Phenomena

Phenoma are also ontological constructions.

We think we 'really' share them because we can talk as though we do.

They seem fundamental because we seem to 'refer' to them introspectively. But there is no reason why any two individuals' internal states should be 'commensurable' beyond what is required for mutual intelligibility.

This is why there can be no 'science' - no articulated theory - of consciousness. We do not share the aspects which we would need to articulate in order to make such a science possible.

Reminiscence ....

This now seems more important to me than when I first wrote it down:

"Kripke’s paradox cannot have the consequence that we cannot be sure that someone who states it is following the rules that make its statement intelligible."

It's really the solution to the paradox, and also an explanation of how we should think about language and certainty.

Introspection

If you can participate in this conversation, then you are a language user - you will feel like a language user (if you have any relevant feelings about it at all).

If you think 'what do I feel about what it would be appropriate to say, here?', then you are likely to come up with the right answer, since knowing the right thing to say is just what competent language users can do.

But the reliability of these introspections is misleading: it can make us think that these feelings and internal processes are at the root of the reliability of the move we feel is appropriate, or even of the language game itself.

(In order to show that a particular move in the game is reliable, or correct, we must produce an argument, not a feeling. It is incoherent to ask for an argument for the reliability of the whole game: an argument for the reliability of argument would not demonstrate anything.)

And this observation extends to our empirical intuitions as well as our 'language instinct'. It is not our sensory perceptions which make us reliable theorists - it is our ability to agree with each other about them. Our theories are linguistic artifacts.

Our ability to act in a rational way - an ability any moderately sentient animal exhibits to a greater or lesser extent - is not an ability to theorise, except under interpretation. If I describe a cat as having a theory, I am describing its behaviour in a certain way - as having a certain normative content. There will always be an alternative 'cognitive', or computational (homeostatic?) interpretation which elminates this content. This isn't possible in the case of a person who articulates a theory, because we can only produce a computational account of this behaviour by reducing the linguistic performance to something mechanical. Articulating a theory is participating in a conversation - we don't automatically do this by moving our jaws in certain ways and producing certain sounds.

I might, in a very complex conversation with you, give you an account of how your physiology and neurology instantiated certain cognitive/computational process in such a way as to produce the output we recognise as 'speech'. But when you said 'Ah yes, I see', I would hardly respond 'And there's another example of it working'.

Belief, Interpretation, and Criticism

In order to believe what you say, I have to understand it. I have to interpret it.

This means that I can't just 'accept' it. There is no belief without interpretation.

And there is no interepretation without critical interpretation. If I wonder 'what sense does this make?' then I am wondering 'how can this make sense?' This is the same as trying to figure out how I can continue the conversation with you.

Just because the outcomes of these reflections can seem obvious, and the reflections themselves 'subconscious', they are not therefore 'given' in any useful sense. They are the outcomes of cognitive processes which, if we are not able to articulate them, are still our 'practice'. They are things that we do.

In this sense, I cannot believe you without critically interpreting what you say: without, in the literary sense criticising you.

Whatever private reservations we might have, and however we might (again privately) engage only provisionally in a conversation, there are only some interpretations which are consistent with it being a conversation. When we articulate a criticism, therefore, it must be consistent with the possibility of the conversation within which it is articulated.

This means that there are some criticisms which are wrong (inconsistent with the the possibility of their supporting conversation), and some which are not-wrong. A disjunctive list of the not-wrong criticisms must be a correct criticism - however qualified and inconclusive.

The consequences of this may be trivial, however. Northanger Abbey is neither a Western nor a vaccuum cleaner repair manual. And the 'disjunctive list' may be unmanageably long.

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