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Who Am I?
What's the Point of Philosophy Without This First?

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Who Am I?

peter rabbit
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Posted 10/31/09 - 03:39 PM:	#91
Banno wrote: So you are certain of my consciousness, and yet certainty is impossible? Yes, my error. I didn't mean "impossible" but "incomplete".

peter rabbit
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Posted 10/31/09 - 03:43 PM:	#92
Banno wrote: LOL. It would seem that you are laughing at me? Banno wrote: To whom is this addressed? Someone who enjoys mocking his fellows?

Banno
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Posted 10/31/09 - 03:48 PM:	#93
peter rabbit wrote: It would seem that you are laughing at me? Not at all. After all, we are not sure what "you" are, are we? On reflection, it seems to me that the basis of this thread is a bit of linguistic confusion. This is not unusual for threads that seek the meaning of some term or other. As if such things were fixed.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

peter rabbit
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Posted 10/31/09 - 04:05 PM:	#94
Banno wrote: Not at all. After all, we are not sure what "you" are, are we? Hard to imagine you saying this with anything other than the smug knowing sneer of a schoolmaster. Please forgive me if I misread the details of your tone; one way or another though you are clearly being sarcastic, which is easy and cheap, not to mention unhelpful. Banno wrote: On reflection, it seems to me that the basis of this thread is a bit of linguistic confusion. This is not unusual for threads that seek the meaning of some term or other. As if such things were fixed. I am not seeking to clarify the meaning of a term, I am asking what it is that experiences terms.

Banno
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Posted 10/31/09 - 04:28 PM:	#95
peter rabbit wrote: I am not seeking to clarify the meaning of a term, I am asking what it is that experiences terms. You have judged my persona well. Terms are not for experiencing, but for doing stuff with. Why the emphasis on experience?
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

peter rabbit
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Posted 11/01/09 - 01:03 AM:	#96
Banno wrote: You have judged my persona well. That is because I have experienced it. Your posts tend to be brief, clever, sarcastic and vaguely unpleasant. Banno wrote: Terms are not for experiencing, but for doing stuff with. Why the emphasis on experience? See above. I'd say that neither terms nor anything else are here for any reason at all. I can "do stuff" with some of them, and with some of them I can't. What is always true though is that something (or, to the mind, nothing) is experiencing whatever happens, always. Whatever I think about, feel, perceive or do, there is an experiencing witness. The world literally brainwashes the individual to ignore this experience, reduce his or her sensitivity to it, devalue and mock it. The reason that I emphasise it is that experience of it (or from it) is the source of grace, simplicity, joy, spontaneous creativity, good judgement and the electric strangeness of never quite knowing what anything really is.

hanuma
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Posted 11/01/09 - 08:42 AM:	#97
Banno wrote: That you are here engaging in this discussion is sufficient; the habit of doubt is ubiquitous in this forum. As for experiencing my consciousness, what more could there be to this than reading what I write, or contemplating to my erudition. What is missing? What could "objective" mean here? Haha, yes there are some spurious characters on these forums, like trying to push shit up a hill in some conversations. Sisyphus. I don't know if I am in a position to answer your question of 'what more could there be?' Simply because I can only guess as to what your constant experience is beyond my own (and I again am assuming you have a 'constant experience' based on an analysis of myself), and that the process of my response here is surely only the tip of an iceberg. That at every stage I (and so therefore we) cannot help but accumulate memories, feelings, tendencies that add to the system of our minds, change our methods of producing words and responses to them. I'm not keen on this notion of complete subjectivity, of solipsism and our own inextricability, but I find it hard to get beyond such a point here.

hanuma
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Posted 11/01/09 - 08:52 AM:	#98
peter rabbit wrote: Yes and no. It is the experience of this, not the clever linguistic trick of it. Interesting. Because isn't the experience of this, precisely this in the first place? Like I mentioned in my previous post to Banno, this inextricability we have from ourselves. I think we might find a compromise here between my concreteness and your time/spacelessness. Brings us round to perhaps a wider argument (and a psychoanalytical one) about how/whether we are bound by desire. That in some sense every action comes from a desire and that this desire is not always obvious to 'us' although what it makes 'us' do is what we are experiencing. After posting here yesterday I found this page to look at, quite interesting: http://nosubject.com/Desire I would say that an uncorrupted child of four, not the greatest thinker in the world, is more conscious than most university professors. I remember seeing something about Quantum physics which explained how the undeveloped consciousness of a child was actually precisely more sensitive to a 'quantam' reality, because it didn't presuppose that when something disappeared that it still existed. So when you play 'peek-a-boo' the reason the child constantly reacts in the same way, irrelevant of how many times you repeat the trick, is because when the person dissapears from its sight the child thinks it has gone completely and has no expectation that it will come back. And wasn't it "expectation" viz. keys in pockets, that we started with?

Banno
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Posted 11/01/09 - 11:54 AM:	#99
peter rabbit wrote: Your posts tend to be brief, clever, sarcastic and vaguely unpleasant. My posts are ironic, never sarcastic.
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

Banno
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Posted 11/01/09 - 12:00 PM:	#100
hanuma wrote: I'm not keen on this notion of complete subjectivity, of solipsism and our own inextricability, but I find it hard to get beyond such a point here. I sugest you take a look at what got you there. The philosophical game of doubting everything must have an end. But instead of stopping at the self, consider what is needed in order to play the game at all. My suggestion is that one cannot doubt without language. What do you think?
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

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