hopper on 3/2/2011 at 15:45
Quote Posted by Kolya
If I had assumed your kind of What if-lingo I could have rephrased the questions as: "What if we were twins doing everything together? Would we feel the same?"
But yeah, that's assuming a bit too much. :)
But tell me, prove me with the original question if you can, how this approach is any less worthwhile than yours.
Because if we were twins doing everything together, and we looked at each other while doing it, we wouldn't experience
the same thing. I'd see you, whereas you'd see me. Yours is not a "rephrasing" of the question, it's a different question altogether.
To which the answer is a simple "No", and the philosophical yield of it is zilch.
Kolya on 3/2/2011 at 16:02
Oh you mean if we followed this close-to-the-text understanding, it would be impossible to experience the same because we'd see each other and hence influence each other?
hopper on 3/2/2011 at 16:19
Not quite, the "seeing each other" part was just an illustration. I thought about adding something to emphasize this, but I thought it'd be obvious anyway. Whether we'd ever actually look at each other or not, is immaterial. It's clear that we always could do it, which makes this scenario a very different one.
It would be impossible to experience the same thing because, well, we'd be two different persons living parallel lives. We'd never be able to occupy the same space at the same time, or do the same thing at the same time. Think about it in terms of driving a car. You drive, I'm in the passenger seat. Are we doing the same thing? Of course not, you're driving, I'm not. But if each has his own car, driving it himself, both at the same time. Are we doing the same thing? No, because we're sitting in two different cars. We'd never ever be doing or experiencing the same thing, as it is physically and logically impossible.
Kolya on 3/2/2011 at 17:03
"We'd never be able to occupy the same space at the same time, or do the same thing at the same time."
You know, we could do the same thing, for example we could perfectly agree that our existences influence each other and hence our experiences differ, especially if we are having them at the same time in as much the same place as humanly possibly. That's what I did, since the question said nothing about interdimensional travellers.
And the fact that we then have to refute the question's premises does not make it "philosophical zilch". Quite the contrary. The question was wrong to begin with. The simple way to demonstrate that is saying "mu", another way is trying to deal with it's vague operators and finding out that it's not logically conclusive the hard way. As you just did and as I did before.
I understand that you prefer an answer that makes some sense. But for that you have to diverge far from the question and make a lot of assumptions. If you want that, fine with me. But don't tell me, my approach is wrong, because the answer makes no sense. It can't make sense with that question, that's the point.
Sulphur on 3/2/2011 at 17:19
If you realised the question was wrong to begin with, all this pagefilling chicanery and hermeneutical for-instancing was for the benefit of what, exactly?
Instead of trying to assuage your ego and get people to agree that your viewpoint is just as equally valid for an invalid question, declaring that the question was broken from the get go and what you considered your version of the question to be would have helped avoid all of the stupid back-and-forth we've just had.
For all your analytical breakdowns of text, you sure try to be remarkably obtuse.
Kolya on 3/2/2011 at 17:28
As I just said, there are 2 ways to go at a broken question: Either simply reject it or try to show why it's broken. Now I did call mu on it early on, so I'm not sure why you're aiming this at me, but in the end this is a discussion board which has its own dynamics, that say: "You cannot just reject something, you have to explain why." So I did.
SubJeff on 3/2/2011 at 17:36
There are multiple ways to approach a "broken" question and the easiest one was what a few of us itt did - answered what we knew it was really asking.
You're just being butthurt now, and you didn't call mu on it straight away anyway - you posted the post which demonstrated that you'd failed to get what the question, "broken" as it was, it was asking.
It's not a "dynamic" of this board, it's just common sense. Everyone else in here knew what was being asked, you got it wrong. On any other discussion board the person playing your role would have just gone "Ah, I see." and answered the question in the sensible way. But nooooo, you couldn't do that, could you? It's like that in that other thread about the porn letters - you just. didn't. get it.
Kolya on 3/2/2011 at 17:46
Yeah, okay SE. No friends, I see.
And people ask me what all the fighting is for when I realised the question was wrong to begin with. Very funny. They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool.
Vivian on 3/2/2011 at 17:50
or a pompous automaton
Kolya on 3/2/2011 at 18:00
Being compared to an automaton seems to be the highest honour lately given away by the halfwits.
