Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 09:38:48 +0100
From: jmd <jmd-AT-dasein.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: thinker and thought


In message <725E519E4-AT-pluto.aum.edu>, Christopher Honey
<ch1745-AT-pluto.aum.edu> writes
>My point was simply that whether solipsism is correct is, in a 
>certain sense, irrelevant to how we deal with our existence in the 
>world we perceive.  Obviously, if you believe in solipsism or 
>cartesian demons, you're going to have problem with H.  But even if 
>thinker and thought are the same, provided we perceive a difference, 
>H. applies whether that discrepancy is "real" or not.  However, I do 
>still accept a great deal of the criticism on my earlier points.
>
>
>     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

Christopher,
Concerning your claim that "whether solipsism is correct is ... irrelevant to how
we deal with our existence in the world we perceive," I couldn't disagree more.
If solipsism were not only a meaningful/coherent characterization of 'our
existence' (in which case there would be no sense in speaking of OUR anything,
not to mention existence -- there would be no "our" just "mine" or "one's"), but
also a correct characterization, then one would be correct in dealing with "the
world we [one] perceive[s]" as being a sort of 'construction' completely
dependent on one's mind. This view would then entail an array of additional
"answers" to various other philosophical problems: no knowledge of 'other
minds' because there are no other minds, no 'external world' and, thus,  no
knowledge of such a world, no 'objectively existing' moral or aesthetic values,
no 'objective truth' in maths and other maths-based natural sciences, no 'god'
(unless one is a kind of Berkeleyan solipsist, invoking god's continuous
perception as a kind of medium for the continued existence of the items one
does not perceive oneself), etc. So if one were to confer meaning/coherence
upon solipsism and were genuinely/sincerely convinced of its 'correctness', it
would (or 'should' I think) make all the difference in how one deals with the
world one perceives.

But on another matter, what is really being claimed by saying that "thinker and
thought are the same"? I think that having a bad cold is a real drag, but I am not
'the same' as the thought "that having a bad cold is a real drag." And couldn't
someone else also think that having a bad cold is a real drag, without having to
be me? When I responded to the initial claim about the 'thinker and thought
being inseparable', I was reading the claim as invoking not only a Kantian-like
position that any particular mental state -- some particular thought, hope,
dream, anxiety, irritation, doubt, etc. -- must be accompanied by 'a token of
/concrete instance of' an 'I think', but also the further claim that such an 'I think'
is constitutive of that very mental state. From this it would follow that no two
persons could ever enjoy the same thought; every thought would be, in some
sense, logically private to the person whose thought it is -- like the 'pains' that
Wittgenstein was so wont to attack. THAT was my reading of the initial claim,
and on that reading, the view is a piece with solipsism (or so it seems),and
seems to rest on the kind of 'traditionl' mischaracterization of Dasein which H
diagnosed.
Cheers,
jim
 
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