[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:38:57 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> 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).
>
And as I've said before, your use of "subjective experience" simply is not mine
as I do not equate it with the "microcosm" or the "all". Indeed, as you
yourself have said, such a use as yours has no grammar, no referent. So it is
outside of language. Obviously, agreeing with that as I do, I cannot be using
it in any discussion here of what it means to have subjective experience, to be
a subject. So there's no point in imputing it to me in order to argue against
my claim about it being possible to examine its occurrence and manifestations
empirically. -- SWM
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