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From: mcdermott-drew@cs.yale.edu (Drew McDermott)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: The I of the beholder
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.163734.10165@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 91 16:37:34 GMT
References: <133090@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1991Jun12.130817.3621@kingston.ac.uk> <1991Jun12.232457.2962@news.media.mit.edu>
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  In article <1991Jun12.232457.2962@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
  >Conversants never do, in
  >fact, know that they are talking about the same things.  It is always
  >a matter of convention, convergence, and good fortune -- even in the
  >case of "mathematical truths".  When you and I both talk about "that
  >chair over there", our internal models differ substantially, but not
  >enough to make most practical interactions too difficult.  And the
  >cchir itself changes imperceptibly from one moment to the next as it
  >loses and gains atoms and suffers thermal agitations of its internal
  >degrees of freedom.  There is no chair, indeed, from a modern physical
  >point of view, only boundaries imposed by observers....

Okay, but what about this objection: There are no observers, indeed,
but only boundaries imposed by .... who??

Why do we grant such rock-solid existence to observers and not to
chairs?

Surely we're not genuflecting toward the almighty self here?

I think this is a genuine conundrum, but whatever solution we work out
for explaining why people are objectively real will also work for
chairs.  In any case it will not do to say that the reality of 
macroscopic objects is merely imposed by an observer, because the
observer is itself just another macroscopic object.

                                             -- Drew McDermott