I’m not sure that analogy can be extended to our cognitive processes, since we know for a fact that: 1. We talk about many things, such as free will, whose existence is controversial at best, and 2. Most of the processes causally leading to verbal expression are preconscious. There is no physical cause preventing us from talking about perceptions that our verbal mechanisms don’t have direct causal access to for reasons that are similar to the reasons that we talk about free will.
Why must A cause C for C to be able to accurately refer to A? Correlation through indirect causation could be good enough for everyday purposes. I mean, you may think the coincidence is too perfect that we usually happen to experience whatever it is we talk about, but is it true that we can always talk about whatever we experience? (This is an informal argument at best, but I’m hoping it will contradict one of your preconceptions.)
I don’t say that we can talk about every experience, only that if we do talk about it, then the basic words/concepts we use are about things that influence our talk. Also, the causal chain can be as indirect as you like: A causes B causes C … causes T, where T is the talk; the talk can still be about A. It just can’t be about Z, where Z is something which never appears in any chain leading to T.
I just now added the caveat “basic” because you have a good point about free will. (I assume you mean contracausal “free will”. I think calling that “free will” is a misnomer, but that’s off topic.) Using the basic concepts “cause”, “me”, “action”, and “thing” and combining these with logical connectives, someone can say “I caused my action and nothing caused me to cause my action” and they can label this complex concept “free will”. And that may have no referent, so such “free will” never causes anything. But the basic words that were used to define that term, do have referents, and do cause the basic words to be spoken. Similarly with “unicorn”, which is shorthand for (roughly) a “single horned horse-like animal”.
An eliminativist could hold that mental terms like “qualia” are referentless complex concepts, but an epiphenomenalist can’t.
I’m not sure that analogy can be extended to our cognitive processes, since we know for a fact that: 1. We talk about many things, such as free will, whose existence is controversial at best, and 2. Most of the processes causally leading to verbal expression are preconscious. There is no physical cause preventing us from talking about perceptions that our verbal mechanisms don’t have direct causal access to for reasons that are similar to the reasons that we talk about free will.
Why must A cause C for C to be able to accurately refer to A? Correlation through indirect causation could be good enough for everyday purposes. I mean, you may think the coincidence is too perfect that we usually happen to experience whatever it is we talk about, but is it true that we can always talk about whatever we experience? (This is an informal argument at best, but I’m hoping it will contradict one of your preconceptions.)
I don’t say that we can talk about every experience, only that if we do talk about it, then the basic words/concepts we use are about things that influence our talk. Also, the causal chain can be as indirect as you like: A causes B causes C … causes T, where T is the talk; the talk can still be about A. It just can’t be about Z, where Z is something which never appears in any chain leading to T.
I just now added the caveat “basic” because you have a good point about free will. (I assume you mean contracausal “free will”. I think calling that “free will” is a misnomer, but that’s off topic.) Using the basic concepts “cause”, “me”, “action”, and “thing” and combining these with logical connectives, someone can say “I caused my action and nothing caused me to cause my action” and they can label this complex concept “free will”. And that may have no referent, so such “free will” never causes anything. But the basic words that were used to define that term, do have referents, and do cause the basic words to be spoken. Similarly with “unicorn”, which is shorthand for (roughly) a “single horned horse-like animal”.
An eliminativist could hold that mental terms like “qualia” are referentless complex concepts, but an epiphenomenalist can’t.