RE: Mind/matter duality
May 30, 2013 at 9:38 pm
(This post was last modified: May 30, 2013 at 10:21 pm by bennyboy.)
re: medical experiment
That's all perfectly true. In reality, we make the necessary pragmatic assumption that when a person-looking object says "I smell smoke," there's an actual mind having the experience of smelling smoke. And yet, you cannot interact directly with someone else's mind-- you are forced to go through intermediary steps-- either communicating with them verbally to get a report of what they're experiencing, or messing with their brain to change what that mind is experiencing. At no point in this process is it ever provable that there even IS a mind there.
It's a strange situation. Everyone (I'm willing to believe) knows about mind, and knows that mind exists. And yet while you can locate brain functions, you cannot locate (for example) a dream unicorn and give him an apple. In a sense, it's like each mind IS a Matrix environment of its own.
re: minds in vats
This is a good point. I'd argue that shared experience is (by definition more than proof) our reality as human beings. But that doesn't prove it's THE reality-- i.e. that we're not BIJ, or in the Matrix, or the mind of God, or whatever.
That's all perfectly true. In reality, we make the necessary pragmatic assumption that when a person-looking object says "I smell smoke," there's an actual mind having the experience of smelling smoke. And yet, you cannot interact directly with someone else's mind-- you are forced to go through intermediary steps-- either communicating with them verbally to get a report of what they're experiencing, or messing with their brain to change what that mind is experiencing. At no point in this process is it ever provable that there even IS a mind there.
It's a strange situation. Everyone (I'm willing to believe) knows about mind, and knows that mind exists. And yet while you can locate brain functions, you cannot locate (for example) a dream unicorn and give him an apple. In a sense, it's like each mind IS a Matrix environment of its own.
re: minds in vats
This is a good point. I'd argue that shared experience is (by definition more than proof) our reality as human beings. But that doesn't prove it's THE reality-- i.e. that we're not BIJ, or in the Matrix, or the mind of God, or whatever.
