1Z wrote:
> > I'll try to nail this here. I take 'ontology' to refer to issues of
> > existence or being, where 'epistemology' refers to knowledge, or 'what
> > and how we know'. When I say that our 'ontology' is manifest, I'm
> > claiming (perhaps a little more cautiously than Descartes): 'I am
> > that which experiences here'. I take these to be an ontological
> > continuum or set of equivalences, not properties: I ->experience ->
> > here. For reasons of economy, I see no need to postulate any other
> > ontological status.
> What about all the stuff that appears, subjectively , to be not-me ?
>
> If I ignore it, I am not making full use of my only epistemologial
> resource.
>
> If I treat is as 1st-personal as well as third-personal, I am
> overcomplicating things.
Hi Peter
I'd like to be really careful here to avoid getting into some of the
same loops that so frustrated Alan on the FOR list! I may well be dead
wrong in what I'm claiming, but at least I'd like us both to be clear
on precisely what in fact this is.
Firstly, my overall enterprise is to arrive at some general description
of things that relies on as few explanatory entities as possible. Now,
IMO we cannot avoid taking first person into account - I find I can't
begin to have an intelligible discussion with anyone who doesn't accept
this (not you clearly). From this, if first person is to be a given,
the simplest approach is to explore whether, ontologically speaking, we
could take it to be the sole given, and my project has been to see
where this leads. One of the difficulties has been to pin down the
language to distinguish the different meanings associated with the term
'first person', so I've attempted to define certain usages (which I'm
happy at any time to abandon for better ones). These are:
1) FP1g - primitive 'global' first person entity or context
2) FP1i - individual person delimited by primitive differentiation
(which is agnostic to comp, physics, or anything else at this logical
level)
3) FP2 - narrative references to first persons, as in 'David is a first
person', an attribution, as opposed to 'David-as-first-person', a
unique entity.
4) TP - third person, or structure-read-as-information, as opposed to
structure-demarcating-an-entity
Later on in the reply to Bruno from which you quote, and in some of the
earlier posts, I make the point that starting from such a generalised
or undifferentiated first person context we can see that certain sorts
of structural differentiation can create delimited zones within the
whole. Some of these zones take the form of individual first persons
(FP1i). Within each FP1i person so constituted exists a 'set of
capabilities' and a 'structural model of the world'. Which part of the
FP1i acts as 'perceiver' and which 'perceptual model' is simply an
aspect of function-from-structure. It happens to be the former that
has the organisation for representing information and self-reporting,
so it's the one that gets to enjoy 'experience'.
Within the structural model of the world - our only means of
representing, and through 'downloading', sharing information with other
first persons - there will of course be regions that we variously label
'self' (e.g. 'my arm') or 'other' (e.g. Peter Jones'). The latter, I
presume, would be an example of what you call 'stuff that appears,
subjectively , to be not-me'. Of course I agree that 'If I ignore it,
I am not making full use of my only epistemologial resource'. So, I
don't ignore it.
However, you go on: 'If I treat is as 1st-personal as well as
third-personal, I am overcomplicating things'. My response to this is
two-fold. First, of course, it is simply not the case that my
representation of 'Peter Jones' is the same as its presumed referent in
the world 'Peter Jones'. My assumption is that it is informationally
connected with this referent, and to an extent co-varies with it, but
it is well for me to remember that such representations are my
reponsibility and not yours. But more fundamentally, and this is why I
recapitulated my overall project at the outset, the intention is to
simplify, not complicate. My representation of 'Peter Jones' is a part
of my subjectivity, and it is a part I label 'third person' to
distinguish it from 'self', an evolutionarily useful distinction.
Peter Jones in the world I take to be another first person entity
(FP1i) that derives this status in virtue of being another delimited
zone, appropriately structured, within FP1g, the single ontological
context. Outside of my subjective model of the world, and that of
other first persons, in no sense is Peter Jones in the world 'third
person'. Only the *references* to Peter Jones are subjectively
categorised as such within individual world-models, and these are FP2
first-person analogs, or third person descriptions of first persons -
as distinct from 'instantiated first persons'.
Now it seems to me that all of the above has been accomplished without
moving outside of a primitive first person ontology. I have
distinguished various zones within this single context, and I've
suggested how one information structure can be used to 'label' another
(i.e. stand in relation to it) as 'third person' (description or
narrative), 'self', or 'other', and all without deploying any other
ontological type, other than metaphorically. That's what I'm trying to
achieve.
David
> David Nyman wrote:
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> > > All right. (I hope you realize that you are very ambitious, but then
> > > that is how we learn).
> >
> > Yes, learning is my aim here.
> >
> > > My terminological problem here is that "experience" and "knowledge"
> > > are usually put in the "epistemology" instead of ontology. Of course I
> > > know that you (and George, perhaps Stephen and Lee) would like to make
> > > primitive the first person notion(s) ... or the first persons
> > > themselves ?
> > > To be sure I have some problem to interpret this.
> >
> > I'll try to nail this here. I take 'ontology' to refer to issues of
> > existence or being, where 'epistemology' refers to knowledge, or 'what
> > and how we know'. When I say that our 'ontology' is manifest, I'm
> > claiming (perhaps a little more cautiously than Descartes): 'I am
> > that which experiences here'. I take these to be an ontological
> > continuum or set of equivalences, not properties: I ->experience ->
> > here. For reasons of economy, I see no need to postulate any other
> > ontological status.
>
> What about all the stuff that appears, subjectively , to be not-me ?
>
> If I ignore it, I am not making full use of my only epistemologial
> resource.
>
> If I treat is as 1st-personal as well as third-personal, I am
> overcomplicating things.
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Received on Mon Aug 07 2006 - 16:14:12 PDT