What is meaning? What is its relationship to phenomenality?

[hypnagogue]

The issue of meaning has popped up a couple of times recently in the Metaphysics & Epistemology forum, and I think it's substantial enough to merit its own discussion.

What is meaning? As a first pass, it seems reasonable to define meaning in terms of representation. In turn, the notion of representation seems to imply a system for which something is represented. Here, then, is a tentative definition:

An object or event X has meaning for an agent A just in case A takes X to represent some other object or event Y.

The terms "agent" and "takes X to represent" remain somewhat ambiguous. The latter might be specified, for instance, either in terms of belief ('A believes that X represents Y') or action ('A behaves as if X represents Y,' or even 'A behaves as if X is Y.').

I am particularly interested here to investigate the link, if any, between meaning and phenomenality. On the plausible definition given above, phenomenality is not necessary for meaning. A zombie's mental life would feature just as much meaning as ours, even though a zombie is not p-conscious by definition. For instance, a stop sign would have just as much meaning for a zombie as for a human. Just like a human, the zombie would take the stop sign to represent a command to stop a moving vehicle. Of course, a zombie would not have the attendent subjective experience of meaningfulness, but on the definition given above, the qualitative component of meaningfulness is not an essential aspect of meaning.

 

[Pensador]

Hypnagogue,

I think you are absolutely correct in saying that phenomenality is not necessary for meaning. Instructions in a computer program have meaning, so much so that programming languages fail to translate or execute meaningless statements.

That said, meaning in aesthetics is particularly complex. For instance, colors usually have a sort of aesthetic meaning that can't be expressed in language (unless you consider art a language in itself). You said a stop sign means the same thing for a zombie as it does for us, but I'm inclined to believe we have a reason for painting stop signs red, while zombies would not respond differently to a green stop sign. That is, there's something intrinsic to our perception of red besides linguistic and cultural conventions.

Also, in music some tone intervals are clearly interpreted as "happy" or "sad" by most listeners, but no one knows why abstract mathematical relationships are capable of having that kind of meaning. Again, this is independent of cultural conventions, as far as I know.

Because of aesthetics, I feel inclined to think zombies cannot be perfectly equivalent to sentient people, modern philosophers notwithstanding. The very notion of zombie in folk usage reflects that: zombies don't have aesthetic experiences, and they appear and behave as such, with their steely eyes and lack of moral values.

So to answer your post, I think the full meaning of meaning is somewhat elusive. We can understand meaning from a logical/linguistic perspective, the same perspective which allows people to create computer languages. But the aesthetic aspect of meaning is quite far from being understood, and it's a very important component of it.

 

[hypnagogue]

I think you are absolutely correct in saying that phenomenality is not necessary for meaning. Instructions in a computer program have meaning, so much so that programming languages fail to translate or execute meaningless statements.

On the definition of meaning I gave above, a key component is the system or agent for which some object or event has meaning. I believe we must take into account the context afforded by a given agent to evaluate something's meaning, because it's not plausible on a definition of meaning that incorporates representation that things just have some sort of inherent meaning.

With that in mind, I believe that computer instructions are certainly meaningful for us, as human cognitive agents. But we are also phenomenally conscious, so it's not clear that the fact that we view computer instructions as meaningful can tell us much about meaning in the absence of phenomenality.

For the sake of argument, we can suppose that simple computer programs are not phenomenally conscious, and I think this is what you were trying to get at: that we can demonstrate that phenomenality is not necessary for meaning by appealing to computers or computer programs as agents that are not phenomenally conscious, but for which instructions nonetheless have meaning. However, I'm not sure that all computers/computer programs, as such, fit the bill.

Your example of ill-formed computer instructions seems more like an issue of syntax than semantics, when regarded from the computer's point of view. Certainly, a program will only function 'properly' when it is given syntacticly 'well-formed' instructions (notice that the words in scare quotes are human-imposed norms). However, it seems implausible to suppose that a simple computer program would take its instructions to be representative of anything; it seems more like a type of 'dumb' causal chain that operates on certain human designed specifications.

This is not to say that no computer could find anything meaningful. For instance, a suitably designed artificial intelligence computer could find things meaningful, according to the definition I provided. It's certainly a subtle and difficult question about where the boundaries and gradients between syntax and semantics lie, and one could come up with different proposals based on different interpretations of the initial definition of meaning that I provided. However, I think the case of instruction syntax for simple computer programs is extreme enough that we can plausibly say that instructions are not meaningful for simple programs, according to the definition of meaning I proposed above.

You said a stop sign means the same thing for a zombie as it does for us, but I'm inclined to believe we have a reason for painting stop signs red, while zombies would not respond differently to a green stop sign.

Zombies are structurally and behaviorally identical to humans, though, by definition of what it means to be a zombie. So to the extent that humans have reason for painting stop signs red, zombies have equivalent reasons. If perceiving red triggers some sort of 'warning!' or 'caution!' mechanism in humans, it does the same in zombies. All that is different is that a stop sign qualitatively looks something like this[/color] for a human, but does not qualitatively look like anything for a zombie.

Because of aesthetics, I feel inclined to think zombies cannot be perfectly equivalent to sentient people, modern philosophers notwithstanding. The very notion of zombie in folk usage reflects that: zombies don't have aesthetic experiences, and they appear and behave as such, with their steely eyes and lack of moral values.

Zombies would not have steely eyes or lack of moral values to any greater or lesser extent than humans, by definition. They would also value art and so on to the same extent that we humans do, again, by definition. The only difference is that in humans, art has some sort of phenomenal presentation, while it has none for zombies.

So on balance, you are more or less claiming that zombies are metaphysically impossible; there is some sort inseperability between some qualitative experience and some behavior. This constraint of yours seems to necessarily push you either towards some sort of physicalism (i.e., it is logically impossible to have certain mental functions without some sort of illusory, qualitative experience arising) or some sort of interactionist dualism (i.e., it is logically impossible for certain mental functions to be instantiated without some sort qualitative experience to cause them).

So to answer your post, I think the full meaning of meaning is somewhat elusive. We can understand meaning from a logical/linguistic perspective, the same perspective which allows people to create computer languages. But the aesthetic aspect of meaning is quite far from being understood, and it's a very important component of it.

I can understand why you would want to consider some sort of contribution of aesthetics to meaning, but it's still not clear to me that such contributions could not be instantiated in zombies.

 

[Philocrat]

The issue of meaning has popped up a couple of times recently in the Metaphysics & Epistemology forum, and I think it's substantial enough to merit its own discussion.

What is meaning? As a first pass, it seems reasonable to define meaning in terms of representation. In turn, the notion of representation seems to imply a system for which something is represented. Here, then, is a tentative definition:

An object or event X has meaning for an agent A just in case A takes X to represent some other object or event Y.

The terms "agent" and "takes X to represent" remain somewhat ambiguous. The latter might be specified, for instance, either in terms of belief ('A believes that X represents Y') or action ('A behaves as if X represents Y,' or even 'A behaves as if X is Y.').

In philosophy the notion of meaning is very wide and extensively controversial. Partly because meaning is a multi-disciplinary notion - that is, it cuts across several philosophical disciplines. In philosophy there are many papers by Russell, Frege, Strawson, Kripke, Donnellan and countless Langauge and anaylitical philosphers that directly confront this notion of meaning - e.g Russell's Theory of description . What I mean is that meaning cannot be defined in one context for there are many contexts that one has to examine in other to do justice to it. For example, there are some metaphysically vexing problems with meaning in Propositional Attitude context (such as in belief context). Philosophers have a problem with propositional attitude sentences with regards to meaning such as these ones that you specified: 'A believes that X represents Y' 'A behaves as if X represents Y. When you read their papers thoroughly you will understand why. You do not have to agree with them, but it is controversial in general.

I am particularly interested here to investigate the link, if any, between meaning and phenomenality. On the plausible definition given above, phenomenality is not necessary for meaning. A zombie's mental life would feature just as much meaning as ours, even though a zombie is not p-conscious by definition. For instance, a stop sign would have just as much meaning for a zombie as for a human. Just like a human, the zombie would take the stop sign to represent a command to stop a moving vehicle. Of course, a zombie would not have the attendent subjective experience of meaningfulness, but on the definition given above, the qualitative component of meaningfulness is not an essential aspect of meaning.

The question is whether consciousness can be progrmmed into a zombie, given that the zombie is scientifically improvable or programmable. And there is the issue of evaluating the evolutionary value of consciousness in the grand scale of things or life in general. If you ask me "can consciousness be programmed into machines?", my answer would be a capital 'YES'. Can we? Oh yes, we can!

 

[hypnagogue]

In philosophy the notion of meaning is very wide and extensively controversial.

Right; I certainly don't pretend to have given a complete or non-problematic account of meaning. That's why I portrayed my effort as a tentative first pass.

The question is whether consciousness can be progrmmed into a zombie, given that the zombie is scientifically improvable or programmable.

That's not the question at all. For one thing, we cannot program anything 'into' a zombie, because zombies do not exist. They are hypothetical entities that some philosophers believe are logically possible; certainly no one seriously considers them to be nomologically possible (possible in our world). Furthermore, if zombies did exist in our world, they would be physically identical to us humans (by definition), so I'm not sure it even makes sense to talk about programming anything into a zombie. What would it mean to program something into a human? Perhaps it makes sense on some level, but it doesn't seem to be the best choice of words.

 

[Pensador]

On the definition of meaning I gave above, a key component is the system or agent for which some object or event has meaning. I believe we must take into account the context afforded by a given agent to evaluate something's meaning, because it's not plausible on a definition of meaning that incorporates representation that things just have some sort of inherent meaning.

I believe your position is quite mistaken. It's not a given agent that affords context; if you don't have the context which provides meaning to a statement, you can't arbitrarily create that context yourself. Context can be given either by the language itself or by the phenomena the language refers to; it certainly can't be given by the conscious agent in the language, except in the few cases where language refers to subjective phenomena.

With that in mind, I believe that computer instructions are certainly meaningful for us, as human cognitive agents. But we are also phenomenally conscious, so it's not clear that the fact that we view computer instructions as meaningful can tell us much about meaning in the absence of phenomenality.

The point I was trying to make is that meaning can exist in the absence of phenomenality. Once a language becomes sophisticated enough, you can create concepts that refer to the language itself rather than to anything the language refers to (let's call those 'meta-concepts'). Any computer is perfectly capable of understanding meta-concepts. Moreover, we understand meta-concepts in exactly the same way computers do. Words like "not", "and", "more", and so on, do not bring any images to mind. We reason about those concepts completely in the dark, so to speak.

Your example of ill-formed computer instructions seems more like an issue of syntax than semantics, when regarded from the computer's point of view.

Not at all. A computer will not refrain from executing a statement such as 2/0 not because it contains a syntax error, but because it has no meaning.

I think what you are failing to see is that computers did not come out of nothing, they were created by people. Computers are the embodiment of our ways of thinking, just like voice recorders are the embodiment of our ways of speaking. As such, computers provide a wonderful opportunity to look at our own minds from an objective perspective. The fact that some people don't recognize themselves in the workings of a logical machine only means they don't understand how the machine was created.

Certainly, a program will only function 'properly' when it is given syntacticly 'well-formed' instructions (notice that the words in scare quotes are human-imposed norms). However, it seems implausible to suppose that a simple computer program would take its instructions to be representative of anything

That is not the issue. The issue is, does a statement need to represent anything in order to be meaningful to us? And the answer is a clear negative. Gosh, even the question "does a statement need to represent anything" does not represent anything other than meta-concepts.

Zombies are structurally and behaviorally identical to humans, though, by definition of what it means to be a zombie.

I see a huge problem with this zombie thing. Zombies are thought not to have subjective experiences, yet they are also thought to behave as if they have subjective experiences. But you can't simply say "that is the way it is by definition" without justifying it, without addressing complaints that the definition is bogus; that would be sophistry.

I can understand why you would want to consider some sort of contribution of aesthetics to meaning, but it's still not clear to me that such contributions could not be instantiated in zombies.

Of course not, because the definition of zombies is bogus. The problem is that without subjective experiences there is no language and therefore no meaning. Defined the proper way, a zombie is exactly what we are when we are unconscious: we can still move our muscles and talk gibberish, but we cannot possibly behave the same way or have meaningful conversations. Your line of thinking leads one to conclude that subjective experience is just a frill, an unnecessary ingredient of brain activity. I find that notion ridiculous.

 

[Tournesol]

I believe your position is quite mistaken. It's not a given agent that affords context;

An agent is not the ultimate origin of context..

if you don't have the context which provides meaning to a statement, you can't arbitrarily create that context yourself. Context can be given either by the language itself or by the phenomena the language refers to;

..but "language itself" is nothing without an agent.

Not at all. A computer will not refrain from executing a statement such as 2/0 not because it contains a syntax error, but because it has no meaning.

"syntax error" and "meaninglessness" are both interpretations of something causal.

 

[StatusX]

First of all, zombies are logically possible, unless you can find a way to prove the people around you are in fact conscious. You might believe some behavior requires consciousness, but this can only be based on your own subjective data which isn't infallible when trying to describe the objective world. All logically possible means is that there is no logical contradiction in their defintion. For example, an eight headed unicorn is logically possible, but an eight headed unicorn with seven horns is not.

As for the notion of defining meaning. We're essential trying to find the meaning of the word meaning, and it seems self reference might be involved. The problem is that we take a certain intellectual ground for granted, and all our meanings derive from that. For example, if we ran into an alien intelligence, how could we convey information to them? We would need some symbolic system. But first we would need some intellectual grounding to work from, maybe prime numbers. From there we would move up to math, physics, and eventually we might be able to communicate with them as we do with other humans. But how could this be possible without finding some common ground? In other words, there may be some necessary concepts that cannot be defined in any way, but are taken for granted and from which all other concepts are built. The question is what these are, and whether they are unique, or if there are many possible basis sets.

 

[Pensador]

First of all, zombies are logically possible, unless you can find a way to prove the people around you are in fact conscious.

It's perfectly possible to prove that people are conscious, since a person must be conscious to behave in a conscious way. By definition.

What is impossible to prove is that people have the kind of ineffable subjective experience zombies are supposed to lack. But how do we know we have those, if they are truly ineffable? If someone tells you "I have this thing in my head which I cannot describe to you", how would you know what they were talking about, and how would you know you also had it?

Clearly you know you are conscious not because you discovered it from introspection, but because someone told you so. So the claim that it's impossible to tell if people are conscious has no substance: you certainly need other people to know if you are conscious to learn about that fact yourself.

All logically possible means is that there is no logical contradiction in their defintion. For example, an eight headed unicorn is logically possible, but an eight headed unicorn with seven horns is not.

Ah, but there is exactly such a contradiction in the definition of zombies, only it's not as clear to see as in your example. But it's there nonetheless, and the fact that some people can't see the inconsistency doesn't mean it's not there.

 

[Doctordick]

Of course not, because the definition of zombies is bogus. The problem is that without subjective experiences there is no language and therefore no meaning. Defined the proper way, a zombie is exactly what we are when we are unconscious: we can still move our muscles and talk gibberish, but we cannot possibly behave the same way or have meaningful conversations. Your line of thinking leads one to conclude that subjective experience is just a frill, an unnecessary ingredient of brain activity. I find that notion ridiculous.

Though I am of the opinion that you have not thought out the consequences of your position as carefully as you should, I agree with most everything you have said.

To discuss the meaning of meaning, we must give meanings to the terms used in the discussion. It should be clear that "meaning" is a component of language. Without meaning, any language is meaningless and without language, meaning does not exist. The purpose of language is communication and the purpose of meaning is communication. So long as any part of that structure is vague in any way, communication fails. What is important when I use a word, symbol or any reference (and yes, art is a language, one of the vaguest languages in existence), that reference brings to the mind of another the same thing it brings to my mind. Once you see that, you begin to see the problem. That problem even occurs within one's own mind; sometimes internal references bring alternate things to mind. That's why we can't even understand our own comprehensions. Actually, I think the advantage of conscious is that we can exist as a separate entity in our own minds and can thus take advantage of this very phenomena.

To quote myself:

One of the excellent consequences of preventing communication is the fact that it is impossible to communicate beliefs from one generation to another. Misunderstandings will invariably occur and, in an attempt to make sense of what they think the previous generation is saying, new unique perspectives will arise. Without that ambiguity I suspect intellectual advancement would soon cease.

That is, accidental discovery of new interpretations of available information is essential to learning. So the imprecise communication between the subconscious and the conscious mind may very well be the source of the great value of having a conscious mind. Now, that's a theory!

The problem, as I see it, is the notion that an explanation restricted to logic and mathematics can account for the whole of NL (as Doctordick seems to be proposing), even as, from an NL perspective, it can't since logic and math is but a subset of it. And of course from a formalist perspective, the formalist perspective itself cannot be justified other than by force. We sure live in dictatorial times.

First, what the devil does "NL" stand for? Secondly, I don't think you comprehend my starting point. You should look at my post on that issue.

The only reason I use mathematics is that I am fairly sure that I will obtain almost universal agreement with any conclusions I can deduce consistent with that field of endeavorer. My problem is that I cannot get anyone to look down that rabbit hole. I have no idea what they are afraid of. At least my approach begins with a set of meanings almost universally agreed upon. Starting from there, I have a procedure which yields exact definition after exact definition perfectly consistent with everything at every point. It is my contention that my approach is the only rational approach to meanings and I am resisted by those who would rather have no approach at all.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Les Sleeth]

. . . meaning in aesthetics is particularly complex.

I think it's just the opposite; that is, meaning, as an experience, is so simple it defies the complexity needed for any sort of explanation. To clarify a bit more, I don't believe the experience of meaning has any "parts" to it, but rather is a sort of "experiential singularity," and so like its sister qualia, can't be segmented into the parts an intellect requires to formulate a proper definition.

It is my opinion that all the current models of consciousness are missing this “singularity” feature. Out of that unified field emerges offshoot singularities which are likewise indivisible and have forever evaded precise analysis by the intellect (e.g. love, happiness, interestedness, compassion, appreciation, etc.). Logically, the integrated facet would be the seat of individuality and subjectivity, the unique “me” at the core of one’s being.

 

[StatusX]

It's perfectly possible to prove that people are conscious, since a person must be conscious to behave in a conscious way. By definition.

Don't mix up conscious as in "awake" with conscious as in "experiencing." You are experiencing while you dream, so these obviously can't be exactly the same thing, but their similarity can cause confusion.

What is impossible to prove is that people have the kind of ineffable subjective experience zombies are supposed to lack. But how do we know we have those, if they are truly ineffable? If someone tells you "I have this thing in my head which I cannot describe to you", how would you know what they were talking about, and how would you know you also had it?

We can tell others experiences exist, but we can do nothing to convey what they're like. You know red looks like something, but how can you put it into words without simply listing red objects or emotions that accompany red, both of which are completely independent of what the experience itself is like? A zombie would say all the same things, but there would be no accompanying experience. When he says red looks like something, he would be wrong. But when he tries to describe what it looks like, he would do no worse than you.

Clearly you know you are conscious not because you discovered it from introspection, but because someone told you so. So the claim that it's impossible to tell if people are conscious has no substance: you certainly need other people to know if you are conscious to learn about that fact yourself.

In a way, but I think we all know there is something it is like to be us and experience what we do. When we hear the definition of consciousness, we know other people have singled out this phenomenon as well and have invented a word to talk about it. There's no paradox here, if you accept that we can say that we experience but not what it is like.

Ah, but there is exactly such a contradiction in the definition of zombies, only it's not as clear to see as in your example. But it's there nonetheless, and the fact that some people can't see the inconsistency doesn't mean it's not there.

What is it then? Logical, or a priori, possibility is just that there is nothing in the defintions of the words involved that is contradictory. A zombie is an entity that behaves identically to us but does not experience. All experience means is that there is something it is like to be them. Where is the contradiction in these defintions?

Now, it may turn out down the road that we find some law of nature that proves they are impossible. If one did turn up, that would mean they are a posteriori impossible. I believe they are impossible in this sense, but science has yet to provide any evidence either way.

Do you have evidence they are impossible, or is it just your belief? I don't think you do, but even if so, their logical possibility remains.

 

[StatusX]

While typing my last post, I thought of something that actually connected it to this topic. Could it be that the only reason we think of experiences as ineffable is that we totally lack even a fundamental language for describing them? When we ask what it means for something to "look green", we dismiss the question as unanswerable ("you have to experience it to see"). Is this really true, or are we giving up too easily?

 

[hypnagogue]

I believe your position is quite mistaken. It's not a given agent that affords context; if you don't have the context which provides meaning to a statement, you can't arbitrarily create that context yourself. Context can be given either by the language itself or by the phenomena the language refers to; it certainly can't be given by the conscious agent in the language, except in the few cases where language refers to subjective phenomena.

The point is, any given statement does not have meaning unless there is an agent around to interpret it as having meaning, or as signifying/representing something else. The words in a book do not have intrinsic meaning; they are only meaningful when regarded by an agent who understands the language. (Or, they could even be taken to mean something by an agent who does not understand the language; for instance, perhaps the patterns of shapes and colors resembles a visual image of some object for the agent.)

The point I was trying to make is that meaning can exist in the absence of phenomenality. Once a language becomes sophisticated enough, you can create concepts that refer to the language itself rather than to anything the language refers to (let's call those 'meta-concepts'). Any computer is perfectly capable of understanding meta-concepts.

Alright, you seem to be arguing for a more wide-ranging notion of meaning than the one I intended. In my definition, we need an agent to be aware, in some sense, that some sort of representation is going on. (Note that awareness, as I'm using it, does not require phenomenality.) That's a pretty ambiguous issue, and depending on how one interprets the various terms, it might amount to something like you're proposing here. However, I still think it's absolutely essential that we build into the definition some reference to a system for which a given object/event/process/etc. has meaning. Things do not have intrinsic meaning; they acquire meaning in the proper contexts, which must include some sort of system that 'interprets' things in some way or another.

Not at all. A computer will not refrain from executing a statement such as 2/0 not because it contains a syntax error, but because it has no meaning.

Actually, computers refrain from dividing by zero because human programmers explicitly give them instructions to avoid attempting such operations, so it amounts to an ill-formed request. Without such instructions, a program will straightforwardly go about trying to calculate 2/0 according to its particular algorithms (and will probably crash).

The point is, the kind of computers we are accustomed to do not have a concept of what numbers are, or what operations on numbers are. When we feed 2+2 into a calculator and get back 4, it's just a blind causal chain, not very much different in character from dropping a ball or knocking over a set of dominos. Now, obviously it's more complex than that; one could characterize the brain in a similar matter, and obviously we do take things to have meaning. It's not clear exactly what happens in the brain to make this occur, but I do not think it's going out on a limb to say that simple computer programs do not have it, but more complex, AI inspired computers could.

I think what you are failing to see is that computers did not come out of nothing, they were created by people.

I explicitly acknowledged that point several times, and in fact it was the reason I objected to your example. I thought we should consider things from the computer's point of view (if it even makes sense to attribute a point of view to the kind of computers we use today), not from our human point of view, to evaluate the question of the meaning of instructions for a computer.

That is not the issue. The issue is, does a statement need to represent anything in order to be meaningful to us? And the answer is a clear negative.

Please produce a meaningful statement that does not have representational content.

 

[hypnagogue]

I'm responding to this post in two parts: the last to address meaning, and in this response to address the issue of zombies.

I see a huge problem with this zombie thing. Zombies are thought not to have subjective experiences, yet they are also thought to behave as if they have subjective experiences. But you can't simply say "that is the way it is by definition" without justifying it, without addressing complaints that the definition is bogus; that would be sophistry.

The definition is what the definition is. You can argue that zombies are logically impossible, or in other words that the definition is incoherent, which is fine. But if you want to talk about hypothetical beings whose behavior resembles humans' in some respects, but who do not appreciate art and have no moral values and the like, you are not talking about zombies. You are talking about something else.

Of course not, because the definition of zombies is bogus. The problem is that without subjective experiences there is no language and therefore no meaning. Defined the proper way, a zombie is exactly what we are when we are unconscious: we can still move our muscles and talk gibberish, but we cannot possibly behave the same way or have meaningful conversations. Your line of thinking leads one to conclude that subjective experience is just a frill, an unnecessary ingredient of brain activity. I find that notion ridiculous.

Obviously, accepting the logical possibility of zombies presents problems. But rejecting the logical possibility of zombies also presents significant problems. As I said before, if you reject the logical possibility of zombies, then you are essentially claiming that human behavior and human subjective experience are inseparable in a very strong sense. You must either claim that it is logically impossible that certain mental functions/brain activities occur without subjective experience arising, or you must claim that certain mental functions/brain activities cannot occur without subjective experience playing a role in their causal production. The former amounts to some form of physicalism, the latter interactionist dualism. But there are strong arguments that physicalism is not a sufficiently powerful ontology to account for subjective experience, and interactionist dualism rejects the well-founded principle of the causal closure of the physical. So, if you reject zombies, which of these impalatable options are you going to choose?

By the way, it is not the case that accepting the logical possibility of zombies forces us into a kind of epiphenomenalism where subjective experience is just an unncecessary frill. The "A Place for Consciousness" discussion is about a book that demonstrates this notion.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

it seems that in this flow of thought about the idea of meaning, zombies play a key role.

 

[Pensador]

So many interesting replies, too bad I don't have time to address all the issues.

To discuss the meaning of meaning, we must give meanings to the terms used in the discussion. It should be clear that "meaning" is a component of language. Without meaning, any language is meaningless and without language, meaning does not exist. The purpose of language is communication and the purpose of meaning is communication. So long as any part of that structure is vague in any way, communication fails. What is important when I use a word, symbol or any reference (and yes, art is a language, one of the vaguest languages in existence), that reference brings to the mind of another the same thing it brings to my mind. Once you see that, you begin to see the problem.

Langauge is used for communication, but it's also used for thinking. In fact you can't use language to communicate if you don't use it first for thinking, although this is a bit tricky to explain. What needs to be understood is the difference between words and what words refer to, the major difference being that words are arbitrary while their referents are not. For instance, a child may not know the English word for "sun" but she knows a word probably exists, so the child can think about "sun" without even knowing if the word actually exists. So we have those "placeholders" in our minds which are filled with whatever it is that a word stands for, and when we learn the word all we have to do is attach it to the existing placeholder.

I said all that to get to the point that your problem may or may not exist, it really depends on the context you're talking about. If you talk about "the decline of Western society in posmodernistic times", you may have more words than placeholders for them (that is, you learn words without really knowing what they mean); on the other hand, when talking about "the sun rised in the East and sets in the West", the words may be vague but the meaning, at least in my head, is absolutely clear.

So I don't fully acknowledge the existence of the problem you're talking about when it comes to descriptions of the physical world, although I certainly agree it exists in the more abstract domains of human knowledge.

I think it's just the opposite; that is, meaning, as an experience, is so simple it defies the complexity needed for any sort of explanation. To clarify a bit more, I don't believe the experience of meaning has any "parts" to it, but rather is a sort of "experiential singularity," and so like its sister qualia, can't be segmented into the parts an intellect requires to formulate a proper definition.

It is my opinion that all the current models of consciousness are missing this “singularity” feature.

This is really what I was trying to point out when I mentioned aesthetics. I'm glad you seem to agree. We can't create this artificial dichotomy between the physical world and the picture we have in our head, they are the same thing. Stop signs are not simply abstract concepts, they are red hexagonal things which can only have meaning when taken in their entirety. I don't know about others, but I have never seen an abstract stop sign, the kind of which Hypnagogue says zombies are capable of seeing.

We can tell others experiences exist, but we can do nothing to convey what they're like.

Of course we can, that's why we have language.

Logical, or a priori, possibility is just that there is nothing in the defintions of the words involved that is contradictory. A zombie is an entity that behaves identically to us but does not experience. All experience means is that there is something it is like to be them. Where is the contradiction in these defintions?

The contradiction is embedded in the meaning of "behavior" and "experience". Just because you can put a sentence together without offending the rules of grammar doesn't mean the sentence doesn't harbor a contradiction. The problem is that the contradictions can be very hard to see. For instance, Newton's laws of mechanics were contradictory, but those contradictions only showed up 300 years later when they gave rise to the paradoxes which could only be solved by relativity and quantum mechanics. And those, as everyone knows, also give rise to paradoxes of their own.

But physics is a lot easier than philosophy, because we cannot lie to the world. If an equation describes a real physical phenomenon as an undefined mathematical entity, we know the equation must be wrong. Philosophy however doesn't have that luxury; we can go on and on for centuries making logical mistakes and nature will never correct us.

The point is, any given statement does not have meaning unless there is an agent around to interpret it as having meaning, or as signifying/representing something else. The words in a book do not have intrinsic meaning; they are only meaningful when regarded by an agent who understands the language.

Actually, we need to make some distinctions before we can clearly discuss this issue. Words do have some form of meaning; that meaning is given by its relationships with all other words in the language. That kind of meaning is what allows computers to translate many statements from one language to another.

But there's more to words than their relationships to other words, and that is the part of meaning which only exists in the minds of conscious agents. That kind of meaning is what prevents computers from translating most statements from one language to another.

I contend that the second kind of meaning can only exist together with what I'm loosingly calling "aesthetic experiences". A computer, or your zombies, can know that "happiness" is the opposite of "sorrow", but they cannot know why one must be sought and the other avoided.

Try that yourself. Try explaining to your favorite zombie why is it humans spend so much time and energy seeking happiness when sorrow is a lot easier to find.

Please produce a meaningful statement that does not have representational content.

Any statement about language itself qualifies. To take a simple example, "all meaningful English sentences must include a subject and a verb"

By the way, that is the kind of sentence a computer/zombie is perfectly capable of understanding. The grammar checker in your word processor software certainly understands it.

 

[Tournesol]

The contradiction is embedded in the meaning of "behavior" and "experience". Just because you can put a sentence together without offending the rules of grammar doesn't mean the sentence doesn't harbor a contradiction. The problem is that the contradictions can be very hard to see. For instance, Newton's laws of mechanics were contradictory, but those contradictions only showed up 300 years later when they gave rise to the paradoxes which could only be solved by relativity and quantum mechanics.

Newtonian mechanics is not self-contradictory, it is just not
in line with the behaviour of matter.

"Any statement about language itself qualifies. To take a simple example, "all meaningful English sentences must include a subject and a verb"

By the way, that is the kind of sentence a computer/zombie is perfectly capable of understanding. The grammar checker in your word processor software certainly understands it.

Not it doesn't. It *implements* it. A falling rock does not "understand" gravity.

 

[Tournesol]

Before any more wheels get re-invented:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning#Frege.27s_philosophy_of_language

 

[Les Sleeth]

Before any more wheels get re-invented:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning#Frege.27s_philosophy_of_language

I took Hypnagogue's topic to be about the experience of "meaningfulness" that can accompany literal meaning. A zombie could identify the meaning for a word, just like it can recognize the color red. The zombie isn't capable of the phenomenal element which human consciousness does rather effortlessly.

If your link applies, then I've posted to the wrong thread.

 

[Philocrat]

When MULTIPARTITE reality overpowers your comprehension, take out your METAPHYSICAL HAMMER and crack it open. Don't enslave yourself in the stalemate?

Qualia and ALL its relatives can be explained. This is now the homework for you all:

STEP 1: Take out your METAPHYSICAL HAMMER from your Metpahysical Tool Box.

STEP 2: Take out your METAPHYSICAL GLUE from the same Tool Box

STEP 3: Crack open, not Qualia nor its close relatives, but our Natural Langauge (NL).

STEP 4: Crack open mathematical physics to make it easier to cut through

STEP 5: Take out your METAPHYSICAL KNIFE from the same tool box

STEP 6: Surgically cut through and remove the part of mathematical physics that can explain qualia in the way that physicists can understand.

STEP 7: Place this removed part in NL and glue it tightly into place with the Metaphysical Glue that you took out of the toolbox to produce a new updated language.

STEP 8: Teach this language to all the the native speakers of NL. Part of the original NL will explain what it can explain and the embedded physics part will explain the qualia remainder.

LESSON: There is nothing wrong in CONJOINING LANGUAGES TO EXPLAIN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE SAME UNIVERSAL SYSTEM. What does this mean? It means that you need a MULTIPARTITE METAPHYSICAL LANGUAGE (which I am quite prepared to count as part of a universal language) to explain metaphysically vexing and seemingly unexplainable parts of the same system. Consciousness is such a system. If explaining Qualia and its close relatives is so important to us, then we need to find a suitable language that can be metaphysically embedded in our Natural Langauge to explain them. The only drawback is that we have a marathon task or project of teaching it to everyone the world over within an unpredictable period of time. Left to me alone, I would suggest that we should all ignore all these so-called 'UNEXPLAINABLE REMAINDERS' and let the evolutionary underwriters subsequentely write them off when it is due..for time is the best Judge of everything. But, if it is important to us now to explain all these metaphysical beasts before we can get a good night sleep, then the metaphysical embeding of languages in other languages to explain them is metaphysically and epistemologically inevitable. Call it it a 'META LANGUAGE' if you like.

--------------------------
Think Nature...Think Green! And above all, think how your action may affect the rest of Nature! May the 'Book of Nature' serve you well and bring you all that is Good!

 

[Tournesol]

"STEP 6: Surgically cut through and remove the part of mathematical physics that can explain qualia in the way that physicists can understand."

What part would that be?

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

what is the meaning of a word but a string of other words? All these words that we use in whatever language we speak, What do they refer to but themselves? In all communication, what does any idea referance to but other ideas that expand on the original idea? No matter how we choose to view ideas and how or why they are communicated we must conclude that there is something else rendering them real that we cannot fully communicate to each other (as to exactly what "it" is).

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

So I ask you to see beyond these words that I string together for they are only an invention of the human mind as it ravages through space-time, and the human mind isn't infinate such that it can comprehend it's own existence.

 

[Tournesol]

what is the meaning of a word but a string of other words?

Something that can be conveyed by, among other things, a defintion -- a string of words.

All these words that we use in whatever language we speak, What do they refer to but themselves?

With very few exceptions (eg "noun"), very few words refer to themselves.
Did you mean "each other" ?

In all communication, what does any idea referance to but other ideas that expand on the original idea? No matter how we choose to view ideas and how or why they are communicated we must conclude that there is something else rendering them real that we cannot fully communicate to each other (as to exactly what "it" is).

Maybe the something else is just real-world objects.

 

[Pensador]

what is the meaning of a word but a string of other words? All these words that we use in whatever language we speak, What do they refer to but themselves?

Precisely! I'm glad to read a post by someone who can clearly see things as they really are.

In all communication, what does any idea referance to but other ideas that expand on the original idea?

Yes, yes, yes! Words represent ideas, they represent absolutely nothing else. We can use words to communicate ideas; we cannot use words to communicate anything about the "real world", except insofar as "real world" is an idea in itself.

It doesn't matter how hard you try, all you can do with languages is run in circles. To transcend the circle, you need more than language.

No matter how we choose to view ideas and how or why they are communicated we must conclude that there is something else rendering them real that we cannot fully communicate to each other (as to exactly what "it" is).

Man, you are a genius! So simply put, yet so true!

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

thanks for the hype, but let's not step over the line and proclaim that we "clearly see things as they really are". Patting ourselves on the back doesn't prove our understanding of reality... I appreciate that you found some joy in what I had to say, and that alone is flattering. Afterall, I just want to spread my happiness to others.

"Something that can be conveyed by, among other things, a defintion -- a string of words."- Tournesol

That sounds like a good enough definition of what I meant when I said "a string of words". It also helps illustrate my point, all definitions of all words in whatever language are merely more words of that language. (This expansion on the original idea may be more helpful for understanding, as it does use more words to explain the idea/feeling).

"With very few exceptions (eg "noun"), very few words refer to themselves.
Did you mean "each other" ?" - Tournesol

yes, I should have been more clear. When I said words, i meant (in the context of that sentance) only other words within the language being used to communicate.

"Maybe the something else is just real-world objects." - Tournesol

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.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

But I do have a feeling that they way I look at the idea of "feeling" isn't and will never be complete. The linkages go on seemingly ad infinitum when I try to define "environmental stimuli" and "will". Every word is a diving board into a sea of diving boards.

 

[StatusX]

Of course we can [convey what experiences are like], that's why we have language.

But how can words ever describe an experience? Yes, we have language, and this is fine for representing abstract concepts, because these concepts are nothing more than the relationships between them. If the same relationships are enforced between the corresponding words (eg, "She is tall and short" is not allowed, but "She is tall and skinny" is), we have completely captured those concepts.

The difference with experiences is that there is more to them then their relationships to other concepts. There is something it is like to have them. We could write hundreds of pages about the neural correlates of a red experience, or objects that are red, or the physics of red light, or the emotions that red evokes, etc, etc, etc. But some one who has never actually seen red before will still have no idea what the color looks like. Words are not enough.

The contradiction is embedded in the meaning of "behavior" and "experience".

You continue to say there is a hidden logical contradiction, but you have yet to actually point it out. Where in the definition of "experience" is behavior even mentioned? You may have beliefs about how the behavior of a being is related to its experience, but this would only affect the a posteriori possibility. That is, just like there happens to be no easter bunny in this universe, but there logically could be in other universes, there happen to be no zombies here, even though they are logically possible.

As another example, is water with the chemical formula H3O logically possible? Yes, because there is nothing in the definition of water (that is, water from our everyday life, which is defined by properties like "drinkable", "clear", and "wet") that specifies its chemical formula. But after science discovered that water is precisely H20, we discovered that the above proposal is a posteriori, or nomologically, or metaphysically (I'm pretty sure these are basically the same) impossible. That is, impossible in our universe because of the way it happened to turn out.

 

[Pensador]

thanks for the hype, but let's not step over the line and proclaim that we "clearly see things as they really are".

Sorry, I really went overboard. But I wasn't trying to be flattering, I was actually aiming at the people who disagree with those ideas. So don't take it personally

That said, what I really meant by "clearly see things as they really are" is the difficulty in seeing exactly what is written, and absolutely nothing more. People have an enormous difficulty with that; they read words, attach meaning to them, and think the words express whatever their interpretation of the words is. That is wrong, but difficult to see why.

That is related to an experience that always puzzles me. When you live in a certain neighborhood, the sights of the neighborhood have a certain "feeling" to them. I can't properly explain what this feeling is, but I think most people can relate to it. If you go to a part of town that you've never seen before, it looks "foreign" to you, "foreign" as in something you perceive in your vision of the houses, streets, and so on. But if you move there, the feeling of "foreignness" gradually disappears, and is replaced by another feeling (homeliness?). I don't know if that explains it, but it's the best I can do.

What I wish people could "clearly see" is that we can't understand how language works if we look at it in a way that doesn't appear "foreign" to us; that is, you can only understand language if you disregard your subjective experience of it. Look at words for what they are, and try to understand what they do without thinking about what they mean. That is necessary because you cannot know what many words mean to other people, but you can still use those words to communicate with them. So "clearly" meaning is not as important to language as it seems.