Bruno writes
> Le 08-août-05, à 17:49, Lee Corbin a écrit :
>
> > (True, we can also extend sympathy by believing it to be utterly
> > true that he is experiencing pain, but I think that John and I
> > (and many) are simply not comfortable with introducing a "reality",
> > namely, "subjective reality" to cover this simple situation.)
>
> This amounts to dismissing the first person.
As anything scientific, yes. I agreed with John's statement:
"Interpreted used as subjectivised. There is a fine line separating
solipsism from craziness..." at least insofar as I may read that
to mean that our subjective impressions actually turn out to be
less reliable than our efforts to understand things objectively
(3rd person).
So I dismiss the 1st person, remarking that it's "existence" is
but only to be expected. If an ape or a parrot could talk, it
could yak on about it's impressions. And they'd be of little
but therapeutic value.
> I am sure you did have known to be living some "subjective reality".
Well, by that you mean what I'd call my own 1st person impressions
of the world. Yes.
> What exactly makes you not comfortable with the "other mind" reality?
I don't want to ascribe "reality" either to *my* 1st person whacked
out drug-mediated experiences, or anyone else's. I prefer to reserve
"reality" for 3rd person accounts. "the highest mountain in the world
is located in Tibet" or some similar conjecture.
> Is it the fact that it is not verifiable?
> In that case again, incompleteness theorem can be used as a cure,
> because it makes utterly clear that for the sound machine there are
> many truth which are guess-able but unprovable.
So you say. And I confess I haven't the energy (and probably not
the preparation) to study your thesis. So I'll wait for the experts
to acclaim you. No one will cheer louder: "I knew him *before*
the world saw the truth to COMP! He even knows who I am!".
> Is it the fact that once you accept the reality of the first person
> experiences, then we are led to that first person indeterminacy from
> which the physical laws emerges, assuming comp (which you accept)?
This might be a good time to ask what is meant by that word you
just used. Hal explained "computationalist hypothesis" as used
by philosophers, e.g., that a robot (that was just CPU driven)
could be conscious. I have believed that since 1966 when I used
to argue about it with people in high school. *Lots* of people
believe that. I have taken "COMP" to be Bruno's Thesis, in which
practically everything can be derived fundamentally from the
integers alone, using Gödel's results, and other rather recently
discovered truths.
> You are neither a zombie, nor a solipsist, so what is the origin of you
> dismissing the reality of first person experiences. I am very curious,
> because, as you say, you are not the only one.
Well, maybe some of the above helped to explain it. Basing stuff
on "1st person" has a long history. That's what everyone, it seems
to me, did before the scientific era (about 1600?). Even William
James, I think, did some of that. So far as I know, nothing
has ever come of it.
My friends and I (and probably Daniel Dennett and so on) believe
that people who demand a 1st person "account of the world" (e.g.
Chalmers) will never get anywhere. That the "hard problem" or
whatever is just a horrible consequence of the way sense impressions
traveling on neurons give rise to people thinking that their
own perceptions are a sort of reality independent of the physical
reality. We think that this is a sort of delusion, although the
very #?!&$-AT_SYMBOL-! structure of our language hideously leads from that
to "who or what is being deluded?".
That's it in a nutshell.
> Is it because you do feel some inconsistency with your physicalist
> assumptions, once we take seriously the "assumption" that others can
> feel genuine pleasures and pains.
Hmm? Well, what you write here doesn't seem at all wrong to me.
I regard the "assumption" (as you call it) that others can feel
pain and pleasure to be about as accurate as a statement as "less
light gets to the ground during the night". That is, pretty basic.
> Anyway. We are not supposed to search comfort, but to reason from facts
> and assumptions, isn't it?
It was just a figure of speech. You are free, of course, to use
the word "reality" any way you want. I'm not comfortable for using
it to describes one's subjective impressions, feelings, etc.
Lee
Received on Tue Aug 09 2005 - 23:55:47 PDT
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