Thanks, Steve.
I like what you wrote, and I like Eric's response, as well. I have many
related thoughts popping up, but nothing to add that is clear enough to be
useful.
I do think the idea that one maintains models of oneself and others is
particularly significant and hope to later return to it.
One more point about the discussion in general, which I'll just slip in here if
you don't mind -- it gradually dawned on me that there are two different,
insufficiently explicated contexts in which our conversations are evolving,
i.e. accuracy, verity and "realness" of information about self and others,
versus nature, quality or texture of experience of self and others.
Regards,
Rikus
From: Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 6:12 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Direct conversation - 1st vs 3rd person
Rikus -
Nicely stirred.
This is a very well articulated example of why I am
confused/offended/confounded when people talk about someone else knowing my
intentions (or experience) better than I do. In most cases, it would seem to
be simply absurd.
There are some cases where I am self-deluded, allowing myself to rationalize
an explanation for my own feelings or behaviour which is not real, but rather
conveniently fits some agenda or self-image I am trying to maintain. Once I
have reached that level of sophistication in my self-delusion, I acquiesce to
Nick's ideas/references about psychotherapy... I believe that trained
professionals can be of help in untangling these tangles of self-misdirection
and self-delusion. But for normal, everyday experience and perception... we
can and do "know ourselves" quite well.
Otherwise, I cannot imagine how anyone else would believe they understand my
experience or feelings or intentions better than I do. And I mean this
qualitatively... they simply cannot know any of it except through their own
"model" of who they think I am and what they think my actions imply about that
model.
I believe that Nick's original position about our 1st person experience being
qualitatively the same as our 3rd person experience excepting the specific POV
we have (seeing/hearing/feeling through our own sensory apparatus) might reduce
to saying that our own "self-knowledge" is *also* based on evaluating a "model"
of ourselves in an identical fashion to the model we have of others, excepting
that our evidence/data for our own model has the unique qualities of being
situated from a specific point of view, being pervasive (we observe ourselves
continuously but others only now and then), and by being informed directly by
our own biochemical state (emotional) and only minimally (pheremones?) by
others'.
So... even if I accept Nick's hypothesis that our 1st person experience is
essentially the same as our 3rd person except for POV.... I say the POV is high
dimensional (6DOF geometry, direct access to our own sensory apparatus,
biochemical, etc.). In the abstract, the differences might be considered to
be "small" but in the real/practical/physical, these are huge differences
yielding a qualitatively distinct difference between "self" and "other".
Perhaps studies of infant development lead us to other beliefs (the
observation of babies "discovering" their own hand belongs to their own will
after seeing it enter and leave their field of view, etc.). Does someone have
more background on this stage of development and it's presumed implications?
- Steve
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