Bruno writes > 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.
As anything scientific, yes. I agreed with John's statement: "Interpreted used as subjectivised. There is a fine line separating solipsism from craziness..." at least insofar as I may read that to mean that our subjective impressions actually turn out to be less reliable than our efforts to understand things objectively (3rd person). So I dismiss the 1st person, remarking that it's "existence" is but only to be expected. If an ape or a parrot could talk, it could yak on about it's impressions. And they'd be of little but therapeutic value. > I am sure you did have known to be living some "subjective reality". Well, by that you mean what I'd call my own 1st person impressions of the world. Yes. > What exactly makes you not comfortable with the "other mind" reality? I don't want to ascribe "reality" either to *my* 1st person whacked out drug-mediated experiences, or anyone else's. I prefer to reserve "reality" for 3rd person accounts. "the highest mountain in the world is located in Tibet" or some similar conjecture. > 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. So you say. And I confess I haven't the energy (and probably not the preparation) to study your thesis. So I'll wait for the experts to acclaim you. No one will cheer louder: "I knew him *before* the world saw the truth to COMP! He even knows who I am!". > 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)? This might be a good time to ask what is meant by that word you just used. Hal explained "computationalist hypothesis" as used by philosophers, e.g., that a robot (that was just CPU driven) could be conscious. I have believed that since 1966 when I used to argue about it with people in high school. *Lots* of people believe that. I have taken "COMP" to be Bruno's Thesis, in which practically everything can be derived fundamentally from the integers alone, using Gödel's results, and other rather recently discovered truths. > 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. Well, maybe some of the above helped to explain it. Basing stuff on "1st person" has a long history. That's what everyone, it seems to me, did before the scientific era (about 1600?). Even William James, I think, did some of that. So far as I know, nothing has ever come of it. My friends and I (and probably Daniel Dennett and so on) believe that people who demand a 1st person "account of the world" (e.g. Chalmers) will never get anywhere. That the "hard problem" or whatever is just a horrible consequence of the way sense impressions traveling on neurons give rise to people thinking that their own perceptions are a sort of reality independent of the physical reality. We think that this is a sort of delusion, although the very #?!&[EMAIL PROTECTED] structure of our language hideously leads from that to "who or what is being deluded?". That's it in a nutshell. > 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. Hmm? Well, what you write here doesn't seem at all wrong to me. I regard the "assumption" (as you call it) that others can feel pain and pleasure to be about as accurate as a statement as "less light gets to the ground during the night". That is, pretty basic. > Anyway. We are not supposed to search comfort, but to reason from facts > and assumptions, isn't it? It was just a figure of speech. You are free, of course, to use the word "reality" any way you want. I'm not comfortable for using it to describes one's subjective impressions, feelings, etc. Lee
