I think it’s important to distinguish between subjective experience and verbal reports of subjective experience.
You’ve convinced me that my verbal reports of subjective experience are untrustworthy. The next time I make (or am tempted to make) an assertion like “I see a right angle,” I will ask myself, “Do I really see a right angle? What is actually going on here?” whereas before I would not have bothered to do so. So, thank you for the help understanding myself. That’s a big step.
On the other hand, you haven’t quite made out the case for distrusting the experiences themselves. For example, suppose I dream of a quasi-red door. Duly skeptical about verbal reports, I do not verbally specify whether the door was red or grey or colorless or something strangely in-between. However, I remember the dream, and label the dream as “Dream X.” When I wake up in the morning, I log “Dream X” in my dream journal. The next night, I have Dream X again. The night after, I dream of a completely colorless door, and don’t label it as Dream X. I’m doing (epistemologically) useful work here, right? Even if I can’t reliably describe exactly what the dream corresponds to in formal, verbal, explicit terminology, I’m still keeping track of whether I had a particular experience or not. I don’t see any reason to question and double-check whether I actually dreamed about a sort-of-reddish door or was just imagining that I dreamed about it. Do you?
I think it’s important to distinguish between subjective experience and verbal reports of subjective experience.
You’ve convinced me that my verbal reports of subjective experience are untrustworthy. The next time I make (or am tempted to make) an assertion like “I see a right angle,” I will ask myself, “Do I really see a right angle? What is actually going on here?” whereas before I would not have bothered to do so. So, thank you for the help understanding myself. That’s a big step.
On the other hand, you haven’t quite made out the case for distrusting the experiences themselves. For example, suppose I dream of a quasi-red door. Duly skeptical about verbal reports, I do not verbally specify whether the door was red or grey or colorless or something strangely in-between. However, I remember the dream, and label the dream as “Dream X.” When I wake up in the morning, I log “Dream X” in my dream journal. The next night, I have Dream X again. The night after, I dream of a completely colorless door, and don’t label it as Dream X. I’m doing (epistemologically) useful work here, right? Even if I can’t reliably describe exactly what the dream corresponds to in formal, verbal, explicit terminology, I’m still keeping track of whether I had a particular experience or not. I don’t see any reason to question and double-check whether I actually dreamed about a sort-of-reddish door or was just imagining that I dreamed about it. Do you?