[Wittrs] Re: What Is Ontological Dualism?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:31:58 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> >...I said here that neither Dennett nor I deny that we have subjective
> experiences...
>
> Right! If you call some experiences "subjective". I imagine you call
> others "objective." Should I take this to be your distinction?
"Subjective experiences" may mean a number of different things. In this context
it means what we have previously discussed in earlier discussions on this list:
the aspect of having the experience in all its immediacy for the individual
experiencer.
> Everyone
> can experience the objective, but each person, on his/her own,
> experience the subjective. Simply put, the subjective is private, like a
> dream, a film that only one person can see. It is as if we experience
> two sorts of objects, physical and mental. I'll assume that this is
> mostly correct.
>
It's partly what I meant in the above case but I don't know about the
distinction you make between the physical and mental in this case. "Physical"
seems to me to refer to a particular class of phenomena and what we think they
consist of and are underlain by. The "mental", the aspects of our subjectivity
in which we encounter what we call "physical".
> > ...this is about how we account for them not whether we have them!
>
> Let's see if I have this straight. By account you mean cause in the
> sense of "what makes it come forth." The public objects are caused by
> what physics says. They precede us for millions of years. Then the
> private objects come along. They are caused by the interaction of two
> sets of public (physical) objects, those inside our skull - the brain -
> and those outside. So the dental pain is accounted for by the
> interaction of some internal brain area (molecules) and some external
> molecules (sugar) -- mediated by tooth decay molecules.
>
Yes insofar as we understand ourselves to be part of the rest of the physical
universe and not simply superimposed on it, intruding into it, existing in
parallel with it, etc., etc.
> And this explanation must be true because your brain was caused to say
> it by the impact of Dennett's brain molecules making molecules (sound)
> impact upon your brain.
>
> bruce
>
>
Truth is a function of language and of the logical parameters implied by the
word in its linquistic context. What is true meets certain logical and factual
criteria. What is known to be true is apprehended by one or more knowing
entities. Knowing the truth is a function of what the brains or equivalent
components in those entities cause to happen in the context of producing the
features associated with knowing anything at all.
SWM
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