Comment by o_nate
3 years ago
I'm afraid this is far too clever for me to understand. I know what I mean by subjective experience, and no amount of linguistic hair-splitting will convince me it doesn't exist.
3 years ago
I'm afraid this is far too clever for me to understand. I know what I mean by subjective experience, and no amount of linguistic hair-splitting will convince me it doesn't exist.
You mean you think you know. If I put an object in your blind spot, you'll also swear up and down there's nothing in front of you.
I think everyone knows what they mean when they refer to their own subjective experience. That is entirely separate from the question of what that experience corresponds to in the external world. If you put an object in my blind spot, I know that my subjective experience will be of no object. I couldn't make that statement if I didn't know what I meant by subjective experience.
When you say, "I know what I mean by subjective experience, and no amount of linguistic hair-splitting will convince me it doesn't exist", you are not simply saying you are perceiving X and that, even if X is an illusion, X at least refers to a persistent and predictable illusion, and so you know what you mean by anytime you refer to X.
You are actually saying is that X corresponds to something real, that you are directly perceiving some aspect of reality, because how else could you conclude that nothing could convince you that X doesn't exist?
It is to that, that I say no, you don't know what you mean by subjective experience.
Are you asserting you don't have any subjective experience? Or that you only feel like you have a subjective experience and it doesn't actually exist?
I am arguing that subjective experience is not what we perceive it to be. The qualities that we perceive of it are deceptive, and not necessarily reflective of anything real.
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