Can Subjective Experience Truly Address the Other Minds Problem?

[Evolver]

Well I would believe that they too have conscious mind states because I believe that my being in pain is a mind state of my own, so therefore if my wincing and pain is a mind state, wouldn't it be logical for me to believe that another person who is wincing and in pain would share a similar mind state?

Believe being the operative word here. If you take a look at the plethora of human beliefs you will instantly realize the belief and truth aren't necessarily linked.

The only thing that can be known to exist on an empirical level are your very own thoughts (though that could even be debated.) Take for instance this bit of logic: Your brain is packed away tight inside your skull. No photons of light ever reach this brain (which is thought to be the origin of consciousness). Now, how then does the brain even know what light looks like? Well... it doesn't. It creates what it thinks it should look like. It's simply a way of interpreting information. The optic nerve interprets some information and translates it into an electrical signal... the brain then takes that electrical signal and further interprets it. We "see" a multi-processed representation of the original information.

Now, should we go down the rabbit hole even further... you could argue that the physical brain itself doesn't even exist, as it too is simply a perceived set of information. This is all getting a bit ahead of things here, but the real point is that nothing outside of your own conscious spectrum can be known to actually exist. And that is from a very logical perspective if you think about it. When we say someone else exists, and feels, and thinks just as we do, we are only assuming this. We actually have no verifiable proof other than we believe they do because our senses tell us so.

This idea in philosophy is known as Solipsism. It's well documented and very old in origin. There is also a project known as 'Blue Brain' where scientists have replicated the neurons of a neocortical column on an IBM supercomputer. They are attempting to study if the brain does, in fact, project it's own reality. These ideas are hard to grasp or even come to terms with initially, but then again so was the idea that the world wasn't flat.

 

[JoeDawg]

I liken this to an outsider or laymen view of nihilism, exactly as JoeDawg said: a perjorative.

In the modern day, it's hard to believe people who call themselves nihilist don't believe in subjective meaning. It would be kind of difficult to remove subjective meaning from your life. Wouldn't you then be a fatalist?

Then there's always Nietzsche:

Fatalism is not about meaning, its about whether your actions have consequence.
And, in case there is some confusion, Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist.

 

[Pythagorean]

Fair enough on fatalism, I was referring to your "give up and suicide" quote.

The Nietzche quote is about nihilism.

 

[JoeDawg]

The Nietzche quote is about nihilism.

Fair enough, sometimes Nietzsche gets called a nihilist, when in fact he considered nihilism a result of christian hypocrisy, and something to be overcome.

 

[Pythagorean]

Fair enough, sometimes Nietzsche gets called a nihilist, when in fact he considered nihilism a result of christian hypocrisy, and something to be overcome.

But Nietzsche's thoughts on nihilism can't really be summed up in a sentence like that. He spoke positively of nihilism, as well. Particularly what he called "active" nihilism. (I.e. embracing nihilism and responding productively to it).

 

[JoeDawg]

But Nietzsche's thoughts on nihilism can't really be summed up in a sentence like that. He spoke positively of nihilism, as well. Particularly what he called "active" nihilism. (I.e. embracing nihilism and responding productively to it).

Nietzsche's relationship with nihilism is complex, I agree. But I don't think he would have said to 'embrace' nihilism. Nihilism for Nietzsche was more 'a stage', or what results from the 'death of god'. Its the unavoidable result. Its a place, one had to pass through, after one breaks the chains of christian morality. It wasn't the goal.

From: On a Geneology of Morals

"This man of the future, who will release us from that earlier ideal just as much as from what had to grow from it, from the great loathing, from the will to nothingness, from nihilism—that stroke of noon and of the great decision which makes the will free once again, who gives back to the Earth its purpose and to the human being his hope, this anti-Christ and anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and of nothingness—at some point he must come . . ."

 

[Pythagorean]

Nietzsche's relationship with nihilism is complex, I agree. But I don't think he would have said to 'embrace' nihilism. Nihilism for Nietzsche was more 'a stage', or what results from the 'death of god'. Its the unavoidable result. Its a place, one had to pass through, after one breaks the chains of christian morality. It wasn't the goal.

From: On a Geneology of Morals

No, he didn't instruct his readers to embrace it. He showed admiration for a type of nihilist (or type of nihilism, I suppose) that embraces the "destruction" of empty value systems.

 

[magpies]

Give some more nietzsche quotes please I think it will make this thread better :)

 

[Galteeth]

Give some more nietzsche quotes please I think it will make this thread better :)

"In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it—or worse still! under their dress and finery."

 

[delivered1]

Hey guys,
So for my philosophy class we have a writing that is related to the quote --
"The only accounts of the mind that have any chance of solving the other minds problem don't take the subjective, 'first person' nature of the mind seriously, and the accounts that do take it seriously can't solve the other minds problem"
I have to argue for or against this argument with examples. At the moment I am having a bit of trouble actually explaining this concept. I understand the idea that it logical to think that for example, if i hit my thumb with a hammer, I wince in pain, if someone else hits there thumb with a hammer they also wince in pain, so it is logical to believe that they too are conscious (have mental states etc...)
I feel like I know what this is saying but I just don't understand completely what it means by take the first person nature of the mind seriously. Can anyone shed a little light on this?

* My answer is if there are a group of doomed people gathered, that represent "Accounts of the mind". They must not all feel doomed and destined to die. Someone in the group must not see things the way the group sees it, representing: "does not see in the "first person"."Not in first person" has to think about the situation in a different light than "Accounts of the mind". If everyone was in "Accounts " they are all seeing the same ending.

 

[Pythagorean]

Nietzsche quotes:

The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every
considering-something-true, is necessarily false cause there simply is no true
world Thus. a perspectival appearance whose origin lies in us (in so far as we
continually need a narrower, abbreviated, simplified world).

That it is the measure of strength to what extent we can admit to ourselves,
without perishing, the merely apparent character, the necessity of lies.
To this extent, nihilism, as the denial of a truthful world, of being, might be a
divine way of thinking.

Nihilism. It is ambiguous:
A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism.
B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive
nihilism.

Nihilism as a normal condition.
It can be a sign of strength: the spirit may have grown so strong that previous
goals ("convictions," articles of faith) have become incommensurate (for a faith
generally expresses the constraint of conditions of existence, submission to the
authority of circumstances under which one flourishes, grows, gains power). Or
a sign of the lack of strength to posit for oneself, productively, a goal, a why, a
faith.
It reaches its maximum of relative strength as a violent force of destruction-as
active nihilism.
Its opposite: the weary nihilism that no longer attacks; its most famous form,
Buddhism; a passive nihilism, a sign of weakness. The strength of the spirit
may be worn out, exhausted, so that previous goals and values have become
incommensurate and no longer are believed; so that the synthesis of values
and goals (on which every strong culture rests) dissolves and the individual
values war against each other: disintegration-and whatever refreshes, heals,
calms, numbs emerges into the foreground in various disguises, religious or
moral, or political, or aesthetic, etc.

from The Will to Power