In Conversation: W. V. Quine - Block Panel - Section 1

[ShoobyBugger]

Truly amazing how little is said in 7 minutes and 55 seconds.

[thesomewhatlostboys]

the hesitation within this ultimate divide of the color seen by both is of personal disability. As to say 'i am a different color" only differs from obvious relation, is in the terms of predetermined communication, they themselves deem necessary.

[GaryGeckDotCom]

To quote the great logician, Dr Hao Wang (Kurt Gödel's confidant) in his book, Beyond Reductionism (pg 8):

[Quine and Carnap's philosophies] "fail to give an adequate

account of logic (or of mathematics ). This , in my opinion , discredits

their views in a basic way in the light of the fact that logic is so central

for both of them ."

...And he spends most of his book developing this. I highly recommend it!

[503mindst]

thank you for making my term less difficult.

[iamthewalrusQ]

Wow. Excellent. 

[Thinkingbeingone]

Again with regard to Quine's view that subjective experience doesn't affect communication. One person may see red and call it red. Another person may see green and but call it red because he mistakenly learned to call that red as a child. Each person is having a different subjective experience but it doesn't affect their communication because they both call it red.

[HubTM]

@Thinkingbeingone apologies for replying to an old comment! The problem is that you are, maybe unintentionally, referring to "red" as an objective phenomenon (and also "green") when you say "see green but call it red". Your wording implies that we are perceiving a publicly available qualia: "greenness", when Quine's point is that there is no such objective qualia or 'class of green things' - that this reference to colour comes from our use of language alone and is irreducible beyond that

[Hallibutbouy]

Ah, Mr Ned 'Potato head' Block, I can never get over how much he looks like Mr Potato Head!!! Pure entertainment!!! Mr. Potato head did in fact exist at this time too!! I wonder if he was ever in a room while someone was playing with Mr Potato head or even watching a Mr Potato head advert! That would have been good enough. He has made an effort to look a bit cooler nowadays but we're all loosing out. I bet if he went back to Mr. Potato head imitation I bet he would get more lecture attendance!

[Bassmaster86]

Look at Neddy Block at 4:18...he is having difficulties understaning Quine.

[Thinkingbeingone]

It sounds funny to say of something nonexistent that it is nonexistent.

Somehow it seems redundant.

"This nonexisting thing is a nonexisting thing." Well, DUH!

[Bassmaster86]

this is important in metaphysics- for what is called the law of the identity of inderscernibles.

[rh001YT]

The inverted spectrum cannard is just that. "Philosophers", especially of the analytic schools, are notorious for their bad taste in clothing, grooming and home decor. It could be that Quine does not have good taste - lacks some brains structures. Then of course it would not occur to him that there could not be color schemes that "work" (and sell) if we did not all "experience" colors in a similar way. One could suggest that we experience the color red as green, but that the relationships ...

[theoneclyde]

@rh001YT That empirical 'support' you suggest does not do the work you think it does. There is no question about the effectiveness of communication, marketing, etc. The question is about identity between the qualities of two separate subjects inner sensations.

Your example only works if we grant these identities can be verified by comparisons of overt behavior. That's exactly what's at issue.

Your attempt to defame analytic philosophers also does not provide any support to your claims.

[rh001YT]

@theoneclyde The extreme similarity in response among different people for the same stimuli suggests an inner mechanism that is nearly identical in function. Also, we need not only "observe" the overt behavior of others, we can also be the subject, and we can ask ourselves and others to describe what is going on in them due to the stimuli. A reality check can be helpful.

[theoneclyde]

@rh001YT Again, the issue is IDENTITY between the qualitative aspects of these experiences. I think you keep missing that. The thought experiment is silly, as are most which have little or no basis in reality. I think Quine is onto that, but is expressing it in a manner that is more polite within this milieu.

I think that analytic philosophers are interesting critters... but feel no need to sully them anonymously in youtube comments. I find it *interesting* that you do.

[rh001YT]

@theoneclyde It is autistic that anyone would suggest seriously a lack of significanct similarity amongst humans regarding whatever is in the black box of the mind. The identity is proved by the outcome combined with personal observation & dialogue with others. His life's work: a rationalization of a bias, his bias likely formed by an unsavory childhood experience(s). He was but a ratty little mouse. No one finds his type interesting except his type - it's all vanity and flattery.

[theoneclyde]

@rh001YT I guess you are keeping tabs on the popularity fluctuations and the developmental irregularities that correlate to those. Interesting.

So you are arguing for the identity between the properties of different individuals qualitative states... by calling other people unpopular canards?

Toodle-o and good luck with your *popular* programme.

[rh001YT]

@theoneclyde May I point out that you initiated contact with me. And I am very happy to see you go. No doubt you are one of them. Enjoy your sad vanity/flattery fests. I only wish I could put an end to your genetic type - then the world would be a more be a more beautiful place. PS: if you have children, and you don't ruin them, they will despise you.

[rh001YT]

@theoneclyde Also, analytic philosophers need not only to be defamed, but it should be pointed out what weird, loser personality types they usually have. Typically I would think they were bullied as children. These people are not real, and of the male variety they are not real men, never good looking, never the desire of women, and generally dull and boring, except of course their own kind will laugh at their unfunny jokes.

[Thinkingbeingone]

He didn't say that subjective experience doesn't exist, he said it has doesn't matter for communication. To express the situation behavioristically, your subjective conception of red and my subjective conception of red may not be exactly the same, but as long as we both stop at the red light, the slight differences in each of our subjective conceptions of red don't matter.

[baaddavid]

Quine is dead.... he is no longer the greatest living English speaking philosopher...

[polymath7]

And who, in your judgement, might be?

[YouCouldGetBodied]

how could it possibly be that there is no such thing that exists (according to any reasonable definition of existence) that can be described as a "subjective experience of consciousness"? I am not a 'qualia freak' (to use a term of Frank Jackon) in the sense that i do believe qualia are produced by physical properties and happenings in the brain, but they are not uniform in human beings and thus produce subjective phenomenal experience. I do not see how this isn't the case.

[branlory]

The look on Quine's face during Block's question (at 2:16) is priceless, it just kills me. It's as if he thought Block was was the world's biggest moron.

Also, at 2:44 "inverted spectrum hypothesis, the idea that perhaps things that we both call red look to you the way things we both call green look to me". Yeah, that'd explain your tie. :-P

[megoku]

Thank goodness for flame0430.

[paparodendro1]

I'll drink to that!

[Angk0rwat]

Flame430 is a sufficient condition for making youtube worthwhile.

[Braves4321]

Oh. my. God. Thank you for putting this up, flame!!!!

[sugizodx]

oh man oh man w.v.o quine is one of my heroes, thank you very much for uploading this!

[mavaddat]

I love Quine. He is great at deflating or diminishing traditional philosophical problems.

[InfectedDaemon]

Deflating at the very least! Very elegant in solving that philosophical problem (your red is my green) by stating that it cannot be experimented upon, and that its essentially meaningless.

[wilthiswork]

Did you watch the next two sections? Late in Section 2, Quine repeats this charge of meaninglessness. Then Ned Block proposes a way to test such a thing (early in Section 3) and Quine accepts it.. quite willingly I might add, considering how convinced he seemed that the question was meaningless.

[InfectedDaemon]

I think its still meaningless. Let me explain: Block got him off-guard, the fact is that a person that sees green where I see red will inevitably have grown up attributing to that same color all the social implications that it may have. His memory will be wired much the same way mine is when I see red (the color of blood and war and maybe passion for example). So indeed, making a test to perceive this difference in the way his neurons react to the input from his eyes... is hard to imagine.

[wilthiswork]

You seem to be suggesting that social learning and meanings will have a larger (or as large) an impact on which area of the brain lights up from which color as the raw physiology and wavelengths would. Am I right?

In any case, it seem to me that Block has provided a good prima facie reason to find the idea of an inverted spectrum meaningful, even by Quine's lights. To resist this conclusion, it seems like you have to introduce novel ways of thinking about how the physiology of our brain works.

[InfectedDaemon]

It isn't novel at all, the brain works by creating associations. That is why learn things easier with mnemonics, we make stories out of things. That is why you relate a song to a sentiment (they remind you of a past lover or what not). That is how all memory is stored. For more information read up on the lymbic system (determines primitive reactions, sentiments and memory).

The brain is not really a computer... but it can be like a series of .dll files.

[wilthiswork]

Novel according to a behavioristic worldview. Quine is dismissing these problems from a sense of methodological economy. He's so motivated by this that he is at times eliminative about consciousness. What you said sounds more like "cognitive revolution" stuff, not Quine-Rorty-Churchland elimination.

The claim that qualia is more like memory of a song than a pre-embedded cognitive response seems debatable, and what you've said about the way we associate colors with meanings seems un-Quineian.

[InfectedDaemon]

I don't care if its un-Quineian. Its fact. If you'd like to read on the subject, I'd recommend "Clinical Neurophyshology" by PJ Snyder, "Cognitive Neuroscience by Gazzaniga or even Clinical Neuroanatomy by Richard S. Snell (although the last one talks only briefly about it). Maybe your not completely up-to-date (understandably since "lusters" in the medical field can happen every 2 to 4 years and are hard to keep up with in all subjects even for physicians).

[wilthiswork]

I don't need to read up on the subject. The point I am making is that in order to dismiss these philosophical problems the way you want to, it would help to stay Quineian. The mental view you're endorsing was avoided by Quine partly because it invites certain philosophical problems. If you're happy with colors lighting up certain parts of the brain based on what kinds of meanings we associate with those colors, then it's odd to praise Quine for solving philosophical problems.

[wilthiswork]

I'm not saying that you're wrong in your assertions about cognitive science, I am saying that you seem inconsistent in your praise of Quine's dismissal of the inverted spectrum, but willing to allow for social meaning to have a starring role in why certain wavelengths cause certain physiological responses.

[InfectedDaemon]

I thought he was expounding on on what I just affirmed above, its not until the next video that I see he had no knowledge of current views (since this video is, at most, from the 90s).

Still, the affirmation he made in the video holds true knowing what we know about the brain now.

[wilthiswork]

Even if he knew what we now "know" about the brain, he would have to abandon his behavioristic outlook in order to share your reasons for dismissing the "inverted spectrum" problem.

I therefore find it odd that you could find his dismissal "elegant" and echo mevaddat's sentiments.

Plus, I doubt that what we know about the brain is as obvious to interpret and apply to qualia as you believe. Does the brain not light up at all, for example, when encountering a new shade?

[wilthiswork]

Also, babies brains light up in a different area than adult brains. Adult brains light up around the place language does, and speakers of different languages can have different perceptual abilities at picking out shades. Now, why couldn't an inverted spectrum test (such as the one Block proposed) be done on babies? Also, presumably people in similar linguistic and cultural contexts attribute similar meanings to colors, so why not do the test on people from similar cultures?

[Perlustrate]

This is very nice.

[sssswwwsssss]

This is (going to be) the best series I've yet seen on YT. Thank you so much.