Private Minds in 3rd Person views?

From: Stephen Paul King <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:00:06 -0400

Dear Bruno,

    I missed something that you wrote earlier! Do you truly think that the
solution to the mind/body problem involves "explaining how a private mind
can be attached to anything third-person describable"?

    I don't see how this makes any kind of sense! The mere fact that you
cannot have a 1st person experience of "what it is like to be Stephen Paul
King" unless you are, actually, Stephen Paul King tells me that it is
impossible for a 3rd person description to exist. What I see is that we have
agreements and/or coincedances in the 1st person views of many SASs. These
give rise to the idea of 3rd person views, but such do not actually exist.

    At best we can associate an inferability of a private mind, ala Turing
Test, or someother kind of justification of the belief in private minds, to
some aspect of our individual experience. For example, I assume that you
(and your private mind) are not merely a computational simulation generated
by the same computation that generates my own experienciable actuality
because if I did so I should be able to induce a transformation of my 1st
person experience directly and smothly into yours. After all, the
simulations would all be within the same repetuoir of possible simulations.
This is classic problem of solipsism! Don't you agree?

Kindest regards,

Stephen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruno Marchal" <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
To: "Stephen Paul King" <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
Cc: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: Are we simulated by some massive computer?


snip

> > > [BM]
> > > But that's the point of the whole work. Now, if you have follow
> > > a little bit the literature on the mind body problem you surely know
> > > that nobody has succeed in explaining how a private mind can be
attached
> > > to anything third-person describable, be it physical or mathematical.
> > > All what I say is that if we survive the digital brain substitution,
then
> > > any
> > > fundamental explanation of what matter *cannot* rely on anything
> > > like Aristotelian substances or even to anything *primitively*
physical.
> > > With comp the mind-body problem is just two times more difficult in
the
> > > sense that we must explain not only the mind but also the matter, and
> > > this from the mind. The UDA (alias the 1-8 reasoning) just show that:
> > > comp *must* explain matter by a mind theory. Wait perhaps I say
> > > more to Kory so that you can be made your objection more specific.
Received on Fri Apr 30 2004 - 20:05:08 PDT