Wittgenstein's Box: private phenomena (incredibly f**king long)

Great Debates
61

This is my first posting to Great Debates. Please accept my apologies if I don’t quite “get” how it works.

I have found it useful to do two things that not everyone cares for. First, I assert-as-true various posits without prefacing them with “IMHO” or equivalent; please feel free to make the needed insertion as a default mode. Second, I notice I tend to make more use of “what if” styles of argumentation than do others: my tendency is try try to establish what is possible before worrying too much about what is actual.

Now then. The essence of this thread is not, specifically, about Wittgenstein and beetles, but a certain core issue raised by the following question: “If all I can ever possibly be aware of is some set of entities of type ‘M,’ where ‘M’ is by definition characterized by the attribute ‘available only to one’s own observation: as in the supposed private content of one’s own mental experience;’ and if my use of (an uttered, “public”) language presupposes the knowable existence of a supra-self world of particular referent-objects upon which the meanings of my utterances are founded; how do I justify my belief that language communication is possible, or even conceivable, given this apparent contradiction?”

To really speak (=with meaning and intent) is already to believe that another might possibly hear and understand. But by the standard model, for a linguistic unit to have meaning in a “language community” is (in effect) for the members of that community to have been able to engage in a shared experience (such as: seeing someone point to a tree) and to have discerned in that experience some element that is taken to be the referent-object of the referring sign (the sound or symbol).

But if I can only perceive my own mental furnishings, and you can only perceive your own mental furnishings, it is logically possible that what I took to be a shared experience–two minds with a common thought, so to speak–was no such thing. Even assuming what one (perhaps) has no right to assume–that “you” in fact exist at all as an independent center of perception, and that some sort of event took place “in” your mind simultaneous with an event in mine, and that we both somehow intended that said paired events would produce the definition of a certain referring sign–I have no reason to presume that your experience was IN ANY WAY comparable to my own.

That last statement puts things rather starkly. I am not saying that “my green may be perceived by you as what I would consider a different shade.” I am not saying “my green may be perceived by you as what I would consider red.” I am AT MINIMUM saying, “my green may not even be perceived by you as what I would consider a VISUAL EXPERIENCE.” It is “an experience” (for the uninteresting reason that the key term means little more than “a something known by a mind”). But (like the result of division by zero) it is literally incommensurable, one self to another self. What is put before your mind when you claim to be “seeing green” cannot be shown to be ANYTHING LIKE any experience of mine. {…what is seeing like for a stone? for the Trojan War? for Euclid’s Fifth, or Beethoven’s? I do not yet know that what I call “that other person over there” has a “self,” any more than I know that these objects have one…}

But why accept that my belief in other persons, other minds, the possibility of communication, an external world, etc., require “proof”? If I find that I am thinking “X”, I do not need to “prove” that it is indeed “X” of which I think. “X” is simply the name, the particular experienced twinge of designation, that is defined by my mind’s perception-in-the-moment.

You object: But how do I know that “X” might not designate something different tomorrow, that it might not come unstuck in my mind? I answer: What is the meaning of “different” in such a circumstance, given that it is my current connection of “X” with its referent-object that provides “X” its incorrigible definition? Two occasions of use–even regarding the selfsame individual person–can not be “objectively compared.” There is neither difference nor sameness. {…nor is equality blue or green, or a symphony right-handed or left…}

My belief in an objective world, in YOU, has the status of an axiom, not something deduced or derivative. Far from being questionable, such things are the essence of truth itself: I verify the existence of such items immediately and directly, by knowing them. (Likewise, I verify that my present experience exists merely by having it.)

And yet the other part–the self-subjectivity of my experience, of my thought of anything–is also axiomatic. By no twisting and turning can I conceive it impossible that, e.g., “my green is incommensurable to your green.” I cannot convert the opposite proposition into a necessity, for I can always conceive of its violation. (I can even conceive that some supposed “isomorphic pattern” might be “like” one thing in my mind, another thing in yours–or, better, simply that I must deny that they are commensurate at all.)

How can I close the gap?

I have come up with this notion.

For every thing-that-there-is, there are two aspects. The first is its logical essence, its identity or “whatness.” It is NOT atomistic, not componential: it is the unial referent-object no matter what the reference may be (to an individual, or a heap, or a group, etc.), and it constitutes the meaning of the reference.

Indeed, a “meaning” becomes a metaphysical object, a real existent in its own right. To know a meaning is to bring about a certain relation between self and meaning-object: AS IF to place the object before the mind.

Every meaning-object transcends the borders of self-subjectivity. Anyone and everyone can know it. When I communicate (with complete success) a meaning to you, you perceive the very same meaning-object as I do. When I teach you the meaning of a word, I am guiding you into a position to “see” something that I already am seeing.

Meanings are thus objective, independent individuals, not entities somehow generated by my mind or your mind. We don’t make them: we find them.

And at the same time–and here there is less to say–in the moment of mental perception, the objective logical identity is clothed in a purely subjective form, a “way it seems” that can neither be analyzed nor communicated. It formally exists; but it “exists to me,” a mode of being we can allude to only with difficulty, and can never divorce from its objective other half.

It is impossible, unintelligible, to “experience the way-of-seeming of another self”–or even one’s own self at another time. The momentary seemings replace one another and are gone, never to return; and part of the experience of the “seeming” is this endless flux, this entering-and-leaving, this passage.

So.

62

My God, Scott killed the thread!
“You bastard!”

63

Ha! I wouldn’t imagine so. Many of these replies are spaced some time apart. :slight_smile:

I’m sort of thinking about your idea of meaning being objective. In a sense, I absolutely agree, as far as I personally use the word “objective”, which is, capable of being verified by more than one party when the same behavior is used. But, let’s not stray here, because by that mention language is, by definition almost, objective already. Which is to say, if we have already discounted private language, then only public (objective) language remains.

The rejection of green as a necessarily visual experience in all cases is absolutely fascinating. I’ve been thinking on the matter a bit, and I find no obvious counter to that, mainly because it is the case that, first, words used to describe vision are often utilized in completely non-vision-related contexts (“I see!” meaning “I understand [now]!”).

I would think that it may be said that a subjective experience is one in which only language can be used; which is to say, one in which the object-referent mode of analysis cannot be said to operate. In the case of pain, I think, we can see that even without language (which is, an explicit symbol-set with explicit or implicitly learned rules for manipulation, concatenation, etc) we can understand pain. We know, for example, when an animal flinches away from a pin prick that it was hurt. Perhaps we don’t know (I don’t want to get into a full-fledged epistemology discussion) exactly, but at least, we would use “pain” to describe the state of the animal without hesitation.

And I’m not certain that such a word develops use only for beings which we consider conscious. I can imagine, for example, stating that a slug is in pain when I put salt on it. I imagine most people would not hesitate to understand or even to question the use of “pain” in such a circumstance. It isn’t to say that pain doesn’t represent a mental state in us, but that the use of the word doesn’t require mental states (conscious mental states, I suppose I should emphasize).

Pain, then, is an objective state in as much as language is objective. Let me say that as a correction to stating that language is objective (since some might not like my definition of “objective”). If there are degrees of objectivity, noting language’s meaning and noting “pain” itself are equally objective observations.

I would say: exactly. I think this is an important point. But it serves to also elucidate another point, that of the “object-referent” notion in subjective speech, which is speech not connected to objective states to begin with (color perception).

In the case of “pain”, I think I have developed the point clearly, we are discussing objective states with an objective word, and by implication the word’s meaning is objective. In the case of “green”, however, it certainly seems to be the case that there is no objective “object-referent” analysis, there is only subjective “object-referent” analysis. It does not seem to be the case that you and I could ever settle on “what the experience of green is like”. We could only learn to use the word green similarly in similar situations.

Is this an objective meaning? It isn’t the case that “green” refers to anything in the same way “pain” refers to something (or can be conceived to refer something, it is perhaps better to say).

Let me backtrack. “Pain” serves a dual purpose; one, what it means, period. Two, what we personally ascribe to its use. But i can never actually communicate what I ascribe to its use that doesn’t involve what it means. So in that sense, I cannot disagree at all that meaning is objective. But I am not sure that this is a significant point or a restatement of the definition (implicit) of language already.

And the case of misspeaking doesn’t shed any light on the situation. If it comes to my attention that I have misspoke, then I merely reply with, “Ah, sorry, what I meant was…” and carry on with a new sentence or sentences, knowing full-well what I mean can be expressed.

Which is why the words came to mind in the first place: that is what they are there for.

Which is not to say that if I cannot find the words to express my thoughts that my thoughts cannot be put into words.

But I do not agree that we are led to a case where meaning becomes a metaphysical existent in its own right, mainly because I am an immanent realist and thus meaning would always be tied to things or people; in this case, I would say “to people.” Much like “inches” are tied to “rulers”.

Meaning is more than a definition. If it were not there could be no dictionary, for consider that the only object in the world which cannot be exactly one meter long is the standard meter in Paris (what is there to compare it to?). Also, it must be noted that our dictionaries frequently give both the origin of the word and its usage in varied states.

I need to focus on the distinction between “green” and “pain”. I think that the “key”, so to speak, lies there.

Green is not a relative word, in almost all cases, like “tall” or “hard” is. Not that we cannot place “It appears to me” in front of color observations, we clearly can, but rather that it is only in certain instances where this is done, and for the majority of cases we say no such thing.

Subjectivity cannot be expressed in any other way than by merely adding “It appears to me to be the case that [etc]” or some variant of it. When we say that the meaning of a word is subjective, I think we make an error.

If we have used it right, then we have understood the word’s objective meaning. If we have used it wrong, we are attatching the referent to the wrong object.

But green needs an objective referent, then, or it has no obejctive meaning in the object-referent sense. And it is the case that when we correct the usage of most words, we do not use the subjective clause. In the case of color, however, we often find it to be the case that the response is, “…Really? That looks more bluish to me.” Which is to say, we do not doubt another’s description of color.

A subjective word is a word whose meaning cannot be verified, and if the syntax is correct, we assume the person really thinks that way. But it also presumes that there is a way to think about it “in that way” which brings us back to what we are referencing.

And here is where the other half comes in that you mention, Scott, the subjective meaning in the first place. Color has a meaning, but perception of color has no manifestation other than that a color has been perceived. Color is a distinction ew make based on personal experience (on how it seems to me) and however that distinction manifests itself subjectively is what we call “green” or “blue” or whatever. But the meaning is simply, “this distinction”, “this difference”. I think we have retained, without ‘cheating’, objectivity in language even for subjective words.

They seem private only because we may append “or so it seems to me” to the end of it. But this doesn’t make the meaning private.

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I appreciate your thoughtful response, Erislover (indeed, all your many thoughtful responses, which I have found within many of these GD threads).

It seems we are both willing to endorse a set of words along the lines, “The meaning of a word is not a private entity: not an entity to which one sole individual has privileged access.”

Yet, agreeing on the words, I think we disagree on the “image.” And our disagreement is well summed-up by the fact that you describe yourself as an immanent-realist. By contrast, I would describe myself as a transcendent-realist. Not that any of these terms are perfectly transparent, or haven’t been used in precisely contrary senses over the centuries…

My general thesis is that every “this” (approximately: everything and anything named by a noun) functions like a Platonic Idea or nonimmanent universal. There are genuine objects existing “out there” in timeless eternity that we come to know, during certain specific moments of “Now,” as the things we call “this keyboard,” “that chair,” “my mother,” “beauty,” “equality,” “the pythagorean theorem,” “World War II,” “my hearing the bell,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “blueness,” “the pain of this toothache,” “the history of Rome”…and all the rest. No, don’t do me the kindness of assuming I must mean less than I’m saying; it is indeed that radical and comprehensive a vision. All nameable public entities–thus, everything of which one may speak–have a transcendent existence. The mind just comes upon each one in a certain order, at a certain moment.

And I deny any distinction between knowing (that is, being engaged in knowing) the meaning of a term, and perceiving mentally the exact entity that the term refers to. Hence I erase the distinction between word-meaning and referent-object; and maintain instead that reality is composed of independent meaning-objects. And I really mean it! “The emotional state of Ludwig Wittgenstein during a certain nanosecond on July 8, 1943” is just as much a real “solid” object as the planet Neptune (but not a material object). Prior to that moment it had existence of the kind “going-to-exist;” afterwards, of the kind “did-exist.” Temporally tensed existence-predicates are modes of existence, not alternatives to existence.

That is the objective aspect of what I call noumenons. (A noumenon is merely “a certain something,” a “real-existent,” an entity.)

But every noumenon presents at the same time a second “face” or aspect which is utterly and absolutely private. Hard though it is to see how some pure abstraction might present a purely subjective side, I have a very complex argument in favor of the proposition; for now I’ll just note that the same subjective element we acknowledge so readily in objects of sense (in blueness, roughness, pungency, pain) is not absent from conceptual objects. We merely don’t know how to “notice” that element.

I say: every noumenon is both absolutely public and objective (aspect one) and utterly private and subjective (aspect two).

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It is decieving, I think, to think in terms of nouns. Anything with a thisness can be treated as a noun, but concepts and words and meaning: all these, too, are universals, and as such can be treated as adjectives philosophically. I don’t wish to speak of essences, but to say that there is a chairness to this object I am sitting on, I call it a chair.

Behind every noun is an implicit adjective? This is the name, the meaning, the universal. And I not only want to say that this exists, but that it is a chair. It possesses chair-like qualities et cetera.

This troubles me, because it seems I am deconstructing all words into the same pattern I did to color-words again: that there exists this distinction, and that is what the word stands for. But isn’t that the case?

I want to personally avoid transcendent realism. I feel I can do so because at once a word can refer to that distinction, and it can also refer to my conception of the distinction. If all chairs disappeared forever and no one was to construct one again I should still be able to conceive of a chair, to demonstrate on paper what one looks like, to draw schematics, and so on. “Chair”, the concept, still exists, and the word still has meaning.

But I can see why that would lead me to Platonism, for haven’t I said that meaning is objective? Perhaps all statements, all meanings, refer to our ability to perceive distinctions of all sorts, be that in what we call the world, or be that in what we conceive of the world. Language deals only with the former, and it assumes that the latter is equivalent when we aren’t discussing the world at large.

It is assumed that we “see” green similarly because we use the word the same.

But this is what troubles me. I think most people would take that as a fact, and in fact I have asserted the same thing many times (that I see green is not in question, but how I see it is), that such private experience is not able to be communicated.

But here’s the problem. Can we communicate it to ourselves? When we recognize some distinction (green, long, chair) and we assign a name to it (“green”, “long”, “chair”)—be that noun, adjective, pronoun, and so on (I don’t think it essentially matters)—we have conceptualized the distinction we wish to make, drawn similarities from it, and so on. If there can be no private language, how have we internally done this? Objectively we say, “This distinction exists, and it is called ‘green’.” Internally, can I tell myself anything? I am going to put the following into words, but only to demonstrate teh point, I do not recognize it as the case that we always talk to ourselves mentally. So, the question was, can I tell myself anything internally? “Ah, yes, this same sensation again.” If I think on the internal mechanations of my thought, everything seems to be reduced to indefinite references like this, that, those, him, and so on. I don’t think in terms of words except when what I am thinking about requires words (such as: thinking about replies to debates, thinking about what I am going to say at a meeting, and so on). In hindsight, upon reflection, then, the words I can use only appear as those indefinite references because they were always only referring to my conception, memory, impressions, and impressions of memories and concepts, and so on.

The words fall out of the picutre internally. No private language.

But that seems to present a contradiction, for how could I have learned my first word? And I mean explicitly. If I have no internal language (since only I could understand it, and thus it would have had to have spontaneously generated which I am not about to accept) then what could any objective word denote?

Language takes for granted that our concepts refer to objective ontological existents. It isn’t the case, then, that we can verbally derive objective reality as a logical conclusion, because at the core of our understanding is just such an assumption. And furthermore, because we have all been trained similarly to use such-and-such words in such-and-such cases (and that such-and-such cases exist) then any attempt to construct a logical argument for external reality begs the question.

And so denial of objective reality is a contradiction.

But we have said nothing of objective reality itself… nothing can be said? I almost hate to say that, but now I see no other conclusion.

The motivation against private language seems clear enough. I should take it as a fact that I cannot communicate what it is like for me to see green, I can only convey that here is the distinction I call ‘green’.

I would agree with the meaning, again. We certainly refer to such a “thing” in the same way refer to other “things”. It may be treated is such a way. And to say that it is or isn’t is to make, I think, an error. “Well, either LW thought such-and-such at that exact time or he didn’t.”

And note the word play there. At once we are using language to refer to what we would call a private experience: LW’s thoughts! And yet, at the same time, we are discussing it objectively, that is, it is a fact that LW thought something, and it was either this or it wasn’t. All the time we say what others did or were or will think, all the time we hypothesize others’ personal experience, and we talk about it, and yet there is no way to get “inside” their heads.

I think I want to say that if there can be no manifestation of a word then it is senseless. But that would be wrong in a general sense, wouldn’t it? I have a concept of God, but there is no distinction I can make, “Here is God, and here isn’t God. See the difference? We call that distinction ‘God’.”

But not all concepts are like that?

I can see no distinction between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world. My entire understanding of the latter is based in the former; indeed, my very concept of the latter came from the former. As far as I can tell, nothing exists in the latter that doesn’t exist in the former, and I mean that literally: as far as I can tell. Both “perceive” and “speak of”.

But the phenomenal world is exactly where I am cut off from everyone, it is where my priave non-language operates. So I can see why you would say that the meaning and the referent reside in the same non-phenomenal mode of existence, and why there is no distinctin between “The distinction” and “What we name the distinction”.

And I am back to square one. What is the connection between the two? I cannot be cut off from the noumenal world else I could not speak as we speak. The “sameness” cannot exist only in the phenomenal realm.

It would be a non-definition to say of the noumenal world that it is the world as it exists beyond perception, or without perception, or in spite of our perception, because everything I know I know from perception (reference, to an extent, Hume). Any philosophical definition of “objective” which explicitly forbids perception to come into play is a null-definition. It says nothing since its meaning cannot be perceived (to perceive the meaning, to understand it, would necessarily invoke perception).

But then what is it to say that no word can refer to events in my phenomenal world? It would then also have to be improper to define the phenomenal world as one of complete subjectivity, because then there could be no discussion of it. It would also be a null-definition.

Both of us have the question to answer, then, as it stood in my OP. What is the link between the phenomenon and the noumenon? We (as a race) have performed tests which indicate that the phenomenal world is not necessarily the noumenal one… haven’t we? It is like trying to test the imperfection of memory. Once we’ve called it into question, how could we trust any results? But we know our memory is not perfect. How do we know this? We remember times in which et cetera. How marvelously that dodges the issue entirely!

Like the connection between two null-definitions. We set up the question so that none of the terms can possibly refer to anything we can understand, and then wonder at how it is that we can’t understand them! We’ve constructed a board on which it is impossible to play. But where was the error? Why did the distinction between perception and actuality seem so obvious? Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t that why we even can express it in the form of “That is how it appears to me, you may see things differently”?

Perhaps subjectivity lies not in the distinction between perception and actuality, but instead certainty of observations. The noumenal/phenomenal distinction seems empty if I accept that there can be no private language.

“Beauty” doesn’t just exist for me, it exists for everyone who uses the word. But what I apply the word to may be different than you, and so we say that beauty is subjective. What if, instead of subjective (which seems to carry ontological baggage), we said “though I am not certain you will see it this way.” Which isn’t to say it is or is not beautiful.

But no, no… for you and I would assert, “That is a chair” when referencing the same objects. We would not use “beautiful” to refer to the same objects. We are inclined to say that beauty, then, is in the eye of the beholder. Which is to say, it is subjective. But how is it any more subjective than calling something “green” or “a chair”? Isn’t the same set of perceptions involved in all cases?

What if there were sets of people throughout the world which used the word chair, but did so differently from one another. Would the meaning of chair be subjective? But no, they aren’t referencing the same object.

And isn’t that the case in “beauty”? Consider, for example, the deconstructed meaning-test I made eariler, that there exists a distinction to make, and we call it such-and-such. Now, you and I look at a statue, and you say, “It is beautiful”, and I say, “It is ugly”. We both recognize the distinction… so can we say that we were simply taught the words differently?

But doesn’t the observation of beauty carry with it a manifestation? Again with the manifestations. That makes two distinct types of words: words which refer to manifestations, shall we say, behavior, and words which refer to distinctions. The former is a special case of the latter (since recognizing you are in pain from how you behave is also a distinction, of course). And sometimes we grammatically use one class of words like we use another class, and this confuses us philosophically. But let us not be led astray here. Let us say an object is “beautiful” if it makes me respond in a certain way.

Don’t chairs make me respond in certain way?

I say that is ugly, you say it is beautiful. And that is to say that we get a certain feeling from looking at something, that we wish to continue looking at it. To look for the meaning of “beauty”, then, we must see that it is a distinction along a variable scale, albeit a linear one (from beautiful on one end, indifferent in the middle, to ugly on the other end). The distinction is still there, objectively, even if we disagree in its particular measurement.

It just so happens that chair is not permitted such variation.

And color is a variable scale, but a non-linear one, since it can be more or less green, and more or less blue… a sort of scale of scales. The container scale “color” is, then, non-linear, wihle each color is or is not more or less itself.

Does that make beauty objective, or the distinction to which beauty refers? I’ll ask you that specifically since you mentioned the concept. I am not sure what to say right now, for I have just made an anlogy to measurement, which would mean I should have to say that “length” is objective but “centimeter” is not.

Types of beauty, then, like color. the beautiful/ugly distinction is itself linear, but there are different types of beauty like there are different types of color, and it is not clear that a song is beautiful the same way that a statue can be. Language deceives us here because beauty has not long stood as an aid to survival like, perhaps, color has. We do not (usually) say of yellow that is more colorful than green. So why should I expect a song’s beauty to be like a statue’s? There is the container concept, and there is the variable measurement application of the concept, and there is the instance of the concept (this). In the case of beauty it is such that the container and the measurement are the same.

And a punk rock song which I would call beautiful (and I can name a few!) would not be beautiful in the same way that a Beethoven piano concerto would be.

And the word which refers to the container and the measurement are the same because we have not yet recognized that beauty must, too, be objective. Distance is an easy thing to learn, and its corresponding application of “ten miles” is easy to learn as well. I shall use some hand-waving and say we are built for it. But beauty… beauty we start to recognize glimpses of the scale, but we have not yet learned to apply it consistently. It is almost like we say that a football field is longer than a house and shorter than the Mississippi river, and so there is a “longness” and a “shortness” to a football field. If someone were to say this, we should comment that this person has not yet learned about length properly. Why should beauty be any different?

I think I now see why Wittgenstein, to be almost tangential for a moment, was keen on discussing meaning as “family resemblances”.

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(Prefatory stream-of-thought: …I should confess in all honesty to getting a little lost in our web of words…I am not sure to what extent I have comunicated my view to you…I do not use “noumenon” in the Kantian sense…You must be a touch-typist!)

  1. Let us set aside the word “noun.” Everything is an “ontolog,” yes?–a something-that-is?

  2. Even what we term “fictitious” ontologs “are” in some significant sense of the word; else they could bear no true predications. (…which just tells you I’m defining “real existent” in the broadest possible sense: whatever is “not nonentity.”)

  3. All ontologs without possible exception are publically knowable objects (knowable=available to being known by some mind at some time). I may not happen to be engaged in knowing “X” right now, but that is a detail: it might have been so. It is not logically excluded that I might know your thoughts and feelings. The bar to telepathy is practical, not logical.

  4. Therefore there neither is, nor could be, such a thing as a “private language,” taking “private” to mean “necessarily private.” For a language either refers to various entities, or it is not a language: and all entities are publically knowable. My so-called internal system of reference is, for all that, just one more species of public language.

  5. The problem of language communication, if it is a problem at all, is no less a problem between the time-phases of “oneself” than between “diverse selves.” But all knowledge–even the meaningfulness of this very sentence–depends upon accepting as axiomatic that self-to-self communication does in fact take place. To be a bit Cartesian, even the rejection of this proposition entails its affirmation: therefore it is true. In language activity we confront objective entities external to the self (some of which are internal to the “brain”).

  6. Yes, beauty is objective. It is a certain property-entity sometimes found associated with other entities. But if I find X beautiful and you find it ugly, your mind is not so situated as to perceive, with X, the entity “beauty,” and my mind is not so situated as to perceive with X the entity “ugliness.” Evidently both property entities are proximate to X; but to perceive one is for the other to be obscured. Perhaps there are persons in the universe who perceive utter beauty and utter ugliness in the same object: no more opposites than to be square and blue.

  7. What is objective in every ontolog is a shareable informing content. But additionally every ontolog presents to the observer, the knower, an ineffable private “something” beyond all possibility of description or communication. Its function seems to be to determine the Now; for though the objective informing content is transcendent and eternal, the subjective form-of-presence exists only now, for me, this instant, and is never repeated. (To claim that it is repeated would be a literally unintelligible conjecture. WHAT is repeated?)

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That’s a question that eastern philosophy has dealt with since the 7th century when Fa-tsang wrote Essay on the Gold Lion. He identified the phenominal world as the world of principles, and the noumenal world as the world of things. In the case of the Gold Lion, the gold symbolized the noumenon from which the phenomenon of the lion arose. Primary and secondary causes (equivalent to Aristotle’s material and efficient causes) were always required to give rise to phenomenal existence. The gold was the primary cause and the artist the secondary cause.

He asserted that all existence in the phenomenal world is dependent on causes in the noumenal world, and is illusory while all existence in the noumenal world is free from generation and destruction. The gold is gold and can be shaped into any arbitrary image, the existence of which he called “sole imagination”. That left him with three characteristics:

Sole imagination: the perception of a lion from the senses.

Dependency: the comprehension that the lion is an illusion.

And ultimate reality: the knowledge that nothing is there but gold.

The most serious implication of Fa-tsang’s work is that, while nothing inheres to sole imagination, it is nevertheless the very bridge of inter-subjectivity that gives context to our existence. Our senses fool us into believing that there is significance to reality, while reality itself is emptiness, i.e., mere form.

There then follows the breathtaking implication that, since empty, static, independent entities inhere no meaning (including the meaning of existence itself), the only existence — the only reality — is the illusion.

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Interesting. In most of the world, one could get a degree in philosophy without ever having heard of Fa-tsang. Which is why serious people take care to distinguish between “Professors of Philosophy” and “Philosophers”!

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Interesting. In most of the world, one could get a degree in philosophy without ever having heard of Fa-tsang. Which is why serious people take care to distinguish between “Professors of Philosophy” and “Philosophers”!

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Yeah. That very point pretty much came out in the thread on Ayn Rand’s contributions to philosophy. We learned that, apparently, Academia is content to wear its laurels on its ass.

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[pre apology… for some reason, I couldn’t get a post to take yesterday only in this thread, and so I composed the post and emailed it to myself… now the formatting is sort of screwed up. I’d tried to get what I could to look right, but you’ll just have to struggle through it]

Scott, not quite a touch-typist in the normal sense of the word. I can type mostly without looking, but I never took formal instruction in typing and so I end up losing my position on the keyboard. But long, stream-of-consciousness posts like the ones in here have helped my typing considerably! :wink:

Ok. **7)**But additionally every ontolog presents to the observer, the knower, an ineffable private “something” beyond all possibility of description or communication. Here is where I stand now: I have no idea what that sentence means. I don’t see how it makes sense to say “Here is a distinction” and yet we cannot put words to it. Every word’s meaning (rather, every meaning period, as words can have more than one meaning in different contexts etc) signifies a distinction that appears to the senses. The distinction is objective, which is to say, we can agree that there is a distinction here, we may name it, we can find that it shares some qualitiesin common with other distinctions we have named.

But then we turn around and say, “But to ourselves internally, the phenomenon is not able to be described. You cannot say what it is like to see green, only that you do.” And from that we say that this is a subjective experience, a private one.

But I do not think I can accept this explanation any longer. For what distinction have we made to say something like that? Is it an objective distinction? “Look, can you tell me what it is like to see green without referencing green things?” ; “Why, no, I cannot.” ; “Then here we are: all things that we cannot describe and yet that we can name are subjective perceptions.”

Then how do we learn words in the first place? How can we perceive universals if nothing is repeated?

I walked in to philosophy, and this thread in particular, thinking this exact same thing. And then it struck me that if I cannot form words about my internal states, how can I operate with words corresponding to my internal states? If there can’t be private language, how can there be a private (metaphoric) world? How would we recognize it? Is it like anything? If it is, why can’t we talk about it?

I am saying: if you say that there are experiences we can’t share, then you cannot recognize them yourself. Which is to say, there is no private world that makes any sense. Sense is tied to the realm of distinction: the objective reality we find ourselves in. This private realm? Well, (ahem, Lib), illusion. For note:[list=1][li]There can be nothing said about it to others[/li][li]There can be nothing said about it to ourselves[/li][li]Because of (2), there is nothing it is like[/li][li]Because of (3), there is no way to recognize it as itself; that is, there is nothing to compare it to (it is wholly unique)[/list=1][/li]Now I don’t want to deny the realm of my thoughts. But the “typical” talk of that mental realm seems, upon the reflection given in this thread, to be totally nonsensical.

It is interesting to look back to flowbark’s post about Wittgenstein mentioning a calendar on which an X mark is placed every time one feels a specific sensation. I just tried to find the actual reference in Philosophical Investigations but I do not know exactly where it is located and the index isn’t helpful in this instance (though I found “box” for the reference in the OP there is no listing for “calendar”… go figure; and, though I am currently on my second pass through the book, I haven’t found the reference yet, it seems to be much later in the book).

I want to agree wtih Wittgenstein that there is no private language. But the removal of private language seems to make a mess of how we learn anything. How can we recognize similarity internally without it? And, if we then were to disagree with Wittgenstein and say there is private language, then what links the private to the public, and why can’t we discuss the private if there is such a link?

Lib, I’ve got to say that that is a damn interesting post. It reminds me of some existentialist work in that meaning is a sole invention of the mind. But, typical to eastern philosophy, it seems to never answer the actual question posed. Note that, “Ultimate Reality: the knowledge that nothing is there but gold.” I could spend hours on this one alone, especially in this context. But still, I do not find it very surprising that an eastern philosopher may have thoughts which predated many of our (cough) “highly original” western philosophers ( :wink: ).

I think it still runs into the same problems upon analysis.

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I want to say: it is important and fundamental to language that a distinction exists and is recognized. For any distinction that exists, there can be meaning which is this distinction (“when I say ‘[such-and-such]’, I mean this [and perhaps this and this as well]”). And here is a distinction: how I see green versus how I see blue. And yet no words come? But how do I recognize the difference? If I tell myself, “This is blue, and this is green, and I see the difference” then haven’t I used language privately? Don’t those words still have meaning?

If I was the last person alive on earth, I could still say things and mean them.

If no one read this post, it could still mean something.

…

“Yes, erl, the words still have meaning. But only to you.” that can’t be the answer unless we’ve accepted private language. And mustn’t we accept private language if we are to learn anything? If we are to recognize similarities and differences?

“Ah, this sensation is the same one I had as that other time!” Can I tell myself this? don’t I have to, implicitly, if i am to form new concepts?

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Just a brief response today, Erislover. If I don’t shower SOMEtime, the canary will die.

I’m fairly sure we do disagree.

I think I understand you to be saying that any personally knowable-as-itself-in-itself ontological element–take that as the most general possible way to say “thing”–must be able to be referenced, by oneself if not by others. And whatever can be referenced can be stood-for by a word or other sign. So those things referencible by oneself only become the referents of a true “private” language.

I dissent in two ways.

  1. I deny that there is, or could be, a “personally knowable-as-itself-in-itself” ontological element that is ONLY personally knowable, as opposed to publically knowable (where the “-able” refers, as usual, to potential). No entity is knowable “as-itself-in-itself;” it is rather the case that every entity is knowable “as-itself-in-another,” the “other” being the indescribable form-of-presence that I have mentioned. Do this: name anything, anything at all–from the outer world, from your inner world. That name really indicates two somethings, two aspects of the noumenon you have in mind. First is the shareable part, second the unshareable part (unshareable even with one’s own later self!). Both are mentally seen (thought-of) in the same moment, by the same act. And though I do have the unshareable part before my mind while considering the thing that my word stands for, the unshareable part plays no role whatever in constituting the MEANING of my word: the meaning is entirely constituted by what can be shared. I’m being a little verbally tricky, I suppose, but I do have a point. Please DO take this idea to its radical extreme–I really DO mean that the meaning I attach to the word “green” is a shareable and unchanging something, which in addition, and extraneously, is joined to an incommunicable “this.” (Note that I can reference the “incommunicable this” as a universal, but as a particular it is only a “blank particular”–as when we say “the particular tree I’m thinking of,” as opposed to actually providing its particularizing descriptors.)

  2. You note repeatedly that words express distinctions–and I agree. Where we may disagree is that I maintain the real existence of knowables that present themselves to consciousness without, at the same time, offering any basis to distinguish one such knowable from another such knowable. We have a direct and unmediated experience of A, and we have a direct and unmediated experience of B (at the same time, within our “field” of conscious presentation), and we know directly and indubitably that A is not B: BUT we lack the kind of experience that accompanies being able to “make a distinction” between items. In other words, it is simultaneously true that (a) we know that each is itself and not the other, and (b) that they cannot be “distinguished”. I think you will find this a contradiction. But isn’t it like the notorious case of the speckled hen?

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It is as if your first sentence of (1) denies knowledge of an external world entirely. I am reminded of a dialogue of Plato’s. “I don’t see a ‘tableness’ and a ‘cupness’, I only see a table and a cup.” ; “Yes, that is because to see a table and a cup you only need eyes and you have those. To see a ‘tableness’ and a ‘cupness’ you need intelligence, and you haven’t got that.” Cute! :slight_smile: But not entirely supportive of transcendent realism (but who expected a sentence to sum up such a huge area of philosophical investigation anyway?).

The second seems to me to be a totally senseless proposition. How do you know it is there if you can’t recognize it (as I understand “recognize” to mean, “share with one’s self the notion of similarity to some previous experience”)? Which is to say, it appears to me like you desire to create a synthesis between nominalism and transcendent realism. I’m not calling it crazy (yet! ;)) but I am very unclear with how to proceed to understand this synthesis.

In (2) you say it so clearly that I wish the clarity could extend to explanation. “Where we may disagree is that I maintain the real existence of knowables that present themselves to consciousness without, at the same time, offering any basis to distinguish one such knowable from another such knowable.” Exactly. I mean, it is quintessentially unique. But we make distinctions. In (1) you tie our knowledge to impressions gained from the real world (let’s not tread into Kantian terms if you feel I am using them that way and not the way you intend). This distinction exists, it is green, and so on. Yet in (2) you note that there is no similarity to impressions. I would say this is a great description of nominalism: every impression is unique, and every object is unique, and nothing every presents us a means of distinction-making—the distinction-making is in us.

But that isn’t quite what you’re saying, and it confuses me greatly.

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For the record, I have found the passages which deal with the calendar. Any typographical errors are mine.

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ERL, I’m very much enjoying this occasion of discourse with you, and hope neither of us tires of it too soon.

  1. “…It is as if your first sentence of (1) denies knowledge of an external world entirely…” I don’t follow you. To extract, “…I deny that there is, or could be, a(n)… ontological element that is ONLY personally knowable, as opposed to publically knowable.” In other words, I am asserting that everything I “know” is a public, not private, object. (I later on add that everything also incorporates a purely private element; this does not negate the first assertion.) Isn’t a world of public objects an external world?

  2. Or do you mean, not that I obliterate the external world, but rather that I erase the division between external and internal entities, in the sense of a basic ontological-categorial distinction between them? --Which is quite accurate. I posit that everything is equally “external” (ie, public and objective) and real: including my “made-up things,” dreams, percepts, yearnings, and so forth. My approach is somewhat Berkeleian: everything is a thinkable, nothing is a non-thinkable (which is thus an unintelligible characterization), and furthermore, all thinkables are equally real (though some lack the attribute “actuality”). BUT–this is in no way a subjective or individualized idealism; thinkables are objective self-external entities perceived in an identical and invariant manner by all possible perceiving minds.

  3. Obviously we are both rationalists–not “Rationalists,” the historic term, but simply folk who believe in reason and, I suppose, the so-called Laws of Thought. But if I may make bold, you are an empirical rationalist and I am an intuitive rationalist. I think you believe that the world must be derived from sense-data or not at all, whereas I maintain that sense-data may be subject to critique and correction by means of axioms directly intuited to be true.

  4. The axioms relevant to our current exchange seem to be:
    (a) Knowledge is possible (where “knowledge” means the apprehension of truth, not merely a “belief”). Reject this axiom and all striving is in vain; but we can’t reject it, for it is self-validating. But if knowledge is possible, then (the argument is obvious) my prior selves must be able to convey ideas to my present and future self without being stymied by Wittgensteinian problems of the sort mentioned in your quotes. The simplest way to account for this is to deny that we “construct” our thoughts out of a hash of input-data that we can never know directly, “just as it is.” I say: the “ideas” are real objects that anyone can access.
    (b) But each “idea” has not only a shareable informing content, but also an unshareable (yes, unique) form of presence. You ask how I can know this; I answer that I know it as an intuited axiom arising in the contemplation of what a thought is like. (The same axiom, by the way, that allows you to understand how it is that two persons can in one sense be “seeing the color green,” while in another sense they are almost certainly having experiences that are entirely dissimilar.) As a (somewhat inadequate) illustration, consider this very sentence. It conveys to your mind a certain content–the ideas it is “about.” At the same time, in the same act, it presents a certain form–the shapes of the letters and words. Better example: consider how a poem “means.” Ideas are conveyed, but the means of conveyance consists in many elements that are not, strictly speaking, “the ideas”–namely word-sounds, rhythms, image and allusion, and suchlike. Thus again, a distinction between content and form.

  5. So, no, I do not maintain that the distinction-making is “in us.” That sounds like Eastern mysticism to me. The distinctions exist objectively “out there” in a timeless, spaceless transcendent reality to which we have access with every effort of our minds, a hundred times a second. But to this realistic stance I add a nominalistic fillip, that every accessed thinkable presents itself clothed in a form that I, as a certain individual, am able to “grasp.” It is that continuous flux of “graspings” that make me a conscious knower-of-thinkables, and not a consciousless processor-of-data.

Am I making myself any clearer? (…which may only mean that you know more clearly wherein we disagree…)

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So we have a sort of “sense organ” (not to be taken perhaps too literally) which can access the, shall we say, platonic realm, and we have presented to our “normal senses” a series of utterly unique sensations.

I do indeed tie all knowledge to sense perception. Perhaps this is the ultimate barrier here between us.

In rereading this page, I feel compelled to retreat (and I mean retreat!) into epiphenomenalism. The impossibility of private language seems to fall out of it as a consequence quite neatly.

And: precisely. Yea, we reached some form of mutual understanding!

And that is almost what I also wish to do. For if every investigation of the categorical distinction leaves me empty-handed, wouldn’t I be right to abandon it? We’re playing a game here where there can be no winner, no tie, no stalemate, no conclusion. Which isn’t much of a game at all.

Berkeley indeed! It is quite the distillation of that idealism. But, now, would the following question be off-topic: is denying the Law of Identity thinkable? Which is, can we really imagine that someone denies it, not to say that someone merely says they deny it.

I would say that is highly accurate. On one hand, your idea does sort of dissolve the problem I face, but on the other, it does seem to present new ones. Well, I shouldn’t let that trouble me here.

What should trouble me is whether any other solution exists. And isn’t that what is troubling me? I feel chained to the notion of a private realm. It comes so naturally to accept that it exists without even the slightest inclination of doubt. But every investigation of it turns up chimeras and ghosts that I only call chimeras and ghosts because I have no other name for them, and no evidence exists that I may name them from it.

And, you know, I wipe a metaphoric tear from my eye when I read that, because it does tie things up so nicely (here) and it states my problem quite clearly. I feel led to reject this private realm. Wittgenstein seems to want me to believe it exists but we cannot speak in it or of it. Then what is his evidence for its existence?

Like God, we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of all person’s private realms.

But is Wittgenstein saying that? Is he asserting this private realm exists? He says, “I do not know I am in pain, I have pains.” That makes me inclined to think he does recognize this sort of private world which is hidden from everyone. Including ourselves? And mustn’t it necessarily be that way?

Now that is something to think on for sure. And, your phrasing there is somewhat ironic as I often conceive of people’s consciousnesses as computers. I almost cannot divorce myself from that mode of speech.

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Interesting sort of side-note: it is the case that, in what I scribbling down at home to be my own sort of conception of philosophy, that one of my “fundamental” statements is: the limits of epistemology are the limits of language. Which isn’t to say that we can learn everything that can be known by studying language, but rather that we may examine language to get a sense of where it no longer makes sense to look. And, if we cannot speak of something (Tractutus Logico-Philosophicus, prop.7 ?) then it serves us no purpose to assert contrary to that that some distinction exists.

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ERL, this is quite a dialogue between us, isn’t it? And we’re really geting somewhere. (Though it seems we’ve driven off everyone else, either by our brilliance or our insistent obscurity.)

And perhaps I should note in all humility that I have no right to expect you to accept the intuitions of someone who doesn’t even know how to use the “bold” or “italic” features of the site, much less the “quote” feature that is so convenient. (Instruction appreciated…)

1)–
“…So we have a sort of “sense organ” (not to be taken perhaps too literally) which can access the, shall we say, platonic realm, and we have presented to our “normal senses” a series of utterly unique sensations…”

For better or worse, you’ve surely got the main idea. I don’t know whether any further comment by me on this is just a quibble; I’ll let you decide. The “sense organ” is the personal mind, and if you were to say “the individual soul” or, like Kant(?) the “I-Myself,” you would be closer yet. I am wont to use terminology like “some entity X present to the mind” or “before the mind” or “perceived by the mind,” and all such choices apply metaphors that can be gravely misleading if taken too literally. The Self, the absolute Knower of whatever is known (ie, of whatever is thought) is not to be conceived as “brain” or “nervous system” or “cortical function,” nor certainly “information-processor” or “onboard bio-computer.” The Self owns such things as parts of the body with which it happens to be associated. It is not identical with any of them. I view the Self somewhat in the manner of Fichte–a pure ego possessed of two essential attributes: to perceive, and to will.

Now it is true, by my approach, that the Self perceives platonic-like objects. But I do not affirm the existence of other kinds of entities perceived by the traditional organs of sense. ALL individual nameables, including the particulars found in sense-experience, are to be classified as transcendent items. Hallucinated items, illusory items, dreamed items–all are real-existents, as real and “solid,” if you will, as the stool I am sitting on. (For we can assess the truth of statements about, say, the dream I had last night–at least, as much as one can about anything.) There is no line of separation. When I speak of the “unshareable part” of entities, do remember that I apply this to ANY AND ALL entities, not specifically to “sensations.”

The knowing mind is the only real sense organ; and to it is made present the whole range of things-that-are, those that are concept-like and those that are percept-like. And every one of those items is a certain shareable content joined to a certain unshareable (unique) form.

2–
To be mercifully concise, I can be distinguished from the good Bishop Berkeley by the fact that I accept what he denied, that there are real-existents, knowable in themselves, that are what he termed “general abstract ideas.”

3–
I am not anything like a student of Wittgenstein. But I have understood that the whole thrust of his later philosophy was to deny the coherence of the notion that there are private mental entities. He brings up the example of a pain only to deny, ultimately, that it can be a private something at all: “having a pain” is a way of labelling a certain variety of public bodily behavior, societally defined and available to public view. This at least is my understanding of his position. And with that view I agree and disagree. I agree that my pain is (like anything) potentially accessible by other minds. I do not mean by this that my pain is a visible behavior, however, but rather that one Self can in principle be able to Know directly the very noumena being then experienced (known) by another Self.

4–
One cannot “prove” the existence of the purely private dimension in the thought-experiences of another person. But what we call “proof” is only, ultimately, the application of the Given (intuited axioms) to the Acquired (sense-data, etc.). And it seems knowledge of the existence of other minds, which implies their possession of those properties necessary for something to meet the definition of “mind,” is a Given, and thus indemonstrable.

So it seems to me.

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And this is what led me to open the thread:

This is, ultimately, the impression I have from what I have read (one and a half times through “Investigations” and probably three readings of “On Certainty”, the latter of which has proven to be a veritable treasure trove of profundities IMO).

And I must say that on some level I totally agree. But the problem that he leaves then is the one I am also faced with and that you have in a sense bypassed.

I am no student of anything, except perhaps electronics, but for the past two years I have been almost entirely unable to read anything but philosphical works by assorted authors. It has become something of an addiction. I am often compelled to philosophize without apparent cause or necessity.

But, that is tangential.

Yeah, I didn’t want to pin you down on any term, but I can see that your use of hyphenated constructions lends itself to any number of other philosophers like Sartre or some earlier phenomenoligists who dealt heavily with consciousness and self as, perhaps, an irreducible primary.

Ha! I don’t think we are alone here, though when such gaps occur where only me and another trade words, I often wonder what that cause was. I hope we haven’t lasped into senselessness!

But, see, on one hand I agree you have done this, but on another level I feel that you’ve more or less destroyed any distinction between “inside” and “outside” other than the nominalist/trancendence distinction.

I am still uneasy about your assertion of the nominalist version of perceiving certain things. If we could, perhaps, focus there? Can we focus there or must we include the other side? Because this problem is what I feel Wittgenstein completely failed to characterize: if all of our words, including words which seem (at first glance) to refer to private entities, really refer to objective distinctions (in some sense, let’s remind ourselves not to get trapped in absolutes until it is absolutely necessary! ;)), then how in the hell do we recognize obejctive distinctions? It is as if your solution is the only solution: a realm of ideas (shorthand use of the word, I must admit a more convenient term does not come to me) that we all have access too. Want to call it a physical word? Be my guest. Want to call it the realm of consciousness? Whatever. I think once we’ve made this mention, any further clarification is also useless. It is sort of atomic, and so any attempt to explicate will only serve to add concepts to it that don’t belong.

I agree with LW that the “S” in the calendar is meaningless. But, then, what about the calendar itself? Or the notion that this is a mark? Doesn’t everything present itself to our senses in this private way? If we talk of anything, and a private world exists, there must be a bridge, so to speak.

Now, you say this bridge is the self, the being. And while I cannot combat that notion on this level, I do reject it on others and am thus compelled to seek an alternative. Would that such an alternative presented itself! Perhaps I should retreat and drag up some works by earlier phenomenologists (I must admit, reading Sartre was mentally tiring and I had to put it down) to see how they handled the issue, or if, indeed, they handled it at all, because it doesn’t seem they could have from the comments up to this point.

And, it isn’t that I seek some pure intermediary of some sort to bridge the gap, but any.

In rereading the earlier posts I find something kind of interesting in a train of thought shared with Jerevan (where did he go?? He seems to disappear with no apparent cause and return only to say some great things and disappear again. Like Gandalf!).

Now, this little metaphor of course assumes that the box/cup/PP exists in the first place. Which is to say, I certianly do feel pain, but any attempt to discuss it or examine it leads me to cups that can’t hold liquids and calendars with silly marks on them.

And, to me, it feels almost convincing, until I think to myself that I must realize something internally or I could never have formed words for “objective” things. For example, if we say that pain represents (in some deliberately vague way) people’s general reaction to certain stimulii, several things must present themselves to us. One, the visal stimulus of a person’s reaction (over time, even!). Two, the already-existing classification of stimulii, or of causality even. And then, three (maybe a 2a) the recognition of these pins and spankings and so on as pins and spankings.

For couldn’t we recreate the calendar argument and say I made the sound “pain” each time I got the set of sensations that look like people and pins and so on (which is to treat the sequence of events themselves as sensations or phenomena presenting themselevs to the eye and ear and skin). Now, why should “pain” be meaningful and not “S” [on the calendar]?

Ha, had to throw that last line in there, didn’t you? :wink: