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From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Mechanism and Determinism
Message-ID: <27500114@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 00:21:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.27500114
Posted: Fri Aug 30 00:21:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 13:11:37 EDT
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Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Aug 30 00:21:00 1985


>I don't deny that there is such a thing as subjective experience.  Indeed,
>my first impulse is to say that of course there is.  But WHAT IS IT?
>The difficulties involved in trying to answer this make me take seriously
>the idea that it does not exist, which I would otherwise reject out of hand.
>I don't see how to get subjective experience out of a mechanistic system,
>and I don't see any reason to believe in (nor understand the meaning of) a
>non-mechanistic system.

You are contradicting yourself; you are saying that you will reject the
evidence to preserve the model.  Clearly you do have reason to believe
in a non-mechanistic system, since you have subjective experience which
you cannot deny, but you cannot see how to get it out of a mechanistic
system.  However, I do not think that the reason to believe in a
non-mechanistic system is *compelling*; rather the inability to get subjective
experience out of a mechanistic system should be deeply questioned,
examined, and challenged, despite the difficulty in doing so,
because this still seems easier (to you, and to me) than giving meaning
to the notion of a non-mechanistic system.

>By the way, I don't have any problem explaining the fact that other people
>claim to have subjective experiences.  The problem is in explaining my
>own subjectivity to myself.  Maybe it's all an illusion -- but what is it
>which is being deceived?

I think the latter is a clue; the thing doing the analysis is so deeply
embedded into the analysis that it can't ever see what is really going on.
It's a trick, but you will never be able to catch the magician.
As Alan Watts, says, it is like trying to look at your own eyeball,
or to touch the tip of your right index finger with your right index finger.

However, I think you can maybe get a little glimpse; think of being a rock,
then think of being a plant, then think of being a tree, then a clam,
and on through cats and dogs and monkeys, and really think about your
level of emerging awareness; then think about being you, and remember being
tired or drugged or just plain slow, of not catching on to things,
and then think of becoming senile, and then think of dying.
Think of the mechanistic nature of the reactions and neuron firings in your
brain; think of their imprecise, heuristic, methods, and then think of your
imprecise heuristic ways of thinking, not really all so much crisp and *there*
as you like to think; think of the mechanistic biological nature of your
actual thought processes.  I think if you try real hard you will catch a
sense of how you *are* the process, rather than being a mind standing outside
of it.  You are just a mechanical approximation of the conceptual you.
I think it is in this gap between the conceptualization and the realization
that the answer to the paradox of subjective experience lies.

>By the way, I don't really expect any answers -- the problem is probably
>unanswerable.

Nah, but it sure is fun to try.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)