It seems to me that consciousness and perception is innately solipsistic.
Well, an objective viewpoint is a view from nowhere and thus not really a viewpoint, but an objective description need not be precluded, and it often yields answers that elude a subjective description. You're going to need it for answers like this one.As Thomas Nagel says "Objectivity is a view from nowhere" — Andrew4Handel
sure you are conscious but only because there are others that you have mimicked that's all. — Cavacava
So instead, don't assume that there is an 'I' that got to be 'me', or got to be 'here', and the problem vanishes. — noAxioms
Fine. I have never heard of anybody that was somebody else. Why am I me? Well, who else could I be?There is no realistic way of taking the "I" out of any theory because that raises the question of who is talking and what they are talking about. — Andrew4Handel
'Inhabit'. OK, I see the path you want. Never mind at all what I say then. Religion has better answers to this one than I do.inhabit this conscious location of having experiences of a reality and how this subjective location arises — Andrew4Handel
Why am I me? Well, who else could I be? — noAxioms
So no one raised you? You didn't learn how to be a person on your own, sure consciousness but you learnt how to be conscious by studying what others were doing, realizing that you are also an person — Cavacava
Yes, that's the second guy I'm referring to. I say it doesn't exist. There is nothing that could have been somebody else until being born in this specific body. Mind you (pun intended), I am not asserting this. I'm just saying that the question you pose goes away with my answer. If this dualistic view is one you prefer, fine. As I said, religion has a lot of answers to how you got to be the fourth of six siblings, or how you got to be human at all for that matter.You could not be anyone else now but you could have been someone else and been born in another body or era or gender. — Andrew4Handel
My answer is that it would seem absurd for the 4th child to be conscious of being the second child. That's what monism says. I think a lot of people that claim to be monists actually don't understand it and cannot accept that simple answer. It sure took me a long time.I am one of 6 children I am conscious of being the fourth child but why not the first or sixth?
There is nothing that could have been somebody else until being born in this specific body. — noAxioms
Well as I said, I think I am the wrong person to give answers to questions about a view that I do not hold.Before you are born is the period I am referring to. If I start to exist there is the question of how I start to exist as that person. — Andrew4Handel
So no one raised you? You didn't learn how to be a person on your own, sure consciousness but you learnt how to be conscious by studying what others were doing, realizing that you are also an person. — Cavacava
A dog, a mouse, and so on are all conscious but none of them are persons. What I am saying is that to be a person is to be self consciously aware of one's self among others and that this is learnt from others in the sense of a differentation. The 'I' is only possible because of the 'We', the "I" is derivative of the We. — Cavacava
Isn't this a vicious circle? Don't you need to be conscious to be able to study what others are doing? So you seem to imply that one must already be conscious in order to become conscious
I don't see how this is possible. You seem to be arguing that a plurality (we) is prior to the individual (I). Don't you believe in a first? How are two, three, and four possible without there first being one? I think that you have this backwards.
the existence of an individual doesnotrequire the existence of a plurality
If consciousness is just "in the brain" how do you come to be the subject of that brains experiences? — Andrew4Handel
I believe in parents, caregivers, the people who teach you that the fire truck is red. The people teach you to speak and to help make you who you are....and you are not possible without them. — Cavacava
There is no way to know what exists in reality without consciousness, perception and sensation.
All theories of reality are based on someone's personal awareness. As Thomas Nagel says "Objectivity is a view from nowhere" — Andrew4Handel
The infant child does not identify itself apart from its parents until it becomes self aware of itself as an independent agent, this is what Freud is all on about. — Cavacava
The child has no structured psyche until it has experience, and these experiences are shaped by its caregivers....the child's desires are the desires of the mother, and in a similar manner our desires are the desires of others. — Cavacava
The 'I' is derivative of the 'We'. — Cavacava
You didn't reply to my description of the logical relationship between "one" and "plurality". So I take this as a hollow assertion which is contrary to logic and ought to be rejected.
This is surely wrong. A baby has the desire to eat, and though the mother may shape this desire through timing and substance in an effort to create habit, the desire is not the mother's desire. Nor is the desire derived from the mother. The desire is that of the baby, as an independent agent. Even within the womb, the need for nutrition is a need of the foetus, not a need of the mother.
Yet right from the start language has begun to work. The child is spoken to and named, and therefore it has a place in the discourse of the other, the words of its mother. As the child begins to become aware of itself as separate from its mother, as a distinct psychic entity, it does so only by taking itself to be its mother. There is a mirror effect, Lacan argues, in which the image the child has of itself is in fact the image of its mother. Hence the child's early ego, or pre-ego--Lacan calls it the ideal ego--takes shape as a misrecognition: the child understands itself not as itself but as the other, as its mother. From the beginning the ego is constituted as an illusory incorporation of the other; when it names itself it is only naming the other, or, in linguistic terms, its place is defined by the discourse of the other.
Lacan also conceptualized the mirror stage in relation to Hegel's concept of recognition and desire. The infant has a sensuous relation with its mother. Its needs are fulfilled by her and she is in tactile relation with it. In addition to needs, and quite distinct from them, the child has desires (libido) and, as Hegel says, the prime desire is to be recognized by the other's desire. The desire of the mother and the desire of the child thus enter into a complex, confused relation.
But that doesn't mitigate against the effectiveness of science in its domain of application. — Wayfarer
The infant child does not identify itself apart from its parents until it becomes self aware of itself as an independent agent — Cavacava
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