David Nyman wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial sally on dreams and
> machines. Naturally I have arrogated the right to plagiarise your
> helpful comments in what follows, which is an aphoristic synthesis of
> my understanding of the main points that have emerged thus far. I
> hope this will be helpful for future discussion.
>
> THE APHORISMS
>
> We do not see the mind, we see *through* the mind.
>
> What we see through the mind - its contents - is mind-stuff: dreams.
>
> Hence dream content - i.e. whatever is capable of being present to us
> - can't be our ontology - this would be circular (the eye can't see
> itself).
>
Yes. This is the big issue.
(a) Descriptions of 'how it appears to us' (empirical science by the
awake scientist!)
and
(b) Descriptions of 'what it is that appears to us as it does' (science
of a noumenon)
....cannot be the same set of descriptions to the one in which 'the
appearances' are being delivered. Especially when (b) descriptions are
responsible for creating the way it appears in (a). Seems fairly self
evident. Assuming (a) and (b) are identical (or that (b) is
unapproachable) is not justified.
The assumption in your comments is that there is/needs to be 'mind
stuff' is wrong. /ALL/ of it is "some undescribed stuff", not just that
resulting in mind. The assumption in your statement is that we need
something extra just to explain mind pressupposes that everything else
is sorted out. It hasn't. It never has been. The singular unique feature
of mind is not 'stuff', it is merely the perspective of it .... first
person.
ask this instead....
What kind of universe is it (= wots the stuff?, (b) and its behaviour)
such that a 'first person perspective' can result in which it appears
(a)-ish to us all, and in particular, makes a brain look brain when it
is delivering the first person perspective which delivers (a) to us?
Does X being self-evident classify X as an aphorism? I think not.
:-)
col
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Received on Mon Jul 27 2009 - 11:45:28 PDT