>I'm quite familiar with the story. "Philosopher A," so the story goes,
>was Berkeley, and "Philosopher B" was Swift.
I shall try to remember that for the next time I recount the story. Thank you.
>Indeed, my approach of assuming that we "experience" (in the >functional
>sense) instead of Experience (in the spooky Cartesian >sense) gives me all
>the practical value I need: I'll still try to >avoid being in "pain," still
>attempt to maximize "happiness," etc. >Only I don't have to believe that
>there's something spooky and Hard >about the problem of mind.
Fair enough (I was wondering what the capitalization was for, thank you for the clarification-I must have missed it).
I'm actually going to defer to Mr. Haradon here, as he has already said pretty much all I wanted to say at this point, and I prefer to keep the noise ratio down.
>You assert that without Experience, there is no basis for argument, >but
>you make this claim totally without justification! Sometimes I >get the
>feeling that I'm arguing with 17th century thinkers about the >existence of
>God. "Look," they say, "You simply have to have a >notion of God! Denying
>His existence is logically contradictory!" >"How?" "It's a first
>principle!"
>You're telling me that your argument for the existence of Experience >is
>that... it's a FIRST PRINCIPLE??? What the *heck* kind of an >argument is
>that? This is dogma, not reason!
Second, could you please tell me why 1+1=2?
Kathryn Riley