In article <4rj2iv8j605vchjg4git20dhf2q90elb8c@4ax.com>,
Jim07D3 <Jim07D3@nospam.net> wrote:

Ted King <

If anyone "operates" past solipsism they need to make some assumptions
about the nature of their experiences.

I'm wondering a couple of things about this statement. They are, (1)
is this a matter of choice, and (2) is solipsism devoid of
assumptions? It seems to me that there is a position that "underlies"
solipsism or any other metaphysical ism -- uninterpreted experience --
that is assumption-free.

I didn't elaborate as much as I should have and rather than say
"operates" I should have probably said something about belief or
conviction. If we start with just experience itself, there doesn't
appear to be any intrinsic reason to *set aside* the notion that
reality is solipsistic.

It does appear to be that one could just set
it aside as a practical or functional matter even if one doesn't
believe or have a conviction that reality isn't solipistic, because if
one simply doesn't have a conviction either way one might as well, as
a practical matter, live their life as if reality is not solipsistic.
To have a belief or conviction that reality is solipsistic I think you
are correct to imply that that would entail some assumptions about the
nature of experience (at least in terms of justification for such a
belief). What I meant to refer to, though, was that coming to a belief
or conviction that reality is *not* solipsistic also entails some
assumptions. (As it seems to me that any committed physicalist or
dualist would have to take some assumptions for granted to argue for
their position.)

I'm wondering if you would agree
or not with my observation that there is, perhaps only to some extent,
some type of a polarity of methodologies arising from two types of
intuitive inclinations. One inclination is more purely contemplative -
reflecting on the "flow" of experience as a phenomena. This methodology
implies a division between that which is observed and the observer that
observes that which is observed. This way of looking at it seems to flow
sort of inward to outward - from an inscrutable "self" as observer,
outward to "other than self" which is observed. Experience is what the
inscrutable self *has* about other. Consciousness as the flow of
experiences is something the inscrutable self *has*. The other intuitive
inclination seems to sort of move outward to inward. This methodology
seems to assume that regular sensum is essentially what it appears to be
- an accurate "reflection" of a regularly patterned reality.
Consciousness, as a flow of experiences, arises as a process that is not
fundamentally different in nature from other processes that are
empirically "known".

That is an interesting way of describing the priority (or centrality)
of self over other, or other over self.

"Interesting" as in a diplomatic way of saying not very fruitful, even
if not totally screwy? :-)

If this does in some way "captures" differences in intuitions, then a
question might be if there is a way to determine which type of intuition
is correct.

The notion of "correct intuition" (versus an incorrect intuition) WRT
this issue implies comparison of the intuited view to something
superior in its "authority" to intuition, or to some other intuition
that is held to be superior. If both intuitions that you describe are
"points of view" then it seems to me this is like asking whether it
is correct to look at a car as a collection of parts, versus looking
at a car as a means of transportation. In addition to the difficulty
of "bias-free" criteria of correctness, maybe the subject matter -- a
point of view -- is "beyond" being correct or incorrect, or it is
inherently situational. But then, there is the case where someone
looks at a car as a type of monkey. We'd tend to call that incorrect.
But, still, the questions are, "in what sense is a car not well viewed
as being a type of monkey?" or "what do I mean when I say that viewing
a car as a type of monkey is incorrect?" My mind goes toward pragmatic
criteria of correctness, which means that either point of view can be
called correct, if the circumstances warrant.

Maybe, but I'm not convinced that even if it is unknowable by its
nature, that there isn't a state of affairs with which one intuition
more correctly corresponds than the other. If there is a state of
affairs which one of the intuitions more closely approximates as a
representation, and this state of affairs is innately unknowable, it
may still be that in terms of practical application, one or the other
intuition may be deemed "correct" using efficacy within the context of
a circumstance as the criterion. Does that though just shift the
problem into a digression of criteria for "correctness as efficacy"
rather than digression of criteria for "correctness as truer to the
real state of affairs"? And does efficacy ever enter the picture with
respect to contrasting these types of intuitions?

As you often point out, to answer that question there would
appear to be a need for an "unbiased" set of criteria to determine the
answer. Of course, that would call for the establishment of unbiased
criteria to determine the unbiased criteria - and so on.
Perhaps it is "better" to just leave the questions unanswered; at least
by my intuitions it is better to at least acknowledge that at some point
we are led to answers by intuitions backed up by nothing other than
themselves.

William James said something about this dualism issue being resolvable
by referring to a single thing he called "pure experience" where there
is no distinction between experienced and experiencer. It seem to me
that the "point of contact" between experienced and experiencer is
just one thing, that could be called pure experience or pure
experiencing. IOW, so long as experienced and experiencer remain
separate, there is no experience, (or no experiencing happening) and
so it is pointless to think of experiencing as something that involves
two fundamentally different "things" since at the moment of actual
experiencing, they cannot be separate. It is the very essence of
experience that the experienced and the experiencer are "one thing" at
the moment of experiencing. So in this sense, it is a false problem,
because it describes a situation in which there is not an experience
happening. Alan Watts had similar things to say. I don't know if this
is exactly what James had in mind. But what do you think of it? Does
it help to say that dualism is a "point of view" issue, or is a "false
problem"?

That view is appealing, but I'm not sure how to think of "self
reflection" within that framework. There are times when I seem to be
busy just "doing", and other times when a "part of me" seems to
observe the rest of me doing something. Sometimes it even seems as
though there is experience of myself observing myself observing
myself. (I just watched the movie "Adaptation" last night - what a
kick!) I think Brian King in one of his posts said something, IIRC,
about different parts of the brain functioning simultaneously as a
possible accounting for the sense of observing oneself. Such a
neuro-psychological explanation seems plausible. Maybe this point is
tangential to what you are saying about "pure experience", but I am
attracted to the notion that experience is a dynamic process that is
sometimes more fragmented and other times more coherent/syncronized. I
think maybe that view isn't inconsistent with the spirit of what it
seems to me Alan Watts was saying in some of his writings. I get from
some of his writings that "problems" often arise for people when they
"identify" themselves as some "thing" separate from their experiences.
Or people can just get hung up by being preoccupied with observing
themselves as though from perspective of being outside of themselves.
When I was learning to play baseball I had a hard time catching fly
balls. Then a coach yelled at me to quit thinking about it and just
catch the damn ball. He was right, I was so busy monitoring myself
trying to catch the ball that it got in the way of me catching the
ball. I was sort of amazed how easy it was to catch the ball when I
quit monitoring myself trying to catch the ball.

The role of memory in this has to be considered, but maybe that's
another subthread. Memory seems to be one thing that convinces us we
are separate from our experiences and from the experienced.

Jim07D3

Oh yeah, that's a puzzle. I think what dovetails with that, but is
probably more distant from this topic, is the ramifications of the
notion of "duration" of an experience.