On 7/1/2014 1:09 AM, LizR wrote:
On 1 July 2014 17:38, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 6/30/2014 9:03 PM, LizR wrote:
Well, that's quite straightforward. Brent is assuming the (so called)
Aristotelean
paradigm, and hence that his mother /is/ her brain.
I'm assuming (on some evidence) that she, her stream of consciousness, is
what her
brain does. For example, she remembers her childhood very clearly, better
than the
recent past (like whether or not she's told you about her childhood in the
last two
days). I don't see how this jibes with Kim's idea of "poor reception".
It /doesn't/ jibe with it, that was his point.
As far as I can see, Kim is suggesting that "poor reception" - the workings of memory,
perception and so on - cause a consciousness which is basically unchanged to appear
different to the outside world. As he (?) says, one doesn't feel that one's mind changes
as one gets older,
I don't think that's true. I think differently than I did as a child. As a child one
experiences many more things as new, fresh, surprising.
one feels that external things have changed - e.g. my memory may fail me more, but (on
this view) that is an external thing, a piece of wetware, going wrong, rather than
something about me that has changed.
But I see this as denial of the simple fact that there is no sense to saying one is the
same person without one's memories. My father died of Alzheimer's and he was definitely
not the same person, in the sense of personality, when he had lost his memory. Of course
he was the same person in the physical and legal sense of continuity. I think it's mere
wishful thinking to suppose there is a "you" a "soul" that is independent of all your
memories (including the unconscious ones).
Brent
Apologies if I am misrepresenting Kim here, that was my reading. It seems like a
particularly clear cut distinction between the "Aristotle" and "Plato" camps' views,
which is why I tried to highlight that fact (if fact it be).
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