Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!pdxgate!eecs!erich From: erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Introspection Message-ID: <1575@pdxgate.UUCP> Date: 12 Feb 91 09:12:42 GMT References: <1991Feb4.224101.18846@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1574@pdxgate.UUCP> Sender: news@pdxgate.UUCP Lines: 42 Oops! I made a mistake on the part about being female... (missed reviewing it before posting, and misinterpreted his statement to boot... what can I say, I'm embarassed ;-). erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) writes: >mpdevine@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Michel P. Devine) writes: >> ...My point is that the only reality to which we have direct >>access is our own, and even then from a very limited vantage point, namely >>we may come to know ourselves, but we shall never truly know anyone else. OK, I agree that we may only know ourselves directly. One theory of communication is that we can only hint at what lies underneath, and that is all "communication" is. How well do we even know ourselves, though? Sometimes it takes someone who is not cluttered by our own internal pressures to tell us things that we didn't conciously recognize... and how complete is a model if one purposely (although, not necessarily intentionally) ignores certain often quite significant aspects? And I think that nobody has *no* illusions, we simply cannot be that well informed. This does not also imply that no correspondence exists at all, just that it is tenuous. There *does* seem to be some correspondence, and in some cases the ability to abstractly think about what its like to be another being (like my example of thinking about what it would be like to be physically female without ever being so myself, which IMHO, seems to have worked OK for a first approximation). Building a model of someones mind does not necessitate knowing the internal states by introspection, though, unless checking it for validity along that route. Some, like myself, may argue that this could even cause confusion. Erich "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where it is." / -- Erich Stefan Boleyn -- \ --=> *Mad Genius wanna-be* <=-- { Honorary Grad. Student (Math) }--> Internet E-mail: \ Portland State University / >%WARNING: INTERESTED AND EXCITABLE%<