Yep. Its from a speech — Mongrel
like the way Chomsky sets the stage for understanding Descartes' concept of mind. He says Descartes was firstly a scientist living during the scientific revolution (read physicalism). Descartes made progress seeing humans as machines, but couldn't complete the project due to volition. He could see no way to mechanize it. — Mongrel
... the problem [ :) ]facing Descartes. What do you think of his solution?
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (pp. 35-36)
Our thinking is already "dualistic", as expressed ontologically by all things being just themselves, and not anything else, including our (individuated) selves versus whatever else. — jorndoe
.Our thinking is already "dualistic", as expressed ontologically by all things being just themselves, and not anything else, including our (individuated) selves versus whatever else.
,there's nothing contradictory in that, except when messing up anything with anything else, self with other, ...
.Maybe "'partitioning' thinking" is better wording, e.g. self-awareness versus not-self/other.
.We're still part of the same world, along with whatever else, though.
Quite so. The possibility world that we all live in is the setting for each of our separate life-experience possibility-stories.
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And it could be asked (Locks implied this question), how is it that all of our life-experience possibility-stories are set in this same possibility-world. — Michael Ossipoff
So do you agree that Descartes' dualism was in some ways a response to the scientific revolution? The rise of physicalism brought the concept of mind into sharp relief? — Mongrel
But I’m not mixing separate things. I’m just not unnecessarily separating, dissecting, the animal (including us humans) into artificially separate body and Consciousness. — Michael Ossipoff
Watch. I decide consciously to raise my arm, and the damn thing goes up. (Laughter) Furthermore, notice this: We do not say, "Well, it's a bit like the weather in Geneva. Some days it goes up and some days it doesn't go up." No. It goes up whenever I damn well want it to. — Searle
Of course consciousness has parts. When you close your eyes, you are still conscious but have removed part of the conscious experience. People who are deaf, or have lost feeling in certain parts of their bodies have also lost part of their consciousness. When you lose part of your consciousness, you lose part of your awareness of the world.Consciousness always appears singular and so by definition couldn't be a mechanism because it is without parts. — JupiterJess
As I read your last post I got this picture of a problem (for lack of a better word) appearing over and over in different guises. It's like a pendulum swinging or oceanic tides... — Mongrel
Of course consciousness has parts. When you close your eyes, you are still conscious but have removed part of the conscious experience. People who are deaf, or have lost feeling in certain parts of their bodies have also lost part of their consciousness. When you lose part of your consciousness, you lose part of your awareness of the world. — Harry Hindu
This is what happens when the reality of dualism is denied, we end up with possibility worlds. Then instead of dualism we have infinitism. — Metaphysician Undercover
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