[ExI] Subjective/Objective

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 2:23 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


> *> Cause-and-effect-based messaging, and words are, by design, abstracted
> away from whatever physical properties are representing them.  A
> transducing dictionary is required to know the meaning.*
>

*And where would the information needed to write such a dictionary come
from? There is only one possible place, objective examples. And even that
wouldn't enable you to bridge the objective/subjective divide unless you
make the assumption that there is ALWAYS a connection between intelligent
behavior and conscious states. *

*> When we are aware of many qualities at one time as one unified gestalt
> experience, something more is happening — effing of the ineffable.*
>

*Maybe so, but even if it's true there is absolutely no way to communicate
that "something" to anybody else. I don't often agree with Wittgenstein but
I do agree with what he said in the last sentence of the only book he
published in his lifetime, "Whereof one cannot speak, therefore one must be
silent." I have never had a mystical experience, but if I ever do I intend
to keep my mouth shut. *

*> If a new quality you have never experienced before, call it grue, was
> integrated with your familiar qualities, you would be able to say for the
> first time:*
> *    "Oh THAT is what grue is like."*
>

*You could make a noise like that with your mouth but it wouldn't help
anybody else understand what, if any, subjective conscious state you were
experiencing because the referent to the word "THAT" in the above is
"grue". And if you, and possibly nobody, has ever been "grue" before then
grue is "like" grue and "like" nothing else. *

*> It is a tautology that any kind of abstract messaging, like the word
> 'grue' alone, would not give you that ability.*
>


*And you think a dictionary is going to help you bridge the
objective/subjective divide? A dictionary, including the one you keep
talking about, is one big tautology, words that are defined by other words,
that are defined by yet more words, that are defined by .... *

*John K Clark*






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