Philosophy: books and discussion

[FlorenceArt]

Donut or cheesecake, you can have both - I'll take chocolate

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Of course it is, our brain was created by evolution.

Yep, which is why I'm struggling to see a problem.

'Anticipation' seems a valid 'brain state' to me.

[FlorenceArt]

I must admit I'm a bit confused myself, especially since we moved on to the evolution of cheesecake

[TimMason]

I'll take chocolate

That great philosopher, Brillat-Savarin, would have approved.

[TimMason]

Yep, which is why I'm struggling to see a problem.

I guess the problem is the Russian Doll problem: is there always going to be another one inside this one? (Or is it as the theosophist put it, after that, it's turtles all the way down?).

Where is the subject?

What if the subject were distributed - out there in the network, part of the cloud? Along with the cheesecake?

There are some philosophies in which this would be a comprehensible possibility, although it could be difficult to see it in our hyperindividualistic age.

[TGS]

@Tim

Being eliminativist about "self" - which I take you to be suggesting here, a la Metzinger or Strawson - is an attractive position for all sorts of reasons. However, it doesn't seem to accord with our everyday experience. I certainly seem to be a self that cannot be reduced to an epiphenomenon arising out of "interconnected" brain states, not least because it is not clear in virtue of what these otherwise disparate brain states are interconnected without positing a self which provides the "substrate" for their connectedness.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by TimMason

I guess the problem is the Russian Doll problem: is there always going to be another one inside this one?

I think 'anticpation of pleasure' is a different thing to experiencing that pleasure; so I'm not seeing where the Russian Dolls come in.
Unless, it's anticipating an anticipation of an anticipation and so on. But then that's just all one thing - anticipation - I reckon.
So that's that one sorted - what's next?

[TimMason]

@TGS

Have you read Strawson's essay on the self? In it, he claims that he does not experience himself as having continuity through time, and that he is not alone in this? (speaking for myself, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't). He argues that people who experience themselves as living continuously do so through constructing stories - and stories are inadequate. (Interestingly, the social historian Charles Tilly makes something like this point in one of his last books, "Why?")

I think that one counter to your saying that it flies in the face of our everyday experience is that this is culturally shaped: there are cultures in which the self doesn't work like this. (At least, I think this is what Marilyn Strathern is getting at in "The Gender of the Gift," where she says that masculine and feminine are not distributed in the same way in New Guinea as they are chez nous. But then I don't know that I'm persuaded that masculine and feminine are distributed chez nous in the same way as they are chez nous. There are more things in heaven and St. Denis than are dreamed of in our philosphies).

[TimMason]

@Sparrow

I suspect the problem is not the anticipation, but the "I" that anticipates.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by TimMason

@Sparrow

I suspect the problem is not the anticipation, but the "I" that anticipates.

I'm pretty sure I'm not understanding the issue - so, in an attempt to seek enlightenment, I'll say my answer would be that there is only one "I" (one Russian doll), regardles of how many levels of anticipation I experience.

[FlorenceArt]

Interesting article in the NYT today about robot teachers.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Interesting article in the NYT today about robot teachers.

very much in tune with your karma fortune cookie

[FlorenceArt]

[TGS]

Originally Posted by TimMason

@TGS

Have you read Strawson's essay on the self? In it, he claims that he does not experience himself as having continuity through time, and that he is not alone in this? (speaking for myself, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't). He argues that people who experience themselves as living continuously do so through constructing stories - and stories are inadequate. (Interestingly, the social historian Charles Tilly makes something like this point in one of his last books, "Why?")

Strawson's story story might be able to account for the sense that the headache I had yesterday only appears to me now as "my" headache in virtue of the story of an enduring self that I construct (and although he might argue that I'm not convinced that's how it is for him), but I don't think it accounts for the headache I have now being experienced as "my" headache as distinct from some headache-ness going on that I contingently associate with.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

now I recognize you!