On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 6:00:17 PM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 7:49 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com >> <javascript:>>wrote: >> >> > I'm not claiming that intelligence == mind. >>> >> >> Do you believe that your fellow human beings have minds? If so why? >> > > Yes (weakly). Occam's razor. If I'm the only human being with a mind, > then, for some mysterious reason, there are two types of human beings: me > (with a mind) and the others (zombies). So heuristically I'm inclined to > believe that all human beings have a mind, although I know I will never be > able to prove it. >
I question whether it is possible to ask whether your fellow human beings have minds without resorting to sophistry. I say that not because I am incapable of questioning naive reasoning, but because it does not accurately represent the reality of the situation. Just as our 'belief' in our own mind is an a prori ontological condition which cannot be questioned without incurring a paradox (whatever disbelieves in its own mind is by definition a mind), the belief that our fellow human beings have minds does not necessarily require a logical analysis to arrive at. We know that we have access to information beyond what we can consciously understand, and part of that may very well include a capacity to sense, on some level, the authenticity of another mind, barring any prejudices which might interfere. Craig > > >> >> John K Clark >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com<javascript:> >> . >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
