Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, August 28, 2009, 16:29 (5565 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Friday, August 28, 2009, 16:39

dhw,
> I wrote that I was "absolutely not prepared to dismiss people's personal experiences as possible evidence". Matt replied: "A person's experiences are inviolable. Your experiences are not open to study by me, because there is no way to recreate the event except in words." And also: "The act of recounting an event from memory is itself always worth casting doubt on. [...] This means that the level of subjectivity is simply too high for my analytical taste."
> 
> In your response to David (26 August at 01.43) you also wrote "To me, any acceptable explanation must be studyable."
> 
> All things are "studyable", but I suspect that what you mean by that is scientifically testable. It comes down to the usual question of whether you do or don't believe that science holds all the answers ... and that in turn comes down to whether you are or are not a materialist. (I'm aware that you are not, but when asked to lean, you tend to go in that direction.) "Subjectivity" is a dirty word in scientific contexts, but I would say that subjective experiences provide us with most of the realities that make life worth living. I hope you didn't insist on a scientific study of the cerebral cortices of your wife and yourself before you told her you loved her. 
> - I think it would be best here to give you the terms I use; subjective experiences are something you can reflect on, but to study something you need to have something "not just in your head" in order to do it. You can write your subjective experiences down; but what you have is only a metaphor of the actual event. So maybe yes, I do mean "scientifically." I do not mean to move subjective experiences to the side--I'm fully aware that it is exactly those things that give our lives meaning. However I feel I would be lying to say that I can *study* my brain. I can reflect on what's in it. I can examine it and try to make sense of it, but study just isn't the right word for that. Rest assured, that I wouldn't have married my wife if I wasn't certain that it was requited love; so while not studying her cortices, I was certainly mining them for information, heh. - > Subjective does not mean unreal or untrue ... and I know you're not saying it does ... but I recall in one of your earlier posts that you dismissed all "paranormal" experiences as fake. (Forgive me if that was not the precise word ... I'm too lazy to go hunting for it ... but it was certainly something like that.). You're right to avoid personal conflict in individual cases, and in general it seems to me quite fair to suspend judgement. But without knowing the facts, it's unfair to pass judgement, let alone impose prejudgement. I wrote that I was absolutely not prepared to dismiss people's personal experiences as possible evidence. Your reply suggests, in the nicest possible way, that you are.
> - A better way to put it would be that I am instinctively skeptical, but that I'm aware that being that way can cause undue stress on friends, family, etc. I'm interested in learning these things from people because they make each of us who we are, but I dare not in any event treat them as something I can study. We are equipped to examine our own subjective experiences, but the moment my buddy "Fred" takes his demon story to me for some kind of validation, he's making it an objective event, and it patently cannot be an objective event, and my skepticism will prevent me from treating it as an objective event. I don't pass judgment, but recognize that no matter how important, I have no right or claim against Fred's demons because unless I was there, I cannot say if it was real or not. Maybe that helps you place my thought a little better? - > I would add, though, that we're ALL subject to personal experiences we don't understand and can't analyse objectively, but because we're so used to them, we're largely unaware of them. That's the subject I'm trying to grapple with under this thread, but it's very difficult to articulate. I shall have another go at it in due course. Your inability and my own to answer the questions I posed on 25 August at 07.55 lie at the heart of it. - Humans have their own "three-body problem" when it comes to ideas. Someone picks up a doctrine and then everything in the world moves according to it. Someone else picks up one of the "orbiting" doctrines and then there's a new interpretation of the same movement. We need to have some kind of common ground to connect experiences to make them "objective." - [EDIT]
When Fred takes his demon story to me, all I can do is provide what I think based on my perspective. However, it is two things, firstly, it is my examination based on his words, which may or may not be wholly accurate. Secondly, his perspective shapes his retelling of the events, and further removes me from the actual event itself. There is far too much subjectivity here to be able to *study* it.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"