John M wrote:
> Brent,
> there is wisdom in your views - b u t -...
>
> Does anybody really 'know'- 'experience'-and indeed: ' feel' what and how
> another person idenfifies internally feeling the color red?
I think 'know' and 'experience' are different. We all think that we know how another person feels
when they hit their thumb with a hammer - because we've done that and we remember how it feels. But
instead of seeing the other person hit their thumb and hearing their reaction, suppose we observed
all their brain and other neural and hormonal processes at the time and suppose we knew enough about
human brains that we could make one. I'm suggesting that we could know how the person felt about
hitting his thumb just from that "internal" observation. And then, carrying that a step further, we
could infer how chimpanzees feel from their neural processes, and dogs, and mice, and...
> All physical-physiological data can be fixed, yet it is open whether
> another person feels 'red' as I do 'green. (Long standing debate os psych
> lists).
But is it really in doubt, or is it just a philosophical game. Knowledge is usually taken to mean
true belief that is justified: not certain.
> Then again we forget the big mystery: the (feeling of) SELF, and I mean it
> in a wider sense, not only human. I try to identify it (am not satisfied)
> with the broader effect of an intereffecting relational group on its
> wide-range environmental impacts. The 'self' does not end at the skin (I say
> that metaphorically), but depends on the 'within-skin' processes of
> interrelated and self-reflected relations in the 'beyond skin' relations.
> Now these are just as individual,as DNA or fingerprint (just 2 silly
> examples) and so is the interrelation with the beyond-skin world. No two
> 'self-s' relate identically.
1) How do you know this? and 2) how about "similarly"? Sure DNAs are unique and so are
fingerprints - but that doesn't mean we can't understand how another person's fingers work.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Sat Jul 22 2006 - 16:22:53 PDT