The Outage
October 5th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: errr :: [epistemology] The Outage
GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:
>jPolanik@nc.rr.com writes:
>[Jud]: Dialectically one can only progress to a certain point with a
>trannie and one hits an ontological brick wall. … The addition of
>*extra* symbols of meaningfulness is of no avail for even if I accepted
>them, colloquy would dry up for there would be nothing to discuss. It
>would simply be a question of: I think this, you think that, they think
>that.
>[Joe]: getting to the point of ‘I think this, you think that’ might
>represent considerable progress. there is no ontological brick wall;
>but, there is your stonewalling. according to you, physical objects
>exist and nothing else exists in any other sense of ‘exists’. applied
>to the human, this means that the human is nothing more than a human
>body. …
>[Joe]: that is precisely the definition of the philosopher’s zombie: an
>entity with a human body but no subjective experiences whatsoever (and,
>it goes without saying, no soul or immaterial mind either). your
>definition of the human and the philosopher’s definition of the zombie
>are identical: I-0 = [ I-1 ]
>[Searle]: “I am saying that once the existence of (subjective,
>qualitative) consciousness is granted (and no sane person can deny its
>existence, though many pretend to do so), then there is nothing
>strange, wonderful or mysterious about its *irreducibility*.” [Searle,
>John R. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p.
>124]
>[Jud]: NAME one JUST ONE philosopher who PRETENDS that he/she denies
>the *existence* of subjective, qualitative) consciousness. Come on I
>CHALLENGE you to back up your cheap rhetoric by *outing* someone who
>does.
[Joe (on behalf of Searle who is not here to speak for himself)]:
I out … Jud Evans.
the grounds for this outage:
1. your definitions
you have defined your terms (’exists’ and cognate terms) so that all
that is exists and all that exists exists as matergy and in no other
way. this makes the definition of a human indistinguishable from the
definition of a zombie.
what aspect of a human that is not also an aspect of a zombie is
allowed by your definitions?
2. your challenge to Searle
>Jud: It’s simple then you old fool - PROVE the existence of you
>invisible let’s pretend entity!
Searle doesn’t believe that there is a metaphenomenal entity such an
immaterial soul or mind that produces the phenomenon of awareness.
indeed, as you should recall from your study of Searle, he thinks that
the phenomenological experiencer is a (metaphorical) ’secretion’ of the
brain. he merely says that the experiencer is not reducible to the brain
(which, he assumes, is solely responsible for its generation).
3. your eliminativism
>Jud: you are losing the plot! Eliminativists do no play … let’s
>pretend there are zombies … Searle … is a contemporary philosopher
>of *mind* … Who the hell believes in *mind* any more… ?
‘mind’ is one of those terms that eliminativists eliminate. so, even if
you somehow prove that there is a difference between a human (according
to your definitions) and a zombie (as philosophers define it), you
wouldn’t be able to say anything about this difference without
un-eliminating the vocabulary necessary to do so.
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
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http://what-am-i.net
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