Is Consciousness an Emergent Property of a Master Algorithm?

[hypnagogue]

I don't want to argue this point because I would seem to be arguing for materialism, which I'm not. I just want to point out that materialism does not, in principle, pose any unsolvable problem. To find unsolvable problems you have to transcend the materialist perspective.

I would agree, in a way. Materialism, when applied to its own domain, poses no unsolvable problems. But P-consciousness does not appear to be in the domain of materialism, and it appears as if materialism is not suited to solving the problem of P-consciousness. Even if we choose to label P-consciousness an illusion, it is still paradoxical how it could even have the illusory properties that it does if materialism is true.

It is different on a very fundamental point: from my perspective, "matter causes mind" is just as true as "mind causes matter". You seem to be overlooking the importance of the second assertion.

I don't think you've gone into enough detail on this point.

Your language doesn't allow you to make any true statements about 'unga'. It's not the kind of language I'm talking about.

What if 'unga' means 'I see this color[/color]' (or if you prefer, 'there is this color[/color]')? Then clearly it can have a truth value, despite it being the only word in my language.

Here is what you said initially:

The reason that happens is because we tend to assign meaning to words, rather than to their relationships with other words. Just like you think the meaning of the word 'red' is this, whereas the real meaning of the word 'red' is defined by its relationship with all other words in the language.

What of a child who learns his first word? His father points to his mother and says "momma," and eventually the child learns to refer to his mother as "momma" himself. The child knows no other words, so there are no other words for his "momma" to achieve meaning from, and yet clearly the word "momma" now has meaning for the child. How can this be if the meaning of the word "momma" is strictly contingent upon other words?

Another scenario: before a hypothesized experimental result is determined empirically, what determines the truth value of the hypothesis? Does it not yet have a truth value? When does it attain a truth value, when the experimenters observe that it has been verified (or falsified), or when the experimenters think internally/speak/write about the empirical results?

If you take that to the highest level possible, of the language as a whole, then you clearly see that language is far less connected to reality than you currently dream of.

I'm not necessarily making claims about the connections between language and reality. What I am making claims about is the connection between language and perceptual experience.

Suppose there is a 5 year old child, A, who has seen and can percpetually distinguish between cats and dogs, but suppose that his limited vocabulary only allows him to make the crudest of linguistic distinctions regarding what makes a dog a dog, such that these distinctions alone are not sufficient to tell dogs and cats apart. To this end we might imagine that A would say "a dog is a furry animal with 4 legs and a tail, a snout, two eyes, a nose," etc.-- a description that agrees perfectly with any description of a cat. So A can perceptually discriminate between cats and dogs, even if he cannot say precisely what it is about dogs that makes them different from cats.

Now suppose that there is another child, B, with the same vocabulary set as A, except for words referring to furry, four legged animals (although he knows what furry, four, legged, and animal mean). Not only does B have no words for furry, four legged animals, he has never seen one. Suppose that B learns what dogs and cats are only in virtue of reading a simple, linguistic description of what they are-- perhaps A has written him a letter telling him about dogs, which matches precisely the description of cats in a children's book (with no pictures). What will B label a cat if one is presented to him? He may call it either a dog or a cat, since it is a furry, four legged animal, or he may claim that he doesn't know which one it is. Why can A distinguish between the two whereas B cannot, if they are working with the same linguistic tools? Because A's linguistic notions of cat and dog are associated with his past perceptual experiences of cats and dogs, whereas B has no such perceptual experience of cats or dogs to ground the semantics of these terms.

Dictionaries do not define a language; they don't expose enough word relationships. In order to learn Chinese, you need to be exposed to an awful lot of it, certainly far more than just a dictionary. But it is not true that you can't learn Chinese by studying the language alone. How do you suppose those geniuses at the army crack enemy codes?

They crack them by finding systematic relationships between the code and a natural language. But such schemes are made much easier due to the fact that symbols in a code stand for letters in an alphabet. Chinese has no alphabet, it has distinct symbols for each concept.

Even putting that objection aside-- to borrow from your example, how would the interpreter, going only by syntax, differentiate between the words for 'left' and 'right'? Even if he manages to narrow things down enough such that he knows one word must mean 'left' and the other 'right,' how is he to differentiate between these without ultimately making some inference grounded in facts about the external world? For instance, if he finds that one word refers to the dominant hand of most people in China, he may conclude that this word means 'right,' but this inference is draw via reference to an externally existing fact about Chinese people; or he may find that one word means 'left' by roundabout reference to the direction in which the sun sets, but this again relies on an empirical fact. (e.g., if the text of some human-like alien civilization fell to Earth tomorrow, we would not know which of their hands tends to be dominant, nor would we know in which direction their sun sets, and so we could not make sense of any of these.)

 

[confutatis]

What if 'unga' means 'I see this color[/color]' (or if you prefer, 'there is this color[/color]')? Then clearly it can have a truth value, despite it being the only word in my language.

If your language only had that one word, could you think about other things? For instance, could you think about not-unga? And if you can think about non-unga, can you invent a word for it? If you can come up with a new word, that means you already have the concept in your mind. When I'm referring to language here, I'm referring to the totality of concepts you have in your mind, not the totality of arbitrary symbols which may or may not exist as expressions of those concepts.

What of a child who learns his first word? His father points to his mother and says "momma," and eventually the child learns to refer to his mother as "momma" himself.

The child may only know one word, but his/her head must already be full of concepts before the first word is learned. It's one thing to know that 'momma' is the sound that goes together with a particular concept; it's another thing to become aware of the concept in the first place. I'm talking about the latter, not the former.

Let me use a notation to make things easier: I will append a '+' sign whenever I'm talking about a concept a word refers to, and '-' when I'm talking about the word itself (eg: mother-, mère-, madre-, mutter-, are different words in different languages for the concept mother+)

The child knows no other words, so there are no other words for his "momma" to achieve meaning from, and yet clearly the word "momma" now has meaning for the child. How can this be if the meaning of the word "momma" is strictly contingent upon other words?

The meaning of momma- is momma+. The meaning of momma+ is contingent upon concepts such as object+, room+, person+, face+, eyes+, and so on. Even though it may take years for the child to learn the words object-, room-, person-, face-, eyes-, those concepts must be in place from a very early age.

Another scenario: before a hypothesized experimental result is determined empirically, what determines the truth value of the hypothesis?

Semantics.

When does it attain a truth value, when the experimenters observe that it has been verified (or falsified), or when the experimenters think internally/speak/write about the empirical results?

That depends. The experimenter learns something by observing the experiment, and that knowledge becomes true to him as concepts (eg: this+ causes+ that+). But concepts as such cannot be communicated, so the experimenter must choose some words in his vocabulary, and create a relationship between the words that mirror the relationship between the concepts in his mind. And here is where semantics shows up its ugly head: how can the experimenter choose words that perfectly recreate the concept "this+ causes+ that+" in the mind of everyone else?

I'm not necessarily making claims about the connections between language and reality. What I am making claims about is the connection between language and perceptual experience.

The connection may be clear for the speaker, but for the listener/reader it must be reconstructed. It's one thing to explain what momma- means by pointing your fingers at momma+. It's quite another thing to explain what "consciousness- is- an- epiphenomenon- of- the- brain-"; it's really difficult for anyone to figure out what concepts a person has in mind when uttering that sentence. However, no one is born a speaker, which means our knowledge of what words mean is always imperfect. Which means not everything we learn from other people is true, in the sense that it would be true if we had learned it from personal experience.

Suppose there is a 5 year old child, A, who has seen and can percpetually distinguish between cats and dogs, but suppose that his limited vocabulary only allows him to make the crudest of linguistic distinctions regarding what makes a dog a dog...

To cut a long story short, learning about cats+ and dogs+ is not the same thing as learning about cats- and dogs-. If you know nothing about cats- you can still think about cats+. If you know about cats- but do not know about cats+, then you may be tempted to think cats- is just another word for something you already know (such as dogs+). You may, in fact, enter into a long philosophical discussion as to whether dogs- really exist as every dog- can be shown to be a cat+ (which is of course nonsense if you know that dogs+ are not cats+)

They crack them by finding systematic relationships between the code and a natural language. But such schemes are made much easier due to the fact that symbols in a code stand for letters in an alphabet.

I'm sorry but you're wrong on this. Those forms of encryption (letter substitution) are no longer used since, as you said, they are so easy to crack. What makes cracking codes possible is that people usually know what a coded message probably means - there aren't many things one can talk about during war. But this is a side issue anyway.

Even putting that objection aside-- to borrow from your example, how would the interpreter, going only by syntax, differentiate between the words for 'left' and 'right'? Even if he manages to narrow things down enough such that he knows one word must mean 'left' and the other 'right,' how is he to differentiate between these without ultimately making some inference grounded in facts about the external world? For instance, if he finds that one word refers to the dominant hand of most people in China, he may conclude that this word means 'right,' but this inference is draw via reference to an externally existing fact about Chinese people; or he may find that one word means 'left' by roundabout reference to the direction in which the sun sets, but this again relies on an empirical fact. (e.g., if the text of some human-like alien civilization fell to Earth tomorrow, we would not know which of their hands tends to be dominant, nor would we know in which direction their sun sets, and so we could not make sense of any of these.)

Even though my example was trying to address something different, I will comment on that as it touches on the same issue. The issue is what I referred to as symmetries. There is a symmetry between 'left' and 'right' that prevents you from knowing what other people mean by it, except that if something is on the right then it can't be on the left. That's all you know about left and right; for all you know your left+ might be my right+ and we'd still agree that most people prefer to use their right- hand. So the meaning of right- is not right+, it's something else close to "not left-". But of course there's more, because there are things that are neither right- nor left-. Even so, things that are neither right- nor left- tell you very little about what right+ and left+ could possibly be.

In the end, we can only discover what right- and left- mean to the extent that we can perceive assymetries. And this has two very important consequences:

- the entirety of our perceptions cannot possibly exhibit any kind of assymetry
- as such, any description of our perceptions that implies assymetry (eg: mind vs. body) is an artificial construct
- since descriptions are made of abstract symbols, the dichotomy between the description of our perceptions and the perceptions themselves must have been introduced by the symbols, not by our perceptions themselves

I'm not sure exactly how language, as expressed by symbols, creates this false dichotomy, but I'm sure that it does. The reason I'm so sure is because there is no dichotomy between any aspect of my perceptions and the entirety of them; in other words, I never experience anything that I believe I should not be experiencing. Clearly it is our theories that must be wrong, not our perceptions.

 

[hypnagogue]

If an infant has a concept of 'mother' before learning to say 'momma,' then surely a dog has a concept of 'master' despite never learning any words at all. Is a dog, then, a linguistic animal despite never speaking or writing?

 

[confutatis]

If an infant has a concept of 'mother' before learning to say 'momma,' then surely a dog has a concept of 'master' despite never learning any words at all. Is a dog, then, a linguistic animal despite never speaking or writing?

Parrots can speak many words. I guess that makes them linguistic animals then

 

[hypnagogue]

Some parrots have shown the ability to use language relatively intelligently.

Anyway, my point is that you seem to refer to much more than is normally referred to by 'language.' Concepts of the kind you refer to can exist without linguistic tokens, and are probably best characterized as perceptual concepts (baby's concept of momma, pre-language, is defined by baby's visual perception/recognition of its mother's face). That was my point at the outset-- perception is not a purely linguistic phenomenon, although you seem to be trying to paint it as such.

 

[Fliption]

Confutatis

I've been following along here, taking advantage of the dialogue you're having with Hypnagogue to once again try to understand your view. It seems the last 2 or 3 posts have been some of the most comprehensive as far as describing the heart of your view that I've seen. It seems there are some arguments being presented that are crucial to understanding your view. I have read these posts several times trying to make sure I understand them before I post any questions or develop any opinions. I do not have an opinion right now. I need a little more clarification.

It seems to me a crucial thing to understand is what you mean by "symmetry" and "asymmetry". While I know what these words mean, I'm not sure how you're applying them here. We have one example of -left and -right that you say has symmetry which leads to the same problem that we have in inverted spectrum scenarios. Sometimes you used the "symmetry/asymmetry" concept when referring to the relationship between words. And other times you referred to these concepts as something that reality would exhibit. Exactly what is it that has symmetry or does not have symmetry? And what criteria classifies it has having symmetry? I just need a little more clarification/examples on of what you mean by these concepts.

 

[confutatis]

you seem to refer to much more than is normally referred to by 'language.' Concepts of the kind you refer to can exist without linguistic tokens

That doesn't change the fact that we can assign tokens to those concepts, and apply the same rules as we do for all other concepts. There's nothing particularly different about a concept that currently lacks a word, except the fact that it currently lacks a word.

perception is not a purely linguistic phenomenon, although you seem to be trying to paint it as such.

Perception is a purely linguistic phenomenon as far as our theories go, because our theories are also purely linguistic phenomena. There are far more things than things that we can talk about, but there's nothing we can say about those things, except in the languages of art, myth, folklore, etc.

 

[confutatis]

It seems to me a crucial thing to understand is what you mean by "symmetry" and "asymmetry".

It certainly is, because ultimately it can be shown that there is a symmetry between "mental" and "physical", and because of that symmetry we have no way to know exactly what is different about them. But let's save that for a future discussion.

While I know what these words mean, I'm not sure how you're applying them here. We have one example of -left and -right that you say has symmetry which leads to the same problem that we have in inverted spectrum scenarios.

I believe the left vs. right problem is also classified as an inverted spectrum scenario, but I'm not sure. In any case, the idea is the same: flip everything, and nothing in our descriptions change.

Sometimes you used the "symmetry/asymmetry" concept when referring to the relationship between words. And other times you referred to these concepts as something that reality would exhibit.

Concepts certainly exhibit symmetry, as in left/right. You can replace every single instance of one word with the other, and your knowledge still remains intact. You can't do that with 'left' and 'top', for instance, so left and top are asymmetrical. Still, taken together, left and right are symmetrical with top and bottom.

As to whether reality exhibits symmetries, the answer is a bit more complex. The existence of a certain symmetry between concepts implies that we have no way to know which aspects of reality the concepts refer to. For instance, if the words 'red' and 'green' are really symmetrical as some people think, then all you can know about reality is the relationship between 'red' and 'green', not what they really are. You can't know if 'red' means this[/color] or this[/color].

This is where things start to get interesting, because things that appear different to different observers are not considered real; we usually call them 'illusions'. For instance, if there is no objective way to assert if grass looks like this[/color] or like this[/color], then it necessarily follows that grass is neither this[/color] nor this[/color], and our perception of color is an illusion. Still we do perceive something, so what is it that we perceive after all?

Let's not argue that last bit for now. First, we can't be sure that 'red' and 'green' are really symmetrical. Second, we're not yet ready to discuss what 'illusion' mean in the context of the kind of monism I'm talking about.

Exactly what is it that has symmetry or does not have symmetry?

Langauge definitely has it. Reality exhibits symmetry to the extent that we are ignorant of some of its aspects. For instance, suppose we have two perfectly identical cards placed side by side on a table. We call the card on the left 'card A', the one on the right 'card B'. We leave them on the table, go away to get something, and when we come back we find the wind has blown them away. We can no longer tell which card is which, even though we are sure both are still there. So we say there is a symmetry between card A and card B by virtue of their identical appearance.

what criteria classifies it has having symmetry?

We find symmetries by using thought experiments, such as the one above about two identical cards.

 

[Fliption]

Unfortunately, I'm still not clear on exactly what it means for things to be symmetric or asymmetric. It sounds as if the criteria for being symmetric has something to do with our ability, or lack thereof, to know. Know what? It sounds as if it means we can't know what aspect of reality a word refers to? Is that close? I'm just not clear. I'll try to be more specific below.

Concepts certainly exhibit symmetry, as in left/right. You can replace every single instance of one word with the other, and your knowledge still remains intact. You can't do that with 'left' and 'top', for instance, so left and top are asymmetrical. Still, taken together, left and right are symmetrical with top and bottom.

Why is 'left' and 'right' symmetric and 'top' and 'left' are not?

This is where things start to get interesting, because things that appear different to different observers are not considered real; we usually call them 'illusions'. For instance, if there is no objective way to assert if grass looks like this[/color] or like this[/color], then it necessarily follows that grass is neither this[/color] nor this[/color], and our perception of color is an illusion. Still we do perceive something, so what is it that we perceive after all?

People seeing different things is different from the inability to objectively prove that people are seeing the same thing. Inverted spectrum scenarios are a statement about our ability to know whether we are referring to the same thing, with the color red for example. This doesn't mean that we necessarily DO see different things thus making it an illusion. But this may be getting too far ahead. I'm not sure I'm prepared to move this far until I understand symmetry better.

First, we can't be sure that 'red' and 'green' are really symmetrical.

Why can't we be sure? It certainly seems that we have an inverted spectrum scenario with them so why would they not be symmetric? I'm hoping your answer will illuminate more on what it means to be symmetric.

Langauge definitely has it. Reality exhibits symmetry to the extent that we are ignorant of some of its aspects. For instance, suppose we have two perfectly identical cards placed side by side on a table. We call the card on the left 'card A', the one on the right 'card B'. We leave them on the table, go away to get something, and when we come back we find the wind has blown them away. We can no longer tell which card is which, even though we are sure both are still there. So we say there is a symmetry between card A and card B by virtue of their identical appearance.

Does this symmetry exists if we had not originally labeled them as 'card A' and 'card B'? If not then again it seems symmetry only applies to concepts and not reality.

The reason I'm trying to understand this distinction is because it seems symmetry is applied to both concepts and external objects differently and it makes the definition of symmetry more confusing to me. And I'm hoping to make it as simple as I can. At least at first. There should only be one definition of symmetry that can be applied to both concepts and reality but I'm not sure what that single definition is yet.

 

[hypnagogue]

That doesn't change the fact that we can assign tokens to those concepts, and apply the same rules as we do for all other concepts. There's nothing particularly different about a concept that currently lacks a word, except the fact that it currently lacks a word.

Perhaps you can find a better word to use than language. The way you are using it, we can easily speak of mice having language, but that doesn't square with the way the word 'language' is used.

Perhaps we might say that a language is some set of concepts existing within an organism's mind/brain that can be expressed externally by a systematic set of abstract symbols. Symbols as such may not be sufficient for language, as in the case of parrots (even if it is arguable that a parrot's 'speech' truly consistitutes a symbol of a concept in the first place), but surely they are necessary. If I never speak or write a word or have internal mental chatter, but have at least some set of concepts in my mind, then surely I cannot be said to have any linguistic properties.

Perception is a purely linguistic phenomenon as far as our theories go, because our theories are also purely linguistic phenomena. There are far more things than things that we can talk about, but there's nothing we can say about those things, except in the languages of art, myth, folklore, etc.

Depends what you mean by theory. Is my perception of what differentiates this color[/color] from this[/color] a theory? If so, then all animals with red/green color perception can be said to have such theories. If not, then you cannot say that subjective redness is a merely linguistic phenomenon.

 

[confutatis]

Unfortunately, I'm still not clear on exactly what it means for things to be symmetric or asymmetric.

Some abstract concepts can be difficult to grasp.

It sounds as if it means we can't know what aspect of reality a word refers to? Is that close?

Sort of. Think of inverted spectrum scenarios: the same word may refer to different experiences, yet that difference never shows up in their usage of the word.

Why is 'left' and 'right' symmetric and 'top' and 'left' are not?

Look at your computer. It is true that there is one pixel on the left side of the screen for every pixel on the right, but it's not true that there's one pixel at the top for each pixel at the left. The image on your computer can be rotated around an imaginary vertical line in the middle of the screen, around an imaginary horizontal line, and around a point in the middle. But there is no form of rotation that can exchange 'top' with 'left' without also exchanging 'bottom' with 'right'. So 'left' is symmetrical with 'right', 'top' is symmetrical with 'bottom', and 'left and right' are symmetrical with 'top and bottom'.

Does this symmetry exists if we had not originally labeled them a 'card A' and 'card B'?

The symmetry exists because you perceive two identical cards as two objects rather than one. What name you give them is immaterial; what matters is that you can give them names, and the names must be arbitrary. There is nothing about one card that makes it different from the other, except the fact that one card is not the other.

If not then again it seems symmetry only applies to concepts and not reality.

It applies to both. Is 'red' a word or a colour? It is both. Same idea.

 

[confutatis]

Perhaps you can find a better word to use than language. The way you are using it, we can easily speak of mice having language, but that doesn't square with the way the word 'language' is used.

I didn't come up with this idea myself. The first time I saw it I balked at the notion just as you are doing now. It took me a couple of years to understand why 'language' is the right word.

Symbols as such may not be sufficient for language, as in the case of parrots, but surely they are necessary.

Would you say primitive humans had language skills before they invented the first word? If so, how could they have language skills before language existed?

Langauge encompasses more than symbols; syntax and semantics are far more important and far more relevant than which words we choose to express which concepts. Syntax and semantics reflect aspects of our consciousness as well as of reality; lexicon is of no interest to any metaphysical inquiry and therefore can be completely ignored.

Is my perception of what differentiates this color[/color] from this[/color] a theory?

If I ask you what differentiates this color[/color] from this[/color], then your answer will be a theory.

then you cannot say that subjective redness is a merely linguistic phenomenon.

In your mind, is there something about 'redness' which the word 'redness' leaves out? I'm not talking about what 'redness' means to other people, I'm talking about what it means to you. If the word 'redness' encompasses every aspect of your concept of redness, what exactly is different between the word and the concept? What does the concept of redness bring to your mind that the word 'redness' does not?

 

[hypnagogue]

Would you say primitive humans had language skills before they invented the first word? If so, how could they have language skills before language existed?

Perhaps they had a latent ability for language, but it doesn't follow that they literally had language. I may have a latent ability for scuba diving, but I am not a scuba diver.

Langauge encompasses more than symbols; syntax and semantics are far more important and far more relevant than which words we choose to express which concepts. Syntax and semantics reflect aspects of our consciousness as well as of reality; lexicon is of no interest to any metaphysical inquiry and therefore can be completely ignored.

I mostly agree here, but it doesn't make sense to refer to syntax in the absence of tokens to be ordered according to that syntax. If you don't have the tokens, you don't have syntax.

If I ask you what differentiates this color[/color] from this[/color], then your answer will be a theory.

I agree that this is trivially the case. However, I maintain that my answer in this instance will be an abstract representation of the process by which I distinguish the colors, not the actual process itself.

In your mind, is there something about 'redness' which the word 'redness' leaves out? I'm not talking about what 'redness' means to other people, I'm talking about what it means to you. If the word 'redness' encompasses every aspect of your concept of redness, what exactly is different between the word and the concept? What does the concept of redness bring to your mind that the word 'redness' does not?

You try to eliminate a distinction between the public and private meanings of the word, but that cannot be done. My word 'redness' refers to everything there is about redness in my subjective space. But not everything in my subjective space can be shared with other subjective spaces. (If it could, an eye doctor would not have to ask me which glasses suited me best-- he would just slip into my mind, literally see through my eyes, and make the determination from there.) So there is necessarily a dichotomy of reference between public and private referents.

Besides this, there is still a distinction between the word and the concept. The word refers to the concept. It is a pointer. Equating the two is like equating my finger with the moon. The moon is not biological, nor is this[/color] linguistic.

 

[hypnagogue]

Sort of. Think of inverted spectrum scenarios: the same word may refer to different experiences, yet that difference never shows up in their usage of the word.

The differences may not show up in the abstract language itself, but they most suredly show up once it is made evident to what these words refer. That is, once they have been solidly grounded in their referents, they can be compared and distinguished.

Assume I use 'right' and 'left' the standard way, and you use them the inverted way. Say you, me, and another 'normal' English speaker are standing in a line playing Simon Says. The instruction comes, "Raise your left hand." I raise what I call my left, my normal partner raises what I call his left, and you raise what I call your right. An analogous situation holds for the command "Raise your right hand." The referents of these words have been exposed and made evident to all, and on this basis I can distinguish my meanings of 'left' and 'right' from yours.

The same would hold for the inverted spectrum scenario, if only I could observe the subjective referents of your words 'red' and 'green.' But whereas I can see you raising your right hand upon the command "Raise your left hand," I cannot see what you imagine upon the command "Imagine the color green."

 

[Fliption]

Look at your computer. It is true that there is one pixel on the left side of the screen for every pixel on the right, but it's not true that there's one pixel at the top for each pixel at the left. The image on your computer can be rotated around an imaginary vertical line in the middle of the screen, around an imaginary horizontal line, and around a point in the middle. But there is no form of rotation that can exchange 'top' with 'left' without also exchanging 'bottom' with 'right'. So 'left' is symmetrical with 'right', 'top' is symmetrical with 'bottom', and 'left and right' are symmetrical with 'top and bottom'.

Yes I understand this. This is just the traditional usage of the word "symmetry' but what I'm having trouble with is connecting this traditional symmetry property to what I can know about your experiences. Let me see if I can explain what I mean.

Hypnagogue seems to be having a similar issue when he says this:

Assume I use 'right' and 'left' the standard way, and you use them the inverted way. Say you, me, and another 'normal' English speaker are standing in a line playing Simon Says. The instruction comes, "Raise your left hand." I raise what I call my left, my normal partner raises what I call his left, and you raise what I call your right. An analogous situation holds for the command "Raise your right hand." The referents of these words have been exposed and made evident to all, and on this basis I can distinguish my meanings of 'left' and 'right' from yours.

You see how he thinks that we are comparing the words 'right' and 'left' to an actual referent in the outside world? Namely the arms. But in this quote from you it seems different:

For instance, all you know about 'top and bottom' is that it is 'neither right nor left', but again you have no way to know if what I experience as 'top and bottom' is what you experience as 'right and left'.

So here the referrent of the the words 'left' and 'right' isn't the actual external arm. It is the experience of right and left. Used in this way then we do indeed have the same problem that we have with color. So I'm not real clear which method is the correct one: The one Hypnagoue used or this one from you above.

If it's the one from you, then I'm still having a problem with the symmetry concept, as I stated above. If I cannot know that my experience of 'left' is the same as your experience of 'left' and you may actually be experiencing what I would call 'right', then how is it that I know that your experience of 'left' isn't what I would call 'top'? I'm just not understanding how the fact that 2 words are opposites, or symmetrical have anything to do with what I can know about your experiences.

 

[confutatis]

Perhaps they had a latent ability for language, but it doesn't follow that they literally had language.

This is not the right way to approach the issue. The issue is, we do have language, and to a good extent we do think and perceive the world in ways that can be expressed with language.

it doesn't make sense to refer to syntax in the absence of tokens to be ordered according to that syntax.

But it does make sense to refer to syntax as something which must already be in place before we attempt to order tokens. How would we order tokens if we had no predefined syntax? How would I know that the correct way to express today's date is "today is Wednesday" as opposed to "Wednesday today is"?

If you don't have the tokens, you don't have syntax.

If you don't have syntax, tokens are useless.

I agree that this is trivially the case. However, I maintain that my answer in this instance will be an abstract representation of the process by which I distinguish the colors, not the actual process itself.

Your answer is all I have to go by. Whatever the actual process is that your description of the process leaves out, I'm completely ignorant of it.

My word 'redness' refers to everything there is about redness in my subjective space. But not everything in my subjective space can be shared with other subjective spaces.

This is completely beside the point. You have a concept of 'redness', and you have something the concept refers to. All I said is that, for you, there's no difference between the concept and what the concept refers to. I'm talking about the personal relationship each of us has with language, not the relationships we have with each other through language. I'm not sure you can see the distinction.

Besides this, there is still a distinction between the word and the concept.

Of course there is a distinction, but the important issue is that the distinction has no bearing on what is true and what is false. As far as you are concerned, everything you say is true is perfectly equivalent with what you perceive to be true. If that equivalence is absent, that means you are lying about your perceptions.

Assume I use 'right' and 'left' the standard way, and you use them the inverted way. Say you, me, and another 'normal' English speaker are standing in a line playing Simon Says. The instruction comes, "Raise your left hand." I raise what I call my left, my normal partner raises what I call his left, and you raise what I call your right. An analogous situation holds for the command "Raise your right hand." The referents of these words have been exposed and made evident to all, and on this basis I can distinguish my meanings of 'left' and 'right' from yours.

That implies you have not understood what I was trying to say. Of course if I'm mistaken about what 'left' and 'right' mean, that mistake will eventually become evident. But if I'm born with some strange "disorder" which causes me to see the world as it appears to you when you look at a mirror, then that fact won't become evident in my usage of the words 'left' and 'right'. For instance, when you ask me to raise my right hand, I will raise what I have been taught to be my right hand, only the way I see it my right hand occupies a position in my visual field which, for you, is occupied by your left hand.

This is a classic inverted spectrum scenario and I'm not sure why you're missing my point.

 

[confutatis]

Hypnagogue seems to be having a similar issue ...

I hope my reply to hypnagogue makes things clear for you.

So here the referrent of the the words 'left' and 'right' isn't the actual external arm. It is the experience of right and left. Used in this way then we do indeed have the same problem that we have with color.

I'm glad you understood it.

So I'm not real clear which method is the correct one: The one Hypnagoue used or this one from you above. If it's the one from you, then I'm still having a problem with the symmetry concept, as I stated above. If I cannot know that my experience of 'left' is the same as your experience of 'left' and you may actually be experiencing what I would call 'right', then how is it that I know that your experience of 'left' isn't what I would call 'top'?

Actually, you don't know. As I said, 'left and right' are symmetrical with 'top and bottom'. Put in another way, 'horizontal' is symmetrical with 'vertical'. This is actually easy to verify: just tilt your head 90 degrees to the left, and your experience of the world immediately changes: what was 'left' is now 'top'. See what I mean?

Now, if after tilting your head you want to argue that 'left' remains 'left', then I urge you to wait, because I happen to think the same. However, asserting that is not easy matter, as it implies some interesting things about inverted spectrum scenarios. Again, please wait until we have cleared out any possible misunderstandings.

I'm just not understanding how the fact that 2 words are opposites, or symmetrical have anything to do with what I can know about your experiences.

That is because most of what you know about other people's experiences you know by means of language. You know that people think stop signs are red because they say so. You know that, except for colourblind people, everyone perceives stop signs as being red. But those inverted spectrum scenarios imply that the reason we agree that stop signs are red may not have much to do with what stop signs really look like to different observers. The source of our agreement may have more to do with language than with the way we experience the world. For instance, the reason we all agree that stop signs are red may be simply because 'red' means 'whatever colour stop signs look to you'. That would throw hypnagogue's concept of redness to the category of 'illusion'.

If you understand that we can agree on the way we describe our perceptions even if we perceive in different ways, then the natural question to ask is, exactly what are the things we agree about the world which are independent of our perception of the world? Which, jumping a little bit ahead, is just another way of saying, how many of the things we think are true happen to be semantical truths rather than facts about reality?

I've been trying to raise those two questions ever since I wrote my first post here. So far no one seems able to understand the need to ask them.

 

[confutatis]

Perhaps you can find a better word to use than language. The way you are using it, we can easily speak of mice having language, but that doesn't square with the way the word 'language' is used.

It just occurred to me that what I'm referring to as 'language' could also be described as "having perfect isomorphism with language". I'm happy to use that term if you want, even though I can't see why it matters, since everything that is true about language is also true about anything that exhibits perfect isomorphism with it.

On a side note, if mice have subjective experiences, then their subjective experiences can be described with language - or something perfectly isomorphic with language.

 

[Fliption]

I hope my reply to hypnagogue makes things clear for you.

Yes it does.

Actually, you don't know. As I said, 'left and right' are symmetrical with 'top and bottom'. Put in another way, 'horizontal' is symmetrical with 'vertical'. This is actually easy to verify: just tilt your head 90 degrees to the left, and your experience of the world immediately changes: what was 'left' is now 'top'. See what I mean?

Heh. No, I don't. I mean I understand what your saying but I didn't get the point of it as it relates to this topic.

Again, please wait until we have cleared out any possible misunderstandings.

Ok

That would throw hypnagogue's concept of redness to the category of 'illusion'.

This, I'm not so sure about. It depends on what you mean by illusion. We may need to skip this for now as it seems to be a consequence of the view and not part of understanding the view itself. And I'm still trying to understand.

If you understand that we can agree on the way we describe our perceptions even if we perceive in different ways, then the natural question to ask is, exactly what are the things we agree about the world which are independent of our perception of the world? Which, jumping a little bit ahead, is just another way of saying, how many of the things we think are true happen to be semantical truths rather than facts about reality?

Well, there is no concept that I can experience that I can be sure I have communicated to you in such a way that it draws the exact same concept into your mind. There is no word that does not have this problem. We can get over this dilemma to the extent that a word directly refers to an external object. The truth of any statement about such an object should also be able to be verified externally. For example, a house is a concept that I can use and then point to a house. I can then say "A house exists here". Now I cannot say that my experience of looking at a house is the same as you're experience of looking at a house. But this doesn't affect the truth value of the statement "A house exists here".

It seems that we only get into trouble when we deal with words that are descriptors of experience. I'm not even sure that the color 'red' qualifies here. I can say that "the trafficlight is red" and you can agree that it is red. The truth value here is that we have agreed that the trafficlight is emitting at a very specific wavelength. We both use the word red and we have successfully communicated the wavelength of the light. The process by which we do this may be very different and we can never know how we actually perceive red. But why does this impact knowledge about the wavelength of light?

Now if you say "I love my dog". Then I have no idea how you really feel about your dog. That's because love is a descriptor of experience that doesn't directly relate to anything externally.

Notice that I haven't mentioned the word symmetry or asymmetry anywhere. As I said above, all words may conjure up different concepts in our minds. Every single one of them. I cannot understand how words being asymmetric changes this fact. Unless, I'm just not understanding how the concept of symmetry is being used in this view. Which, I obviously don't.

 

[hypnagogue]

That is because most of what you know about other people's experiences you know by means of language. You know that people think stop signs are red because they say so. You know that, except for colourblind people, everyone perceives stop signs as being red. But those inverted spectrum scenarios imply that the reason we agree that stop signs are red may not have much to do with what stop signs really look like to different observers. The source of our agreement may have more to do with language than with the way we experience the world. For instance, the reason we all agree that stop signs are red may be simply because 'red' means 'whatever colour stop signs look to you'. That would throw hypnagogue's concept of redness to the category of 'illusion'.

If you understand that we can agree on the way we describe our perceptions even if we perceive in different ways, then the natural question to ask is, exactly what are the things we agree about the world which are independent of our perception of the world? Which, jumping a little bit ahead, is just another way of saying, how many of the things we think are true happen to be semantical truths rather than facts about reality?

I agree that red, in public usage, loosely means "whatever color stop signs look to you." This does not deflate my personal usage of the term. They can coexist. Intersubjectively, red means "whatever color an observer associates with light of wavelength 600nm." Subjectively, red means "the specific color that a specific observer associates with light of wavelength 600nm." Colors observed as a result of 600nm light striking the retina may vary from individual to individual, but they can nonetheless be categorized under the same category since they are produced on the same basis.

Say the objective world can be arbitrarily labeled according to numbers, and subjective experience can be arbitrarily labeled according to letters. The role of the brain is essentially to provide a mapping between the two sets. So say we let the number 600 = 600nm light, r = this color[/color], and g = this color[/color], and we have two observers whose brains interpret stimuli according to f(x) and h(x) respectively. Then it may be the case that f(x) = r and h(x) = g if and only if x = 600 for both cases. So there is a systematic difference between f and g, but also a systematic similarity. For f, the word 'red' = r and for h the word 'red' = g. But a fundamental property of these systems is that f cannot directly compare his red to h's red, and vice versa. As a result, when they converse about redness they are essentially conversing about that component of redness that can be shared amongst them in public discourse, and that is precisely the objective input element, 600. Essentially, they systematically agree about redness because given that f = r and h = g, it must follow (discounting hallucinations) that x = 600 in both cases, and since x is the only piece of information about redness that they can publically share, it seems that their concepts of redness pick out the same thing when in fact they do not on a different level of analysis.

 

[Fliption]

Subjectively, red means "the specific color that a specific observer associates with light of wavelength 600nm."

This is what I was getting to in my post above. It's similar to 2 computers being given the exact same inputs and then calculating a problem. They may order and perform the calculation in different ways but they will come to the same conclusion. In this case, the problem has been solved and there is no need to question whether we really know the answer simply because they performed the calculation differently.

 

[confutatis]

Well, there is no concept that I can experience that I can be sure I have communicated to you in such a way that it draws the exact same concept into your mind. There is no word that does not have this problem.

I think we're digressing from the original issue, which is that many true statements about the world are true by virtue of something other than observations of the world. For instance, I don't have to make any observation of the world to assert that "two plus two equals four".

Once you understand that, you realize that many things you think are true about the world may not be statements about the world at all. That is the issue I'd like to talk about.

For example, a house is a concept that I can use and then point to a house. I can then say "A house exists here". Now I cannot say that my experience of looking at a house is the same as you're experience of looking at a house. But this doesn't affect the truth value of the statement "A house exists here".

That's all fine with me, but beside the point.

I can say that "the trafficlight is red" and you can agree that it is red. The truth value here is that we have agreed that the trafficlight is emitting at a very specific wavelength.

People agreed on the meaning of 'red' long before they knew light was electromagnetic radiation. "600-nanometer" adds nothing to your understanding of what 'red' means that 'the color of stop signs' doesn't. It's just another way of stating what you already know.

The process by which we do this may be very different and we can never know how we actually perceive red. But why does this impact knowledge about the wavelength of light?

It doesn't. Knowledge about the wavelength of light belongs in the category of things that are true by virtue of something other than observations of the world. That is why even a blind man can know it.

Notice that I haven't mentioned the word symmetry or asymmetry anywhere. As I said above, all words may conjure up different concepts in our minds. Every single one of them. I cannot understand how words being asymmetric changes this fact.

Asymmetry does not make a concept easier to communicate, it only makes the concept more meaningful. Statements about asymmetrical concepts convey more information than statements about symmetrical ones. A statement such as "left is the opposite of right" tell you very little about what 'left' and 'right' really are.

Think of 'matter' and 'space', for instance. What is matter but simply the absence of space, and space the absence of matter? It seems correct to say "the universe is made of matter", but taken by itself the statement really says nothing about the universe. You could as well say "the universe is made of space". Unless you can tell something about 'matter' that makes it asymmetrical with space, the difference between the two statements can't be decided. And in fact there is asymmetry between matter and space: we observe more space than matter. That is one of the things that allow you to understand what people say by 'matter', and why it is different from 'space'. Assuming, of course, there is no symmetry between 'more' and 'less', in which case you are back to the original problem.

Ultimately, the point of this whole exercise is to realize that 'mental' and 'physical' are perfectly symmetrical. There is nothing you can say about 'mental' that makes it clear that 'mental' is anything but the opposite of 'physical', and vice-versa. And that makes materialism, the notion that "physical precedes mental", just a meaningless exercise in rhetoric. The opposite, "mental precedes physical", could be just as valid. Materialism is a powerful notion because people tend to think it's possible for the physical to exist without the mental, therefore breaking the symmetry. But that is a misperception.

 

[confutatis]

I agree that red, in public usage, loosely means "whatever color stop signs look to you." This does not deflate my personal usage of the term. They can coexist.

Actually, there's more to 'red' than just a particular color. The important thing about 'red' is that it is a color like no other; it's not 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', and so on. Even for you, I believe what red looks like is far less important than its uniqueness.

Say the objective world can be arbitrarily labeled according to numbers, and subjective experience can be arbitrarily labeled according to letters. The role of the brain is essentially to provide a mapping between the two sets.

How does the brain know the difference between the objective world and subjective experience?

The objective world is just a theoretical construct. Insofar as it is supposed to be different from our observations, it can't be observed; insofar as it is supposed to be the same, the distinction is meaningless.

This is a tricky issue. The answer to "how does the world look like when nobody is looking?" has only been approached in the recent past, in the field known as Quantum Mechanics, and so far all that physicists know about objective reality is that they don't know what it is. One thing is certain though: it's not what we think it is.

 

[hypnagogue]

Actually, there's more to 'red' than just a particular color. The important thing about 'red' is that it is a color like no other; it's not 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', and so on. Even for you, I believe what red looks like is far less important than its uniqueness.

I agree, though this does not allow us to avoid the problem of redness in itself.

How does the brain know the difference between the objective world and subjective experience?

The objective world is just a theoretical construct. Insofar as it is supposed to be different from our observations, it can't be observed; insofar as it is supposed to be the same, the distinction is meaningless.

This is a tricky issue. The answer to "how does the world look like when nobody is looking?" has only been approached in the recent past, in the field known as Quantum Mechanics, and so far all that physicists know about objective reality is that they don't know what it is. One thing is certain though: it's not what we think it is.

You're ducking the issue. Yes, the notion of objectivity is a tricky one. Nonetheless, we can coherently refer to 600nm light. 600nm light can be dissociated from subjective redness to the extent that, eg, a physical measuring device will read off '600nm' whenever we perceive redness, but will not literally appear to be red. There is thus some sort of underlying, functional, measurable entity behind both my perception of redness and a measuring device's detection of 600nm light, which is not equivalent to phemonenal redness. To the extent that this entity can reveal itself in a variety of forms distinct from phenomenal redness, it can be dissociated from phenomenal redness.

 

[confutatis]

I agree, though this does not allow us to avoid the problem of redness in itself.

I don't think there is a problem of redness as such. First because it's impossible, even in principle, for me to know what your experience of red is besides what you can tell me. Even if I could get inside your brain it would still be my experience, not yours. So it is a fact of life that there's nothing to your experience of red that I can know about, other than what we can communicate. But second, and even more important, is that however it is that you experience red, it has no bearing on anything I know. If God tells me, "hypnagogue experiences green objects the same way you experience red ones", I would turn to God and ask, "so what?".

You're ducking the issue.

I'm not.

Yes, the notion of objectivity is a tricky one. Nonetheless, we can coherently refer to 600nm light. 600nm light can be dissociated from subjective redness to the extent that, eg, a physical measuring device will read off '600nm' whenever we perceive redness...

The point I was trying to get is that when you remove subjective experience from the world, all you're left with is a linguistic description of abstract entities. Without experience, instead of light with a certain color and certain brightness, all you're left with are abstract notions. Ironically, what you call "objective reality" is completely abstract and therefore not "real". You don't seem to be taking this important issue into account.

So when you say the brain's job is to match subjective experience to objective reality, what you are really saying is that the brain must match experience to abstract notions that the brain itself comes up with. Hardly the idea of objective knowledge people usually have in mind - there's nothing objective about objective knowledge!

 

[hypnagogue]

I don't think there is a problem of redness as such. First because it's impossible, even in principle, for me to know what your experience of red is besides what you can tell me. Even if I could get inside your brain it would still be my experience, not yours.

That's like saying "I can't know what your computer is like, because if I used it then it would be my computer." It would be 'your experience' in some technical sense, but that only confuses the issue. The point is, if you could really get inside my brain as you say, you would see the world the same way I do, even if those experiences in some sense would belong to you. And that's the issue. The only way for you to know if you see the world the same way as I do is to literally see the world the same way as I do, then somehow compare that to the way you are accustomed to seeing it.

But second, and even more important, is that however it is that you experience red, it has no bearing on anything I know. If God tells me, "hypnagogue experiences green objects the same way you experience red ones", I would turn to God and ask, "so what?".

And God would say, "well, now that you know for sure that you two see opposite colors, you can have the visual pathways of your brain analyzed and see what analogous differences exist in the way your brains function. This will give you the beginnings of a theory on how consciousness is systematically tied to the activity in your brain. If you're smart enough and careful enough, this may give you the insight you need to formulate a complete theory of consciousness. A complete theory of consciousness would answer one of the oldest, most troubling philosophical problem to have plagued humans and would have have practical applications for predicting which physical systems have consciousness, and what kind of consciousness these systems have. Aside from undreamed of technological innovations and personal modifications that might follow from this knowledge, an entire host of hotly debated ethical issues would suddenly become tractable. Proper administration of this knowledge would cease unnecessary suffering and unnecessary conflict. And this would only be the beginning."

The point I was trying to get is that when you remove subjective experience from the world, all you're left with is a linguistic description of abstract entities. Without experience, instead of light with a certain color and certain brightness, all you're left with are abstract notions. Ironically, what you call "objective reality" is completely abstract and therefore not "real". You don't seem to be taking this important issue into account.

This is a problem of how we can know objective reality. Regardless of how you choose to characterize it (concrete or abstract), the simple fact remains that there is some entity associated with redness that can be dissociated from phenomenal redness-- some kind of causal agency that underpins both phenomenal redness and other, distinct phenomena, like a measuring device's measurement of 600nm. Systematic agreement about the existence of redness can be attributed to the systematic existence of this causal agency whenever phenomenal redness exists. If two different representations of this causal agency exist such that the representations themselves cannot be compared, then the only basis for comparison is that causal agency itself.

So when you say the brain's job is to match subjective experience to objective reality, what you are really saying is that the brain must match experience to abstract notions that the brain itself comes up with. Hardly the idea of objective knowledge people usually have in mind - there's nothing objective about objective knowledge!

Strictly speaking, you should not be allowed to refer to the brain by your own reasoning. After all, the brain is just an abstract notion that your mind has come with, isn't it?

There is a clear dichotomy we can draw. Public phenomena and private phenomena. The quality of my subjective experience is completely private, but it has a certain structure that can be communicated by various means (speech, body language, etc). The structural/functional aspects can thus be shared publically, and in this sense they are objective. If you prefer, substitute "intersubjective" for "objective," but the point stands. Some things admit themselves to public observation, analysis, and mutual confirmation (structural/functional aspects) and some do not (qualitative aspects).

 

[Fliption]

I think we're digressing from the original issue, which is that many true statements about the world are true by virtue of something other than observations of the world.

It may appear to be digressing because I didn't connect my points quickly enough but the point I was trying to make is that all words have this problem which doesn't allow me to know what experience you are referring to when you use that word. It isn't a matter of whether or not the word is symmetric or not. I had understood you to make the claim that this situation only existed when there was symmetry. And only when there is asymmetry can we really have any knowledge. So I went into all this to illustrate how "symmetry" doesn't connect to the issue to me at all. However, from the rest of your post I see how this might be considered digressing as I now think I know what you mean when you say symmetry.

People agreed on the meaning of 'red' long before they knew light was electromagnetic radiation. "600-nanometer" adds nothing to your understanding of what 'red' means that 'the color of stop signs' doesn't. It's just another way of stating what you already know.

I was under the impression that you were claiming I couldn't know anything about red because when we all use the word we could be referring to different experiences. I'm simply suggesting that the experience is simply the process by which we identify 600nm. Whether we know it is exactly 600nm is not really relevant to me.

Think of 'matter' and 'space', for instance. What is matter but simply the absence of space, and space the absence of matter?

Ahhhh, so this is what you mean by symmetry! Ok, now this I can understand. To interpret this I'd say that 2 words have symmetry when their definition refers to each other without referring to some other external concept as a distinction. I wouldn't have called this symmetry. This is just what I call circular definitions. And imo, circular definitions are a different issue from inverted spectrum scenarios.

Ultimately, the point of this whole exercise is to realize that 'mental' and 'physical' are perfectly symmetrical. There is nothing you can say about 'mental' that makes it clear that 'mental' is anything but the opposite of 'physical', and vice-versa. And that makes materialism, the notion that "physical precedes mental", just a meaningless exercise in rhetoric. The opposite, "mental precedes physical", could be just as valid. Materialism is a powerful notion because people tend to think it's possible for the physical to exist without the mental, therefore breaking the symmetry. But that is a misperception.

Ok if the claim is that mental and physical are circular definitions, then I can just drop all this inverted spectrum scenario business and this becomes much simpler to discuss.

As info, materialists like Mentat wouldn't agree with what you have written above because they don't see it as "physical precedes mental". To Mentat, mental IS physical. There is no distinction and therefore there is nothing to have symmetry with.

As for my opinion on this, I disgaree that mental and physical are circular definitions. I would say the distinction has to do with whether information is public or not. I see Hynagogue is going in this same direction. This reminds me of that long thread on defining materialism. I spent 20 pages trying to convince people that the distinction between materialism and it's opposing views has to be about the nature/origin of the contents of the mind as it relates to things outside the mind. Or another way of saying subjective/private versus objective/public. To define it the way they were trying to made the term meaningless. So I agree that some of the usage of these terms has been messy and circular but it is because people don't understand the proper philosophical definitions of them.

(As info: They were trying to define 'matter' as "everything that really exists". If this were the real definiton then how could anyone not be a materialists? Why would anyone believe in something that does not really exists? You have to watch these guys. They're sneaky )

 

[confutatis]

There is a clear dichotomy we can draw. Public phenomena and private phenomena. The quality of my subjective experience is completely private, but it has a certain structure that can be communicated by various means (speech, body language, etc). The structural/functional aspects can thus be shared publically, and in this sense they are objective.

I won't comment on most of your reply because it is beside the point I'm trying to make, and I'm short of time today. The above though is an interesting point.

You say we can communicate the structural aspects of the world, but you don't make it clear if we can communicate what is not structural. That is exactly the issue I'm trying to discuss. I don't know if there are non-structural aspects of reality that can be communicated; that depends on the existence of at least one fundamental "asymmetry", which makes at least some aspects of the world look unequivocally identical for every observer. I don't know if that asymmetry exists or what it could be; I take it on faith that there are several, but I don't know what they are.

 

[confutatis]

from the rest of your post I see how this might be considered digressing as I now think I know what you mean when you say symmetry.

Good!

I was under the impression that you were claiming I couldn't know anything about red because when we all use the word we could be referring to different experiences.

I didn't say that; I said there are some things you can't know. But you can still know that stop signs and firetrucks are red. You can also know that red and green are different colors.

Ok, now this I can understand. To interpret this I'd say that 2 words have symmetry when their definition refers to each other without referring to some other external concept as a distinction. I wouldn't have called this symmetry. This is just what I call circular definitions.

Circular definitions are a different issue. Concepts defined in a circular manner do not need to refer to anything real. You can think of symmetry in language as a set of circular definitions that you can successfully map to some aspects of your experience. For instance, 'left' and 'right'. You certainly know that there's more to 'left' than simply 'the opposite of right'.

I disgaree that mental and physical are circular definitions.

They're not circular, they're symmetrical. You know what 'mental' and 'physical' refer to.

I would say the distinction has to do with whether information is public or not.

public = physical, private = mental; makes no difference.

This reminds me of that long thread on defining materialism. I spent 20 pages trying to convince people that the distinction between materialism and it's opposing views has to be about the nature/origin of the contents of the mind as it relates to things outside the mind. Or another way of saying subjective/private versus objective/public. To define it the way they were trying to made the term meaningless.

Actually, any definition of anything is meaningless, as it is just a statement of the same idea in different words.

So I agree that some of the usage of these terms has been messy and circular but it is because people don't understand the proper philosophical definitions of them.

I don't know if proper philosophical definitions of any term exist.

As info: They were trying to define 'matter' as "everything that really exists". If this were the real definiton then how could anyone not be a materialists?

That's exactly the materialist's dilemma: how can anyone not be a materialist? Which, by the way, is just a particular case of a more universal dilemma: how can can anyone disagree with me as to what is true, given that what I know to be true cannot possibly be false?

You have to watch these guys. They're sneaky

I think you can be very naive if you think people manipulate words with some agenda in mind. Some undoubtedly do, like politicians, lawyers, businessmen, but most people tend to be sincere when they express their philosophical views. The reason we hold different, often antagonic worldviews has little to do with intellectual dishonesty.

 

[hypnagogue]

You say we can communicate the structural aspects of the world, but you don't make it clear if we can communicate what is not structural. That is exactly the issue I'm trying to discuss.

My position is that we can't communicate what is not functional/structural. 'Redness,' insofar as I can converse with you coherently about it, is a purely structural/functional concept-- as characterized by physical laws, its propensity to create certain measurements in certain devices, and so on. (Whenever we say "this light is red," a measuring device will read off "600nm.") Thus red, in this sense, is identical to what scientists call light with a wavelength of 600nm (or thereabouts).

However, we cannot communicate about the subjective aspects of redness-- what it looks like to me vs. what it looks like to you. Red, in this sense, is identical to what philosophers call phenomenal redness. Phenomenal redness is not structural or functional, but rather is an intrinsic property. As a result, it is not expressible in language, and for the same fundamental reasons, a purely physically reductive science must either remain silent on the issue or deny its existence.

We seem to disagree about what 'red,' in general usage, means. Your position seems to identify red with the scientific concept of 'light of 600nm,' or at least characterizes it in the same spirit, insofar as you have claimed that red is a purely linguistic (extrinsic) concept and does not refer to perceptual experiences-- that red is exhaustively characterized by its relationships with other things. I claim that 'red' refers to the phenomenal aspect (which may vary from person to person), which is intrinsic and hence is not exhaustively characterized not by its relationships with other things-- there is something about red above and beyond its extrinsic relationships, some inherent property. On this view, people agree as to what is red on the basis of the common causal chain precipitating their phenomenal experiences. Basically, I am saying that one's language refers directly to one's phenomenal experiences, but that in public usage the only common element among such experiences that is available for comparison (and hence available for discussion) is the underlying structural/functional causal chain leading up to those experiences.