Was that post intended to say something — Banno

Was this one?

It seems not.

:yawn:

It seems not. — Banno

Seemed that way too me too

You're contradicting yourself at nearly every turn, in addition to the fact that your 'argument' leads to the absurdity of you claiming out loud, for everyone to see, that you do not conclude anything about stimulus from your experience all the while insisting that there is no color in stimulus. — creativesoul

I'm reporting what the science says.

Opticks:

The homogeneal Light and Rays which appear red, or rather make Objects appear so, I call Rubrifick or Red-making; those which make Objects appear yellow, green, blue, and violet, I call Yellow-making, Green-making, Blue-making, Violet-making, and so of the rest. And if at any time I speak of Light and Rays as coloured or endued with Colours, I would be understood to speak not philosophically and properly, but grossly, and accordingly to such Conceptions as vulgar People in seeing all these Experiments would be apt to frame. For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour.

Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway:

There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1).

Vision science: Photons to phenomenology:

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.

Color:

One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what we seem to know about colors into what science (not only physics but the science of color vision) tells us about physical bodies and their qualities. It is this problem that historically has led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue in the way that we naively think, nor are apples red (nor green). Colors of that kind, it is believed, have no place in the physical account of the world that has developed from the sixteenth century to this century.

Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with the common-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, the scientific tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception of color. There is, to illustrate, the celebrated remark by David Hume:

"Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind." (Hume 1738: Bk III, part I, Sect. 1 [1911: 177]; Bk I, IV, IV [1911: 216])

Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include the luminaries: Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton, Thomas Young, Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz. Maxwell, for example, wrote:

"It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yet Young, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent theory of color." (Maxwell 1871: 13 [1970: 75])

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, e.g., Zeki 1983, Land 1983, and Kuehni 1997.

You are taking the special case in which for the purposes of experiment researchers restrict "seeing red" to having a "mental percept of red" and taking this to be what "seeing red' is in every other case. — Banno

I'm not. I'm saying that our everyday, ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, qualitative, sensuous, intrinsic, irreducible properties, not micro-structural properties or reflectances, and that these sui generis properties are not mind-independent properties of tomatoes, as the naive colour realist believes, but mental percepts caused by neural activity in the brain, much like smells and tastes and pain.

The relevant question "do objects like tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have?" is not answered by engaging in a linguistic analysis of all the ways that the word "red" or the phrase “seeing red” are used, and so your continued insistent to appeal to language is a fundamentally flawed approach to the problem. The only people who can answer the question are physicists and neuroscientists. Armchair philosophy is useless in this situation.

I'm not. I'm saying that our everyday, ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, qualitative, sensuous, intrinsic, irreducible properties, not micro-structural properties or reflectances, and that these sui generis properties are not mind-independent properties of tomatoes, as the naive colour realist believes, but mental percepts caused by neural activity in the brain, much like smells and tastes and pain. — Michael

I genuinely think this thread has made it clear that the discomfort with this (apparent) reality is all that lies behind htis debate.

I'm reporting what the science says. — Michael

Well, you're reporting what the writer says. If the author is a scientist, then you're reporting what a scientist says. And they... and we... are theorizing from observation/experiment. Not all scientists agree on the theoretical extrapolations you're presenting. Theoretical physics is philosophy. So, it seems to me that you're reporting on both, the experiments, and the philosophical explanations thereof. Those are flawed as well, as I'll address shortly.

First...

Here's what I'm saying: The biological machinery under consideration - in complete and total absence of external stimulus - is inherently incapable of seeing, dreaming, or hallucinating anything at all, colors notwithstanding. Seeing, dreaming, and hallucinating colors takes more than just the biological structures.

Second...

I'm not disagreeing that hallucinations and dreams happen even though there is no typical external stimulus present. I mean, hallucinating and dreaming red pens, never includes a red pen. It is only after one has seen color, that can one hallucinate and/or dream that color. It is during dreams and hallucinations that the same biological structures behave as if they were seeing a red pen, not the other way around. There is an existential dependency at hand here. It's important.

Third...

If there were no cake, then there could have never been anyone smelling one. If no one ever smelled a cake, there could never have been anyone dreaming or hallucinating cake smells. Likewise, if there is no creature capable of smelling cakes, there could have never been cake smelling, even if there were plenty of cakes being baked. It a complex process, replete with necessary elemental constituents.

So...

It takes more than just biological machinery. It also takes more than just cakes. Hence, to isolate only one necessary element in a complex process is to lose sight of and/or grossly neglect the fact that it's a process, and that process consists of different things, all of which are necessary for the emergence of seeing colors and smelling cakes.

You want to ignore the fact that dreams and hallucinations are existentially dependent upon veridical perception, excise the biological machinery from the rest of the process, and then claim that all three consist of only that machinery.

Depending upon one's notion of physiological sensory perception, it could sensibly and consistently be said that smell and color are both inherent in distal objects. Newton came close until positing "sensation". Colored things possess mind independent physical properties that are inherently capable of being seen as colored by a mind so capable. I think Searle holds something like that, but I'm sure his is more nuanced.

I personally reject the idea that color exists at all in the complete absence of both/either colored things and/or creatures capable of seeing color.

Since "pain" in its scientific representation, is understood to consist of both of these aspects — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you perhaps lay out which two aspects you're referring to, in terms of the scientific understanding? I cannot see any room for the weird "pain in the toe" aspect in any scientific reading I've seen (I don't think!).

Do you agree that it is wrong to say that pain is simply a specific type of touch sensation? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not really, but I think pain from sensory input and pain with no sensory input are the same thing from different sources. The experience is the same. Seeing a shadow in the exact same shape as an actual image (which you can also 'see') might be analogy here. Maybe a slightly better one would be apprehending something's shape due to touch, rather than sight.
In any case I take it that you're trying to get out of me an admission of difference between pain the "Sensory input" and pain the "mental experience". I could probably be pushed. Onward...

"unpleasantness" inheres within the definition of "pain" — Metaphysician Undercover

This does not seem true to me. I think I have covered this earlier. I'm unsure I will go back over it, but a pretty darn clear example is BDSM behaviours or combat sport. For some, "pain" is literally an academic label for something they don't shy away from whereas for most, that is the case.

In the case of pain, unpleasantness is a defining feature, so one cannot feel pain without the unpleasantness, and so this emotional aspect is an "objective" aspect of pain, it is a necessary condition. — Metaphysician Undercover

I just think this is obviously wrong for reasons above, and elsewhere. I am less inclined to be pushed now :P

However, in the case of "pain", unpleasantness is the defining feature of that concept — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not (on my account/view).

We can though, separate the sensory aspect and talk about "pain" as an emotionally based concept — Metaphysician Undercover

It is (on my account/view) a different concept. Emotional pain, it seems to me, is actually a different but related mental experience. Perhaps, a bad one and hte unpleasantness in this concept seems to inhere, but I think you are wrong to conflate them and transitively apply this to "physical" pain. There are blurred lines - being emotionally struck can cause nausea for instance, but is that pain? I should think not. Discomfort.

And, the fact that "pain" as an emotional concept, is a true representation of the reality of pain, is evident from experiences such as phantom pain, and some forms of chronic pain. — Metaphysician Undercover

This, for me, seems to indicate exactly the opposite and represents an aberration in a physical signalling system. THe expereince remains the same.

Can you perhaps lay out which two aspects you're referring to, in terms of the scientific understanding? — AmadeusD

I told you already. The two aspects are known scientifically as the sensory aspect of pain and the affective aspect of pain. If you research those to names you'll find plenty of information.

Though pain undeniably has a discriminatory aspect, what makes it special is its affective-motivational quality of hurting.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763408001188

Not really, but I think pain from sensory input and pain with no sensory input are the same thing from different sources. The experience is the same. — AmadeusD

I was talking about the unpleasantness of pain. This is what makes it so that we cannot say that pain is simply sensory. Did you not read my example of sweetness? The taste of "sweet" is not defined as a pleasant or enjoyable taste, and sweet is simply a sensory experience. But if "sweet" was defined as a pleasant sensory experience, then it would be in the same category as "pain" which is defined as unpleasant.

This does not seem true to me. — AmadeusD

The definition of pain in my OED is: "1a the range of unpleasant bodily sensations produced by illness or by harmful physical contact, etc.."

Notice, "unpleasant" is the defining aspect of pain, sensations which are unpleasant. If you do not acknowledge this, then you and I will always be talking about different ideas when using the word "pain". And we' will be forever talking past each other in any discussion like this because I will refuse to accept the contradictory idea of pain which is not unpleasant.

The two aspects are known scientifically as the sensory aspect of pain and the affective aspect of pain. — Metaphysician Undercover

That does not actually seem to be the case. This seems a floated theory on how to get around some esoteric aspects of pain, so to study them. The paper is speculative and philosophical, not scientific. You can tell they are way off track, without even havign access to the full paper (your link does not provide this):

" How can one obtain an account of the experience of pain that does justice both to its objectivity (and thus its similarity with exteroception) and to its excess of subjectivity?"

The former is a misnomer. They are trying to conflate pain with damage or stimulus. They are clearly not the same, and so conflating same as aspects of the 'same' thing is erroneous. I see how this approach will be very helpful in treatment of pain, but it does nothing for our discussion best I can tell.

Notice, "unpleasant" is the defining aspect of pain — Metaphysician Undercover

No. No it's not. I have given plenty of examples which violate this definition. It is inapt. Pain is not inherently unpleasant. If that were the case, the examples i've given would not obtain. I think what you meant to discuss is discomfort. I tried to lead you here... Discomfort is inherently uncomfortable. Pain is not.

Phantom limb pain works exactly like hallucination does as it pertains to the existential dependency aspect between limb pain and phantom limb pain. The biological machinery behaves as it does when there is a pain in the limb. If there were never a limb, there could never be a phantom pain.

The pain is in the limb, not the brain. The brain plays a role, but not as the location of the pain. It is the locus of one's awareness of the pain. Hence, after having already evolved the neurological pathways of having experienced pain in the limb, they are primed to act that way again, despite no longer having a physical extremity located where the pain seems to be coming from. It's akin to neurological muscle memory. Biological structures acting as they do... mindlessly.

Oh, and there are no colorless rainbows, nor colorless visible spectrums.

:zip:

The pain is in the limb, not the brain. — creativesoul

And yet

despite no longer having a physical extremity located where the pain seems to be coming from — creativesoul

Obviously, pain is not in the limb. That para honestly felt like trolling... Is it?

Oh, and there are no colorless rainbows, nor colorless visible spectrums. — creativesoul

These are aspects of visual world of a perceiver. If you're suggesting, in these terms, that colour inheres in the Rainbow... hehe. Nope. Try changing your terms around to be idependent of perception. Could make some headway..

I can't make you pay attention to the whole post. Hallucinations of red pens never include red pens. The pain feels like it's coming from where the limb used to be for the reasons already explained in the parts you edited out. The phantom pain is the result of having already had pain in the limb. It's what is happening when the neurological structures are acting as if there is pain in the limb.

It does not follow that no pain is located in limbs.

That para honestly felt like trolling... Is it? — AmadeusD

Pots and kettles.

'Felt like'???

Or projection, perhaps.

Oh, and there are no colorless rainbows, nor colorless visible spectrums.
— creativesoul

These are aspects of visual world of a perceiver. If you're suggesting, in these terms, that colour inheres in the Rainbow... hehe. Nope. Try changing your terms around to be idependent of perception. Could make some headway.. — AmadeusD

Nice red herring, strawman, non sequitur, etc...

I made the case a few posts back. See for yourself.

Yep - Michael is begging the question and then falsely appealing to "the science." This has been going on for a long time now.

---

The point of this is that it is empirically proven that an internal, subjective experience can be evoked by direct brain stimulation. This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience. The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain. — Hanover

This poor argument is at the bottom of so much confusion on TPF. I have often considered devoting a thread to it. It is the basic modern error of thinking that Cartesian anti-Pyrrhonism represents the only kind of knowledge.* The modern skeptic will characteristically identify some absurd possibility, note that it cannot be apodictically ruled out, and then conclude that we have no reason to believe it is not the case. This is sophistry. To give an example, we could cash it out this way:

1. If one does not know with perfect certainty whether they are dreaming, then they have no evidence for believing that reality exists.
2. We do not know with perfect certainty whether we are dreaming.
3. Therefore, we have no evidence for believing that reality exists.

The error relating to (1) is always the same, and the corrective is to note that there are different kinds of knowledge and evidence. Knowledge and evidence are not an all-or-nothing affair. Aristotle pointed out 2500 years ago that the one who is intent on applying a criterion of mathematical certainty to every subject is fundamentally confused about the nature of knowledge.

This is of course related to Lionino's thread on Cartesian dualism:

This whole thing is reminiscent of the Cartesian move that, "We of course have good reason to believe that X, but do we also have the fullness of certitude?" What standard of proof is being imposed, here? Are we trying to jump over the fence or over the moon? — Leontiskos

One approach to this modern form of skepticism is Pragmatism, but I think there is a simpler answer. The simpler answer is that one does not require perfect certainty in order to have knowledge. I do not need to have perfect certainty that I am not dreaming—whatever that is supposed to mean—in order to have good evidence for believing that reality exists.

* Burnyeat shows that Descartes was self-consciously interested in an inflated version of Pyrrhonism, which we might now call modern skepticism.

...This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience. The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain.
— Hanover

This poor argument is at the bottom of so much confusion on TPF. — Leontiskos

It strikes me as a performative contradiction, given the fact those purportedly holding the first claim as true have been incessantly making claims about the constitution of the stimulus.

...one does not require perfect certainty in order to have knowledge. — Leontiskos

Yup. As far as I'm concerned, one need not be certain at all in many cases. Certitude is confidence. Knowledge is not. One can be unshakably certain and wrong just as one can be very hesitant and right, to put it roughly.

I like AJ Ayers answers to radical skepticism given the awareness of our own fallibility. It does not follow from the fact that we have been wrong about some things that we've been wrong about everything. It does not follow from the fact that we cannot know everything about something that we cannot know anything about it.

It strikes me as a performative contradiction, given the fact those purportedly holding the first claim as true have been incessantly making claims about the constitution of the stimulus. — creativesoul

Yep, I think this is surely correct as well. Similar to what I said earlier:

When "science" undermines realism it undermines itself, and those who do not notice this live in an alternate reality where their perceptions are good enough when it comes to "science" and untrustworthy otherwise.* There is never a clear answer as to where the "science" ends and the "otherwise" begins. — Leontiskos

To place the idea in an image: someone in Michael's group might claim that, via the scientific findings of a microscope, they have proved that the human eye does not perceive reality. But without the legitimacy of the human eye the findings of a microscope have no value, for the microscope presupposes the human eye. More subtle iterations of this fallacy are percolating throughout this thread.

It does not follow that no pain is located in limbs. — creativesoul

Yes, it does actually. In any case, we can actually jettison this entire part of the debate (I am well aware of what I see as erroneous arguments earlier in the thread from yourself - i am not coming at this in bad faith (you may think bad reasoning; so be it)). The disagreement is deeper than an issue of 'pain' and of reducibility, and demonstrability.

What we can do is simply ask:

Where is the pain? If it is in the limb, you can show me.
But you cannot show me pain.
You can show me potential stimulus for pain.
That's all. I need not take this much further to be quite comfortable that your position is not right (yet..)

Further, in this passage:

Hallucinations of red pens never include red pens — creativesoul

You are making a couple mistakes here(on my account - read all as such. I am not here to make absolute claims. I am, and will continue to often be wrong):

This is plainly wrong. An Hallucination, if it is of a red pen (so called), then that is what is present in the hallucination. Your position relies on your position. Which is to say, it is tautological. IFF hallucinations do not include anything they purport to represent (I take this as incorrect for reasons askance from this particular issue) then your point is extremely apt, loud, and clearly made in such a way I could not dispute it other than on grounds of linguistics (though, I wouldn't. That would be clear to me). But, it seems you rely on that there is a strict difference between the image conjured by the mind when eyes are cast, and the one conjured when no eyes are cast. I disagree. There is no solution to this disagreement, as it stands. You think they're not the same, and I do. We're in the weeds now. Onward..
The "red pen" in the hallucination is the same as a "red pen" gleaned from casting your eyes toward the object we (by convention) call a 'red pen' which, importantly, is just denoting it's function, not what it 'actually is'. It is a label indicating what it will cause in the perceiver.
Given this position, yours simply makes no sense. I can't understand why you think the 'red pen' in the Hallucination is not the same as the 'red pen' when one's eyes are cast on an object which, by convention we call a red pen. It might seem silly, but again, on my account they are the same, let's call it, mental image, triggered in different ways. A red pen can be inferred from any writing implement, and an experience of the colour red (mentally speaking). And, that is what the object is actually attuned to, as a conventional object. It is created to induce the experiences we have labeled variously as "(such and such of/for/and/before/after/because of etc)... a red pen". If you hand me what you think to be a red pen, and my experience looking at it is not red, you cannot tell me I am wrong. That is, in fact, what the object triggers in my mental space. On your account, this is an hallucination? (genuine Q, as it's a role reversal from your point about hallucinations not including hte object of their image).

But again, these all make sense on my account - not on yours, so I'm not trying to do some "You're an idiot" type thing here. I think we see things differently enough that we couldn't come to terms. Several of our competing points are independent of our disagreement about that particular point and simply go back to whether a mental image is it's object. I say no, which Hallucinations are a prime evidence for. If a mental image is not synonymous with it's object (which it couldn't possibly be, right?) then we have no appreciable difference to instantiate in some account. Nevertheless, It's probably worth my addressing:

This poor argument is at the bottom of so much confusion on TPF. — Leontiskos

I agree, but you are the confused one. Hanover is exactly right. This is how the body/brain works.

To place the idea in an image: someone in Michael's group might claim that, via the scientific findings of a microscope, they have proved that the human eye does not perceive reality. But without the legitimacy of the human eye the findings of a microscope have no value, for the microscope presupposes the human eye. More subtle iterations of this idea are percolating throughout this thread. — Leontiskos

Exactly. Unspoken necessary presuppositions. Collinwood comes to mind.

It does not follow that no pain is located in limbs.
— creativesoul

Yes, it does actually. — AmadeusD

Care to shoulder that burden?

Edit: Nevermind, I see you just claimed that hallucinations of red pens include red pens.

Exactly. Unspoken necessary presuppositions. — creativesoul

Right, and we can run these arguments directly if we like:

The point of this is that it is empirically proven that an internal, subjective experience can be evoked by direct brain stimulation. This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience. The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain. — Hanover

Given that the "empirical proving" is itself an experience, according to Hanover we cannot conclude anything from this experience. His conclusion is self-defeating.

More concretely, suppose a scientist observes that they can evoke some form of experience via brain stimulation. Hanover thinks this proves that experience is untrustworthy, and yet the scientist's observation is nothing other than an experience. So why isn't their experience untrustworthy? *crickets*

Hanover is making exceptions for himself in an ad hoc manner. He wants to invalidate experience, except for all the experiences that he doesn't want to invalidate, namely the ones associated with empirical tests. Hanover and Michael are both thinking about science in a muddled way, as if it were distinct from human experience. This is on par with the way that our culture treats science as an omniscient and inscrutable god, such that the word 'Science' may as well always be reverentially capitalized.

This whole approach should be suspect from the start, for arguments for hard skepticism cannot be domesticated in the service of scientific knowledge. When your monster chainsaw cuts down everything in sight, there is no use pretending that you are sitting safely on the high limb of Science. Science is the very first victim of the idea that all human experience is untrustworthy.

Care to shoulder that burden? — creativesoul

Hmm... I get it's a quip, but i'm not quite sure what you mean - your account showed to me (though, I saw this prior) the limb doesn't contain the pain in either the non-, or the phantom case (. Not sure what else could be said here. It might come down to something further on here...

I suppose what I'm trying to get at, is that (this may be askance from Michael/Hanover - if so, please do note it because it seems a bugaboo for you guys) we can't know for certain what's going on. That's actually the basis for discarding certain positions that require it. We can't positively discriminate based on 'experience' but we can remove what's not possible. We can't even experience a situation where the pain is in the toe or the colour is in the pen because they are not experiences open to us. One would need to be a toe, or a pen, to have such an experience of pain or 'being red'. And that, even if possible, would just further complicate the matter for reasons that are cartoonish and irrelevant. No human has ever had an experience of pain without their mind. No one has ever seen a red pen without their mind. So, it seems either there's an inviolable relationship between the two (experience/mind) which is read as a single entity qua whatever qualia you're talking about (pain in a toe, eg) or the claim is that there isn't, and the mind merely imports experiences (i.e pain, colour, texture) from elsewhere. I cannot accept that as it doesn't seem open to me to claim on either the grounds above (i.e we cannot make such positive claims) or because it is in clear violation of several types of experience we actually can have (mental pain mediation is one example). There is no 1:1 when it comes to stimulus v experience. It is all approximate.

What we can do in this context is eliminate unsupportable claims (not unsupported - those could well be the case, but are not being presented correctly). The claim that pain is in the toe is not supportable. We need not be apodictic or even emotionally certain of this to know that our position is not supportable. In the cases in front of us, I see that both 'viewing a red pen' and 'pain in the toe' are mental experiences. This does not rely on any form of scientific claim due to 'objective' experiment. It is self-evident, and only needs itself. However, the issue of the scientific understanding of how pain works certainly presents room for 'us' to do as you describe and that does seem to be happening in other arguments. I don't think I require this viz. I am uncertainexactly what is going on, but I am certain it is not red being imported from without, into my mind, and same with the pain. It is not being imported from the toe to my mind - something else (similar to a radiowave) moves from the triggered area, through my body physically (which does not hurt - important) and arrives in my brain, where my mind is triggered to give me an experience which would seem to be pain the toe so that I know where to tell the doctor it hurts (or whatever.. just a vessel). I would assume, from previous replies, you're going to label this a redherring/strawman etc.. I cannot understand that, if so. It would be helpful if you can set that account right - so far, the above accords with all you've said. Nevertheless, that reliance on 'objective' measures is certainly an issue (and, If I've inadvertently, or simply prior to due consideraiton)

So I 100% take that objection, and pretty much agree that relying on something like the minutiae of scientific anatomy is not that helpful to make a positive claim if we're saying perception is non-veridical. But, perception is close enough to get a lot out of it. And, the 'lot', to my mind, is able to show that it can't be the case (rather than "it is the case that..*insert positive claim*) that pain exists independent of the mind perceiving it. If the argument you're using merely creates a, let's say, inviolable relationship between "actual pain" triggered by an instance of injury, and the purported 'hallucinatory pain' (excepting phantom limb issues, on the grounds you've used to link it to the former "actual" account of pain) then, while I disagree, I can't argue against that. It is a position which cannot be adjudicated on empirical grounds. And, that, is where I think the entire thing lies. Maybe what's going on with the claims positive to a certain mode of perception is that if the institution of 'science' is telling us something like "well, we've never seen X, so we're not saying it's the case" is being taken too far. But, in this way, Leontiskos is laying out a severe red herring. Hanoever is not exempting himself. He's (I think, wrongly) delineating between kinds of expereince of perception. Perceiving 100 experiments that give us the same result, is pretty good, even though digging down Leontiskos is right to say each individual scientist is at the whim of their perception. That is clearly true.

This is on part with the way that our culture treats science as an omnipotent and inscrutable god, such that the word Science may as well always be capitalized. — Leontiskos

I would agree. Yet, you're not able to make the claims you're making on these grounds, so I'm unsure where that would lead... Will let Hanover actually answer instead of my speculation above.

More concretely, suppose a scientist observes that they can evoke some form of experience via brain stimulation. Hanover thinks this proves that experience is untrustworthy, and yet the scientist's observation is nothing other than an experience. So why isn't their experience untrustworthy? *crickets* — Leontiskos

But isn’t this approach failing to take into account that the witnessing selves are part of the semiotic construction of a witnessed reality? And there is a difference between the scientistic and the folk phenomenological account on this ground.

One view speaks to that of “ourselves” - our socially constructed notion of being an actual experiential being. The one having the experiences when we move our heads, widen our eyes, see something come into focus and mumur to ourselves, “I see a red pen”.

My point is that already we are constructing the self as the ultimate subjective witness, when objectively - as science can tell us - this is merely a socialised narrative.

An animal lacking language just exists in its world in a direct embodied fashion. It reacts to a red pen in terms of appropriate learnt behaviours and without any extra internal narrative about witnessing the world as a self who might thus have done something otherwise than react in a direct animal fashion.

So your eyeball may be pressed to the microscope, but there is also this idea of a “you” in play that comes at reality with already a theory. It is possible “you” were dreaming, hallucinating, distracted, careless, or whatever, when you saw what you thought you saw.

Even just at this regular linguistically constructed level of being a reliable observer of reality, you felt equipped to be able judge the rationality and soundness of your verbal reports about what was in fact the case. You can contrast a real red pen and a hallucinated red pen in terms of being a counterfactually theorising kind of self.

So the next step to a mathematically informed observer - the fully scientific ideal - is not such a great difference. We can swap out our phenomenological stance for the laboratory stance at a drop of a hat.

What we can’t do so easily is recover what being a self would have been like as a languageless animal. What it would be like not to live in this narrative haze of counterfactual possibility that adds so much complexity to our sense of self - our sense of always being both firmly rooted in reality and yet also floating somewhere else beyond it at the same time.

No. No it's not. I have given plenty of examples which violate this definition. It is inapt. Pain is not inherently unpleasant. If that were the case, the examples i've given would not obtain. I think what you meant to discuss is discomfort. I tried to lead you here... Discomfort is inherently uncomfortable. Pain is not. — AmadeusD

Huh. I think that's a very strange thing to say. Unpleasantness is exactly what "pain" indicates to me. It refers to a wide range of unpleasant feelings, just like the dictionary states. What does "pain" mean to you? Does it simply mean the sensation of touch? Are all touches painful to you, or do you have a way to distinguish a painful feeling from a not painful feeling?

:up:

I agree, but you are the confused one. Hanover is exactly right. This is how the body/brain works. — AmadeusD

Yet you keep falling into the same trap of asserting you know how the body/brain works while at the same time asserting that we cannot trust our senses. How do I know that you read what you read about the body/brain accurately when you depend on your eyes to see the words? How do we know that some mad scientist didn't plant these ideas in your head, or that you didn't hallucinate the experience of reading "facts" about bodies and brains?

Just because someone can change the time on the clock to report the wrong time does not mean that clocks are useless in telling time. We eventually come to know that the clock is wrong by observing other clocks. In other words, we can determine the validity of what one sense is informing us by using other senses, observing over time and using reason.

We did not evolve in an environment full of mad scientists that directly stimulate our brain. We evolved in an environment filled with electromagnetic energy, an atmosphere as a medium in which sound waves can travel and carry odors, etc. Our brains evolved to interpret the stimuli coming from our environment in ways that give us a very good idea of the state of the environment. So good in fact that humans are no longer just a "figure in the landscape but a shaper of the landscape (Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man)".

If we were to evolve in an environment full of mad scientists that directly stimulate our brains, over millions of years our brains would have evolved to use the scientists as a means of knowing about the rest of the environment in the way that we currently use light in the environment to inform us about things that are not light, like pens and brains.

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

Well, yes. Tomatoes are usually red when ripe, especially the shop-bought ones. Other varieties might be orange, black or green, some with striated combinations of these colours. They are cultivated to this end, so reliably that the seed can be bought and sold. Some varieties of radish are white, some purple. Strawberries that are not red are tasteless.

Claiming that they do not "really" have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour.

Given that the "empirical proving" is itself an experience, according to Hanover we cannot conclude anything from this experience. His conclusion is self-defeating. — Leontiskos

If solipsism is the only logical conclusion of recognizing some amount of difference between the object and the perception and naive realism is the only practical solution to avoid that slippery slope, then I choose solipsism because at least it is logical.

Naive realism suffers from the same logical failure you assign to indirect realism in that it demands that objects are as they appear, but empirical studies (i.e. the study of things as they appear) prove soundly that objects are not in fact as they appear. In fact, what naive realism teaches us is often we have perceptions that do not correlate with reality, as in hallucinations, direct stimulation of brain cells, and and damage to various nerves and anatomical structures. That is, the system you use to prove that things are as they appear proves that things aren't as they appear. This seems a nice matching bookend to your criticism that indirect realism can't prove things aren't as the are if indirect realism demands the evidence received is inherently flawed.

What we learn is that there is no fully satisfactory answer, which is obvious, as if there were, this would be a physics class and not a philosophy class where there are no answers.

If you scroll up somewhere above, I long ago acknowledged that the difficulty with transcendetal idealism is that it creates an irrelevant sort of realism, where we can only assert an external reality, but we can't ascribe much to that reality. The alternative, which is to just say WYSIWYG suffers from another host of problems.

What does seem clear to me is that the pen is whatever it is, but its redness is not part of the pen, but is part of the person. That is the conclusion demanded of direct realism.

But this is only half of the conversation, the larger part circling around Wittgenstein, words, and beetles, none of which sheds a whole lot of light on the topic, and much of which was so unconvincing I have to believe that it's been poorly presented here because it's so facially invalid I can't see how it can be taken seriously.