Le 08-août-05, à 17:49, Lee Corbin a écrit :
(True, we can also extend sympathy by believing it to be utterly true that he is experiencing pain, but I think that John and I (and many) are simply not comfortable with introducing a "reality", namely, "subjective reality" to cover this simple situation.)
This amounts to dismissing the first person. I am sure you did have known to be living some "subjective reality". What exactly makes you not comfortable with the "other mind" reality? Is it the fact that it is not verifiable? In that case again, incompleteness theorem can be used as a cure, because it makes utterly clear that for the sound machine there are many truth which are guess-able but unprovable.
Is it the fact that once you accept the reality of the first person experiences, then we are led to that first person indeterminacy from which the physical laws emerges, assuming comp (which you accept)?
You are neither a zombie, nor a solipsist, so what is the origin of you dismissing the reality of first person experiences. I am very curious, because, as you say, you are not the only one.
Is it because you do feel some inconsistency with your physicalist assumptions, once we take seriously the "assumption" that others can feel genuine pleasures and pains.
Anyway. We are not supposed to search comfort, but to reason from facts and assumptions, isn't it?
Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
