then this phrase doesn’t refer to anything. Or if there’s more than one thing inside your box then it’s ambiguous as to whether or not it refers to anything. But if there is a single thing inside your box then it refers to that thing, and is true if that thing has wings and false otherwise.

Much like the phrase “your oldest brother is older than you”. Even though I know nothing about whether or not you have a brother, I am in fact referring to him if you have one.

I don’t need to see something or know something about it to talk about it.