The problem is that there are cases where we are not sure if we can apply the
label real or not. For a physicist a physical body is real, like a person, a
book, a tree, a glass of water, a cat, a mouse, etc. A physical body hasas a
weight and an extension that can be measured. It has a mass and can be touched.
Wizards, witches, unicorns or flying horses that appear in Harry Potter stories
are not real. If we see them in a movie they seem to be real, but they are
obviously invented by J.K. Rowling, J.R.R Tolkien and their
predecessors.Subjective experiences and feelings are real, because they are
ultimately based on physiological processes like hormone levels, blood pressure
and neurotransmitters concentrations like Serotonin, Dopamine, Norepinephrine,
Acetylcholine, etc. The idea of a single central place in the brain where
subjective experience happens is unreal, as Daniel Dennett explains in
"Consciousness explained" and Jay Garfield in "Losing Ourselves".The
interesting cases are the ones that are real and unreal at the same time, like
the rainbow that emerges from waterdroplets which are hit by light rays. Or the
projection of a 4-dimensional cube on a 2-dimensional piece of paper. Or the
historical movie which is authentic and yet illusionary.-J.
-------- Original message --------From: Nicholas Thompson
<thompnicks...@gmail.com> Date: 6/1/22 03:04 (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday
Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re:
[FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism, Behaviorism, oh my! Thanks for these
comments, JOCHEN.I think Garfield’s point was that there is nothing but
experience, So the problem is, what is the special character of experiences to
which we apply the label real.NickSent from my Dumb PhoneOn May 31, 2022, at
4:00 PM, Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net> wrote:Interesting episode. Yes,
Garfield apparently uses it to advertise his book. I like the mirage example he
uses (at 11:00) to illustrate an illusion which is real as an experience and as
a dynamic refraction process but unreal as a physical substance.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691220284/losing-ourselvesDaniel
Dennett recently posted on Twitter a link to an article which contains the
same idea, but for a rainbow instead of a mirage: perceiving a rainbow is a
real experience of a colored arc, but also an illusion because there is of
course no real physical arc at the place where we see it.
https://www.keithfrankish.com/2022/05/like-a-rainbow/Maybe the illusion of the
self works indeed in the same way? As whole persons who have bodies and brains
we are real, just as raindrops in the sky are real. But when the billions of
neurons start to sparkle in the light of conscious thoughts, the experience of
a self emerges for a short time like a rainbow which emerges shortly from a
million raindrops that bend the light towards the observer.I believe Jay
Garfield is right when he says that we are able to construct ourselves as
embedded beings. It is as if we are 6, 7 or 8 dimensional beings in a 4
dimensional spacetime where the additional dimensions are embedded in the
others. This additional dimensions come through language and enable to specify
a personality. If we consider a person from a 3rd person point of view, then
the personality of a person certainly determines the behavior. This means
everyone has a self in form of a character or personality. Even if it is
illusionary or an unreachable ideal to be a certain type of person, such a type
can be approximated. Our personalities can be considered as embedded abstract
person types that we acquire and approximate in the course of time. In this
sense we can say we have a self that guides our actions. And the abstract type
is independent from us, since it could also be implemented in a sophisticated
robot, android or AI.-J.-------- Original message --------From:
thompnicks...@gmail.com Date: 5/31/22 11:04 (GMT+01:00) To: 'The Friday
Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam@redfish.com> Cc: 'Mike Bybee'
<mikeby...@earthlink.net>, stephenraron...@gmail.com, 'Grant Franks'
<grantfran...@gmail.com> Subject: [FRIAM] Peirce, Buddhism, Monism,
Behaviorism, oh my!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/282-do-you-really-have-a-self/id733163012?i=1000563340865
Jay Garfield promotes his book Losing the Self on the Sam Harris Podcast. I
can see no evidence that Garfield ever read a word of Peirce, but It’s
fascinating how closely he tracks Peirce’s monism. Fascinating, also, to see
how Harris never quite gets it, repeatedly trying to drag the outside/inside
distinction back into the conversation, while slathering praise on Garfield for
eliminating it. Reminds me of James’s failure to ever quite “get” Peirce. But
then it was James who died a neutral monist. Oh well. Reminded me of all the
times that Dave West has accused me of being a closet Buddhist. Nick Nick
ThompsonThompNickSon2@gmail.comhttps://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -. --- -
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