[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[Case]

dmb says:
Turn to the subject for understanding? Unit of measurement? Huh? Okay, 
forget about Skinner, monkeys and all that other stuff for a moment. I'd 
like to hit the reset button here and sort of start over. What I'm trying to

say is just that the Protagorian motto is an ancient version of radical 
empiricism, which says that all knowledge is derived from experience and 
that experiences can't be discounted or ignored in an account of "reality". 
Its says experience is all the reality we'll ever get. So the motto in 
question is not about measuring things, its about the limits of our reality.

See, I can't experience dog consciousness. I can't expect any answers from 
my dog about what she's thinking. I just know that she comes when I call her

name and she gets excited when I promise her "crunchies". There is nothing 
wrong with making some assertions based on this behavior. I'm just saying 
that animal consciousness is not within our experience even if the behavior 
is.

[Case]
By turn to the subject I was borrowing something I heard in a lecture
recently. I mean simply looking inward for truth rather than outward. If you
want to consider experience internally and directly perhaps you should be
looking at what is going on in yourself as an organism. In other word I
don't think Protagoras and certainly not James is saying that an account of
experience can ignore reality.

dmb says:
As I understand it, William James "invented" radical empiricism so your
advice seems a bit odd here. I mean, my this point is based on James
already. The assertion that brain states and observed behaviors are not
relevant to this issue is based on the MOQ's assertion that human
consciousness is NOT a feature of biological man, not a property of the
organism but is instead a distinct level of reality. Yes, of course I
realize that there have been attempts to get at experience by looking at the
brain states that are correlated with it, but this is only a correlation.
This approach is reductionistic and misleading. This is what I was trying to
get at in pointing out the difference between dialogue between people and
observations of exteriors. 

[Case]
I appreciate your stimulating me to review James. I have to say though, I
think you might want to take a look at what he is saying for yourself. First
of all James was a little perturbed that Wilhelm Wundt is generally regarded
as having started the formal field of Experimental Psychology. James studied
under Wundt in Germany for a time before starting his own experimental lab.
He seems to have been convinced that he actually started the first
experimental psychology lab.

James was among the first to make psychology into an academic discipline.
Rather that saying that brain function is irrelevant to consciousness he
states on page 3 of his classic work Principles of Psychology: 

"The fact that the brain is the one immediate bodily condition of the mental
operations is indeed so universally admitted nowadays that I need spend no
more time in illustrating it, but will simply postulate it and pass on. The
whole remainder of the book will be more or less of a proof that the
postulate was correct."

After finding this I thought perhaps this was overstating the case or that
the psychologist James was different than the philosopher James so I turned
to your favorite guy Daniel Robinson for his take on James and I can see now
why you don't like him. James was arguing with the associationists and their
peculiarly reductionist slant. He was saying that all experience should be
considered in the study of psychology and that experience should be the
starting point of psychology. I would be delighted go through a more
detailed analysis of James' work but I seriously do not think you are going
to find in him an ally.

In fact if the point you are making is that: "...that human consciousness is
NOT a feature of biological man" I just don't even know where you would look
for allies. What would be your basis for even saying something like that?

dmb says:
Let's take the famous book ZAMM for example. 
Let's say we want to evaluate this book. In this case, I'm simply saying
that the book's physical dimensions, its width, length, weight and such is
totally irrelevant to our evaluation. In order to get at the meaning of the
book, in order to experience the book as such, you gotta read it. You gotta
get "inside" the intellectual space and look at it with the mind's eye. See,
radical empiricism says that no experience should be discounted or ignored,
but that also leads to the notion that there are different kinds of
experiences and that we need a plurality of epistemologies to evaluated
them. This simply means that its inapropriate to measure consciouness with a
yardstick. The mystical experience can't be detected by looking at brains or
any other biological organ. There are correlations and that can be
interesting, but I think a valid examination of such experience requires an
entirely different method.

[Case]
If all points of view are to be considered and a plurality is needed, why do
you think consideration of brain states and bodily activities are
irrelevant? I suggest that they are particularly fruitful avenues of pursuit
but I have not suggested they are the only way of looking at things. On the
other hand I can not imagine a useful view of consciousness that ignores
them.

dmb says:
Wet sloppy kisses and homophobic A-frame hugs,

[Case]
I am not much on hugs but you taste much better when you don't bite.