Surely. I will say denominations of Buddhism have (and will) push away countless people, including ones such as yourself beyond qualified to take this turn, with wrong teaching/dogmatism. You assuredly project the qualities of someone I’d hate to be distasted by the core underlying philosophy. Sorry if I seem evangelical, never my intent. I just see a fellow brother from far away through your words

If we were able to divide the world into subject and object, internal and external, private and public, and to put colours firmly in the subjective, internal, private zone, then all would be good for many folk here.

But colours are demonstrably a part of the objective, external, public world. — Banno

A flick through the pages will show many arguments directed towards me as if I had maintained that colour is nothing but an objective, external, public notion. That is not what I have been maintaining, so those arguments miss the their target.

I have not offered a substantive account of the nature of colour. I do not need to, in order to show the poverty of the scientistic view. Indeed I think there is reason to doubt that any theory of colour will be complete. — Banno

Congratulations for finally spelling out your position. Not sure why it had to take so long.

The simple way it fails is that there is everyday talk about colours and then there is scientific talk about colours. The first requires no real philosophical clarification. The second absolutely demands it – precisely to head off a collapse into everyday lumpen realism and its evil twin of everyday lumpen idealism.

In our everyday linguistic practice, even animism is quite acceptable. We can complain about how it only ever rains on the days we have off, as if the weather operates with malign intent. No one is particularly confused by this kind of mixed message talk. It can seem both true and false at the same time while also doing the intended job of sharing a viewpoint about how life itself can seem unnecessarily against us.

But in philosophy of mind, you have to start being more rigorous. The confused ontic commitments of everyday social chatter have to be brought to the surface and given a hard working over.

What is missing from all your posts as far as I can tell – given their normally sketchy and evasive tone – is recognition that human psychology is socially-constructed in a way where we are all taught to objectify ourselves as subjective creatures. And that is just how the system semiotically works. To live in linguistic communities, we must become our own narratives. We must have a running story of "our private self" that stands in fruitful contrast to the "other" that is "the real world out there".

So the "big mistake" you are trying to correct with all this beetle in a box guff is not the bug but the feature – at least so far as everyday community life is concerned. It is a division we must participate in creating for there to be this thing of socialised humans doing their human social thing. The creation of a private realm that makes sense of there being a public ream, and vice versa.

Science understands this aspect of the human psyche. We have social psychology that can tell us exactly how it all works. Self-awareness, autobiographical memory, socialised emotions, the "faculty" of creative imagination or of rationalising reason – these are not things in need of a neurobiological explanation but a social-constructionist explanation. These are ways in which the neurobiology of mind has become extended by Homo sapiens making the semiotic step to being also the new thing of linguistically–structured lifeforms.

If we clear that little issue out of the way – which is the level a lot of your "philosophy" gets stuck at – then we can get down to the more basic issue of what the neurobiology has to say about sentience, awareness, consciousness, etc. The more difficult "hardware" level issues of accounting for the phenomenology of "being a mind".

So the problem ain't scientism. The problem is failing to divide the general problem of "consciousness" into its separate semiotic parts.

Set some example case like "why does red look like red", the first thing we ought to do is reply that well, there is this simple socially-constructed level to that story, and then there is this deeper neurobiological level which seems to be what you are actually interested in here.

And clearly, Wittgenstein is not a great place to start if we want to move smoothly into that deflationary science-based approach. Anglo logicians had no clue about the evolutionary structure of human cognition.

Whereas Peircean semiotics would be precisely a good place to start. It was highly influential to the development of social constructionism in the early 20th C and had become equally as relevant to the neurobiology by the late 20th C.

So sure, you can set things up that you are here to fight the good fight against scientism. For you, humanism or whatever has to come first. And any dialectical framing of the metaphysical issues – this dividing into subjective vs objective, etc – has to be already a wrong step because ... well, Hegel was a silly old fool.

My criticism of this is that it is a stale position that talks past what is of relevant philosophical interest.

The phenomenology of colour experience can't be deconstructed simply as linguistic analysis. Although sure it is worth doing that properly, and so appealing to the relevant social psychology there.

But then what folk are really bothered by is that the firing of neurons is supposed to generate these ineffable feels somehow. And the question becomes how is science – as the not so everyday linguistic community – best explaining that.

Rehashing Wittgenstein might help a bit with the social constructionism perhaps – at a stretch. But it is quite unequipped for the neurobiology. And trying to draw a boundary around the whole topic in terms of the "pragmatics of everyday linguistic communities" is a sad defensive tactic.

There is no reason not to do philosophy of mind properly. The answer to bad metaphysics is well organised inquiry.

If we were able to divide the world into subject and object, internal and external, private and public, and to put colours firmly in the subjective, internal, private zone, then all would be good for many folk here.

But colours are demonstrably a part of the objective, external, public world. — Banno

But the point is, that the division between primary and secondary qualities is basic to Galileo and to early modern science and philosophy generally. The fact that this keeps coming up is due to this ‘bifurcation of nature’ (Whitehead). It’s not due to the predilections of individual posters or some newbie mistake on their part. It’s deeply baked into our cultural framework. Thomas Nagel puts it like this:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36

That remains the default framework for much of modern naturalism, for example in the work of Daniel Dennett whose entire model revolves around it. It is, of course, true, that this is being challenged from many quarters and there are many emerging alternatives (biosemiotics being one) but it remains highly influential. But I think the centre of gravity is all shifting towards the ‘4E’ approach (enactive, embodied, embedded, extended, )

(Where I find Wittgenstein’s approach to these questions frustrating, is because it seems so obtuse and indirect. Yes, he ‘challenges scientism’ but you have to immerse yourself in his writings and worldview to understand how. I’ve found other critiques more direct including Thomas Nagel, Whitehead, and Husserl ‘Crisis of the European Sciences’.)

But the point is, that the division between primary and secondary qualities is basic to Galileo and to early modern science and philosophy generally. The fact that this keeps coming up is due to this ‘bifurcation of nature’ (Whitehead). It’s not due to the predilections of individual posters or some newbie mistake on their part. It’s deeply baked into our cultural framework. — Wayfarer

This is true. The conundrum is coming from a worldview that says people are isolated consciousness bubbles. You can't see inside my bubble. The most extreme consequences of this is a complete breakdown in meaning as described by Quine and Kripke.

But the point is, that the division between primary and secondary qualities is basic to Galileo and to early modern science and philosophy generally. — Wayfarer

So you can explicate and maintain the distinction between primary and secondary qualities? I'm not so confident.

The distinction between primary and secondary qualities goes back to Galileo and was later developed by early empiricists like John Locke.

**Primary qualities** are characteristics of objects that exist independently of any observer. These include qualities like shape, size, motion, and number. They are considered objective because they can be measured and exist whether or not anyone is perceiving them.

**Secondary qualities** are characteristics that depend on the observer's perception. These include color, taste, sound, and smell. According to early empiricists, these qualities don’t exist in the objects themselves but arise from the interaction between the object and the observer's sensory apparatus.

For Galileo, this distinction helped differentiate the mathematical and measurable aspects of nature (primary qualities), which were the focus of scientific inquiry, while secondary qualities were subjective and tied to human perception.

I’m not *defending* that distinction, but I’m saying that it was widely accepted in post-Galilean science and philosophy.

Sure, all that. It's mostly an historical distinction, with little place in more recent discussions, for various reasons.

Again, take a look at the SEP article, which sets out a few of the problems with eliminativism and some of the alternatives — seven main theories each with many variants. — Banno

And if you were arguing for one of them then we could have a meaningful discussion. My problem is with your approach to the problem. Our concern is with perception, not with language, which is why the phrasing in the question presented above is important: "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?".

This is not answered by saying that we use the word "red" to describe tomatoes. That we agree that tomatoes are red is a red herring.

Sure, all that. It's mostly an historical distinction, with little place in more recent discussions, for various reasons. — Banno

I think it lurks under a lot of what you say about it. Unconsciously.

I mean, you often say you agree with me about the shortcomings of ‘scientism’, but you never say why. I am articulating the historical background to it, how it has become so influential and pervasive in modern culture, and how to address it. Not the only way, but a way.

Unconsciously... — Wayfarer

Oooh goodness.

...but you never say why... — Wayfarer

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11175/philosophical-plumbing-mary-midgley/p1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9453/midgley-vs-dawkins-nietzsche-hobbes-mackie-rand-singer/p1

Hmmm.

It's mostly an historical distinction, with little place in more recent discussions, for various reasons. — Banno

This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objects do not have colors, at least in a crucial sense—and subjectivism—the view that color is a subjective quality—is not merely of historical interest. It is held by many contemporary experts and authorities on color, — Michael

And if you were arguing for one of them then we could have a meaningful discussion. — Michael

Well, if you see no meaning in this discussion, you are welcome not to participate.

"do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?" — Michael

Well, there are red tomatoes, and one way of saying that is that some tomatoes have the property of being red. Not sure what what it means to further ask if they really have the property of being red...

But that's kinda my point.

Not following you here. Bringing together primary and secondary qualities, eliminativism, subjectivism, or subjective qualities, needs more than hand waving.

Well, there are red tomatoes, and one way of saying that is that some tomatoes have the property of being red. Not sure what what it means to further ask if they really have the property of being red... — Banno

If "the tomato is red" means "the tomato looks red" and if the word "red" in the phrase "looks red" does not refer to a property of the tomato then tomatoes do not have the property that they appear to have.

Instead we have a case of eliminativism, subjectivism, and projectivism, as opposed to naive realism, reductionism, or dispositionalism.

If...

If... — Banno

Yes, and so we engage in further examination. We do not simply leave it at “we agree that tomatoes are red.”

Not following you here. — Banno

I was simply commenting on your entry:

If we were able to divide the world into subject and object, internal and external, private and public, and to put colours firmly in the subjective, internal, private zone, then all would be good for many folk here — Banno

I was fleshing out why it is seen this way, with reference to the division between primary and secondary, objective and subjective. I wasn't disagreeing with your post, I was attempting to explicate it further. I didn't intend to take issue with what you were saying but to provide background to it.

Furthermore, having now joined this thread, I should comment on the OP:

Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?”

If there is no mind to experience and conceptually designate “red” does red ever aquire an inherent existence independent of a third party mind?

In my personal opinion all phenomena occur as experience, and experience is merely a mental form of consciousness. Awareness/consciousness is as vital to the existence of all phenomena as a canvas is to the existence of a painting. — Mp202020

I agree. I've argued along these lines most of my time here. But I don't think it's the final word (well, obviously not...) as the question can be approached through a number of perspectives, with different intentions. To approach is as a cognitive scientist is not necessarily to raise the philosophical question about the experience of redness at all. The two perspectives aren't necessarily in conflict.

I’m very curious to hear your interpretation of Buddhist philosophy, it very much falls in this realm. — Mp202020

To paraphrase the Lankavatara Sutra, ‘the world does not exist outside of experience. Neither does it not exist’.

Science understands this aspect of the human psyche. We have social psychology that can tell us exactly how it all works. — apokrisis

Come on apokrisis, how can such a gigantic exaggeration just roll off your keyboard as if you were stating common fact?

The exaggeration is twofold. First, it's still debated to this day, whether psychology qualifies as a science. Many compromise and call it a "soft science". Second, it's highly doubtful that even hard sciences tell us "exactly how" anything works. The hard sciences seem to be able to use mathematics to make awesome predictions, but they really are incapable of telling us exactly how anything works.

So if that giant double exaggeration is the premise which the following part of your post is based on, it might as well just be ignored. But, being the faithful philosopher which I am, I can't resist a poke or two.

Whereas Peircean semiotics would be precisely a good place to start. It was highly influential to the development of social constructionism in the early 20th C and had become equally as relevant to the neurobiology by the late 20th C. — apokrisis

Better put, Peircian philosophy was influential in allowing ambiguity, vagueness, and imprecision to infiltrate all sciences, not just the soft sciences mentioned, by making such vagueness appear to be unavoidable and acceptable even in the mathematics employed by the hard sciences.

You criticize Wittgenstein, and praise Peirce, but it has been argued that Wittgenstein was very much influenced by Peirce, in his criticism of the supposed rigour of mathematics. Like Peirce, he pointed out how vagueness, as ambiguity, infiltrates even to the core of mathematics.

A proof alters a formalism by turning a string of symbols into a usable
proposition, it is the proof, or its blueprint, at least, that enables its use
and makes it meaningful. Hence, it remains meaningless in the absence of
a proof. Another proof of the “same” proposition will alter the meaning
yet further, will link the sentence to different groups of axioms and/or in
different ways, hence the proposition proved will not be the same. It is
only our habit of attaching “shadowy entities”, meanings, to all well-formed
sentences, even those that do not have any use, that leads us to believe in
the sameness. — Wittgenstein, Peirce, and paradoxes of mathematical proof, Sergiy Koshkin

https://philarchive.org/archive/KOSWPA

Well, there are red tomatoes, and one way of saying that is that some tomatoes have the property of being red. Not sure what what it means to further ask if they really have the property of being red... — Banno

It seems we have the habit of attaching a "shadowy entity" to the word "red", a meaning. In reality though, the word has a different meaning each time it's used, depending on context. Things don't really have "the property of being red", it's just that things are commonly said to be red.

So you can explicate and maintain the distinction between primary and secondary qualities? I'm not so confident. — Banno

John Locke did a pretty good job. Kant showed how he was wrong, but Kant isn't exactly our worldview, is he?

First, it's still debated to this day, whether psychology qualifies as a science. — Metaphysician Undercover

I did specify social psychology. I agree that psychology in general seemed a science in disarray when I studied it in the 1970s. Apart from psychophysics, it was basically so crap I switched to biology. But then Vygotskian psychology reached the West, social constructionism picked up where symbolic interactionism left off, the positive psychology movement began to form. And I had moved on to cognitive neuroscience and paleoanthropology anyway.

So I found my way to the science of value. I never waste time on the dross.

but it has been argued that Wittgenstein was very much influenced by Peirce, — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed. But what then did he add?

John Locke did a pretty good job. Kant showed how he was wrong, but Kant isn't exactly our worldview, is he? — frank

There's an entry in SEP on "Primary and Secondary Qualities in Early Modern Philosophy", but no follow up with more recent comment. The interest is mostly historical. There are however entries on colour, touch and olfactory and auditory perception, addressing more specific issues.

So the notion of primary and secondary qualities has faded somewhat, and we can ask if this is because it has become so ubiquitous as to be taken as granted, or if it has been shown to be too wanting to be of much use. I think it's the latter.

There are a few problems with the distinction. I commented earlier how "quality" dithers somewhat between "property" and "predicate" Perhaps this dithering gives it some faux respectability. Is the quality of brownness a property had by the table or merely a predicate in a description of the table?

There are issues in sorting things into either the primary or the secondary box.Take heat for example, which might appear to be a secondary quality, only felt, and unlike temperature. The illusion that a piece of metal feels colder than a book at the same temperature lends credence to this. But then heat will melt steal. Which box, then? Is heat only something we project onto the world, or is it something out there in the things around us?

And if primary qualities are understood as those that we can measure, is air pressure a primary quality? Electric current?

And if the idea is that secondary qualities are only perceived, while primary qualities somehow inhere in the object, why and how is it that we only know about primary qualities through our perception? Is there a vicious circularity in the definition of primary and secondary qualities?

It's not that these criticisms are definitive, since each might be answerable, but that such considerations have led to more recent work bypassing the primary/secondary distinction, and the troubles they cause, in favour of more detailed analysis.

All this by way of showing that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities might not be as foundational as suggests.

I never waste time on the dross. — apokrisis

Hmm, I guess that's a matter of opinion.

But what then did he add? — apokrisis

A slightly different way of looking at the same problem is what he added. Neither proposed a solution, in my opinion, merely pointing out weaknesses which others could then see and abuse. The abuse persists and the weakening of mathematics, and logic in general continues. And it will continue until people start to see the need to get rid of the weaknesses rather than to use them for their advantage.

A slightly different way of looking at the same problem is what he added. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seem to be talking about notions of the continuum which would be a small part of Peirce’s semiotics. And you have your own ideas about how to abuse logic I fear.

We do not simply leave it at “we agree that tomatoes are red.” — Michael

It doesn't have to be left there, if you like. So long as it is noted that we do agree that tomatoes are (sometimes) red, and that a theory which cannot account for this is thereby inadequate.

So any theory that claims colour to be a something in an individual's head, and no more, is inadequate.

All this by way of showing that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities might not be as foundational as ↪Wayfarer suggests. — Banno

It’s still writ large in current philosophy of mind. Search for ‘eliminativism’ in this thread and there are half a dozen returns, most of them advocating it.

And if primary qualities are understood as those that we can measure, is air pressure a primary quality? Electric current? — Banno

Yes, and yes. Primary qualities or attributes are just those which are measurable, and, crucially, those that are said to be mind-independent. A hue may look different to different observers - although that’s hard to tell - but any value that can be measured objectively is not subject to opinion. Principally: mass, charge, velocity, dimension, and location. Just those elements of matter and chemistry which are said by materialism to be the foundation of all else that exists.

why and how is it that we only know about primary qualities through our perception? — Banno

We don’t just perceive them. We measure them!

What do you think is the backstory behind the argument over qualia in philosophy of mind? ‘Qualia’ is just a jargon term for ‘quality’. Materialist philosophy of mind insists that only the primary attributes of matter are real - these manifesting as electro-chemical bonds and reactions between cells, and so forth. All of the attributes of organisms that are subject to rigorous objective measurement. ‘Qualia’ by contrast are said to be those qualities of existence that are felt by subjects - including precisely the kinds of qualities under discussion, such as colour, texture, appearance, and so on. Eliminativism is always insisting that these are in some sense illusory (leaving aside the obvious contradiction that illusions are errors in consciousness.)

So the distinction is not ‘historical’ it is still a tectonic one under the contours of current philosophy of mind. And you’re not even describing it accurately.

So the notion of primary and secondary qualities has faded somewhat, and we can ask if this is because it has become so ubiquitous as to be taken as granted, or if it has been shown to be too wanting to be of much use. I think it's the latter. — Banno

I think it faded from philosophy because Kant showed that knowledge of the categories of primary qualities is apriori. The old way is still the prevailing one among regular people. Most still think of an object's girth as something that's mind-independent, while its color is not.

All this by way of showing that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities might not be as foundational as ↪Wayfarer suggests. — Banno

I think he was just saying that it's the way most people think.

:up: