From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Wed Sep 04 2002 - 02:51:44 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
> I think that there is a 40% chance that one of you is
> right and the other wrong, and a 60% chance that the
> inherent trickiness when talking about "experience"
> has claimed more victims. (Of course, that's easy
> enough to say from the sidelines.)
I agree that the "inherent trickiness when talking about experience" is
and has been a major threat to the sensibility of this thread. :/
> You are separating what some people would view as a single
> experience into two experiences. [the experience vs the
> conscious recognition of the experience] But I don't disagree
> with you because I think your phrases well-describe what
> is going on in the brain.
Good! I think we're on the same page in this respect.
>> As evidence, consider people with severe mental
>> disabilities. As anyone who has ever worked with
>> mentally challenged individuals will tell you,
>> (including myself), people with mental handicaps
>> tend to be happier and more loving and gleeful than
>> those with superior cortexes.
>
> If you say so.
I once worked as a volunteer at a school for the mentally disabled (in
those days it was still politically correct to use the term "mentally
retarded"). The school had some 20 to 25 students, all of them severely
retarded adults. Few could spell their own name or count past ten. They
all shared one common trait: they were filled with love and happiness
and joy. Life was for them an incredible adventure, filled with the joy
of discovery. I learned a lot from those good folks. Perhaps the most
important lesson I learned was that the so-called "higher faculties" of
the cerebral cortex are as much a curse as they are a blessing.
The fruit of the tree of knowledge is not sweet.
> I do have a question about one of the refs posted, although
> when I re-read the ref a bit yesterday, I couldn't remember
> my concern. I'll post it if I do. This thread isn't quite
> dead yet.
Great. This thread is of great interest to me (as if you haven't noticed
:). I'm very sorry that Rafal has decided to sign off on it.
-gts
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