David Nyman wrote: > Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and > machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your > helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of > my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I > hope this will be helpful for future discussion. > > THE APHORISMS > > We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind. > > What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams. > > Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us > - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see > itself). > Yes. This is the big issue.
(a) Descriptions of 'how it appears to us' (empirical science by the awake scientist!) and (b) Descriptions of 'what it is that appears to us as it does' (science of a noumenon) ....cannot be the same set of descriptions to the one in which 'the appearances' are being delivered. Especially when (b) descriptions are responsible for creating the way it appears in (a). Seems fairly self evident. Assuming (a) and (b) are identical (or that (b) is unapproachable) is not justified. The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind stuff' is wrong. /ALL/ of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that resulting in mind. The assumption in your statement is that we need something extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first person. ask this instead.... What kind of universe is it (= wots the stuff?, (b) and its behaviour) such that a 'first person perspective' can result in which it appears (a)-ish to us all, and in particular, makes a brain look brain when it is delivering the first person perspective which delivers (a) to us? Does X being self-evident classify X as an aphorism? I think not. :-) col --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
