Quote:
Originally Posted by Max Goodman
You seem to assume that the dog understands there's another being doing the scratching or throwing, a being that differs in a significant way from, say, a steak or a bowl of dog food. But it's possible that all the dog understands is that one smell should be eaten and the other smell should be made googly eyes at, and each results in a good feeling of a different sort.
The human scratching the dog's belly is real. So is whatever the dog perceives that prompts him to do what he needs to do to get the scratching. But that doesn't mean that they're the same thing or even that they exist on the same plane (or level?) of reality.
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Yes, I assume that, just as I assume that
you are a being that differs in a significant way from a book or a chair. Can I prove it? No, I can't. You may just be a robot or a simulation, an advanced form of Alexa. But I don't think we should be philosophical conspiracy theorists who conclude that we are each of us the only real consciousness and that all other beings are mechanical zombies without a rich internal life that at least in some ways is like our own.
For me so much of this is poignantly expressed in Bishop's great poem, "In the Waiting Room." She's just seven years old, but it's not strange to me that even a seven-year old gets right to the heart of the problem (and, incidentally, let this be a lesson to all children's poets: children are as deep and thoughtful as adults):
But I felt: you are an
I,
you are an
Elizabeth,
you are one of
them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Those final three lines are pretty much where I leave off, as well. Nothing stranger could ever happen. I truly don't think we'll ever understand it.