[Wittrs] Re: Minds, Brains and What There Is

  • From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:02:31 +0100

blroadies wrote:

"Cayuse" wrote:

It's not a nothing.


Mental contents? Just metaphysics? When you tell me about your pain,
you are talking metaphysics, i.e., empty talk, ....I can't grasp what
you are saying.


When you tell me about your ("third-person") pain, I can't help but
interpret it in terms of how pain is experienced in the "first-person" case,
even though "The thing in the box has no place in the language-game
at all; not even as a /something/: for the box might even be empty.
-- No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out,
whatever it is." (PI 293)



I follow Nagel in his use.


We can't know what it feels like to be a bat. A bat doesn't speak.
We do. But our words are about something, not nothing...so it
amounts to what?


I don't understand the question.



but it has no application none the less.


My talk about my pain doesn't apply to my pain? In what sense?
Maybe I'm not in pain and tricking you or is it that we can talk about
objects experienced in the world, sticks and stones but not our sense
of sticks and stones.


What has no application is the idea that an object in the world
is associated with a "what it is like to be that object". What is
/observed/ is the object's /behavior/ (including language use), and
any "what it is like to be that object" is /imagined/. I'm convinced
that I imagine correctly in the case of other people, and also in the
case of my horse /even though he doesn't speak/. And I'm convinced
that I imagine correctly that there is no "what it is like to be a rock".
But what if my conviction is in error? -- i.e. what if there is only
behavior? It would make no difference -- I would still behave as
though I /imagine/ correctly since any "what it is like to be that
object" is never /observed/ (it has no empirical content).

"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 a blind man." (PI 424)



There is no "hard problem" of mental processes, and to think that
this is what Chalmers is referring to is to completely miss his
point.


I need help in grasping that point. You are making some distinction
I don't get, mental-process vs ?


Mental process vs "what it is like to be [...]".



I'm arguing that there's a grammatical error ...


and that error is....


That error is to consider the "what it is like to be [...]"
as a "something".

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