[lit-ideas] w*
- From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 09:20:46 +0000
In fact Popper (when I read him) was very confused, this w(hat? World? ‘was’?)
stuff is space time located or not?
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: 26 January 2015 11:00
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Can I Have A Pain In My Tail?
It is surely contradictory for Donal to argue that pain, as a mental
experience, belongs to W2, but also to argue that it is 'really' located in the
brain and not in the tooth. If it is W2 then it cannot really be located
anywhere. Donal should clarify his position if he expects a constructive reply.
O.K.
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 11:28 PM, Donal McEvoy
<donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>McEvoy finally notes:
"The clear way of thinking about these things is to disentangle the W1
aspects that go to create the experience of toothache from the W2 experience of
having a toothache, rather than confusedly thinking the W2 experience
means the toothache is located in W1 (which is what, uncritically, we are wont
to do)."
Indeed. Experience, to echo Oakeshott, belongs in W1, as consciousness,
while Wittgenstein's tooth (and its caries) belongs in W1.>
This last comment surely meant to read "Experience...belongs in W2, as
consciousness" etc,
Btw, it is beside the point that a dentist will not ask "Where does your W2
tell you is the W1 tooth with the problem causing you pain?" but may simply ask
"Where is the toothache?" or even "Which tooth has the toothache?", and in
asking the question is expecting an answer that directs her to the relevant
part of the mouth. For these questions are simply attempts to find out which is
the problem tooth i.e. to identify the correct object in W1 to which treatment
may be applied. It would be otiose to this inquiry to detour into W2. OTOH we
should not infer from such questions that the dentist is committed to the
(mistaken) theory that the experience of toothache actually resides in the
tooth.
The efficacy of local anaesthetics is also beside the point, as Palma
indicated, because the fact that pain resides in W2 does not imply it cannot be
removed by making W1 alterations to its sources in W1.
Dnl
On Saturday, 24 January 2015, 12:30,
"dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
In a message dated 1/24/2015 4:08:32 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes in reply to
someone else: "None [in this
discussion] ... suggested "that the dog does not have 'pain'". It may be
idiotic to
suggest they did [so suggested] given the whole discussion accepted that
dogs may, like humans, experience pain - even, more specifically, toothache.
Hence the reference to H. P. G., "Can I Have A Pain In My Tail?", dated
1978.
McEvoy:
"The suggestion that pain is not located in the part of the body 'in which
it is felt' is supported [a] by modern neurophysiology and [b] by facts
like patients experiencing great pain in limbs that have been amputated etc.
and [c] by our ability to remove 'the experience of pain in a part of the
body' [an expression that itself may mislead] without treating that part of
the body but by giving painkillers to the part of the brain that creates the
pain-experience."
And thus the answer to H. P. G.'s essay is "No."
McEvoy continues:
"There is a more general point here about the nature of consciousness (of
which pains may form a part) - consciousness is not a mere mirror to nature
or imprint from external reality but is a product of a very complex set of
processes that simulate a 'reality' for us. When I touch this keyboard so
that I experience it as if "it is there", the keyboard "is there" but my
experience of it being there is a simulation of its being there."
And that's why philosophers distinguish between things ("Dinge" in Kant),
or 'material objects' (loosely speaking) and sense data.
McEvoy continues:
"What misleads us is that we do not experience our experience as if it is
a simulation but as if it is giving us direct access to reality - but we
are wrong to be mislead, by the immediacy and apparent "realism" of
experience, into thinking it gives us direct or unmediated access to reality."
What we need is a meta-experience. I am reminded of Oakeshott, an Oxford
don (granted, one term in Nuffield, but once an Oxonian, ALLways an Oxonian")
and his voluminous volume, "The modes of experience", or "Experience and
its modes" (it would be "Experience and HER modes" in the Italian
translation).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oakeshott
"In his first book - Experience and its Modes - in 1933, Oakeshott notes
that the book owes much to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and F. H. Bradley."
"Commentators also noticed resemblances between this work and the ideas of
thinkers such as R. G. Collingwood [Waynflete Prof. of Metaphysical
Philosophy at Oxford] and Georg Simmel."
"Oakeshott argues hat our experience is usually modal, in the sense that
we always have a governing perspective on the world, be it practical or
theoretical."
"There are various theoretical approaches you can take to understanding the
world."
"Natural science and history for example are separate modes of experience."
"It is a mistake, Oakeshott declares, to treat history as if it ought to be
practised on the model of the natural sciences."
"Philosophy, however, is not a modal interest."
"At this stage of his career, Oakeshott saw philosophy as the world seen
sub specie aeternitatis, literally, 'under the aspect of eternity', free from
presuppositions, whereas science and history and the practical mode relied
on certain assumptions."
"Later (there is some disagreement about exactly when), Oakeshott adopts a
pluralistic view of the various modes of experience, with philosophy just
one 'voice' amongst others, though it retained its self-scrutinizing
character."
Perhaps this was when he left Oxford for some part of London McEvoy is
familiar with (LSE).
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