Can't you have thoughts about your own thoughts?but are actually more or less distorted reflections of the world — unenlightened
Your words reached me, not necessarily your internal reflections. What happens to someone who stumbles upon these words but doesn't speak or understand English? Would your internal reflections have reached him?I just did. The whole post is self-reflective. Yet these supposedly internal reflections have reached you. — unenlightened
Where are other minds in relation to your mirror? Do we each have our own mirror?So a brain is somewhat like the polished surface of a mirror, and consciousness is like a reflection that appears to have its source inside one's head, but is not physically there, but physically out in the world. And whenever consciousness looks at consciousness, it creates a bizarre fractal complexity that it cannot get to the bottom of. — unenlightened
Where are other minds in relation to your mirror? Do we each have our own mirror? — Harry Hindu
How's this different from Marx?And as long as one is the only person in the world, there remains only the world. It is precisely when one mirrors another mirror - when one is mindful of other minds - that weird shit happens, and you start to see an internal world with an internal self looking at it and a homunculus in the inner world looking at it, with a homunculus's homunculus looking at the homunculus's internal world, and so on. — unenlightened
This seems no different than the Hegelian/Marxist idea that one's ego only crystalises and arrives at its self-identity by seeing itself reflected by another. So how is alienation then related to this self-consciousness that man has?Man first sees and recognizes himself in other men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the genus homo. — Das Kapital
It's difficult though to claim that the internal reflections are "out there" and consciousness is like a mirror. — Agustino
lol - fine for the sake of argument I'll grant your point. What's the import of all this? Just a discussion for the sake of discussion or what's the aim?Yes, it is difficult. It is as difficult as denying that one can see one's face in the mirror - as if one were a vampire. :naughty: The image is clearly me, clearly there, clearly real - and yet it is clearly not there, not me, and virtual. — unenlightened
What's the import of all this? — Agustino
... he no longer considered the mirror stage as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of "Imaginary order".
We model the world in terms some "I" that stands at the centre of this view of things. — apokrisis
The only thing "out there" is light reflecting off of, or being absorbed by, various surfaces. The image in the mirror appears only in the mind. — Harry Hindu
So what about someone who always contemplates destroying his enemies, committing adultery with his friends' wives, etc. but never does any of these out of, say, fear of punishment? Is that person virtuous?One implication is that there is no virtue in the virtual world, but only in what is expressed. It puts value firmly in action rather than thought. You are what you do, not what you think. — unenlightened
:rofl: — unenlightened
I see that you have started to plagiarise yours truly with these emojis. Nice.:naughty: — unenlightened
We ordinarily say that the reflection is 'in the mirror', and yet we know that the essence of a mirror is that it is all surface with no 'inside'. — unenlightened
So with a little more care, we talk about the reflection as a virtual image that appears to be located behind the mirror, and with a little experimentation one can actually mark out the position of a virtual object behind the mirror. — unenlightened
I don't believe action and thought are as separate as you make them seem - thinking is also an action. — Agustino
So what about someone who always contemplates destroying his enemies, committing adultery with his friends' wives, etc. but never does any of these out of, say, fear of punishment? — Agustino
I don't think there is anything which should make you talk about "behind the mirror". — Metaphysician Undercover
This seems very similar to Thomas Metzinger's Ego Tunnel and Phenomenal Self Model. A common position in modern philosophy of mind - being common already makes something suspect though. The most interesting philosophy tends to be that which is at odds with the spirit of the times - because one must really think hard to oppose the status quo - to affirm positions that no one else affirms and stands by - positions that seem implausible to one's contemporaries. And when I talk of one's contemporaries, I am talking about the philosophers, not the common people. For the philosophers live in their own world, which is often different than the world of the common people - indeed, it takes the world of the common man quite some time to reach where the philosopher had been. For example, Cartesian assumptions are already downloaded in our popular culture - but it took hundreds of years.Here is is a highly complex model that includes (a model of) the modeller as a part of the model and is 'run' just like a program, and it is just such complex reflexive models that are (mis)taken to be an inner world. — unenlightened
There is. As the ray diagram indicates, and I remember doing it in physics 101, one can readily find the location of the virtual image using parallax, and it is behind the mirror. — unenlightened
the image is really "in the mirror". — Metaphysician Undercover
the identification of the modeller with the model of the modeller.
No, it isn't really anywhere. It's a virtual image, not a real image. But to be honest, I don't want to discuss optics, but consciousness. If you do not understand that a virtual image can be located, you won't understand the analogy, but I am already wanting to move on; the analogy was intended to open up a conceptual space to consider the nature of consciousness, that's all. — unenlightened
So a brain is somewhat like the polished surface of a mirror, and consciousness is like a reflection that appears to have its source inside one's head, but is not physically there, but physically out in the world. And whenever consciousness looks at consciousness, it creates a bizarre fractal complexity that it cannot get to the bottom of. — unenlightened
I must allow that brain is active in modelling the world, rather than passive in reflecting it, so I must allow 'inner workings' somewhat like a computer. But we allow computers inner workings without allowing them inner worlds, so I think all is not yet lost.
So with a lot of hand-waving and vagueness, I can talk about a modelling process that integrates memory and sensation. I see the lightening, and memory tells me to expect the thunder, and the model is that Shango is forging iron, or some far-fetched tale about electrostatic discharge in the atmosphere. — unenlightened
But that the image is somewhere outside the mirror is just an illusion. — Metaphysician Undercover
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