RE: The Reality of Observer Moments

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 20:19:17 -0700

Bruno writes

> Lee Corbin a écrit :
>
> > Stephen writes
> >
> >> I would like for you to consider that we should not take OMs as
> >> "objective processes" but the result of "objective processes".
> >
> > Of course, I will bow to whatever word usage is favored by most of
> > the people, or by those who have the longest experience with the
> > term.
>
> Well, but here we are divided. Those who thinks OM precede, logically,
> the physical world and those who thinks the physical world precedes
> the OM. It is a main point of discussion.

I think that you misunderstand. Stephen's contention as stated here is
whether they're *objective* or merely the result of such objective processes
and so subjective in nature. I had said that I thought they ought to be
regarded as objective (I have little patience with subjective phenomena)
and he was asking me to consider whether they should be considered subjective.
So: you can suggest that the *meaning* of them be as subjective, or that the
*meaning* be as "objective processes", e.g., those available for scrutiny
from a 3rd person point of view (even if it's kind of hard with our technology
today).

> > For example, if I am poked with a needle and cry out, one may wish
> > to proclaim to me "see, you do have a subjective reality". "Oh, that
> > really hurt," I'll admit "but if you want to really know what happened
> > then the needle caused some nerves in my finger to fire, which caused
> > other nerves to fire and so on. I am a process fashioned by evolution
> > to object to actions like poking me."
>
> I have no problem with that. Actually by admitting "that hurts" you
> admit the subjectivity. By dismissing discourse on it, you agree on its
> ineffable aspect. And by admitting it is related to evolution, you
> admit implicitly the mind-body problem: why nature would have associate
> ineffable perception when only triggering neurons could make me behave
> in the right way.

Yes, except the last sentence: I for one cannot imagine any other way
that nature could have done it without the intervention of Higher Powers.
There has to be an ineffable perception: just what the hell is an entity
to say to itself and to others if there were not?

> >> I shudder every time I read of notions that imply some kind of
> >> knowledge of "reality in itself"!
> >
> > Yeah, well now you know how it feels! :-) Feels, that is, every
> > time that someone speaks of inner truths not accessible to anyone
> > else, not accessible in *principle* to anyone else.
>
> But this is the case of the *hurting* needle. If you can give me a
> purely third person communication that the needle hurts you, just give
> me it.

Sure, and I already did: the needle triggered nerves in my finger which
caused other nerves to fire which cause other nerves to fire in my brain
so that the machine (I mean me and my body) sought avoidance planning
and actions. I spoke out loud to deter future such incidents. I remembered
the incident.

> > I don't consider
> > those things to rank very highly on the scale of truth.
>
> Take someone. Put the needle in the finger of that someone. Tell him
> now that you don't rank very highly his personal feeling on the scale
> of truth!

Of course, being a sensible fellow like you and me, he'll understand
what is meant: the nature of his pain is, as you say, ineffable.
Evolution also built in sympathy and altruism in us which causes me
to "feel his pain" in a sympathetic way. I do "feel his pain", if
we are to take that phrase in the right way.

> Try to give him a third person proof of that! Tell him "Come on,
> that's only some firing neurons!". You frighten me a little bit!

That's ONLY SOME FIRING NEURONS!!??? You jest. Or rather, you may
be putting up a straw man (that can be easily knocked down). Any
doctor, for example, who is indifferent to "firing neurons" should
seek another profession, presumably one that a psychopath would be
comfortable in.

> Suppose you explain [to] me what is a succession of states and how that
> could give some person a feeling of headache. And suppose you are so
> good that you convince me. Now, 'to be convinced' is a first person
> subjective experience. Is that convincing not also just a succession of
> states? If you use that reduction for dismissing the headache, why
> shouldn't we use to dismiss the convincing? But then how could we still
> give sense to any argument?

Remember: I'm not dismissing the headache any more than I would an
animal getting cruelly jabbed with a needle. You seem to assume that
a 3rd person description cannot be a sympathetic one.

> > Your real knowledge, (for example, that some people have been to Hawaii or
> > that you have two hands or that four gas giants revolve around the sun), has
> > survived the tests of time.
>
> But that most humans suffer on the planet, and sometime somewhere more,
> this does not survive the tests of time?

Of course it does. Even apes and elephants know it. They know, that is,
that others can be in pain the way that they are. Naturally, they don't
have any language at all with which to discuss it. Naturally, they cannot
strive to have what they say be objectively true.

Lee
Received on Mon Aug 15 2005 - 23:20:08 PDT