Posted by Karma Police on July 30, 19101 at 21:35:18:
In Reply to: Re: A 'skeptical' solipsist posted by Noctillucent on July 29, 19101 at 19:24:35:
Greetings once again:
::You say the mind transmits, or produces, consciousness. But what is the mind if not consciousness itself? A mind that isn’t conscious would be a mindless mind – an obvious absurdity. And surely consciousness doesn’t transmit or produce itself to itself. Or are you merely saying that consciousness is *essentially* active and causal. This last statement I would agree with.
Nice call! In my haste to get a response out to you I was careless, and should have said BRAIN. I admit some freedom from the determined physical brain, and some dependence of our consciousness upon the brain. Rationality demands free will, but it is also clear, as in the examples John gave of experiments with the brain, that we are in some ways dependent upon the physical brain.
::Your other statement deals with subject and object. Obviously the mind posits its ideas in an objective form. But the objective form the idea takes should not be confused with a physical object. The physical object is something to which the objective idea only refers, and that possible only if mind and matter interact.
Your uming we know only our ideas. If all we directly apprehend is our ideas, then we cannot know the ideas refer to any objects. All ideas are then subjective. To say they are objective, based on your umption, is to appeal to blind faith. We do not apprehend our ideas; we are not directly aware of them as we are sensations and feelings; they (ideas) are rather the means by which we apprehend the objective physical world. You seem to have fallen in to Locke's philosophical trap/mistake.
You may find Mortimer J. Adler's book The Ten Philosophical Mistakes interesting, as he corrects (in depth) these fundamental errors made by Locke, Berkley and Hume (among others).
::Which makes interaction a deciding factor. You observe that mind and matter are incommensurate. They are. This would seem to negate their interacting. For interaction to occur, each must have an existence for the other. How is this possible? Thought is nothing for that which is thoughtless. And, in turn, that which is thoughtless is nothing for thought. Because each can only act according to what it is, neither can make itself real to the other, and so effect, or be affected by, the other.
Again, this implies an underlying and unifying reality common to both. That is why I carefully stated they were *apparently* incommensurate. Taken without the qualification of an implied common ground, they are incommensurate. The other alternative (what appears to be the logical conclusion of your position) is to become a solipsist, which is an affront to reason and common sense.
::You speak of a common ground. Logically, what can be thought and non-thought at the same time and sense? Obviously nothing. So wherein is the common ground?
I speak of an "implicit" common ground. If you ask me to define it I cannot. You may as well ask me what free will essentially is. I can only tell you it must exist, and explain what it does, but what it "is" and how it works is beyond us in our present capacity to know. What *is* reason? Again, I can only tell you what it does (or allows us to do). We have to admit a limit to our finite knowledge eventually, don't you agree?
Jesse
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