[FRIAM] mental imagery

[Nicholas Thompson]

That's odd; so am I.  Yet we have disagreed on such things in the past.

 ​I am rushing to beat the dying of the light, here, but here is the Wittgenstein quote to chew on.  Note the italicized premise.  The quote doesn't make much sense if one doesn't incorporate that.

“Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a ‘beetle.’  No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.  – Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.  – But suppose the word ‘beetle’ had a use in these people’s language?  – If so it would not be used as the name of a thing.  The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.  – No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.”  --


The question is h0w do I square my understanding of this sentiment with my belief that one can indeed do science on the experience of migraine auras.  I do so by putting a lot of weight on our shared experience of auras; in fact, it was not until somebody told me about migraine auras that I fully perceived my own.

N
________________________________
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Russell Standish <lists at hpcoders.com.au>
Sent: Saturday, November 8, 2025 4:51 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] mental imagery

On Fri, Nov 07, 2025 at 08:31:50PM -0500, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Hi, Glen,
>
> As usual, I have launched myself into alien territory without a pass port.  I
> cannot follow the analysis stuff, but allow me to comment on objectivity.  I
> dont think it has anything to do with physiiological correlates-=- that's just
> icing on the cake.  Do you get migraine auras?  Lets imagine for a moment that
> migraine auras had absolutely no physiological correlates.  How would we go
> about doing science on them?  Or are they a subjective phenomenon.  That would
> be odd because already we seem to be talking about them. they seem to be on the
> face, intersubjective.  I wonder what the difference is between intersubjective
> and objective?

According to some, no difference at all. I belong to the school of
thought that there is no objective, just intersubjective.


--

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Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
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