From: barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Psychobabble
Date: 18 Aug 92 19:27:32 GMT
Organization: QQQCLC

In article <1992Aug18.020443.19655@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
>In article <059m_+n.barry@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
>>In article <1992Aug17.183007.14168@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
>>>Ah, but you see, I don't have that problem, because I don't *know* anything
>>>that I can't prove.  :-)
>>
>>	Think again; can you prove you're self aware to someone else,
>>and not a Stepford Wife, yourself? Not just "have good evidence", or
>>"convince them", but _prove_ it?
>
>Well, I didn't say that I *knew* that I was self-aware, did I?  :-) :-)

	Won't work. If you don't _know_ you're self-aware, you're
therefore _not_ self-aware, by definition. I've got a can't-lose
proposition here, Kevin :-).

>>	When you figure out it can't be done, you may also then
>>understand why "the ghost in the machine" is both an old and an
>>apropos name for self awareness.
>
>I submit to you for your consideration this:  that one cannot, even in
>principle, prove something (by any definition) unless a test for that
>something is devised first, and that the term "prove" is devoid of any
>meaning unless such a test exists.
>
>Thus, if you cannot devise a test for the existence of "the ghost in the
>machine" (aka self-awareness), then the statement that one cannot prove
>the existence of "the ghost in the machine" is devoid of meaning.
>
>Therefore, I must ask: what test or set of tests, if passed would prove
>self-awareness?

	Descartes' test: "I think, therefore I am".

	Yours is a very concise statement of the tenets of logical
positivism. Only the measurable and palpable is real, yes? Well, no. Let
me try to put it in the kind of formal terminology positivists like. 
Self awareness is an infinite recursion: you know because you know
because you know. Aristotle overlooked infinite recursions when he
formalized logic, but they're very important, and very real. Fractals,
for instance, are a physical phenomenon that involve infinite recursion.

	Infinite recursions are logically important because they're
self-sufficient. Cause-and-effect propositions are contingent: things
only exist in relation to other things. By themselves they're a castle
in the air, floating abstract and unsupported, severed from reality.

	And, believe it or not, this does relate to romance and
relationships, honest :-); ain't the most direct approach, but perhaps
it'll be one you can relate to.

	What you don't sufficiently appreciate, Kevin, is that when you
deal with other people, you are in a world of ghosts and magic. People
don't live in the "real" world, they live in an abstraction of objective
reality they've constructed in their heads. That's the reality they see
and react to, not to the objective constructs of science. These private
realities are as devoid of concreteness and objectivity as the
self-awarenesses that inhabit them, but are still real: they are
experienced (by the inhabitant), and have concrete effects: if someone
decides in his private reality that you're about to attack him, he may
kill you, or run away, both real-world phenomena.

	Your analytical approach to the subject of love and romance is
very incomplete. Love is not an objective phenomenon, it is a creature
of those private realities we all live in. But they're not _that_
private. We share 'em constantly, they interact and influence one
another. It's called "socializing". And the main thing going on when
people socialize is the meeting of those maps of reality, subjective
maps. As subjective phenomena they are not obligated to follow the rules
of objective reality. People make magical associations. A cop may notice
you're speeding and give you a ticket because he's suspicious of people
that drive the kind of car you do; a woman may reject you because you
use figures of speech her hated ex-husband also used.

	You'll never understand the aspects of human nature you want to
understand by trying to dissect it as you would a frog. Stop looking for
science; expect magic. Magic is within the rules of subjective reality.
Every aspect of the reality you live in is shaped by the beliefs you
hold about "reality"; change the beliefs and you change your world.

>My point?  I agree that "the ghost in the machine" may be an apropos
>name for self-awareness, but it would be interesting to know *why* it
>is apropos.  :-)

	Because it's simultaneously an entirely subjective phenomenon,
and undeniably real - so real that the reality of everything else is
contingent upon it. We are spirits in a material world.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                Kenn Barry
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