On Jun 1, 6:04 pm, Torgny Tholerus <tor....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> I look at myself in the third person view. I then see a lot of protons reacting with eachother, and I see how they explain my behavior and the words I produce. I see how they cause me saying "I am conscious! I have a free will! I am happy!".
Torgny, you give yourself away in the phrase 'I look at myself in the
third person view'. The 3rd-person world thus revealed to you can
only be encountered in the way you describe within a 1st-person pov
where it is modelled and grasped. Given that you directly refer to
this view in your justification, and further given that you have
passed, as far as I'm concerned, the Turing Test, you indeed do
possess such a 1st-person pov. Consequently you are as conscious as I
am, and you are just doing what Galen Strawson calls 'looking-
glassing' - i.e. "using a term in such a way that whatever one means
by it, it excludes what the term means".
It is a category error of the first magnitude to believe that the 3rd-
person world simply exists 'out there by itself'. To claim this is to
try to claim that there is nothing, and nobody to care about it - the
ultimate attempt at self-defeating nihilism. The source of the error
- ironically - is that it's the 1st-person pov alone that allows us to
create the 3rd-person models that we are then at liberty to mistake
for *that which is modelled*. This very act conjures up the 'zombie
3rd-person world' *which exists only in our imagination* (what Bruno I
think calls 1st-person plural). What is in fact 'out there' beyond
the 1st person - i.e. whatever is unconscious from one's own pov - is
*not* a 3rd-person world. It is the rest of the *participatory*
world, within which one gets a vote solely in virtue of the fact that
one is emergently constituted by participatory 'elements' (i.e.
process and structure). These, by directly *grasping* each other,
without mediation, are the foundation of everything that 'knows' and
'acts'.
If you're not participating, you can't exist, or know, or act. Sorry
- welcome to the club!
David
> Bruno Marchal skrev:Le 01-juin-07, à 14:35, Torgny Tholerus a écrit :The only thing that exists is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons reacting with each other inside my brain.Are you *sure*?
> By the way, are you more sure about proton than about your belief in proton? What would that mean?
> I look at myself in the third person view. I then see a lot of protons reacting with eachother, and I see how they explain my behavior and the words I produce. I see how they cause me saying "I am conscious! I have a free will! I am happy!". This is all that is. This explains everything.
> --
> Torgny Tholerus
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Received on Mon Jun 11 2007 - 12:43:41 PDT