[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:53:44 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> Stuart wrote:
> > Cayuse wrote:
> >> Stuart wrote:
> >>> Cayuse wrote:
> >>>> 424: The picture is there; and I do not dispute its correctness.
> >>>> But what is its application? Think of the picture of blindness
> >>>> as a darkness in the soul or in the head of the blind man.
> >>>
> >>> "I do not dispute its correctness." As to "application"
> >>> what application do you think he is challenging? The
> >>> idea that brains can be shown to be causal re: minds?
> >>
> >> Any application at all.
> >
> > I don't think he can be taken as saying "any application at all."
> > Think of the moral application of acting in a way that reflects
> > empathy for the pain of another. Wittgenstein, if anything in his
> > later years, was arguing against the notion of solipsism, that we
> > had no way of knowing that there was anything beyond ourselves.
> > As a man much given to solitude it's not surprising this held his
> > attention. But recall, as well, that his later work is directed to our
> > linguistic practices, to understand how these reflect and shape
> > our beliefs, ideas, understandings, etc. He himself often noted
> > that ethical questions fell outside the purview of analytical
> > considerations and this, of course, is an application! So your
> > blanket statement that he meant "any applicationn at all" when
> > he asked "what is the application?" strikes me as quite wrong.
>
>
> The idea of "subjective experience" has no application at all.
Of course it does. We speak quite regularly of a person's having only
subjective experience of something. That, after all, is why we cannot have a
private language, because we must have some objective standards to gauge our
word uses by. Just thinking to ourselves without anyone to correct us would
lead, in time, to a degree of breakdown in our ability to speak with others nor
could we conceive of following a rule consistently if we had nothing to measure
our usages by. We need more than our own subjective experiences to speak a
language (even though we could certainly lose contact with others for long
periods, maybe even a lifetime without losing all our linguistic capacities --
the issue, rather is whether we could ever develop them without such contact in
the first place).
Another example: Drunk or on drugs I may perceive things around me quite
differently than others do. Then I must compare what I have seen or recall
seeing to what others say happened to differentiate my experience of events
from that of others. Presumably I will defer my recollections to that of others
who appear to have been more reliable.
Another: On a witness stand the cross examining attorney asks me if I'm sure of
what I recall. Perhaps I imagined it or simply projected a pre-existing idea I
had onto the events or the actors I observed. Again, my experience was only
subjective, my own.
Another: I sit in Zazen and "see" visions while trying to meditate. Where they
really there? No, I imagined them, reflecting the intensity of my trying, the
affects of efforts.
> Empathy is an instinct and does not depend on this idea.
Again, a declaration, not an argument! How do you know empathy is an instinct?
Might it not be something else? But let's grant that it is. Maybe empathy
actually underlies this idea in which case there is a dependence relationship
though it goes the other way. Or maybe it goes both ways?
> Conditioned responses (moral codes) do not depend on this idea.
You have yet to argue that moral codes are "conditioned responses". I see no
reason to view them that way though, I suppose, sometimes they may be that, too.
> Reason takes this idea and tries to provide an explanatory account.
> All such explanatory accounts are metaphysics and have
> no application at all.
>
We were speaking of the application of the term "subjective experience", not
"all such explanatory accounts".
SWM
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