[Wittrs] Re: On the Experience of Self-Awareness
- From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 13:22:37 -0000
Joseph Polanik wrote:
Cayuse wrote:
Then we have to look to the alternative hypothesis that there is a
separate and distinct experiencer of experience, and this too is
found to be problematic (the homunculus problem).
the alternate hypothesis would be that there is an experiencer of its
experience.
I've deleted your qualifiers 'separate and distinct' because you've
never specified what they mean to you; and, because the idea that the
experiencer must be separate and distinct from its experience is just
another idea about experience.
If the experiencer is not separate and distinct from experience then
it must be a part of it (and since it doesn't appear in the experienced
world, this possibility can be eliminated), co-extensive with it (in which
case the distinction is lost, so this possibility can be eliminated too),
or else experience must be a part of it (which is a metaphysical claim
since it implicates what is putatively beyond experience, and so has
no application in the world).
so, where does that leave us?
it seems to me that we have a fact (that experience is sometimes
reflexive and sometimes not reflexive) and a theory that explains that
fact.
The idea that there is an experiencer that is separate and distinct
from experience, or that experience is a part of the experiencer,
explains nothing. It's just an imagined picture that has no application.
you're response to this situation is to allege that the theory has an
unpleasant consequence: it somehow generates an infinite regress of
experiencers. however, I've never noticed any of these beyond the one
that I designate by saying 'I' [I-2 in humanese english] or by some
phrase such as 'I, this experiencer'.
If the experiencer experiences experience, then what experiences
the experience that the experiencer "has"? Another experiencer?
by itself, an unsupported allegation of unobservable consequences is
no reason to reject a theory that otherwise explains the fact.
I'm not sure what this "fact" is that you claim is being explained,
but the idea of an experiencer explains nothing.
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