Paradox of Fiction & The Response Fiction
Immortalist
SARAH E. WORTH
The Matrix is one of a burgeoning genre of films, philosophical in
nature, that specifically question the way we understand and function
in reality. This is clearly a theme Hollywood is beginning to take
more seriously. The Matrix, Fight Club, eXistenZ, and The Thirteenth
Floor (all released in 1999) deal with the unreliable distinction
between appearance and reality and the possibility that there are
different "levels" or "versions" of reality. These movies come out of
a tradition of films such as Brazil (1985), Total Recall (1990),
Lawnmower Man (1992), Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996), and
even the more recent Truman Show (1998).
The Matrix suggests that the "real" reality is much worse than the
illusion we live in (though we are too unenlightened to know it), and
Fight Club suggests that underdeveloped and undernourished aspects of
our personalities can take on a life of their own-and do quite a bit
of damage. The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ delve into different
kinds of questions about different levels of virtual reality and
whether we can ever know that the reality we are in at any given time
is the real one. All of these films, except for eXistenZ,* assume that
there is some sort of differentiated, "real" reality; that if we ever
came across this reality we would be able to identify it; and that
this reality should function as something we strive for.
*It could be argued, in the case of eXistenZ, that by the end of the
film Cronenburg throws into question the very idea that there is a
firm way of distinguishing between reality, virtual realities, and
fiction.
Earlier than all of these films was Star Trek's Holodeck where the
fortunate members of the Starship Enterprise were able to cross the
barrier from being an observer of fiction to being an active
participant, experiencing in a very real way what it is like to enter
into a fictional space and to interact within the fiction in a
meaningful way. One of the most compelling features of the Holodeck
(for the viewers, not the participants) was that the program, on
occasion, would get stuck or freeze and the "real" player would get
caught in the "fictional" story. Thus the question of what was truly
real came into question in an important way, since if the player
couldn't get the program to work then he or she was going to be stuck
permanently in another world-a false world-from which they had come.
In a significant way, this is the problem all of these movies present
to their viewers. That is, we watch as Neo struggles with
understanding two different worlds (represented by his choice of the
red and blue pills) but at the same time we, as viewers, are choosing
for ourselves the world represented by the red pill ("Choose the
red pill and you will stay in Wonderland") as we engage
ourselves in the fictional space the film creates for us. The more we
"lose ourselves" in the fiction, the further we choose to enter this
altered reality in a way psychologically similar to the way Neo
entered his new reality, the inhabitants of the Starship
Enterprise enter the Holodeck, Douglas Hall and Jane Fuller enter
simulated worlds in The Thirteenth Floor, or the way Allegra Cellar
and Ted Pikul enter the simulated game world of eXistenZ.
- Questioning Reality
Questions about the difference between appearance and reality, with
their venerable Platonic and Cartesian sanction, will always be
compelling. Let us, however, focus on a different, though related set
of questions. How do we, as spectators, interact with the film itself
and how does this parallel the kinds of questions the characters face
in the film? How is it that we can get caught up in a fiction in a way
similar to that in which the characters in these films get caught up
in the different versions of reality that they experience? What this
ultimately comes down to is the question: Why is it that we have
emotional responses to fiction when we know what is happening isn't
real?
Narrative is the important aspect of communicating the gist of a
story. I can say in a conversation that I had a dream of a very
different reality, but an extended narrative will communi-cate a more
detailed meaning of the event and is likely to pro-duce a more
emotional response in the listener. A listener will get the gist of
the story and the setting in a detailed narrative but will get only
the facts from my report that the event took place. Thus, we can take
into account all kinds of stories-documentaries (fact), docudramas
(based on fact), historical fictions (fiction based on historical
fact), and loosely defined fiction (any kind of "made up" story). The
important thing to remember is that we respond emotionally to all of
these-whether we know them to be true or not. We respond to fiction,
knowing it to be a fiction, and we respond even more strongly to vivid
and expressive narrative descriptions. We are attracted to fictions
because we enjoy the ways that we respond to them. We generally
respond more fully when the story is superior, that is, when the
narrative is better developed. To better understand our responses we
need some further explanation of the relationship between fictions,
our beliefs about them, and our responses to them.
- Why Respond to Fiction?
Our responses to fiction produce a complicated set of problems. First
of all, what is included under the heading of representation or
fiction would incorporate everything from literature to TV to big-
screen film to virtual-reality games. The problem is not entirely that
the story is fictional or that it is false, but that it is a re-
presentation of a story-true or otherwise. Why do we purposely
experience things-and enjoy these experiences-which we know are not
real? This is generally known as the "paradox of fiction." The paradox
can be constructed as follows:
(1) We only respond emotively to things that we believe to be real,
(2) We do not believe fiction is real, and
(3) We respond emotionally to fiction.
[The paradox of fiction is a general category, two subcategories of
which would be the paradox of tragedy (How can we derive aesthetic
pleasure from tragedy?) and the paradox of horror (Why do we enjoy
horror when it is presented through representation?).]
To explain the first part of this, logically, it wouldn't seem that I
would have an emotional response to a story you told me, if I knew
beforehand that it wasn't true-for example, if you were to say, "What
I am about to tell you isn't true" and then continue by saying, "I
have a good friend who was so distraught over a romantic relationship
that she threw herself in front of a train." Logically and practically
there would be no reason for me to be concerned at all about your
friend or for me to have any sort of emotional response to your story.
But we do have emotional responses to fictional and false stories all
the time.
All sorts of answers are often given as explanations as to why we do
have these responses. Answers range from suggestions that there is a
"willing suspension of disbelief (first proposed by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge) to claims that any sort of empathy for the characters can
produce an emotional response in the viewer or reader. [Jerrold
Levinson does an excellent job of explaining the competing theories.
See his "Emotion in Response to Art: A Survey of the Terrain," in
Mette Hjort and Sue Laver, eds., Emotion and the Arts (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), pp. 20-34.] Since I do not find any of these
convincing, what I would like to suggest is that the way we empathize
with fictional characters has more to do with the way the story is
told than any real distinction between a true reality and some other
manufactured or simulated reality or that it has anything to do with a
willing suspension of disbelief. Whether it is the set of The Truman
Show, a virtual reality world, or the reality provided Neo in The
Matrix, when the observer becomes emotionally involved, it is because
of the story.
Part of the problem is that we don't believe that what we are watching
is true. This is the key component that makes this a paradox. At
first, Neo did not believe that what he found after he took the red
pill could be what was truly real until the parts of the story he was
told began to make sense to him. Even then, for a long time, he
continued to question different aspects of what this new reality had
to provide. So what we believe about what is real and what isn't
determines how psychologically and emotionally connected we become to
a particular story. A belief of one kind or another is not going to
provide a sufficient paradigm for us to talk of justified or genuine
emotions when the technology has changed the nature of the fictions
that we experience to the degree that it has. The Blair Witch Project
aside, we "believe" when we are watching a movie that what is
happening isn't "real," isn't really happening. But the technology,
especially with the technology provided by IMAX films, which have more
of an effect on our senses than a traditional film, and even the award-
winning special effects in The Matrix, seems to get us caught up in
the film in ways that go well beyond our simple belief that what we
are seeing isn't really happening. The point doesn't seem to be that
we don't believe what is happening is real, but rather that the way
the story is told (and now the special effects which influence the
realness of the way the story is told) seems to be more influential
over how we respond to the story.
Some of the new fictional media even threaten to blur the line between
the real and fictional worlds that we experience- some of it may have
even made that line irrelevant. That is, we have not come to any
conclusions as to whether or not we are able, imaginatively, to enter
into fictional spaces in the same way that Neo enters the Matrix. And
as Neo is told repeatedly, "you can't be told what the Matrix is, you
have to see it yourself." Neo has to choose the red pill in order to
experience this very different reality for himself. This is similar to
the fact that I will never have the same experience or emotional
response when someone tells me about a movie or a novel as when I see
it or experience it for myself. Is it even possible that we, as
viewers, could have the same sort of access to our fictional spaces
that Neo had while he was in the desert of the real? Kendall Walton
suggests that we experience fictions psychologically, in similar ways
as children do physically when they play their games of make-believe.
[See Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990).] That would imply, however, that we really
are able to enter into a fictional space in a way that is relevantly
similar to the way Neo enters the reality that is the Matrix. Although
we do not physically enter into another space, being able to explain
the resulting emotional effects by saying that it is a cognitively
similar experience would relieve us of the burden of explaining why we
respond to things we believe not to be "real." That is, if the
experiences are cognitively similar, a "belief in the reality of or
the clear distinction between "real" and "unreal" becomes not just
blurred but irrelevant.
Don't misunderstand however. It is clear that we do not have to
believe what is going on in the film in order to be affected by it. In
fact, we cannot believe what is happening if we are to have an
emotionally appropriate (aesthetic) response. This is especially true
when it comes to tragedy or horror. [See Noel Carroll, The Philosophy
of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990), and
Peter Lamarque, "How Can We Pity and Fear Fictions?" British Journal
of Aesthetics 21 (1981), pp. 291-304.] Generally, we are not amused by
others' tragic lives nor do we derive pleasure out of watching people
chased, stalked, or murdered. But in the context of a fiction, we
often enjoy these things. We can enjoy them, however, only if we do
not believe they are happening. We can enjoy watching Neo fighting
Morpheus, after Neo has learned through a programmed computer
simulation of a combination of martial arts, only if we know that
neither of them is really being hurt. This goes even further with the
kinds of special effects that The Matrix employs, since what the
viewer sees is what it would be like if time slowed down or even
stopped. Since we know that this can't happen, or it at least isn't
part of our experience, we can still allow it to influence our
response to the movie. (The bounds of these situations are also being
stretched by the media with a new genre of voyeuristic television
shows like Survivor, Real World, and Big Brother. We may even get to
the point where we do want to know the presentation is "real" in order
to derive aesthetic pleasure out of it.)
- We Enter with Alice
The Matrix makes a number of clever and important references to Alice
in Wonderland. Alice had many of the same problems in facing her
strange new reality as did Neo. From the very beginning, Neo (still
Thomas Anderson at that point, outside the rabbit hole) was told to
follow the White Rabbit (tattoo), which ultimately led him to the true
reality. Once Neo arrived, Morpheus said to him, "I imagine right now
you are feeling a bit like Alice-tumbling down the rabbit hole." These
explicit references make it clear that the kind of experiences the
creators of the film were allowing Neo to have are parallel to the
experiences that the viewers have of the film. As viewers, we watch
and become increasingly more involved in the new reality that Neo
experiences and we acclimate to the different reality at the same time
Neo does. Since Alice in Wonderland is a fiction we are nearly all
familiar with, we are taken (the viewers of the film and Neo at the
same time) into a new wonderland of our own.
When we enter into a fictional world, or let the fictional world enter
into our imaginations, we do not "willingly suspend our disbelief."
Coleridge aside, we cannot willingly decide to believe or disbelieve
anything, any more than we can willingly believe it is snowing outside
if all visual or sensory cues tell us otherwise. When engaging with
fiction we do not suspend a critical faculty, but rather exercise a
creative faculty. We do not actively suspend disbelief-we actively
create belief. As we learn to enter into fictional spaces (and I do
believe this is something that we have to learn and that requires
skills we must practice and develop*) we desire more and more to
experience the new space more fully. We want to immerse ourselves in
the new world, just as Neo begins to immerse himself in the real world
outside the Matrix. To do this we can focus our attention on the
enveloping world and use our creative faculties to reinforce the
reality of the experience, rather than to question it.
[This claim might seemingly be questioned because of the fact that
children seem to do this with relative ease. Children do not have to
train to play games of make-believe and they seem to become fully and
easily absorbed in fictional and imaginary worlds of their own making.
It would seem, however, that as Walton argues, adults are
psychologically engaged in fictional experiences in similar ways as
children are physically in their games of make-believe. Although
children do this quite naturally, training to do this as adults seems
to be something that we have to re-learn.]
How does technologically sophisticated fiction, more and more like
"real" events, produce emotive responses? Some argue that we have to
understand the way emotions work in response to real events in order
to understand how we respond emotively to fiction. This may not be the
way to go, however, as it seems that the belief requirement that is
missing from our interactions with fictional situations does not
prohibit us from profoundly similar experiences physically and
phenomenologically. If we feel the same and have relevantly similar
emotional responses, why cannot the experience be said to be real? In
many ways it can, but we are now getting into an area where fictional
spaces and real spaces overlap and even unite. In the same way, the
two worlds in The Matrix begin to overlap and unite. At one point,
after Neo has been shaved and placed in his new digs, Morpheus takes
him into an all white room. Neo is surprised to find that he is
dressed the way that he would have been earlier. Morpheus explains to
him that this is his "residual self-image" and that it is the
"physical image of your digital self." Neo's old self-image crosses
over from one world to the next. Similarly, Cypher can't seem to give
up the taste and texture of steak, even though he "knows" it isn't
real. Our knowledge of what is real and what isn't real doesn't
necessarily change the way we behave or respond to these things. We
may have to face the possibility that the line that divides appearance
and reality (in the Matrix and in our own lives) is not as clear as we
once thought it to be. We may even need to actively make that line
disappear in order to make sense of our interactions with fictions.
- The Importance of Story-telling
In "reality," we make judgments about people and situations without
having full information all the time-we must do this just to be
practical, since the time it would take to gather all the information
we assume would be prohibitive to living our lives. We fill in the
gaps of knowledge with guesses and prejudices of our own. Thus,
reality may not be as "real" as we tend to think of it, since we do a
fair amount of the construction on our own. We do the same with
fiction, as we assume those we read about have had relevantly similar
human lives, that they function as flesh and blood humans unless
otherwise noted, and we assume that they live in a world that works
physically in the same way as does ours. In both cases, in reality and
with fiction, we are given a skeleton structure of what is happening,
and we use our imaginations to fill in the details. With fiction, the
structure is carefully constructed so we are given nearly all the
relevant information. In reality, on the other hand, the information
we use as a basis to construct a coherent understanding of a situation
is not given to us in a carefully constructed way. Rather, we pick up
certain details and make a comprehensible story of our own, using our
own prejudices and biases, working necessarily from our own
perspective, which is determined largely by our culture. If this is
the case and we do have to create and fill in significant parts of our
own realities, we are in a sense, making up our own stories-and these
stories are our lives. Roger Schank explains in his book on narrative
and intelligence that
We need to tell someone else a story that describes our experience
because the process of creating the story also creates the memory
structure that will contain the gist of the story for the rest of our
lives. Talking is remembering . . . But telling a story isn't
rehearsal, it is creation. The act of creating is a memorable
experience in itself. [Roger Schank, Tell Me a Story: Narrative
ct-nd Intelligence (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998), p.
115.]
We create meaning and memory through the hearing and telling of
stories. Thus reality is more like fiction in terms of story creation
than we originally thought, and the question of whether or not we must
have a belief requirement in order to have a justified emotion seems
now to be misguided.
Even if we do create our own stories to be reality (or our realities
as stories) we still have a belief component missing from our
assessment when we experience fictional simulations. If I believe that
I am walking across the street, whether the cars are fictional or not,
I am able to assess that I am in some mortal danger if I stay too
long. If I make this assessment while playing a virtual reality game,
I am not physically in any danger. Understanding how narrative
undermines the distinction between reality and fiction does, however,
make the paradox disappear in a certain sense. That is, the problem
that we respond differently to fiction and reality no longer holds
because the distinction between them has changed. If we put the
fiction-reality distinction aside and look to what it is that connects
our understanding of both, namely how we comprehend narrative, we can
begin to work with a more unified problem, one that will not always,
ultimately, lead us to a paradox.
- Experiencing Neo's Narrative
I am not suggesting that fiction and reality are the same or even that
they are at times indistinguishable. There is a clear distinction
between the epistemological (knowing what is real) and the ontological
(the existence of things as they are) that will forever differentiate
those for us. But what I am suggesting is a much stronger emphasis on
how we make sense of both-that is, through narrative and story-
telling. The way the story is told, or how it is that we create the
story and make sense of it is similar for both fiction and reality. If
it is the narrative that we are ultimately responding to, then it does
not matter how we construe the emotions to work in response to real
experiences and fictional ones-this is a false dichotomy that will
continue to leave us in a paradox.
Further, if it is the narrative that we respond to, and the narratives
are getting better or at least more vivid through technological
developments, then it would make sense that we have increasingly
stronger affective responses, even though we "know" what we see or
experience is not "real." With the current state of the technology,
especially with the kinds of special effects The Matrix provides, we
are able to more fully experience both worlds and respond emotively to
both. By moving the focus of the debate away from the belief
requirement needed for "justified" emotions and understanding the role
of stories more fully we can connect the divergent spaces of the real
and the representational. We can further see how it is that we
function in similar ways to the characters in The Matrix. Neo
experiences a new reality as we experience it along with him in
parallel ways we never before imagined.
The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real
http://www.amazon.com/Matrix-Philosophy-Welcome-Popular-Culture/dp/081269502X
The Philosophy of the Matrix
http://onwardoverland.com/matrix/philosophy.html
Jack Tingle
news:398997b0-186a-4263...@u9g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
> Chapter 15 - The Paradox of Real Response to Neo-Fiction
> SARAH E. WORTH
>
[snip post about the nature of reality per the Matrix]
a) rec.arts.sf.written is a _written_ sf group, not a film group (as is
another in your list) so this is off topic for rasfw.
b) This is (IMO) a really long and boring post. The philosophy of or
regarding a fictional character in a bad (albeit pretty & fast-paced) movie
plagued with a long litany of mistakes just doesn't attract me.
This response is being posted from the actual realistic reality. I can tell,
because I just had to post all of my monthly bills, and I have a hangnail.
And my heel callus is cracked and I need to rasp it off.
Helpfully,
Jack Tingle
Sir Frederick
The situation sucks, so who needs "reality"?
Jack Campin - bogus address
>> SARAH E. WORTH
>> The Matrix is one of a burgeoning genre of films...
> [snip post about the nature of reality per the Matrix]
> a) rec.arts.sf.written is a _written_ sf group, not a film group (as
> is another in your list) so this is off topic for rasfw.
> b) This is (IMO) a really long and boring post. The philosophy of or
> regarding a fictional character in a bad (albeit pretty & fast-paced)
> movie plagued with a long litany of mistakes just doesn't attract me.
That's all you get in this fake universe. In the real one, she was
discussing Stanislaw Lem's "The Futurological Congress" or the later
novels of Philip K. Dick, which deal with the same issues in significant
works of literature,
(I'm reading this in rec.arts.books - I've cut down the Newsgroups:
line in followups).
==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k === <http://www.campin.me.uk> ====
Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739 557
CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic fonts
****** I killfile Google posts - email me if you want to be whitelisted ******
John Jones
> The fantasy folk needs stories.
> The situation sucks, so who needs "reality"?
There you go again with that rote contradiction.
You say that fantasies aren't real, then you say that real is a fantasy.
Huh?
Sir Frederick
Thanks.
I must be a troll for you, JJ.
There is something 'out there', just that 'our'
representations have a lot of pragmatic arbitrary
interpretations built in, such as 'yellow' and 'self'.
The folk tongue is not good for discussing such.
Immortalist
> "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:398997b0-186a-4263...@u9g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Chapter 15 - The Paradox of Real Response to Neo-Fiction
> > SARAH E. WORTH
>
> > The Matrix is one of a burgeoning genre of films...
>
> [snip post about the nature of reality per the Matrix]
>
> a) rec.arts.sf.written is a _written_ sf group, not a film group (as is
> another in your list) so this is off topic for rasfw.
The reason I posted to sf-written was because the post had to do with
the paradox of how fiction ideas can produce particular responses in
us. You try and make some rule that excludes anything that contains
relevance but cannot contain any relevance outside of written, lame
dude.
> b) This is (IMO) a really long and boring post. The philosophy of or
> regarding a fictional character in a bad (albeit pretty & fast-paced) movie
> plagued with a long litany of mistakes just doesn't attract me.
>
> This response is being posted from the actual realistic reality. I can tell,
> because I just had to post all of my monthly bills, and I have a hangnail.
> And my heel callus is cracked and I need to rasp it off.
>
Dr. Know & the Braino Helmet
Imagime that a superscientist invents machine--we shall call it a
"braino," - that enables him to produce hallucianations in certain
subjects . The machine operates by influencing the brain of a subject
who wears a special cap, called a "braino cap." when the braino cap is
placed on a subject's head, the operator of the braino can affect his
brain so as to produce any hallucination in the subject that the
operator wishes. The braino is a hallucination-producing machine. The
hallucinations produced by it may be as incomplete, systematic, and
coherent as the operator of the branio desires to make them.
The present argument starts from the premise that the braino is a
logical possibility, and consequently that there should be
hallucinations that are coherent, complete, and systematic in every
way. From the premise of logical possibility, we conclude that we in
fact have no way of telling whether or not we are hallucinating.
If the braino is a logical possibility, then how can we tell that
hallucinations are not in fact so hard to detect? On the contrary, we
may suffer hallucinations that we cannot detect. If it is logically
possible that hallucinations should be coherent, complete, and
systematic in every way, then there is no way of detecting at any
moment that we are not suffering from a hallucionation.
How we can tell that we are not hallucinating. The braino argument is
intended to establish that we can never tell this, even if we can
sometimes tell that we are hallucinating. Consider some perceptual
belief that you would maintain does not from hallucinations. what
experiences guarantee this? Indeed, what experiences provide you with
any evidence of it?
Notice that whatever experience you indicate, the braino argument will
be quite sufficient to prove that such an experience is no guarantee
against hallucianation. All we need do is imagine that you have,
unknown to yourself, the braino cap on your head. the operator of the
braino is producing the very experiences you claim guarantee that you
are not hallucinating.
Imagine that all people are controlled by the braino and that the
machine is run by some evil being, Dr. Know, who plots to keep us
completely in error through hallucinations. Dr. Know does not wish to
be detected, so he supplies hallucinations that are coherent,
complete, and systematic. Indeed, the hallucinations he produced in us
are a PERFECT COUNTERFEIT OF REALITY.
Our experiences fulfill our expectations and contain no more surprises
than we would expect from reality. But is it not reality we
experience; our perceptual beliefs about the world are quite mistaken,
for the source of our experiences is a mere machine, the braino, which
creates hallutionations. In such a predicament we might have just the
sort of perceptual beliefs we now have, based on experiences exactly
similar to those we now have. But our perceptual beliefs would be
altogether false.
The imagined situation is exactly similar to ours with respect to the
reasons or evidence we would have for our perceptual beliefs.
Experience is virtually the same in both cases. Consequently, if we
lack knowledge in one situation, we must surely lack it in the other.
Obviously, we lack knowledge when we are controlled by the braino, for
then our perceptual beliefs are false. Hence, we also lack knowledge
in our present situation. More precisely, our perceptual beliefs fail
to constitute knowledge in either case.
We believe that we are not controlled by such a machine, and if we are
fortunate in this belief, then no doubt many of our perceptual beliefs
are true. It is, however, good fortune and not good evidence that we
should thank for correctness of these beliefs.
We are just lucky if there is no Dr. Know controlling us with a
braino; and from that good fortune may result the further good fortune
that most of our perceptual beliefs are true. it is just a matter of
luck, however, and nothing epistemologically more glorious than that.
If a belief is true as a result of luck, then it is a lucky guess--not
knowledge.
Adapted from Keith Lehrer
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
http://books.google.com/books?id=cRHegYZgyfUC&printsec=frontcover
> Helpfully,
> Jack Tingle
Immortalist
1. Our ordinary ways of thinking about the mental make up a theory
(folk psychology) by which human behavior is explained and predicted.
2. Folk psychology provides only rough and in many cases completely
defective or nonexistent explanations of human behavior (think of
mental illness and. sleep, respectively, as examples).
3. A mature neuroscience will provide more accurate and informative
explanations of human behavior than folk psychology.
4. Hence, we are justified in believing that folk psychology is a
defective theory, and so that the mental entities the theory
incorporates can be eliminated. That is, eliminative materialism is
justified.
-------------------------------------------
6) Objection: We Cannot Eliminate
What Is Not Posited
In some cases, when a theory is found to be defective in some manner,
we conclude that the entities talked about in the theory do not exist.
Suppose a theory is found to provide inaccurate explanations and
predictions, and that some other theory in the same subject area
provides much better and more accurate explanations and predictions.
Frequently, the old theory is wholly rejected and the new theory is
adopted. As an example, consider again demon theory, from early
theories of medicine. People then believed that demons somehow entered
a person's body and caused the person to become ill. To cure the
person, one had either to make the demons leave the person's body or
at least to appease them; and various methods were prescribed by those
thought to be learned in demon theory to help bring about these cures.
Modern medical theories, which talk of germs, however, provide much
better explanations of the relevant illness. Moreover, attempts to
cure the person typically proceed by attacking the underlying cause,
such as the germ, and these methods, when successful, themselves help
to confirm the germ theory. Modern germ theory has, of course,
supplanted the demon theory: we conclude that the demon theory is
false and that the entities posited by the theory (namely demons) do
not exist. Demons were eliminated by advances in medical theory.
This story of demon theory may be used to illustrate two epistemic
points, as they pertain to entities posited by theories. In the demon
case, if there are good explanatory reasons for referring to demons
when trying to explain certain human disorders, then that alone is
good reason to think there are demons. On the other hand, if there are
no good explanatory reasons for referring to demons in attempting to
explain certain human disorders, then that alone is good reason to
think there are no demons. Shorthand versions of these two principles
would be these: (1) if demons are good explainers, then that is good
reason to think they exist; and, (2) if demons are bad explainers (or
not needed for explanations), then that is good reason to think they
do not exist.
Now what about sensations and other mental entities: are they
analogous to demons in the ways suggested by these two principles?
They are, with respect to principle (1): if sensations are good
explainers, then that is good reason to think sensations exist. The
same would hold for other mental entities such as beliefs or emotional
states. But the second principle is a different matter. It would say:
If sensations and other mental entities are bad explainers (or are not
needed for explanations), then that is good reason to think there are
no sensations and other mental entities. The reason for saying that
this second principle as it applies to sensations and other mental
entities is dubious is simple: there are other reasons, aside from
explanatory virtues, for thinking that there are sensations and other
mental entities. So, even if mental entities turn out to be failures,
from the explanatory standpoint, there would still be these other
reasons for thinking that mental entities exist. So, mental entities
are not analogous to demons in quite the way supposed by the
eliminativist. The only reason to think there are demons is if they
should be good explainers. But explanatory success is not the only
reason for thinking there are mental entities.
What this argument shows is that the inference from step (3) to (4) in
Churchland's argument is not a valid one. Even if folk psychology is
defective in the ways Churchland describes, that alone is not enough
to warrant elimination of its mental entities. For explanatory success
is not the only evidence for mental entities.
Arindam Banerjee
>
> Questions about the difference between appearance and reality, with
> their venerable Platonic and Cartesian sanction, will always be
> compelling.
Indeed. Since 1905 with e=mcc reality has been forsaken for appearance.
Now fair is foul, and foul is fair - millenia of wisdom have been forsaken
for glitter and groan. Conventional morality is dull and dangerous, the new
morality of selfishness and greed is good, for that makes money. Till very
recently.
Arindam Banerjee.
Steve Hayes
Try "The balcony" by Jean Genet.
--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
William December Starr
Immortalist <reanima...@yahoo.com> said:
> I would respond but I am in philosophy, have a good day asshole.
By all appearances that sentence would be *far* more accurate
(albeit a bit less grammatically correct) if all the words between
"am" and "asshole" were removed from it.
-- wds
Errol
> Chapter 15 - The Paradox of Real Response to Neo-Fiction
The paradox of fiction:
Apparently, people have more powerful imaginations than they are
generally credited with. Combine a powerful imagination with strong
empathy and it explains why several members of author, Chuck
Palahniuk's audience, faint during readings from his novel "Haunted".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haunted_(novel)#.22Guts.22
"While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel Diary, Palahniuk read
"Guts" to his audiences. It was reported that over 35 people fainted
while listening to the readings. On his tour to promote Stranger Than
Fiction: True Stories in the summer of 2004, he read the story to
audiences again, bringing the total amount of fainters up to 53, and
later up to 60, while on tour to promote the softcover edition of
Diary. The last fainting occurred on May 28, 2007, in Victoria,
British Columbia, Canada, where 5 people fainted, one of which
occurred when a man was trying to leave the auditorium, which
resulting in him falling and hitting his head on the door."
Errol
That is like saying everything is like energy man. see the patterns.
You need to explain more to get your idea across
ZerkonXXXX
> The Matrix is one of a burgeoning genre of films, philosophical in
> nature, that specifically question the way we understand and function in
> reality.
.. and an enforced contrivance of reality.
It isn't just what is seen as real or not but what is made by another to
seem real. The central aspect being the manipulation and use of humans by
machines who have reached a type of sentience.