If we substitute the ‘I’ or ‘self’ for mind , then I think the issue of a unity comes down to whether perspective, interpretation and ‘ for-me-ness’ are fundamental features of any experiencing of a world. — Joshs
To me it seems contingent. It's convenient that there's one 'soul' or 'self' per body, because bodies have to be trained to wipe their asses and stop at red lights. Which of the fourteen souls that share a skull gets prosecuted for date rape? Which one is a captain and which one is a private? — j0e
But as a temporal flow its contingency unfolds as a synthetic unity from moment to moment. Not a soul or self as something unchanging throughout the contextual transformations of sense but a self remade each moment as new variation of itself. Self as a pragmatic ‘in order to ‘ , an always implying, anticipating beyond itself. The world always matters to me, is significant to me , is relevant to me in a new and particular way, but is always recognizable in its mattering. — Joshs
The idea of a brain transplant confuses us. Why couldn't the world always matter to a plurality of minds in a single body, matter to 'us in here'? — j0e
Galen Strawson argues that the self is always different from one moment to the next, and there is nothing outside of the larger social norms to unify this subjectivity as an identity over time. — Joshs
In this view he is not far from this those say that self is nothing but a social construct, and that intersubjectivity is more fundamental than subjectivity , which is only a temporary position within a socially constituted field.
This may be what you mean by plurality of minds in a body. — Joshs
Marvin Minsky talked about a society of mind , and Francisco Varela described a groundlessness of being with no solid self. — Joshs
Mind is embodied in organism, organism is embedded in world , and all three interact reciprocally such that a dynamic autonomy of self-organization is evinced. — Joshs
I like embodied mind and embedded organisms, but I don't find autonomy clear in this context. I tend to associate it with people who can be more or less autonomous. How does the world fit in except perhaps as a background or extended body? — j0e
Well my quick answer would be that the two alterities are indissociable. — Derrida
Right.
We're still no closer to the way in which my description of a route from retinal ganglia to speech production was "wrong", which is, obviously, the bit I'm most interested in. — Isaac
unless that biological account has learned from constructivists like Piaget, Maturana and Varela. — Joshs
What do you mean when you agree that the strawberries look red? — frank
What does it mean for a thing to have an appearance? — frank
other times it might be traceable back to a memory of the colour of the objects matching that shape. — Isaac
A thing's having an appearance means only that I can recall to mind an image of it to describe the details of. — Isaac
That's not the explanation for the grey strawberries illusion (if it was meant to be.) Your brain is actually generating the experience of redness without any red light. — frank
How are you supporting that assertion? — Isaac
- To clarify. All you've got by way of self report is that they appeared red in retrospect. By third party all we have is that the person selected the word 'red'. If we look at fMRI we'll see activity in v4... — Isaac
...none of which amounts to 'the experience of red'. — Isaac
How are you supporting that assertion? — Isaac
here — frank
Remembering how things looked is a kind of experience. — frank
I'm not enthusiastic about continuing this discussion. Thanks for your responses. — frank
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