[Wittrs] Re: Understanding Dualism
- From: "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:06:16 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> responding to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wittrs/message/6214
> SWM:
> Whatever else you can say of Eray, I don't think he is typical of AI
> researchers or that he speaks for them. Or that he is known for his
> tolerance of disagreement with his own views! I never was quite sure
> what it was about what you said that prompted his extreme reaction
> though so I chalked it up to some highly technical matter with which
> I had no real familiarity or to his feeling particularly truculent
> that day or to a linguistic passage of two boats in the night.
Eray thought that what I was saying was obviously false. And many
people agree with him. According to Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception> , the idea that perception is
passive goes back at least as far as Decartes. It might even have been
part of what led Descartes to his version of dualism.
> SWM:
> I pointed out that you had not clarified what you mean by
> "intentionality" and noted that it is not an easy concept to explain,
> even if we will tend to think we know it when we "see" it.
That was unclear. The paragraph that began "Your statement above
leaves 'intentionality' unexplicated" also ended in "But where is this
'aboutness' in your 'process A'." It did not seem that there was any
disagreement on what was meant by the term.
> SWM:
> I was, finally, making the point that it doesn't help to invoke
> a term, like "intentionality", by way of explaining a phenomenon
> (like consciousness) if the term, itself, is not clear and has yet
> to be sufficiently explicated.
I don't believe that I ever suggested that consciousness could be
explained by invoking the term "intentionality."
Regards,
Neil
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