Glen, 

 

Thanks.  

 

You often and rightly accuse me of overstating stuff, and I apologize if I am 
about to do it again.  But I think you are perhaps saying that there are no 
idiosyncratic experiences?  That an experience, to be an experience, has to be 
repeated or shared or both.  If so, I think I agree with you.  And a very 
strident position it would be if that were the position.  I think many 
humanists would assert that ONLY idiosyncratic experiences are real and that it 
is upon the uniqueness of individual experience that we must focus.  Hmmm!  

 

I feel that this thought is a genuine crowbar.

 

. It's that protocol that carries the knowledge, not the internal experiences 
or the particular toolchain used to execute the protocol.

 

Can you pry some more things with it? 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[email protected]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 9:19 AM
To: FriAM <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

 

Right. I'm not at all bored with your conversation. But, to me, what/how we 
know things has more to do with *repeated* invocation of thoughts/behaviors, 
not unitary experiences. Being as "episodic" as I am, any single experience is 
useless, meaningless nonsense. But a repeated experience acquires meaning. I'm 
that way with names, too. People tell me their names and I forget them 
immediately ... even if I use their name repeatedly right after I learn it. But 
if I meet that person twice, three times, etc., then their name (the word "Bob" 
or whatever) takes on meaning ... becomes grounded to that person.

 

It seems so silly to talk about epistemology without requiring repeated 
experiences. A one-off conversation with Brigham Young means nothing. But 
repeated conversations means something. Granted, it's impossible to treat the 
Nth experience accumulation without talking about how the 2nd experience 
accumulates knowledge from the 1st experience. So, accounting for trust 
transfer from your one-off conversation with BY to another person is important. 
But what we're really after is the *accumulation*. Consideration of the 1st 
experience is only in service to consideration of the 1000th or the 10,000th. 

 

I suppose we *could* get there by talking about how to predictably *force* Nick 
to have the same experience you had (of unicorns or whatever). But, again, to 
do that, we'd have to talk about the science ... controlled manipulation of 
behavior that has been shown to channel people such that they have some 
experience. Attributing too much causal influence of the drug (or any 
particular tool in the toolkit) ignores/discounts the objective, which is the 
method, the process, the protocol. It's that protocol that carries the 
knowledge, not the internal experiences or the particular toolchain used to 
execute the protocol.

On 3/10/20 1:48 AM, Prof David West wrote:

> I don't think bored is a correct term. 

> 

> More interested in examples and arguments-tied-to-examples that are less 
> fanciful than unicorns.

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 

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