Re: cognitive != observable?

There's really no need to study Sartre (or Merleau-Ponty, or Heidegger 
or Husserl), *if* one understands what Skinner and Quine have to say. If 
one doesn't understand Skinner it might ultimately help if you read a 
little "Being and Time" or some Sartre. Reading what the 
phenomenologists write will ultimately make what the radical 
behaviourist has to say much clearer to those that need to have it made 
clearer. I'd start with Husserl, and selectively so.


In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 
OmegaZero2003 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> "Glen M. Sizemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > In other words, there's a real world, but we don't see it. We only see a
> > copy of it in our alleged mind. Right?
>
> Cue: Famous Reply on these boards:
>
> This was a famous Johnsonian rejoinder to Berkeleyan immaterialism
>
> too.  I believe Bertrand Russell once suggested that Johnson might have
>
> been less confident that kicking a stone served as a suficient proof of
>
> the reality of matter had he understood that modern physical science of
>
> matter teaches that his foot never actually touched the stone.
>
>
>
> (Of course Russell was just guilty of misuse of language in
>
> this claim. Physical science is powerless to teach any such thing,
>
> since only the ordinary everyday concept of "touching" is at issue.)
>
>
>
> My own question would be: why do we need kicking and pain? Wouldn't
>
> just *looking* at the table serve just as well? A feeling of pain is, I
>
> guess, more dramatic, but even the sight, i.e. visual experience of an
>
> "objective" table as what it is (a table) is equally an experience that
>
> is simply not within your power to avoid. I.e. a source of resistance
>
> or constraint by the objective over the spontaneity of conceptual
>
> thinking.
>
>
>
> Note also that seeing a table as a table is not an "abstract" or
>
> mathematical operation. The pereceptual experience is informed by an
>
> acquired concept of a table, but the concept is not being used in
>
> abstract thought in this act.
>
>
>
> As Sartre says in the beginning of Being and Nothingness, the table
>
> over there in space is not in consciousness but rather a "center of
>
> opacity" for consciousness. Consciousness is intentional and this
>
> amounts to its consisting of nothing but consciousness of such public
>
> objects as this lamp, that table, etc. Although Sartre's phenomenology
>
> is couched in a somewhat baroque metaphysical idiom, I think it is well
>
> worth studying. It can be seen to articulate a view about the nature of
>
> consciousness that shows how to steer clear of the subjectivistic
>
> muddles of traditional epistemology such as Berkeley.
>
>
>
> (A. Weinstein)
>
>
>
>
> > "Patty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > OmegaZero2003 wrote:
> > >
> > > > "Ray Gardener" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > > > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > >
> > > >>>... by changing.  Consider a blinker in GOL - consider a
> > > >>>glider colliding with it - can you concieve that the blinker
> > > >>>experienced the glider?
> > > >>
> > > >>No. The entities "blinker" and "glider" exist only in your mind. They
> > are
> > > >>anthromorphisms that you are applying to mere information in a
> machine.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > It is the representations of those anthromorphisms that interact.
> > >
> > > I would say that which interacts is represented by what we
> > > call "blinkers" and "gliders" in our minds.  But that
> > > interaction happens regardless of how (or whether) it is
> > > represented in our minds.
> > >
> > > Patty
> > >

--
David Longley