[Wittrs] [C] Re: Wittgenstein's Way
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:48:16 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> What you can watch is irrelevant to what causes what...
If I can't watch both X and Y, in some way, I have no business saying
that X causes Y because that claim is untestable.
> Note, again, that you can watch the mouth and watch the smile
> but there is no interacting between a mouth and a smile so you can't
watch THAT.
So a mouth in motion doesn't cause a smile, by my lights. But you
write..
> the movement of the mouth causes the smile
How can that be if I can't see the interaction between M and S. Of
course, the obvious answer is that I can see both the mouth and the
smile. But I don't conceive of them as interaction but I "take the look
of the mouth to be a smile." Since the brain doesn't interpret,
according to you, that way of conceiving of how the world works is not
available to you.
> It would be an odd subject who cried "ouch" but didn't feel pain when
the fiber in question is stimulated.
Odd, perhaps, but unaccountable by your causal point of view.
> YOU DON'T NEED AN "EXTERNAL RELATIONSHIP" WITH YOUR BRAIN
> FOR IT TO BE THE CAUSE OF YOU BEING A CONSCIOUS CREATURE.
Causes have to be external to the effect is question. What you can't ge
straight is whether there are two things, a brain and consciousness, and
one causes the other (which makes you a dualist, as Joseph points out)
or an indentuty between brain and consciousness (both physical, no
causation because they are the same thing).
> See, I have said repeatedly you are a dualist and here you go again:
> "you have both a machine and a willful person".
> And yet you keep denying that you are dualist while every
> claim you make is embedded in dualist presumptions.
I'll end on this note. Try to clarify. Yes, I begin with the Dualism of
B/M because that is how the philosophical puzzle is initially stated and
how it occurs in the everyday. And like you I'm not happy with the
Dualism. But I'm more unhappy with tricky dualism that claims to be
physical while attributing intentionality to body parts (vitalism) and
that emulates science with talk about causation where NO USE OF THE TERM
works out, and confuses the identity of brain/mind with a causal
relationship.
bruce
=========================================
Manage Your AMR subscription: //www.freelists.org/list/wittrsamr
For all your Wittrs needs: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
Other related posts:
