Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness?

9 Replies, 364 Views

Thinking of this quote:

Quote:'The idea of ... empathy is an intellectual interpretation of the primary experience in which there is no room for any sort of dichotomy.'
- Daisetsu T. Suzuki

As well as Emerson Green's remarks that privacy is one of the great stumbling blocks for Physicalism:


Quote:Before I got into philosophy of mind, I did not realize anyone even tried to deny the privacy of experience. But privacy poses various problems for physicalism, which is why physicalists often dispute it, or say they just don’t know what privacy means, or something. For me, this is non-negotiable. Not because I’m a non-physicalist partisan – I also believed this was certain when I was a physicalist. I didn’t realize it was in tension with physicalism. But once I did come to see it, I became a lot more confident that physicalism was not true. It’s plain obvious that there is something about my conscious states that nobody else can know about in the same direct way that I know about them.

Yet if one accepts the reality of telepathy, and possibly the truth of mystical experiences...does this idea of privacy still hold?

The inability to describe my feelings in third person terms does still hurt the Physicalist, yet what does the potential sharing of thoughts mean for a metaphysical/scientific picture of Persons?

I don't have any definitive answers, but I think one answer that's been put on this forum is the experience of a feeling from *your* PoV, where you *own* the feeling, is what is private. Even if I were to read your thoughts with 100% accuracy the only way that could work is if I distinguish your thoughts from mine.

Another possibility is that even if you were have a telepathic dream experience of, say, the last year of my life where you felt you were me, that "snippet" would then be put into the context of your life after the fact.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


[-] The following 3 users Like Sciborg_S_Patel's post:
  • Smaw, Valmar, stephenw

Messages In This Thread
Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Sciborg_S_Patel - 2025-01-29, 06:32 PM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Laird - 2025-01-29, 07:23 PM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Laird - 2025-01-29, 07:26 PM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Laird - 2025-01-30, 01:00 AM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Valmar - 2025-01-30, 02:39 AM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Laird - 2025-01-31, 01:48 AM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Valmar - 2025-01-31, 03:23 AM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Laird - 2025-02-01, 01:49 AM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Max_B - 2025-02-02, 07:36 PM
RE: Psi vs Privacy of Consciousness? - by Max_B - 2025-02-02, 07:39 PM

  • View a Printable Version
Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)