Mary's Room and the Private Language Argument

[KCfromNC]

Oh, and while you're at it, perhaps you'd like to think about whether there are any other examples - any at all - from science or the "normal" world, where we have two apparently very different entities (X and Y) with completely different sets of properties, but people can expect get away with saying "X is Y" or "X is a subset of Y", without rationalists lambasting them for talking complete and utter, unadulterated, first-class bull-excrement?

Because there aren't any. Funny, that.

Love the ranting - it shows that the best you have is a strong emotional attachment to a particular answer no matter what the facts are. It must be why you continue to ask questions about stuff that we admittedly don't have a complete answer to, in hopes of building up some sort of argument from ignorance.

Even if your claim is true, that means we have one more example of it existing than we do of an instance of a useful supernatural explanation.

But in any case, there are lots of things which change depending on the tools we use to observe them. The equations for stellar nucleosynthesis look nothing like the sun as we see it visually. Written music looks nothing like a stereo which sounds different from the music it plays. A computer's output on a screen looks different than viewing the heat emitted from the CPU. Lots of examples of this happening in the real world, despite your claims it never happens.

 

[zippy2006]

I was trying to get at this by asking for a way to order red not attached to any object but no one took me up on it. People don't experience red. They experience things have various propertied which our visual processing classifies based on a number of categories. Trying to reduce it to a single experience of a disembodied abstract red isn't how reality works.

I agree, but I didn't get the impression that others were trying to reduce it in such a way. What makes you think they are?

 

[KCfromNC]

I agree, but I didn't get the impression that others were trying to reduce it in such a way. What makes you think they are?

Statements like this "Intuitively, I think "Red looks like that" is coherent."

 

[zippy2006]

Statements like this "Intuitively, I think "Red looks like that" is coherent."

You might be right, but one could also read that statement in a way that does not refer to "disembodied abstract red." For example: you might ask me what the color red looks like, and I could point to a red car and say, "Red looks like that." My statement is true even though there is nothing apart from the color of the car.

 

[KCfromNC]

You might be right, but one could also read that statement in a way that does not refer to "disembodied abstract red." For example: you might ask me what the color red looks like, and I could point to a red car and say, "Red looks like that." My statement is true even though there is nothing apart from the color of the car.

Except that's a red car, not a Red. And apples don't look like that at all, but they're also what Red looks like.

 

[zippy2006]

Except that's a red car, not a Red. And apples don't look like that at all, but they're also what Red looks like.

But he didn't say it was "a red," he said it's what red looks like. It is.

 

[quatona]

But he didn't say it was "a red," he said it's what red looks like. It is.

So red looks like having four wheels?

 

[KCfromNC]

So red looks like having four wheels?

And the experience of seeing that car feels like feeling the experience of feeling what it is like to look at an apple. Or whatever it is people use to try and convince themselves that there's something supernatural going on.

I think that philosophy of mind has tied itself in knots with all of this wacky stuff it is making up. Hopefully no one doing actual work in the science of brain function actually pays much attention to them.

 

[zippy2006]

So red looks like having four wheels?

I don't know why this is so hard. Distinguishing different modes of being ought to be elementary. Go read Aristotle's Categories. Colors do not exist in the same way substances do. That doesn't mean color doesn't exist. If someone points to a car and says "It's red!" and you answer by saying, "No, it's a car!" then you're either not trying very hard or you're not much of a philosopher. Either way they're done talking to you.

 

[quatona]

I don't know why this is so hard. Distinguishing different modes of being ought to be elementary. Go read Aristotle's Categories.

Yes, Aristotle has his opinions.

Colors do not exist in the same way substances do. That doesn't mean color doesn't exist.

Depends entirely on how you define "exist".

If someone points to a car and says "It's red!" and you answer by saying, "No, it's a car!" then you're either not trying very hard or you're not much of a philosopher.

It seems to me that when you change the wording of the statements in question like you did, you are not much of a philosopher.

Either way they're done talking to you.

If they aren´t philosophers, that is.

 

[zippy2006]

If they aren´t philosophers, that is.

Rather, they aren't sophists. There is a difference. Good luck, then.

 

[quatona]

Good luck, then.

Thanks. Good luck with what?