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Single Idea 3148

[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 3. Privacy ]

Full Idea

The privacy that is a serious issue for the dualist is a peculiarly epistemic privacy that not even telepathy or brain fusions would seem to overcome.

Clarification

'Epistemic' privacy concerns what we can know, rather than how it is

Gist of Idea

Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach

Source

Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 2.5.4)

Book Ref

Rey,Georges: 'Contemporary Philosophy of Mind' [Blackwell 1997], p.55


A Reaction

This is a key idea in the traditional defence of dualism. I'm inclined to think that we are faced with deep privacy not because the mind is so hidden, but because the observer is trapped in NOT being the thing observed. In that sense, rocks are private.


The 9 ideas with the same theme [exceptionally private nature of thought]:

Increase a conscious machine to the size of a mill - you still won't see perceptions in it [Leibniz]
If a lion could talk, it would be nothing like other lions [Dennett on Wittgenstein]
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him [Wittgenstein]
We can know a lot of what it is like to be a bat, and nothing important is unknown [Dennett]
A full neural account of qualia will give new epistemic access to them, beyond private experience [Churchlands]
Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey]
Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan]
Nothing in physics even suggests consciousness [Chalmers]
We could know what a lion thinks by mapping both its brain patterns and its experiences [Douglas,A]