From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Mon Aug 19 2002 - 10:32:29 MDT
lcorbin@tsoft.com (Lee Corbin) writes:
>In other words, the man would be consciously pretending to be nicer
>than he really was, in order to impress his potential mate of his
>devotion, loyalty, and kindness. But few can pretend to have one
>set of motives while secretly harboring another without at least
>giving tiny signs.
Few can secretly harbor conscious motives. But I'm not aware of any good
ways to detect unconscious motives other than to observe to whom the
resulting behavior is nice.
>> >I'm not talking about consciousness here at all. And yes, you
>> >are perfectly right: one must be EXTREMELY wary of introspection.
>> >We all have many mechanisms conscious and unconscious for convincing
>> >ourselves that we're the good guys, or the nice ones, or whatever.
>> >I came up with my VR Solipsist thought experiment precisely to
>> >avoid the constant rationalizing I do of my behavior.
>Now only the first of these three is genuinely altruistic, and
>the question is, "does it really exist?". I am absolutely certain
>in my own mind that if I found out I was the VR Solipsist, then
>I'd change my behavior: Yes, for items 2 and 3 above, I'd still
If you can be absolutely certain of the results of your introspection,
then it's clear that your belief is immune to criticism.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Free Jon Johansen! http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
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