Jack—I seems to me that ‘slippery slope’ may have been a sloppy use on my part. What I meant was that ‘I think therefore I am’ so implies dualism that it would be difficult to avoid it once you accepted the statement. It is a statement that starts with ideas and goes on from there. On the other hand ‘I exist therefore I think’, starts with materialism. The question is not whether we exist or not but whether we know of our existence because of mental thoughts or because of physical reality. I agree that we cannot be mistaken about our existence.
Descartes’ method also implies that in introspection we gain direct knowledge of something. I believe that this is an untenable idea in light of neuroscience. When we see a tree, there is no actual tree inside our skulls, there is a model of a tree. When we experience our thoughts we are likewise experiencing a model of our thoughts. Consciousness is highly processed and in no sense that I know of is it direct knowledge.
The question is not whether we exist or not but whether we know of our existence because of mental thoughts or because of physical reality.
I’m confused: do you intend your category of ‘mental thoughts’ to encompass the whole of subjective experience or just introspection?
If the former, then yes, subjective experience is what any theory of physical reality ultimately has to explain. There’s no reason why your theory could not include a lot of distortion, but you still have to be parsimonious and justify that distortion in some way.
Jack—I seems to me that ‘slippery slope’ may have been a sloppy use on my part. What I meant was that ‘I think therefore I am’ so implies dualism that it would be difficult to avoid it once you accepted the statement. It is a statement that starts with ideas and goes on from there. On the other hand ‘I exist therefore I think’, starts with materialism. The question is not whether we exist or not but whether we know of our existence because of mental thoughts or because of physical reality. I agree that we cannot be mistaken about our existence. Descartes’ method also implies that in introspection we gain direct knowledge of something. I believe that this is an untenable idea in light of neuroscience. When we see a tree, there is no actual tree inside our skulls, there is a model of a tree. When we experience our thoughts we are likewise experiencing a model of our thoughts. Consciousness is highly processed and in no sense that I know of is it direct knowledge.
I’m confused: do you intend your category of ‘mental thoughts’ to encompass the whole of subjective experience or just introspection?
If the former, then yes, subjective experience is what any theory of physical reality ultimately has to explain. There’s no reason why your theory could not include a lot of distortion, but you still have to be parsimonious and justify that distortion in some way.