[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 17:30:02 +0100
Stuart wrote:
> Cayuse wrote:
>> But the picture we have of such "others" being associated with
>> "subjective experience" is not a matter of behavior, and is
>> therefore non-empirical. As LW says, the picture forces itself
>> upon us, but it has no application.
>
> What "has no application"? His point is that we don't discover
> minds in others by peering inside their heads or by mental telepathy.
> Minds in others just ARE behavior for the purposes of language.
> But we associate that behavior with certain experiential notions
> (as Chalmers later suggests). I don't know that Wittgenstein ever
> dealt with that directly. If he did, I don't recall (though perhaps you
> or someone else here does?). Perhaps you're right that his reference
> to a picture forcing itself on us is to that. (I don't recall the exact
> context of the text you quote from and I'm too lazy to trudge upstairs
> and pull out my PI and look it up -- maybe I will later.) But the fact
> remains that we do make this connection and, while our use of words
> like "mind" in reference to others never depends on seeing into their
> heads, etc., we do come to expect that they have experience that
> is not unlike out own.
>
> When I pulled that fish from the lake I mentioned in an earlier post
> I felt sorry for it because of its desperate struggle to stay alive and
> dropped it back into the water and let it escape. It wasn't language
> that prompted me to do that. I had a deep feeling in my gut of shared
> pain with that fish as I watched it struggle. Perhaps we don't all have
> that or have it to the same degree (certainly many fishermen fish in
> this world and many children stomp on ants, etc.) but it is a picture
> that often forces itself on us. But everytime some of us act on it there
> is, in fact, an application as it were. But the application is NOT to be
> found in how we determine if another has a mind (which, if I recall
> correctly, IS the context of those quotes you cited).
I don't dispute that "subjective experience" is imputed to others on grounds of
structural and behavioral criteria. I only dispute that "subjective experience"
is empirical (and therefore a suitable matter for scientific investigation).
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