Re: Are First Person prime?

[George Levy]

David Nyman wrote: George Levy wrote: Thus first person perception of the world comes about when our own existence is contingent on our observation. Hi George I think I agree with this. It could correspond with what I'm trying to model in terms of FP1 etc. Perhaps it might be expressed as: First person perception of the world comes about when our own observation and existence are mutually contingent Not at all. A bidirectional contingency is superfluous. The only relevent contingency is: If  the observed event will result in different probabilities of survival for myself and for others observing me, then our perceptions will be different. Third person perception comes about in situations when our own existence is not contingent on our observation. Now here I'm not so clear. In sum, I'm not clear what sort of observation is *not* contingent on our existence, except someone else's observation, and so far as I can see this is always first person by your definition. Do you simply mean to define any observation not involving ourselves as 'third person' from our point-of-view? Third person perception comes about when several observers share the same perception because they share the same environmental contingencies on their existence. In effect these observers share the same "frame of reference." I see many similarities with relativity theory which I have discussed numerous times on this list in the past. Let's be clear: all these observer have a first person perspective, however this first person perspective appears to be the same across observers, and therefore appears to be *independent* of the observers. This perspective can be called *objective* but we must keep in mind that it is the same only because the frame of reference is the same. Thus the concept of objectivity loses its meaning unless we raise the meaning to a higher level and accept that different observers will predictably see different things, just like in relativity theory different observers may predictably make different measurements of the same object. George --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---