Just trying to add some more substance shrug
Talking about “How does one describe the color red to someone who has never even seen color?” seems to only be one aspect of PP. Eris, was also pondering the inherent meaninglessness of PP from this stance. So I threw in a couple dynamics on top of PP to make it more ‘interesting’.
“Dude, don’t you understand that smoking kills you?”
“Of course I do.”
“No you don’t, if you did, you would not do it; like me – obviously you don’t “get it”.”
“I totally get it, your the one who doesn’t get it.”
These more subtle instances of PP elude to action as equating to understanding.
In terms of the ‘meaningfulness’ of PP; I tried to illustrate (rather morbidy, I might add! ack) the concept of all value being contained in PP, otherwise the complete circumstance of what transpires is ‘delusional’ on the part of one with 'inferior PP (gauged by sensory acuity, processing speed, distance, bandwidth, nerve density … etc…).
Ultimately looking into the idea that one persons PP may completely negate the existence of whole_entire_beings and their reasons for existence. It’s an interesting question in regards to PP IMO. Not trying to thread steal, and really not trying to sound like a rambling lunatic 
-Justhink
God, I know! This is what bothers me! Once we accept the PP of color, where does it end? It seems that understanding anything is the illusion.
Jus’, I was justryingtobefunny. Sorry if that seemed snarky.
What’s confusing me are the ideas that one person’s private phenomenal perception has an effect outside of that personality, and/or that others can have insight into a person’s PP, and act to influence it. ISTM that both propositions depend on the supposition that either a) PP aren’t really private, or b) private perceptions of reality are creative rather than interpretive.
So, either I’m not following you, in which case I’d like some clarification, or I am following you, in which case I’d like to see some further development of this fascinating direction (with erislover’s indulgence).
After reading through this post and having a couple “Richard Feynman” moments(#1) I have a couple of thoughts. Wait a sec while I wipe the blood away from my eyes…ok, done.
The gist of what I read was about the subjectivity of PP. While I agree that PP differs from person to person there are ways to objectively test how different peoples PP compare.
Let’s take color for an example. First take two people and give them the test for color blindness. If both either pass or fail, the test can continue. If one passes and one fails the test cannot go on due to the fact that there is a biological difference in the cones that gather light in the eyes of the two subjects. To move on let us assume that both subjects pass the test. Separate the subjects and give the subjects green card A. Then give the subjects green card B that has, lets say, 10 shades of green on the card. Then ask the subjects to find the shade of green on card B that matches the green on card A. Once the two subjects pick their choices compare the answers. If the two answers agree then you can say that, while the subjects personal response to the color green may differ, the biological response is the same. So two different people looking into their own PP box came up with the same answer. The subjects PP may not be exactly the same but they are at least equivalent. (Note, I went through this test in a psyc class a long time ago and almost everyone had the same answer. The only people who had different answers had poor vision, which, if you correct for probably becomes irrelevent) This is a test used by some companies to make sure computer monitors are showing true colors.
On to pain and pleasure. This discussion fails to note that the pain-pleasure centers of the brain are pretty well mapped out. Studies in the 50’s and 60’s pin pointed the structures in the brain that caused pain or pleasure. The studies have gone further. I read in a Discover magazine that Doctors could diagnose alcoholics with a MRI or cat-scan, I forget which it was. (I googled for it but couldn’t find a cite)
In other words, PP has a biological base that we are just begining to understand.
Slee
Oops,
forgot my “Richard Feynman” moment.
#1. Richard Feynman has a story in his book ‘Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman’ about his trying to read some philosophy paper. Feynman told his sister that he couldn’t understand what the heck they were saying. Feynman’s sister told him to go back and read it line by line. Feynman did and figured out that, once you got rid of all the big words and gobbley-gook, it was pretty simple.
Slee
Slee, the scientific tests measures that one perceives something, not what one perceives. A color test like that would tell us, it seems, that a person recognizes shades of some perceived color; the test subject has been taught that this color is called “green”. See what I mean?
I tossed the “everyone could have the same favorite color” at my mom today; she feels I overanalyze things.
erislover,
That is why I said that the two subjects views of the color green are equivalent, not exactly the same. Since the two subjects agree on what == green, the subjects actual interpretation of the color green is irrelevant. The beetle in the box (green) is agreed upon by both subjects. As long as both people keep seeing the same beetle it is irrelevant whether both people see exactly the same thing.
To put my point in a mathmatical form let us do this.
b to the x (bx) = b to the y (by) is equivelent. Therefore x=y. In my case what I am saying is that b, the subjects, are irrelevant to the equation since their observations (x & y) are equal. The only problem with the statement I just made is that there is a possiblity that b*(1)* and b*(2)* are not equal. In other words, subject 1 and subject 2 are not equal. I took care of that in my post by making sure that both subjects were roughly equal in vision abilites.
Slee
Very nice, slee; this is also Wittgenstein’s view: the object->referent mode of analysis fails because the object drops out of the picture leaving a dangling word like “green”, “nice”, or “seven”.
Sorry about the lateness in responding… for some reason the SDMB has not updated that you have responded!
OK, on with the requisite reply to Jerevan, hope you haven’t forgotten about this thread!
Fascinatingly accurate. Consider that the number of brain cells in our heads (as a notion of a kind of truth consisting of “that” not “how”, the notion that something is true not how it is in its true-ness). So many, and so many connections, that it seems that the DNA which dictates how we are assembled does not, in fact, contain enough information to expand brains. As such, there must be some environmental and/or (and IMO it is “and”) random factor involved in the brain’s expansion and connections. This would mean that everyone has different brains. I’m not sure the point could even be argued against scientifically, but when I have such “it is obvious!” moments like that I am wary of my own common sense.
At any rate, assuming no one will argue with that, we go off the assumption as well (I try to avoid hidden assumptions) that there is no proper dualism; that is to say, whatever our consciousness is, it is a function of brain composition. It is physical.
So what we have, then, in the case where one person understands another, is that one person’s unique brain has a state (or series of states) correspond to knowing something. That I know the color before me is green is revealed by a state of activity or a series of states of activity (and this needn’t be demonstratable; I think it serves well enough to be plausible given the assumption of physicalism). When two people understand the same thing, then, we are forced to the conclusion that one’s brain state (or series of states) corresponds to another’s in some way.
A traditional sense of explaining an isomorphism like this is to have a map or other sort of mediator… like language. But since we’ve discerned that language of PP can’t refer to a that, this forces us back to a dualistic state of existence, or a rejection of PP.
Our conclusion does seem to be this dichotomy: we accept dualism with PP, or we reject dualism and PP.
IOW, PP<->dualism.
??? That is a very strong conclusion. Perhaps it doesn’t follow so naturally.
Jerevan, our similarities never cease to amuse me. I, too, have dabbled in the Tarot; unfortunately not to the completeness which I would wish. This mention spurs me to get back into it. Well, that and watching Buffy season 2 again, but no matter.
This, too, seems to lead us down the previous dichotomy. It seems fairly established that Tarot readings and similar actions do not yield to the scientific method. Skeptics are often quick to reject such things by saying that if one cannot establish the isomorphism/map/language/method of how Tarot cards work, then they do not work. Physicalism, pure and simple. All things that are, are material.
Pundits are also quick to offer the notion that people are quick to believe what they want to believe; that things like Tarot/Astrology are just vague enough to allow our personal interpretations to beg their own questions. But this begs the question for me: if all things that are are physical, then it isn’t that Tarot cards can’t work, it is that they are simply not complicated enough or applied properly to reflect the language of science.
Science should, in principle, be able to explain the that to all questions which deal with cause and effect. Yet where does that leave the question, “What is it like to see green?” Either this question is nonsensical, or it is nonsensical with respect to science. But if we accept that science can’t asnwer the question, yet there is an answer (that is, it is “like” something to see green), then we’ve clearly established that any method which claims access to PP cannot be accessed by science either.
Startling conclusions, and again I feel betrayed by their simplicity. Can this be the case? If I accept that discussions of PP have a sense, then am I forced into accepting dualism and rejecting physicalism?
Yep yep. Daniel Dennett discussed this very problem in his work (and probably others), Consciousness Explained. To some extent, we must assume what we are trying to investigate once science enters the realm of PP. To test your consciousness (that is, whether it, in fact, exists or mediates or becomes or whatever phrase one cares to utilize) I must acecpt that I am aware of what it means to be conscious; in fact, one might go so far as to say “I am conscious, and whatever acts like me is also conscious.” This is rather like the Turing Test in such a case: if something gives all outward signs of consciousness, then one is conscious.
But here we meet our box again. If consciousness is a PP, then it ceases to be an object of the word “consciousness” in the same way slee mentioned and I agreed with (and the same way which Wittgenstein offers his feelings in the OP’s quote). Is this not paradoxical? That when we discuss consciousness, the word doesn’t refer to anything? This would certainly explain the popularity of the Turing Test, and would go some ways to help physicalism’s cause.
But this leaves us in the state where the question “What is it like to see green” or “what is it like to be conscious” really are nonsensical. All so-called PP are how they appear objectively. Does this stand against phenomenology in general? Honestly, it might; I must confess my personal studies haven’t shown me one way or the other, but someone may have already established this.
I can’t reject phenomenology, though. I do feel there is something to “seeing green” that a description of brain states and electromagnetic radiation fail to account for.
I’ve never considered myself a dualist. I’ve implicitly equated such thought with belief of a soul. In light of this discussion, though, I wonder if I have not judged prematurely. Hmm.
Great thoughts, Jerevan, great thoughts indeed.
Justhink, I think I am ready to enter the world of your posts, given the above. However, I truly must get back to work at this time. 
slee, I think you’re making your points pretty clearly, and answering eris’s primary issue and OP question in the negative: No, if two people can agree upon what “beetle” is, it does not matter whether they are actually perceiving the same thing or not.
For my part, I am obviously reluctant to agree. From a “scientific” perspective I can see why it doesn’t matter and so is of little interest; but from a philosophical point of view? In fact, I’m inclined to agree with Justhink – that all value is contained in PP – and go furthe to conclude that reality is based on PP, not the other way around.
Consider: why have we, in modern times, convinced ourselves that “science” must be able to explain everything in the Universe – unless this is what we need to perceive?
eris: I can’t believe your mother said that. Where on earth would she get an idea like that? 
Justhink: I, too, apologize if I appeared to have poked fun at your posts. What you’ve said is actually very interesting, and you didn’t come across like a rambling lunatic. I just thought xeno’s Caveman Philosopher response deserved a laugh.
eris: yep, I’m still here. My last post went in just as you were posting, too. I will, however, be going out of the country tomorrow evening (Tuesday) and not returning until the 12th, so I’ll have to check back then.
{snip}
I’ve never considered myself a dualist. I’ve implicitly equated such thought with belief of a soul.
[/quote]
Exactly, I think it does lead to that. This was partly what I meant when I said to Apos, in the thread about soul, that the genetic and environmental model of personality does not fully explain how “we” develop as individuals. It might, but from the viewpoint of pure physicalism we don’t yet have enough information or understanding to say so for certain, or to describe exactly how any one individual develops from those factors. Hell, at present we can’t even entirely separate the two physical factors (genes and environment).
Your favorite color might be green, mine might be blue. Let’s assume, for argument’s sake (and as slee postulates), that we do perceive these two colors in the same way – that biochemically “green” and “blue” register in my brain the same way as in yours. If that is so, why do you prefer green, while I prefer blue? One might go on and postulate that “green” produces a biochemical response of “pleasure” in you, that “blue” generates a similar response in me, and that some genetic variation accounts for the difference between us. This is all very plausible, but until we have definitively located this specific genetic difference, have we really explained anything? Or have we just engaged in a little hand-waving to cover the fact that we actually don’t know and don’t know if we’ll ever know?
So, what you call a “random factor” is what I might call “soul” (though with great trepidation because that is such a loaded word). At the very least, I think that each of us has a distinct, innate personality which contributes to who “we” are as much as the physical factors of genes and environment – intertwined with the physical, but not rooted in it. Of course, the disturbing aspect of this notion is indeed that we are all different – and hence there is no way to study “you” or “me” objectively – which means that this notion cannot be “proven” in the way we understand that word at present. Yet the whole idea that it must be provable by “science” is, to me, a very shaky assumption to start.
A point of view with which I am well-acquainted. How neat and tidy, too. If I start off with the assumption that all things are, are material (physicalism), then I have already excluded the possibility, even the existence, of things which physicalism cannot explain. Is this really a valid starting point?
Hmmm, very interesting. This is entirely impossible … because another argument which is often levelled at astrology is: how did astrology come into being in the first place? [What is the isomorph which allowed personality to be mapped according to astrological factors?] Perhaps astrology sometimes fails because the tool is crude, not sufficiently developed, or the mechanism (if there is one, in the physical sense) is poorly understood. In other words: is it possible to build a better Zodiac, a better Tarot deck? (Oooh, now I’m starting to rhyme – somebody hold me back!)
But I think that’s the wrong question. A better one is: why is an age-old tool like astrology so clunky and imperfect after all this time? Maybe because there is no physical basis from which we could build a better tool. A crude and unwieldly and sometimes ineffective tool, modified by trial-and-error, is better than no tool at all.
Right. Have to run now. Until next week!
justhink
Allude; and yeah, this is a perfect example of the implications that matter. It is one think to wax philosophical about color perception, but in everyday occurances there are examples of PP and the gap of understanding. Your example, I must say, is a good one IMO. To some, something seems so simple (right, Slee/Feynman? ;)) that the lack of understanding between two people is a complete mystery.
“How could you not see it [the way I see it]?” Again: that one sees that smoking kills isn’t in question; it is how one sees that smoking kills which seems to evade communication.
And here, too, we seem to agree. When I stop to examine the limits of shared understanding, I feel compelled to note that every act of communication somehow involves a beetle-box, explicitly (“How does that look to you?”) or implicitly (“How could you want to smoke with the knowledge you have?”). The implicit pseudo-understanding seems to be a fair description of “common sense” in terms of PP. Would you agree with that?
Certainly; many theists (on this board, at least) mention that they have encountered evidence sufficient enough to convince them, and yet understand that others may not have been privvy to such data.
One such thread exists in GD as I type this: “How is it possible to be an athiest?” There is no doubt that there atheists.
Fascinating. Of course, naivete would beg us to say that things are just as they seem, but any level of skepticism would prompt us to say that though the adult did get it, perhaps even the same way the child did, the adult would probably have “gotten” more to the joke than the child, and may even be laughing for an entirely different reason (laughing at how funny the child seems to think it is, for example; that is, laughing with the child rather than at the joke).
Well, hey, not me! Actually, a friend and I were discussing this topic at work and he suggested music to me.
Jerevan
Oh, no no! We would call the soul the same thing: whatever mediates and contains PP. The random factor was just one of the two ways which the brain forms some of its connections.
Had you asked me two weeks ago I would have attempted to say “yes” and provide cause and justification. Now, however, I feel a rather healthy degree of skepticism about the matter. It is sort of like an atheists denying a God by asking “Well, how did it get there?” but affirming the same argument with the Big Bang, “It doesn’t make any sense to talk about ‘before’ the Big Bang.” Well, how very convenient for both of them!
Yeah, I agree. Physicalism seems a poor starting point; it attempt to deny the existence of dust by sweeping it under the rug.
I think I agree. If we accept PP (and, by apparent implication, dualism), and we accept that PP and anything which can access PP are not themselves amendable to the scientific method, then there is no physical method to apply to the Tarot to improve its use. What we have is what we have, and it seems to work for some, and no more can be said than that.
erislover: Thanks for the thought-provoking response. Just a quick comment on the “random factor”: yes, I think we are agreed that this factor – physical or metaphysical – is whatever mediates and contains PP. At the moment I don’t feel a strong need to name it or attempt to describe it further.
But isn’t it interesting, how the whole is so often more than the sum of the parts? The “states” contained in the human brain seem to be far greater than our DNA can describe. In fact, the human genome contains far fewer genes than we once thought – opening us to the possibility that complexity and diversity do not arise from mere physical/biochemical coding. And suggesting that one cannot fully understand a system be deconstructing it and analyzing the pieces.
On the other hand, PP, and the ability to communicate it, may have a complex physical basis which we simply don’t yet understand. What if astrology and Tarot work for some people – that is, the astrologists and card readers who seem to produce meaningful results for their clients – because they have a genetic pre-disposition or talent for seeing into other box contents, for examining other “beetles”?
So, you see, I’m not coming down definitively on the side of dualism, either. Rather, I just think that it is more logically sound to allow for the possibility of dualism than to assume a priori that everything can be explained by physicalism. Because until we have explained everything, and shown that only physicalism is needed to do so, how can we make such an assumption?
Medieval alchemists conceived of four elements and four properties, and assumed that everything material thing contained some proportion of those elements and properties… until they started to discover other substances (bismuth, phosphorous) and other properties which didn’t fit so neatly into those old categories. If some of them hadn’t been open to the possibility that the traditional cosmological views weren’t accurate, we might still be looking for the Elixir of Life instead of splitting the atom. Why should we assume that our own cosmological views are different, that they can’t be challenged by new ideas, new discoveries, and found wanting?
So yes, I like your image of “denying the existence of dust by sweeping it under the rug”. Or not looking under the rug.
OK, so this was a not-so-quick comment. But it really is all for now.
No, Jerevan, no! Random factor is nothing more than a catalyst for brain formation; i.e.- something we don’t know is doing we don’t know what and then we find a series of interconnected neurons. But, wait… are you saying that there is something in the way our brains are formed which enable PP in some way? Hmm, yes, I think I see why you keep coming back to that. Our brains (and thus our PP, if we assume physicalism) aren’t “coded” into our DNA. So where did our brains come from, and how do they house PP? Answer: environment/random factor (the environment itself is more or less a random factor, too). Thus, what you and I are calling a soul (no metaphysical baggage implied).
So, random factor/environment mediates brain connections mediates PP, given physicalism. And now we are back to our previous split: how can science explain how I see green (how green appears to me)? And so on.
Ha! Standing right on it and asking, “How could there be anything under here? I’m standing on top of it!”
walks down the thread, smashing each poster’s right foot with a croquet mallet, watches their reactions, then runs out laughing evilly
Thanks for the input, folks!
OK, further reading of Philosophical Investigations has not helped me out of the quandry of PP. I have come no further than stating that language can only express that I see green or feel pain no matter how much I desire it to say how I see green or feel pain.
Perhaps this is why Wittgenstein was resistent to the notion of artificial intelligence. But on the other hand, that doesn’t really follow, and it rather seems to support the Turing Test.
Ok, this is budging into the realm of explaining mental states, and so I come to the discussion on how mental states correspond to physical states.
I’ve traditionally held a view of epiphenomenalism with respect to mental events. Consciousness and feelings and desires of which we are aware (such as how it is to see green or feel pain) are strictly caused by physical events, but the chain of causality goes one way only: from the physical to the mental. Mental states do not affect physical ones. Not only does “I know proposition p” not make p true, “I desire object O” does not make me go get O. Awareness comes about necessarily from the complexity of neural events that occur, but there is nothing more to it than that.
This, in some sense, does remove the quandry of having to explain why we seem to share PP in language that only refers to PublicP. Of course there can be nothing else as mental states cannot affect physical states, they can only correspond to them, and this also serves to note why we seem to agree so much on PP when there seems to be no cause to do so: since we do have the same (or corresponding) physical states, and physical states cause mental ones alone, then a problem of PP should drop right out the trapdoor we’ve left for ourselves.
But it creates a quandry of a different sort. For ease of expression, suppose that there is some function f[sub]1[/sub] which completely describes the quantity and connections of my brain cells. Furthermore, there is a function f[sub]2[/sub] which describes yours. F[sub]n[/sub] is a function which describes the state of neurons et cetera in a brain with function f[sub]n[/sub].
The conlcusion I have come to thus far is that a language L is an expression of F alone, and that
for every y=F[sub]n/sub
there is a corresponding expression in L such that
L(z)=y=F[sub]n/sub.
Such an assumption seems necessary. It might be possible to consider that there are ys which are not in the range of L but I don’t feel particularly motivated to discuss it.
Given this rather arbitrary notation, let us examine a communication and find a flaw with epiphenomenalism (I think!). Recall my previous post to xenophon where I noted two cases of communication:
anti-Case 1
In Case 1 we have a state y[sub]i[/sub] as a value obtained from F(x[sub]i[/sub]). But the expression given in L is not one such that L(z[sub]i[/sub])! How did this happen?
anti-Case 2
This one is slightly more complicated. The state y[sub]i[/sub] as given by F[sub]1/sub somehow caused an expression L(z[sub]j[/sub]). Hearing this, you are triggered into a state F[sub]2/sub=y[sub]i[/sub]. However, as case two mentions, you have understood me even though L(z[sub]j[/sub]) did not, in fact, correspond to my y; that is, you understood L(z[sub]i[/sub])! This case is almost an anti-lie: though I unintentionally lied, you saw through the lie and found the truth.
The cases of lying and misspoken phrases which are still understood seem to cause a serious problem in trying to assert that language only deals with objective reality (public phenomenon). I can weasel out of in some respects, though I am not sure I am satisfied with it.
First, the meaning of an expression L(z) is contextual; that is, words have no vacuous meaning, and so the surroundings and previous words spoken determine the meaning of L(z). Very often it so happens that we anticipate subsequent expressions L(z[sub]i[/sub]), L(z[sub]j[/sub]), … L(z[sub]z[/sub]) from previous ones. Once we are led down a path of meaning, the conclusion seems to follow before the expression does (which would make sense given physical causality). So the case of understanding a misspoken sentence is taken care of, and the misspoken phrase itself could simply be an internal glitch of some sort. Humans are fallible, after all.
The case of lying, though, seems much more complicated, or at least more tractable and difficult to explain. In order to explain lying, it must be that L(z) only can express F(x). “Can”? What does “can” mean in a state of causality? We should like to say that “can” means “is not forbidden” but causality does not deal with forbidden states but necessary ones. Where could something like “can” come from?
It could only come from physical states which anticipate other physical states given incomplete input (considering the brain, still, as a state machine). But this is strange indeed: the notion of anticipation is that the answer (apparent answer) becomes available before it is developed. Is this possible in a causal system?
As anyone who has used Excel can attest the program can certainly anticipate input. So here we have the notion of “can”: the string of letters in Excel “Bill for” can imply “Bill for Phone” or “Bill for Internet Serive”. Anyone who has used MSVC++ knows anticipation in another form, where the beginning of typing an object can present a pulldown menu (drop list) detailing different choices available (For instance, typing CWnd myWnd.[something] will present a dropdown list of CWnd functions). Both can be said to learn as the typist goes on; the skeleton of anticipation exists but it is empty, and as words are typed then the anticipation fuction kicks in and presents options.
“Can” and anticipation seems absolutely necessary for operating within a world of incomplete information and should fall in the realm of natural selection; anticipation is clearly advantageous. So it seems at least plausible that I anticipate your state given L(z), and moreso that I have a causal necessity to attempt to cause a corresponding state F[sub]2/sub in you. Of course, “attempt to cause” is another form of anticipation. Given appropriate feedback from L(x) and sensory organs (which L acts on itself) the anticipation routine(s) could lead to a modest description of desire in the form of “attempt to cause” or “attempt to ‘attempt to cause’” (ad nauseum).
So, yeah, the cases 1 and 2 above can be handled.
…
"Like"
I’m not sure I’ve made any progress here, however, other than some deft rug-sweeping. And epiphenomenalism does feel like rug-sweeping as much as physicalism does, though physicalism at least feels wrong because of feeling (hardy-har). Epiphenomenalism doesn’t quite have the obvious rebuttal, even subjectively.
The notion of what it is “like” to see green is a problem of expression alone, and if mental states cannot cause physical states then the problem of expressing PP does go away, quickly and efficiently. They can’t be explained because they can’t do anything (can’t cause explanation). That I know what it is like for me to see green is also trivial; I know that I see green, and since the likeness of green follows necessarily from that it seems that I know what it is like to see green.
Can anyone think of a counter to this notion of PP?
Yes, the apparent answer in causal systems is called probablity. While the probable answer becomes available before all the facts are in it does not ensure that the probable answer is correct.
Also, please define ‘mental states’ explicitly.
Slee
Mental state is the dichotomy afforded by dualism, that which we are aware of. You know, mental stuff.
[ul][]Awareness[]Sensation[*]Emotion[/ul] and such things. The whole point of this post was to attempt to explicitly describe such things, or at least explain why they are so hard to describe.
Not “the whole point of this post”, but the whole point of this thread. But you knew that!