Chris writes
> The point is that given the certainty of 'I exist' subjective experience can
> not just be dismissed by the realist. Given its certainty, it demands some
> kind of explanation,
Of course it does. But I imagine that you are looking at the phenonmenon
from inside the system. I warn you: no explanation will ever be forthcoming
that you find satisfactory. Such has eluded *everyone* from Plato to Chalmers.
And that's because you are examining it from the wrong perspective.
Don't think of your own. Think of the subjective experience of a monkey
or rabbit who is on the laboratory bench. Examine the nervous impulses
that make up its brain and entire nervous system. Understand (or along
with the rest of us, try as best we can with 21st century medicine) to
understand how the representations of the world are generated inside
that machine.
> but the realist recoils from providing any because
> marrying objective language with subjective language has been an intractable
> problem.
The kind of "marrying" you want will always be an intractable problem.
> If they are going to do that, they should admit how certain and
> central subjective experiences are, how the enlightenment was forged by
> those who dealt with them, and the poverty of their own theories in being
> unable to explain them.
No one has yet suggested exactly what "enlightenment" has been provided.
What can anyone say about subjective experiences qua subjective experiences
that was unknown to Plato and Aristotle?
A "subjectivist" here mentioned a week or two ago the way that even though
the visual image that impinges on the brain is upside down, the brain
reorients them back right side up.
This is an almost laughable idea, once you keep in mind the monkey on
the bench. The brain does no such thing. I should have satirically
remarked "oh, no, you see: the brain is itself upside down, and so
that's why things seem right side up", just to try to employ comedy
to illustrate the error.
Please understand: images on the retina (upside down, left to right,
at an angle, whatever) are converted into series of complicated
nerve impulses. (Yes, in V1 there is a more-or-less 1-1 mapping
that exists geometrically, but if you want, then think of the what
happens to the impulses when they leave the visual cortex.)
And those nerve impulses that finally leave the eye (or V1)?
What happens to them? How do they get uprighted? No, sorry.
The nerve impulses cause other nerve impulses to fire, which
causes other nerve impulses to fire which....
It's nerve impulses all the way down.
Lee
Received on Fri Aug 12 2005 - 11:39:20 PDT
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