The impenetrability of the consciousness of others

[Rum]

Are we island universes?

[Bella Fortuna]

Are you drunk?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"You can get into the head of another person.
You may wish you hadn't.
You should have a good reason for going in.
You should have a good plan for getting out."

[Rum]

Are you drunk?

I can see up your skirt..I hope.

[floppit]

I think. Being known completely is as implausable as not being known at all. We're islands with bridges and roads - langauge, that thing which changed us so much.

[Bella Fortuna]

Are you drunk?

I can see up your skirt..I hope.

See - I'm not that impenetrable...

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Are we island universes?

There is a youtube video (somewhere) where Dan Dennett expresses the opinion that in theory if you knew all the inner workings of another persons brain, you could know that person better than they know themselves.

I can't see any obvious objection to this hypothesis.

[hiyymer]

Are we island universes?

There is a youtube video (somewhere) where Dan Dennett expresses the opinion that in theory if you knew all the inner workings of another persons brain, you could know that person better than they know themselves.

I can't see any obvious objection to this hypothesis.

But you wouldn't know them as a person. You'd only know the physical reality of their brain. There is no person there. Person is what we experience on the inside.

[Trolldor]

...What you experience on the inside is behaviour of the brain. If you could understand that, you would know the person.

[Rum]

I find myself increasingly drawn to Buddhist ideas in particular the notion of emptiness an the idea that the world is essentially a construction of our consciousness.

[Pappa]

Are we island universes?

Yep. We stand alone in the void. We may touch and see and know other people, share some of our lives with them, care deeply about them, love them and need them, but we have two feet planted in the firmament and face the howling winds of existence with no crutch but out own fortitude (and beer).

[Trolldor]

I utterly loathe that whole philosophy. It reeks of woo and metaphysics, with remnants of that human-centric perspective, as if somehow the Univere's shape is contingent upon Man's recognition of it.

The universe existed long before our primoridal ooze stumbled in to self-replication. We evolved to see what was already there.

[Clinton Huxley]

I dont think you could ever access all the inner workings of another persons brain without destroying it in the process and if you did you would just find out they had been thinking of doing a poo or something.

[JimC]

I utterly loathe that whole philosophy. It reeks of woo and metaphysics, with remnants of that human-centric perspective, as if somehow the Univere's shape is contingent upon Man's recognition of it.

The universe existed long before our primoridal ooze stumbled in to self-replication. We evolved to see what was already there.

Basically I agree, but that stance has only a peripheral connection to the OP. (and we evolved to see a pragmatically useful model of "what is there", refined now by science to be closer and closer to an objective reality...)

We make pragmatically useful internal models of the behaviour of others. Those that could not generally failed to survive and breed as effectively as those who could...

As we do this, we are also making models of our own behaviour. The link between our models of ourselves, and our models of others is used for Machiavellian purposes, and is at the same time the source of a deep and vital empathy. As always, we are Janus headed...

However, the models, as always, are not the raw, sensory reality of an individuals consciousness. Impenetrable in that sense, but wily hominid brains still do a damn good approximation...

[Feck]

I find myself increasingly drawn to Buddhist ideas in particular the notion of emptiness an the idea that the world is essentially a construction of our consciousness.