Jef Allbright wrote: ...
The statement "I am conscious", as usually intended to mean that one can be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an exception, because it's not even coherent. It has no objective context at all. It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer somehow in the privileged position of being able to observe itself. Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the subjective experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications, and confabulations. If instead you mean that you know you are conscious in the same sense that you know other people are conscious, then that is not an exception, but just a reasonable inference, meaningful within quite a large context. If Descartes had said, rather than "Je pense, donc je suis", something like "I think, therefore *something* exists", then I would agree with him.
Bertrand Russell wrote that Descartes should only have said, "There's thinking." "I" is an inference. :-) Brent Meeker --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
