On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 1:07 PM, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote: > The only rationale for adducing the additional > existence of any 1-p experience in a 3-p world is the raw fact that we > possess it (or "seem" to, according to some). We can't "compute" the > existence of any 1-p experiential component of a 3-p process on purely > 3-p grounds.
It seems to me that what we know is our subjective conscious experience. From this, we infer the existence of ourselves as individuals who persist through time, as well as the independent existence of an external world that in some way causes our conscious experience. So we know 1-p directly, while we only infer the existence of 3-p. However, you seem to start from the assumption that 1-p is in the weaker subordinate position of needing to be explained "in terms of" 3-p, while 3-p is implicitly taken to be unproblematic, fundamental, and needing no explanation. But why is that? The physical world doesn't explain it's own existence and nature, does it? So what caused it? What explains it's initial state? Why does it have it's current state? Why does it change in time the way that it does? If we're taking the existence and nature of things as a "given", why can't we instead say that 1-p is fundamental? What is lost? What makes this an unpalatable option? It seems to me that it should certainly be the default position. I like Philip Goff's idea of "Ghosts" as an alternative to Chalmers' Zombies: http://consciousnessonline.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/philip-goff-paper.pdf First, from the introduction: "Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature concerns how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are conscious but whose nature is exhausted by their being conscious. We can call such a ‘purely conscious’ creature a ghost." Then on page 7: "The way into imagining your ghost twin is to go through the familiar Cartesian process of doubting everything that it is possible to doubt. For all you know for sure, the physical world around you might be a delusion, placed in you by an incredibly powerful evil demon. The arms and legs you seem to see in front of you, the heart you seem to feel beating beneath your breast, your body that feels solid and warm to the touch, all may be figments of a particularly powerful delusion. You might not even have a brain. The only state of affairs you know for certain to obtain is that you exist as a thing such that there is something that it is like to be that thing. You know for certain that you are a thing that has an experience as of having arms and legs, a beating heart, a warm, solid body. You know that you are a subject of experience. But you may not be a creature that exists in space, or has physical parts. It is by engaging in the process of Cartesian doubting that one arrives at a conception of one’s ghost twin. I am not suggesting that the process of Cartesian doubting demonstrates the possibility of ghosts, but I am suggesting that it goes a good way to demonstrating their conceivability. To entertain the possibility that I am the only thing that exists, and that I exist as a thing with no properties other than my conscious experience, just is to conceive of my ghost twin. Any philosopher who agrees with Descartes up to and including the Cogito has a strong prima facie obligation to accept the conceivability of ghosts." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
