rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/30/85)
> I don't deny that there is such a thing as subjective experience. Indeed, > my first impulse is to say that of course there is. But WHAT IS IT? > The difficulties involved in trying to answer this make me take seriously > the idea that it does not exist, which I would otherwise reject out of hand. > I don't see how to get subjective experience out of a mechanistic system, > and I don't see any reason to believe in (nor understand the meaning of) a > non-mechanistic system. > > By the way, I don't have any problem explaining the fact that other people > claim to have subjective experiences. The problem is in explaining my > own subjectivity to myself. Maybe it's all an illusion -- but what is it > which is being deceived? [ADAMS] It's really so simple, a child could figure it out. But I think maybe we're all too busy imputing purposes and labelling things so that we miss this obvious fact. Assuming for the moment the existence of an objective reality, of which our brains are a part. When we live through an "experience", how is it stored and catalogued and "understood" by the brain? We use words, words which we have learned to describe things. Since different people grow up with different vocabularies, some giving words different meanings than others or placing different emphasis on special meanings that they have learned, they will interpret and store the experience differently. This is why two people who lived through the same experience may recall it with completely different emotions and completely different perspectives, based on what words they used to describe it internally. In fact, people who speak different languages might use the "same" word, but it may have different connotations within each language---this could of course even occur with two people and ONE language: personal connotations of words. Now, our experiences be stored in "word form" (they're probably not), but in any case our interpretation of experiences is ruled by analogy. If not analogies to words (as described above), analogies we make to things we have already experienced. Even something new is experienced in comparison to something old. In any case, this is the "subjective experience" in a nutshell. It is the reason two people can live through the same experience and have different reactions to it: because prior experiences shape the way the current experience is interpreted. (I believe some psychologists think that the more verbal we become the more we tend to catalog and think in terms of words rather than in terms of holistic images of experiences, but I'm not sure how this relates to subjective experience, if at all. It probably explains why children grasp things so quickly at early ages.) > By the way, I don't really expect any answers -- the problem is probably > unanswerable. I hope this provided at least a few pointers. -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr