MagsJ wrote:Being compelled to, and having a strong desire to, are two different pulls on one's time and energy in relation to one's own will. [...] These are separate autonomous thoughts, not feelings.. it's only ever about the single one thought that I am compelled to act upon, when I never actually want to. [...] I have never thought of standing at a bus stop or spontaneously going home for no reason whatsoever.. other than those instances, nor any other unusual things that I didn't plan or want to do myself.
Here again is an experience that I don't know first hand, but I believe that others experience it. For me, strong desire and strong internal compulsion seem to describe the same internal state.
In any case, I have to think that an internal compulsion can arise in just the same ways as any feeling: by the relevant brain network being triggered in any number of ways, whether by another adjacent area of brain, by psychoactive chemicals in the blood, or by out-of-network stimuli like electric fields, radioactivity, or cancer. Granted that I don't know what the distinction between these subjective experiences feels like, it still does not seem to me that the story's weight as evidence depends on whether you did it for desire or compulsion. The distinction may mean a great deal to you, but meaning and evidence are different things.
MagsJ wrote:Re: Isolate Qualia: [...]
What about this is impervious to mundane, non-psychic explanations? You decided not to buy a dream catcher, then waited around until someone who did want to buy the dream catcher bought it.
Is it that you thought you wanted a dream catcher and then upon seeing it decided not to buy it? Have you never had that experience before?
Is it that you stepped away from the shopkeeper after telling her you didn't want to buy it? Or that you then took another step some minutes later?
Is it that the lady stood in the same spot as you did to speak to the shopkeeper? You can't deny that was a good spot to stand in when speaking to the shopkeeper, since, after all, that's where you stood.
There isn't anything extraordinary going on here such that the only or best explanation is an extraordinary one. Ordinary explanations do just fine. What am I missing?
unknowing wrote:While I believe there are false memories, I also believe every single memory you've ever had is recoverable, if given the right prompt, even the ones you don't remember remembering.
Those beliefs seem irreconcilable to me. Just in terms of deciding what it means to "recover" a memory, if we can elicit false memories or true memories depending only on the way we ask, in what sense is a memory that better reflects reality more there than the false memory? Both are apparently equally "recoverable", which suggests that they're both equally manufactured by an unreliable process.
unknowing wrote:The philosophy I adhere to down deep is that everything, even concrete things that slap you across the face, even things that people uniformly agree on, possess some aspect of a Santa Clause description. Things that exist on your doorstep of your perception also don't exist.
I don't actually disagree with this, though perhaps I'm just misunderstanding you. I agree that there are truths about Santa Claus (so called "intersubjective" truths). I also agree that we cover the world in intersubjective concepts, so that all of our concepts have an intersubjective quality.
But I don't think it follows from this that we can believe anything we want. There are also intersubjectively false things we can say about Santa Claus. And it also seems to me that the statement, "Santa Claus doesn't really exist" is true in a different way from the statement, "Santa Claus has a beard". There must also be true and false statements we can make about the things "on your doorstep of your perception", and true and false statements of both types.
In any case, I don't agree that what you're saying about psychic phenomena is true in the way that "Santa has a beard" is true. There is no intersubjective truth to psychic experience, and from the intersubjective truths we do share it seems that claims about psychic experiences are false.
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