RJG wrote:
Me: Indeed, so since the experiencer cannot experience themselves, then to say we - the experiencer - are our bodies, or our brains, would not make sense. If I am experiencing and describing those things, I cannot be those things.
Not so. We could very well "be one of those things", ...all it means is that we just can't experience the part of the brain/body that does the experiencing.
Not if we can name them, we can't. Since the part that does the experiencing cannot be experienced it cannot be named, so it would have to be some part of the body we cannot talk about. Since our body is made of material things, things we can name, then the experiencer can't be a part of the body.
Me: So we have the paradox that we certainly have a sense of identity, but we cannot equate that sense to any particular part of our body - hence the notion of 'mind'.
Except that the "notion of mind" implies much more than just an experiencer. Experiencer only implies the 'thing', or the 'substrate' upon which bodily reactions (aka "experiences") occur.
I do not agree that 'experiencer' does imply some 'thing'. Indeed it can't, for the reasons I have given.
Also, the "notion of mind" still doesn't help solve this paradox. For where is this mind located?
It is not a thing, such that it needs a location, it is descriptive of the nature of experience.
So, why add or create a separate 'imaginary entity' (mind) to explain the actions (experiences) of the body? ...why claim a 'sun-god' is necessary to explain the actions of the sun?
Because my experience of 'thinking' is seperate to 'having a brain'. I do not understand these references to a sun god.
For example, if we accept this new imaginary entity, the "mind", as the explanation for the actions of the 'body', then what explains the actions of this 'mind'? ...must we then add/create another new imaginary entity called "mind-god" to explain the actions of the mind? ...and then what explains the actions of this new mind-god? ...where does all this silliness stop?
As I say, it is not an explanation in the sense of being some undiscovered internal human organ. It is descriptive of the nature of human consciousness, necessary because a material explanation of human consciousness is inadequate, because it does not reflect the nature of our individual experience.
As you can see, asserting a "mind", as the explanation for the actions of the body, does not provide any explanation or resolution. (...it only just temporarily 'hides', or kicks-the-problem-down-the-road).
No, it doesn't resolve the problem, but nor does it hide it. Your alternative seems to be that there is no 'mind' but instead some aspect of the body/brain that we can't experience. There doesn't seem to be much difference.
Asserting something other than the body/brain itself, as the experiencing entity, has no logical basis.
Logic has nothing to do with any of this:
Me: I do not see how I can logically deduce I exist.
You can't. You can only logically deduce 'experiencer' exists. We just call this experiencer "I" for convenience sake.
You cannot deduce the existence of anything, logic just isn't about that. By trying to put an idea into a logical form we can sometime see if it is self-contradictory, or tautological, but that is as far as it goes.
1. Experiencing exists --- is an absolute and undeniably true premise. It is impossible to deny, as the mere act of denying only affirms its existence.
Then it is not a proposition in logic, since as I wrote last time, a proposition in logic must be capable of being either true or false.
I cannot confirm or deny it, because I do not know what it means. What does that 'exist' mean? 'Exists' as an object? As a word in the dictionary? As a fuzzy idea? As a possibility? Subjectively? Objectively? There is no single absolute sense - if we said it 'exists' in any one of those senses then we would be saying it doesn't 'exist' in another. So I do not know what this claim 'exists' amounts to.
Me:..if it was the case that we could simply derive the existence of 'an experiencer' from 'an experience', then one problem would be that every separate experience we have means there must be a separate experiencer. The 'me' of this moment is a different 'me' from the one that started this sentence.
Not so. Imagine a plant leaf. At one moment it experiences moisture (rain) and auto-reacts accordingly, and then moments later it experiences heat and light (sunshine) and auto-reacts accordingly. It is the same leaf (i.e. the same "experiencer") in both moments. The same is true with our physical bodies too.
You start out by stating what is said to be a self evident and undeniable truth, yet your answer to my criticism requires me to accept an analogy, based on biology!
That there is 'experiencing' does not confirm the reality of plants, or of an external world at all. It does not confirm that the world operates in a regular way according to natural laws. It does not confirm that things - including the experiencer - continue to exist over time. It does not confirm that we have physical bodies.
So, when writing out the logical argument that is supposed to confirm the existence of a perceiver, you will have to add extra premises that list all these things as assumptions. But then it will not be simply 'cogito ergo sum', there will be a whole list of assumptions before we get to 'ergo sum', and the conclusion would only be true if every assumption was true, which we cannot know to be the case.