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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ucbvax!decvax!cca!ISM780B!jim
From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Rigorous Mortis
Message-ID: <27500132@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Sep-85 15:04:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.27500132
Posted: Sat Sep 28 15:04:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 05:58:38 EDT
References: <344@decwrl.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:decwrl:-34400:ISM780B:27500132:000:2162
Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Sep 28 15:04:00 1985


>> but remember that I promised to be as unfuriating as
>> possible. So I say that I am hungry. You get out your measuring aparatus and
>> say ``how can you be hungry? you just ate a huge dinner two hours ago!''. I
>> say ``no, your equipment is malfunctioning.'' You go off an test your
>> equpiment and report that it is working fine. I say ``well, it can't be: you
>> see there is this evil plot to starve me to death -- all equipment will fail
>> to measure whether or not I am hungry because that is the way that this plot
>> works.'' ``But you *just* ate dinner!'' ``Pure illusion and deception
>> implanted in your mind. You can't underestimate the damager-god (oops, wrong
>> article!) after all''.
>
>And, given the evidence against you, I'd be right in concluding that you were
>deluded, that perhaps there was other chemical imbalance in your body that
>made it appear to you that you were hungry, or that you WERE simply being
>your typical infuriating self. :-)

Rich, you obviously don't know what it means to be hungry.
Being hungry is not, by definition, a specific physiological state.
It is in practice almost always associated with a specific physiological state,
but the *definition* is subjective.  When we talk about being hungry,
we are talking about a subjective feeling.  Subjective experience is
*embedded within the language*; thus you cannot excise it by dealing only
with objective truth, unless you choose to change the meanings of words to
satisfy your desires, something you claim not to approve of.

Even if we assume that all subjective experience is a manifestation of
objective processes, which I think Occam encourages us to do,
you cannot prove that Laura does or does not feel hungry, because
you do not have sure enough knowledge of *which* processes result in
such sensations.  The medical profession has made many mistakes, such
as denying the possibility of the effectiveness of acupuncture,
or the reality of PMS, because they assumed that their simple model
was in fact valid.  *That* is the nature of scientific arrogance:
viewing information as non-evidence in order to preserve the model.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)


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