What is meaning? What is its relationship to phenomenality?

StatusX

Which side are you arguing here?

You're asking me to prove that there is no possible way for a person to know what an experience is like without experiencing it themself. But what would that even mean? In what sense do we know what any of our experiences are like beyond what we know while experiencing them? To know what an experience is like and to experience it are exactly the same thing, and it doesn't make sense to have one without the other.

Canute

Doctordick

As usual you are very sure that you have the answers to the questions raised in this thread, but as usual you do not tell anybody what you think they are. Perhaps you might post some of these answers for others to consider rather than just continually state that you know them but nobody will listen. How do you know they won't listen? I've listened to what you've said on a few different threads but am little the wiser as to your views.

You say "What all you people seem to miss is that you need a way of expressing exactly what you really know; before you know what you really know."

What makes you say this? And why so arrogantly? It is in complete disagreement with Aristotle and very many subsequent philosophers. I suppose Dennett would agree, since for him we cannot think of anything that we cannot verbalise (he argues that talking evolves before we are aware of the meaning of what we are saying, or even of the fact that we are saying it) but this hardly qualifies as an endorsement, since like you he provides no evidence for this conjecture.

If there is one thing I know for sure it is that I know things that I cannot put into words (or think in words) . Do you have no knowledge of this kind? I think you'll find that most of your real knowledge is of this kind.

On the meaning question - I'm still unclear what the word 'meaning' means, but tend to think that like beauty it lies in the eye of the beholder. (Is beauty a form of meaning? I'd say so). Until now I've always assumed that a symbol can only have meaning for an entity if that entity is aware that the symbol has that meaning to it, but with all that's been said in this thread I'm considering whether to reconsider this. Still, I stuggle to see how anything at all can have meaning in a zombie world (or a pure Lifeworld). It seems to me that all events/interactions in such a world would be meaningless, just the operations of physical cause and effect, as they are within a computer.

Doctordick

Les, I don't disagree with you as much as you think I do. I am only trying to open your mind to an alternate perspective.
The central issue I am trying to bring up is that all languages are vague in essence and it is an incontrovertible fact that we really don't know what people mean.
I agree one hundred percent. Thus it follows that the actual symbol used to represent a word, a picture, an act, an experience is completely beside the point. That being the case, why do we not just use numerical labels instead of these vague historical languages? The answer is quite evident if you think about it for a moment.
Exactly! But how that occurs has not yet been determined. The issue is that, not only has the process not been discovered but, no method of validating the result has been brought forth (we do not know if the meanings we arrived at are correct or not). It follows that, if we are to be rational, we need a mechanism in our attack which includes that fact.

What really makes the problem difficult is the fact that we must use the output (meanings) created by that very same (essentially un-analyzable thing) in order to think about anything. The solution of that problem begins with recognition of its existence. That is exactly the issue brought forth in my earlier post. The words I use may not be the ones you would use but you should be able to get the gist of what I am trying to say if you think about it a little.
Again, we don't disagree at all. I suppose you would not have been as upset if I had said, "a lot of people who don't like things don't like them because they don't understand".

Now math is a bit different. It seems to me that, if a person has any interest in the problem of rational communication, they would find math to be a valuable friend. The only reason I can conceive of for that not to be true is that either they do not understand math or they don't understand logic. And I don't find it at all snobbish or self centered.
Isn't that almost the definition of an assumption?
Unless you can communicate exactly what you mean by " the associated conscious quality of meaningfulness", it seems to me that understanding communication must be have first priority. Without that, you are just stirring the pot of vague concepts. As I said:
I have absolutely no idea what the other side of the argument is. To date, the only arguments I have gotten for not thinking about the solution I have found fall in the category commonly referred to as adhominem.
Isn't there now? If there is no doubt, then why is there no interest in a mechanism to handle the flaws therein?
What you are missing is that I do not acknowledge the usefulness of the debate itself. Until you get down to establishing exactly what you can and can not communicate, the question of what belongs in that category is moot. Furthermore, once you can establish that any given specific thing can not be communicated, then trying to communicate it is a complete waste of time.
Yes, there may very well be such a thing and trying to communicate it is certainly a waste of time.
So what! You know how you feel; I know how I feel and we cannot communicate it. So why are you stirring the pot? Since we cannot communicate it there is no way for you to know if my feelings bear any resemblance to yours at all. Perhaps I am a zombie! I challenge you to prove I am not.

Or, in the same vein, prove you are not a zombie. Ah, you know you are not don't you. And exactly how did you come to that conclusion?
The side of rational thought!
I don't know. You are the one who made the assertion. Just because something doesn't make sense to you doesn't prove your view is valid. Think man, think!

Have fun -- Dick

Doctordick

Hi Canute,
I am going to take you seriously and hope you do the same for me,
That is because the answers are not trivial. I was leading saviormachine towards the opening statement of my position but he seems to have gotten lost (he hasn't posted on the physics forum at all since 3/23/05).
Have you followed anything I have said anywhere? You never responded to my answer to you on the "Can Everything be Reduced to Pure Physics?" thread. My only conclusion is either you didn't understand me or you weren't interested in understanding what I said. And, if you didn't understand that, what purpose is there in going on?
What is arrogant about that statement? I see it as a simple statement of fact.

As far as disagreement with authority, what part do you disagree with? Are you saying you don't need a way of expressing "what you really know"? Isn't that is the very essence of Solipsism? Or are you saying you don't need this until you actually "know what you really know"? If that is the case, Solipsism is the only possible outcome (you will never know for sure what you really know)! I would thus conclude you are a Solipsist.

Or you could be disagreeing with my assertion that people are missing this point. If that is the case, explain to me the mechanism they use to differentiate between what they think they know and what they really know. (Other than just ignoring the problem that is.)
Do you really know these things or do you just think you know these things? Oh, I forgot; your either a solipsist or you think the issue should be ignored.
And how would I do that? Please explain to me the mechanism I should use to differentiate between what I think is true and what is really true.
My point is that, no matter what you think "meaning" means, your mode of thought must accommodate the possibility that you are wrong. If it doesn't do that than your mode of thought is wrong! It has become a religion and not a science.

So I say, once again, there is an issue here being adamantly ignored by everyone. Ok, not to worry, it is of no significance at all; except that there are some surprising consequences of opening your eyes to it.

I am either right or I am wrong. Unless someone competent points out an error in my reasoning, I can only continue to believe I am right. As far as explaining it to others, I need to get some responses. In particular, in response to your post, I need to know what part of what I have said you do not understand.

Have fun -- Dick

spicerack

oh cool another stargate fan, the movie was way better than the TV series I can't get past the fact that it's macgyver !

Anyway the goa'uld analogy i like, as it is exactly what my passenger in the vehicle of my body with me driving analogy is, as compared to Paul Martin's single driver of primordial consciousness fame...whew

So if the goa'uld was a clone of an original, it's adaptation to it's host by way of no two hosts being alike or experiencing the same effects of life over a period of time would account for our differing perceptions of consciousness but it is essentially the same consciousness cloned in all of us.

don't you think ?

Canute

That's nice of you, and of course I'll do the same.

Fair enough. I suspect that I may agree with your views on a number of issues, but I won't know that until you start stating your position. At the moment all I have is hints as to what it might be.

Pardon me. I had to go away for a few days suddenly. I'll go back and look. I thought I'd finished with that one.

You said "What all you people seem to miss is that you need a way of expressing exactly what you really know; before you know what you really know." Does it not strike you that this comment is arrogant? If not then I can't explain. I appreciate that you see this as no more than a statement of fact, but in my opinion it is not. If you wish me to change my mind then you'll have to provide some argument or evidence.

I'm saying that it is perfectly possible for a person to know things that they cannot express. I know what a clarinet sounds like, for instance. I can express the fact that I know this, but I cannot, even to myself, express what it is that I know. My reference to Aristotle was to his comment that true knowledge is identical with its object. If this is so then your view is incorrect, and "all us people" haven't missed anything after all.

I know what I know, just like you. There is no scientific or philosophical explanation for how we know things. It cannot be simply the result of a process of formal reasoning (or computation) since formal reasoning (or computation) by itself does not produce certain conclusions. Yet we know things. (Btw, your second sentence here is incorrect).

There is more to Aristotle's comment above than meets the eye. In effect it is a statement about how to distinguish between certain and relative knowledge.

I don't know what you mean by this. The meaning of 'meaning' is whatever we define it to be. I'll go along with whatever definition is communally agreed.

What issue is that?

Right or wrong about what? I don't understand what you are saying except for the fact that you think other people are wrong. Perhaps this is my fault and everyone else knows what you're suggesting, but I suspect not.

Jonny_trigonometry

"What makes you think you can "fully communicate" anything? It should be obvious to you that this "something else" you are referring to is reality itself." - Dr. Dick

well, obviously... I mean, I couldn't have meant anything else right? geez, Do you mean to say that you've got a better idea of what I'm trying to communicate that I do? Being able to fully communicate anything is not a requisite for recognizing the "something else".

this is what I said when someone else mentioned the idea that the "something else" is reality itself:

"Ya!, or at least indirectly. I believe that all communication is drivin by the motor that is emotion (feelings), and emotion is half drivin by envionmental stimuli and half by will. This is just my opinion."

So my opinion is that it's not as simple as "reality itself", and you're opinion is that it is that simple? okay, have fun with that... It's okay to disagree because we're not all the same person.

Doctordick

Hi Canute,
Thank you very much for your informative posts. It is as valuable to know where you agree with my points as it is to know where you disagree. In order to save space, I will only comment where you have expressed disagreement or I feel you have misunderstood me. If I don't comment, you can presume I have no fundamental disagreement with what you have said.
Reading what you have said, I get the feeling that you don't necessarily glance at the links to other posts which I insert in my posts: i.e., I am not exactly sure I know what particular hints you are referring to. I just made a post to the book discussion thread which (from my perspective anyway) makes it quite clear what I regard as the critical observation missed by everyone. The direct consequences of that observation are displayed in my post to the "knowledge..." thread and proof that my fundamental equation must be valid is posted on the "Nuts are us!" thread (the reference "Nuts are us!" comes from the mentors on that thread; needless to say, we did not get along well). I would appreciate it if you would glance at these three posts before you respond to this one.
That is exactly what I would like to do.
You are missing my fundamental point. That point is that, with regard to anything you think you know (and it makes utterly no difference what that thing is), there always exists the possibility that it is an illusion. This is the crux of the "realist" vs "anti-realists" controversy. (Read my post on the book discussion linked above.) With regard to Aristotle's comment, it doesn't really address this issue at all. As far as I am aware no one except myself has addressed it directly. Everyone else just sort of dances around it.
You have apparently decided that the "realist" school is correct: i.e., you are not going to allow the "Solipsist" position implied by the "anti-realists" any validity. My position is that neither position can be proved and thus anyone who takes a position on the issue can not possibly be approaching the question rationally as he has already decided an issue which can not be decided. (And I knew you wouldn't want to be called a Solipsist; I only put that in there to get your attention to the conflict caused by trying to take a position on the "realist" vs "anti-realist" debate.)
I think the issue you refer to is another aspect of the meaning of the word "know" which doesn't really bear on the differential I want you to concentrate on. The issue I refer to as "knowable" and "unknowable" data which can be found in my post to saviormachine. You should probably read saviormachine's response to that and my answer to his interpretation.
The issue of definition is a very significant issue with regard to my perspective and I would like to delay what I would call "exact" definition of any term until I am confident that I know exactly what I mean. There are three very important issues when it comes to definition. First, it must be very clear in my head as to exactly what I mean, second, there must be a fairly high probability that the other party will be able to understand what constitutes fulfilling that definition, and third, that definition must serve a necessary role in the discussion. Other than that, I will regard any language (even mathematics as a matter of fact) as vague in some sense or another. It is unhandy that we must use language to communicate but it is, none the less a requirement of communication. See my first few posts to saviormachine.
The issue that we need a mechanism for handling the difference between "the things we really know" and "the things we think we know" before we know what we know. These things are very different even if we have no mechanism to tell one from the other. The difference only becomes evident in the future (within that information not available to us "now") but it does arise: i.e., sooner or later we will discover some aspect of what we thought we knew which is wrong. The difference therefore is quite clear: the things we really know will never be found to be wrong no matter what we learn of the universe and are thus fixed and not subject to our whims. The things we only think we know need only be consistent with our understanding and are free to be anything otherwise. Absolutely no other constraint can be placed on them beyond the need that they be consistent with our understanding. Note that our understanding can be, and very probably is, wrong. This is the very first issue to be handled if we are to attack the problem of understanding anything. To avoid it is just plain foolish.
I have put forth a mechanism for handling this issue, and worked out the detailed consequences. I think I have done so correctly but haven't gotten anyone intellectually competent to examine my work. My conclusions are quite different from the common understanding of physics (but there is no difference in the results). Thus it is that I conclude my paradigm is correct and theirs is wrong.

Do you want to go through it or not? As I said, it is not trivial and it is considerably at odds with the standard perspective on reality.

Have fun -- Dick

Canute

That's asking a lot. Surely your views on meaning and phenomenality belong in this thread? I checked the first ref. but it did not seem relevant, except that it restates your view that we cannot know anything (or cannot know what we know and what we don't - which is the same thing). I don't agree.

If this were true then we would not be able to know that solipsism is unfalsifible. I agree that that the evidence of our senses is untrustworthy, and that reason has its limits when it comes to proving what is really true and false, but knowledge derived from direct experience can escape these problems.

It seems relevant to me. You say certain knowledge is impossible. Aristotle says it is possible.

How do figure that out? It's not my position at all.

By 'position' do you mean position on solipsism? If so then I agree completely. It is one of the great tragedies that people adopt metaphysical positions based on the truth of one or the other answer to metaphysical questions which are undecidable, rather than take the hint from their undecidability and conclude that both answers are incorrect.

I thought you were arguing that since we cannot differentiate what we know from what we don't there is no such thing as knowable data

This seems self-contradictory. If we cannot tell what we really know from what we don't really know then there can be no such thing as what we know.

Sure (assuming it's relevant here). But if you are arguing that you cannot distinguish between what you know and what you don't know then it seems to follow that your paradigm must be be based on speculation and conjecture, and you certainly cannot conclude that it is correct.

Tournesol

Even if "what you think you know" is just how things seem to you, and not about how they are ?

Doctordick

No, they are not at all the same thing. Fundamentally you are disagreeing with the statement "all I know is that I do not know". From my perspective your attitude is what is normally referred to as "dogmatic": i.e., you know what you know and you are not going to consider the possibility that you are wrong. If you are going to stick to that, then this discourse is a waste of time.
Oh, then you will guarantee to me that, absolutely never, not even in a billion billion years will solipsism ever be shown to be false? It is absolutely unfalsifiable! Again, that reflects a "dogmatic" position which implies you are closed to rational thought.
Absolutely and forever? Again your position strikes me as quite "dogmatic". I certainly will not base my arguments on such dubious presumptions.
So you want to put authority behind your position. Another characteristic of dogmatic ideologies. To me any time someone tells me they are absolutely certain of something, a red flag goes up in my mind. How can they possibly be so sure they are correct. It seems to me that the first characteristic of a rational mind is that they will admit the possibility they are wrong. And one of the funniest characteristics of closed minds is when they tell you, "oh yeah, I could be wrong! but not about that".
The Solipsist position is that it is all illusion and you have just told me that you very definitely really know some specific things are facts.
I have no idea what you are agreeing to here. By "my position" I meant my position on the arguments between the "realist" and "ante-realist" position. I take no position on either; it's an open issue and any position taken now can only be dogmatic.
Once again you take a dogmatic position under the illusion that your position is not dogmatic. How can you conclude that "both answers are incorrect"? What do you know that I don't know?
That is a dogmatic statement on the face of it. I don't take dogmatic positions. I do my very best to keep myself entirely open to the possibility that I am in error. So far, the most dogmatic statements I have made are: first, the only thing I know for sure is that I don't know and second, an explanation is a defined method of obtaining expectations of events not yet experienced based on information presently available to us.
Once again you jump immediately to a dogmatic position, "then there can be no such thing as what we know". You put forth exactly the argument given by the Solipsists when you, just a few paragraphs earlier told me you were not a Solipsist. What is even more disturbing is that, further along in exactly the same paragraph you have just referred to, I point out exactly what the difference is between what one really knows and what they only think they know. The only problem is that the resolution lies in the future. You don't seem to have even noticed this.

And exactly what do you find contradictory? Do you find it contradictory that we need a mechanism to handle the difference? Do you find it contradictory that there is a difference? Or finally, do you find it contradictory that we need to do this before "know what is real". I thought I expounded on that last issue quite succinctly in my earlier post. I have no way of telling what you have read and what you have ignored.
From your comments, I get the feeling that you don't have the slightest idea of what I am talking about. I could be wrong but almost all the issues you bring up have already been discussed elsewhere. My impression is that you don't read what I say but rather just sort of scan the post and presume you know what I am talking about. If true, that would make this exchange rather a waste of time; on your part and on mine.

Finally, on rereading what I posted earlier, I think one further comment is in order. It concerns an issue which I find obvious but I suspect others might overlook. There is one more, very important, aspect of the starting position we must establish if we are to be truly rational. Let me add a direct comment on that aspect. Quoting the single most important paragraph from my earlier post,
I do not make it clear that the constraint, "Absolutely no other constraint can be placed on them beyond the need that they be consistent with our understanding." must be in place prior to making any attempt at understanding. That clearly opens up "the things we only think we know" to a spectrum of all possibilities we can think of: i.e., they are completely unconstrained by anything except that understanding we are attempting to achieve.

On the other hand, the purpose of "our understanding" is to explain the things we "really know". That fact has some very important consequences. Thus it is that the rules that we think are valid ("the nature of our understanding") and "the things we only think we know" are the central constituents of our explanation of the "things we really know". This view places a very different emphasis on "the rules". In my paradigm, the rules are not discovered, they are invented. That is why I refer to it as a "solution to a profound record keeping problem".

And all this must be established in our formalism prior to any thought on what might possibly work. If we don't make any attempt to structure our formalism to be consistent with these constraints, we are back to stirring that vague pot of intuitive concepts and hoping something of value floats to the top.

Were you able to follow anything of what I said?

All you are doing is using the vagueness of the English language to muddy the subject under discussion. The "knowing" you are referring to is quite different from the "knowing" I am referring to. I am sure that, if the subject ever got to the point that it was commonly spoken of in ordinary everyday conversation, separate words would evolve to differentiate between these two cases.

Have fun – Dick

Canute

I can't follow your logic here. If you cannot tell the difference between things that you know and things that you don't know, which is what you claimed, then you don't know anything. This seems perfectly obvious. What has dogmatism got to do with anything?

Of course I'll guarantee that solipsism is unfalsifiable forever. This is what 'unfalsifiable' means. (Equivalently, the question "Is solipsism true or false?" is undecidable. "Undecidable" likewise means undecidable forever).

I didn't make a presumption. I said, in effect, that it is possible to know more
than can be proved or communicated (explained). This can be easily confirmed by anyone. What an irony it is that you call me dogmatic.

It didn't occur to you to reply to my point then? I stated that your view contradicts Aristotle's view. A more useful reply to such a comment would make clear why you feel you are right and he is wrong. As you don't know what you know and what you don't I can see why this would be difficult to do, but wish you'd wouldn't continually insult people instead of addressing the issues they raise.

Yes.

Something that I can't explain to you. But I can say this. Take the question "Did the universe arise from something or nothing?". It is clear that both answers contradict reason. It follows that if one of them is correct then the existence of the universe contradicts reason. I can't prove that this is not the case, but don't you think it's a little unlikely?

Hmm. What I wrote was "I thought you were arguing that since we cannot differentiate what we know from what we don't there is no such thing as knowable data". If you look carefully you'll see that this is not a dogmatic statement. As usual you neither confirm or deny, but insult instead.

This is getting silly. What I wrote was this "If we cannot tell what we really know from what we don't really know then there can be no such thing as what we know". It is not dogmatic to say this, and it's not my fault that it's true. If you can only know what is true and what is false at sometime in the future then it is impossible to know anything now.

Your posts consist largely of cryptic references to some background hypothesis which you do not make clear, or insults. Don't be surprised if people are unsure what it is you're getting at, or start showing signs of frustration.

Sorry but cannot grasp what you're getting at here.

What fact? The 'purpose' of my understanding is not to explain the things I really know. I'm not even sure what your first sentence here means.

Yes, a few philosophers have suggested that our physical environment is a sort of external memory bank.

In places.

What are the two cases? As far as I'm concerned knowing is knowing. The only division of knowing I know of is between relative and absolute knowledge.

Tournesol

Actually, philosophers already have a number of ways of distinguishing different kinds of knowledge. But if you were talking about one particular kind of knowledge, why didn't you say so ?

Philocrat

QUALIA IS ALREADY EXPLAINED BY A MULTIPARTITE LANGUAGE



The Langauge of science is also a langauge of explanation. When metaphysically conjoined with NL (Natural language), it becomes an acceptable part of NL therefore making it multi-partite in scope and in substance. In other words, the Langauge of science is already part of NL. It just needs a systematic clarification at the metaphysical level.

You might wonder and ask Why?

Well, according to Frank Jackson’s thought experiment, scientists do have a way of numerically identifying all the colours and naming them. In the thought experiment, Mary, a Neuroscientist in a black and white room, knows all names of all the colours and how to uniquely associate each colour name with each wavelength on the light spectrum, which metaphysically and epistemologically implies that she can communicate these colour names (Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, etc) and wavelengths (w1, w2, w3 ….. wn) to her fellow scientists. This epistemologically implies


Colour Name + Wavelength = Knowledge of each colour

For example:

“Red” + W2 = Knowledge of Red colour”

But, according to Jackson, Mary does not know colours in real experience because she has never seen any colour before. This means that Mary can numerically (physically) account for all the colours but she cannot experientially (consciously) account for them. According Jackson, this means that there are some facts about conscious experience that are irreducible from physical experience

Mary knows that

“Green” = Wavelength (w3)

But Mary does not know that

“Green” = Experience (Green)

Ok, let us use the Possible World Semantics to analyse this:

Metaphysically, Mary and fellow scientists in this world can substitute not only the colour term for the wavelength numerical value but also they can substitute any sentence containing the colour term for any sentence containing the wavelength numerical value. So long as they can be communicated from one scientist to another scientist without losing their information contents or semantic values, then they are metaphysically and epistemologically equivalent.


In this case Mary would substitute all the co-referential terms and sentences in the world accordingly.

(a) “Green” for wavelength (n)
(b) “Green” for experience (green)
(c) Wavelength (n) for experience (green)

And so on. However, when it comes to communicating the knowledge of colours to non-scientists in the same world, as is typical of our own present world, Mary (likewise her fellow scientists) has to do so experientially – that is, directly name and physically point at them to identify them.

Well, the TRANSWORLD IDENTITY THEORY says that names should have the same meanings across all possible worlds or that they should not vary in meanings as we travel from one possible world to the next. At least this is what Kripke’s theory of Rigid Designator was attempting to demonstrate. According to Kripke, names do not vary in meanings in all possible worlds because they are rigid designators. Well, if this is true, then if Mary in the Possible World 3 were to board a spaceship and travelled to Possible Worlds 1 and 2, the name “Green” should have the same meaning in all the three worlds regardless of if Mary was speaking to scientists or non-scientists. Metaphysically, this would be equivalent to objectively picking an item in a public realm and introducing into a discourse in a manner that every participant in that discourse fully understands what is being referred to. Note that in my above three analogical examples, both the scientists and non-scientists use the same colour names (“Green”, “Blue”, “Red’, etc.) to name what they each understand as representing or standing for those names (wavelengths for scientists and real colour experience for non-scientists) respectively. This, in my opinion, seems to render the overplayed notion of “WHAT IT IS LIKE TO EXPERIENCE QUALIA metaphysically and epistemologically redundant because the transworld identities of colour names are rigid. They mean the same thing regardless of which world you are in. And the fact that some experiences are directly identified and named does not metaphysically pollute this fact. The only fundamental difference is that some experiences are linguistically describable and nameable while some are non-linguistically describable but directly experiential and nameable.

In this way we have conjoined the language of science with the Natural language in other to describe and communicate different aspects of the same reality to each other without falling into error judgement. The Language of science conjoined with NL produces an Multipartite Metalanguage with which to describe multipartite reality. For a Multipartite reality requires a Multipartite Language to describe it.

Tournesol

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