From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Oct 29 2002 - 11:00:37 MST
Rafal,
I am amused that Lee (and now you) are accusing me of calling others
irrational. If you read my words you'll see that I am attacking Lee's
argument, not his person. Moreover the basis of my refutation is none other
than that his argument is fallacious by reason of reductio ad absurdum,
which is to say that his conclusion is absurd enough to invalidate his
premises. For that reason I make no apologies for describing his argument
with adjectives synonymous with "absurd", e.g., "preposterous" and
"irrational."
> ### Now, let's do some rational analysis here.
>
> If I stay with somebody in a room, we exchange atoms by breathing. If my
> atoms are "self", soon there will overlap of "self" and "other".
I see no overlap here. You exhale some atoms which are later taken up by
another person. The atoms are first a part of your self and later a part of
another self. At no time are they overlapping.
> Or maybe I start talking to somebody and exchange ideas. If "self" is made
> of ideas, there soon will be overlap of "self" and "other".
Again I see no overlap between self and other. You can conceive of an idea
similar or identical to an idea that another also conceives. There then
exists two instantiations of that conception, one in your mind and one in
the other's mind.
> Perhaps I would choose to establish a direct neural link to the person I
> talked to. In that case her thoughts would be accessible to me like the
> thoughts originating within my own skull. If the feeling of direct access
is
> what makes "self", then there would be overlap of "self" and "other".
Again I see no overlap. If you are aware that her thoughts are coming from
her rather than from you, then clearly they are from "other." If you think
they are coming from you, then you are decieved by the illusion created by
the neural link. That deception does not obviate the otherness of her
thoughts.
> Finally, after extensive mental communion (mediated by advanced hardware)
> I/we would decide to rewire our prefrontal cortices (the material
substrate
> supporting the idea you call "self"), to voluntarily merge our
motivational
> concepts of self, without losing any of the memories and capabilities each
> one of me/her had before we met. In that case again, there would be
overlap
> of "self" and "other".
In that far out case I would consider the merged individuals as a very
complex self, similar to a person with mulitiple personality disorder (but
without the pathology connotation).
> "Self" and "other" are not simple mathematical statements that could be
> "mutually exclusive".
The distinction between self and other is the most basic of human
cognitions. It occurs to us in or before early infancy, perhaps even in the
womb. It is the first rational thought we can have, and upon it rests all
subsequent logic.
One might even say we are not persons in the world until we discover this
critical distinction between self and other. Certainly we cannot think "I
exist in the world" until we realize the otherness of the world in which we
exist.
-gts
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