From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!cam Thu Jan  9 10:34:02 EST 1992
Article 2550 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Causes and Reasons
Message-ID: <16315@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Jan 92 14:12:05 GMT
References: <1991Dec18.151208.6749@husc3.harvard.edu> <16114@castle.ed.ac.uk> <5895@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 71

In article <5895@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <16114@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>In article <1991Dec18.151208.6749@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>>>cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>>>>In article <1991Dec17.154142.21021@psych.toronto.edu> 
>>>>michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

MG:
>>>>>*I* uniquely determine what *I* am thinking about.  I am the sole arbiter
>>>>>of the content of my conscious thoughts.  How could it possibly be otherwise?

CM:
>>>>Simple. You could be wrong. People often are.

MZ:
>>>He could be wrong, but not in a way that could be legitimately 
>>>corrected by you.
*******************************

>Or by anyone else, since *he* is the *sole arbiter*.

>>What on earth is the point of this silly and irrelevant ad hominem
>>attack?

>What?

Ah, I see it now. If you beleive that a person is the sole arbiter of
the content of their conscious thoughts, then MZ's ***** remark can be
interpreted as a necessary truth. On the other hand, if "legitimate"
is interpreted as a reference to the philosophical qualifications,
appropriate degree of intelligence, and moral character of the
addressee (a not unlikely possibility in a posting from MZ), then it
is an ad hominem attack.  Since I do not believe that a person is the
sole arbiter of their conscious thoughts, the first interpretation did
not occur to me.  Silly of me.

How can it possibly be that I am not the sole arbiter? Well, for me
while "content of thought" and "conscious" are socially useful
explanatory concepts which I well understand how to _use_, I find it
hard to imagine what can be meant by the "content of a _conscious_
thought". For example, does a content which I was unconscious of at
the time of having the thought, but realised while articulating it,
count? Does it count if I only realised it minutes later? Years later?
After psychotherapy?

My mother was always telling me what I thought. As a general
libertarian principle (which my mother would not accept where her
relatives were concerned) I agree that the owner of a thought should
be regarded as the legally proper arbiter of its content, but in
reality my mother was sometimes right about what I thought, and I was
wrong, as I realised at the time. She corrected me, in fact correctly,
albeit in terms of libertarian principle illegitimately.

Ah, but is it not the case that I am the sole arbiter of the
correctness of the alleged correction? Let us explore that idea. What
if I do not agree with my mother's correction of me, but after further
explanation by my father immediately agree? Minutes later? After
further intervention by another party? Etc. 

And finally, what if I _would_ have agreed with my mother's correction
of the content of my thought, but unfortunately became pre-occupied by
a fatal heart attack before she got to the end of her sentence?

No, I can't accept that I must necessarily be the sole arbiter of the
conscious content of my thoughts -- the notion of conscious content is
just not clear enough to me. I am not a very conscious person :-)
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


