Re: Direct conversation - 1st vs 3rd person

Posted by Rikus Combrinck on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-Direct-conversation-tp3137870p3161135.html

Thanks, Steve.

 

I like what you wrote, and I like Eric's response, as well.  I have many related thoughts popping up, but nothing to add that is clear enough to be useful.

 

I do think the idea that one maintains models of oneself and others is particularly significant and hope to later return to it.

 

One more point about the discussion in general, which I'll just slip in here if you don't mind -- it gradually dawned on me that there are two different, insufficiently explicated contexts in which our conversations are evolving, i.e. accuracy, verity and "realness" of information about self and others, versus nature, quality or texture of experience of self and others.

 

Regards,

Rikus

 

From: [hidden email]

Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 6:12 PM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Direct conversation - 1st vs 3rd person

Rikus -

Nicely stirred.

This is a very well articulated example of why I am confused/offended/confounded when people talk about someone else knowing my intentions (or experience) better than I do.  In most cases, it would seem to be simply absurd.  

There are some cases where I am self-deluded, allowing myself to rationalize an explanation for my own feelings or behaviour which is not real, but rather conveniently fits some agenda or self-image I am trying to maintain.   Once I have reached that level of sophistication in my self-delusion, I acquiesce to Nick's ideas/references about psychotherapy... I believe that trained professionals can be of help in untangling these tangles of self-misdirection and self-delusion.   But for normal, everyday experience and perception... we can and do "know ourselves" quite well.

Otherwise, I cannot imagine how anyone else would believe they understand my experience or feelings or intentions better than I do.  And I mean this qualitatively... they simply cannot know any of it except through their own "model" of who they think I am and what they think my actions imply about that model.  

I believe that Nick's original position about our 1st person experience being qualitatively the same as our 3rd person experience excepting the specific POV we have (seeing/hearing/feeling through our own sensory apparatus) might reduce to saying that our own "self-knowledge" is *also* based on evaluating a "model" of ourselves in an identical fashion to the model we have of others, excepting that our evidence/data for our own model has the unique qualities of being situated from a specific point of view, being pervasive (we observe ourselves continuously but others only now and then), and by being informed directly by our own biochemical state (emotional) and only minimally (pheremones?) by others'. 

So... even if I accept Nick's hypothesis that our 1st person experience is essentially the same as our 3rd person except for POV.... I say the POV is high dimensional (6DOF geometry, direct access to our own sensory apparatus, biochemical, etc.).   In the abstract, the differences might be considered to be "small" but in the real/practical/physical, these are huge differences yielding a qualitatively distinct difference between "self" and "other".

Perhaps studies of infant development lead us to other beliefs (the observation of babies "discovering" their own hand belongs to their own will after seeing it enter and leave their field of view, etc.).   Does someone have more background on this stage of development and it's presumed implications?

- Steve

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