Posted: Nov 28, 2020 6:28 am
romansh wrote:We have have correlated our perceptions and called it coffee.
The big downside to entertaining this kind of question is that it leads to folksy-sounding language like the above, language which is pathetically vacuous. Isn't the aim to appear not to take something for granted? How does shit like this achieve that effect?
"Correlating our perceptions" uses two words, 'correlate' and 'perception', which sound rigorous, but no legwork is being done, there. Even 'aggregating' doesn't get at the issue. Aggravating, maybe.
More boldly stated in 'calling it coffee': "reality is linguistic", but that would be laughed out of court like a Trump voter fraud suit, except for someone who digs stuff like, "politics is perception". After the last national election in the US, we have some data on how perceptions differ. Asking if we perceive coffee in common is, I dunno, kind of chickenshit.
romansh wrote:
But are our perceptions the same? Cito will accurately ask the question does it matter?
Not the same, depending on how much 'same' you want. It's not a word useful when comparing entities that can't be compared. I wouldn't lose sleep over it, if I were you. The whole point of what you started with is that they're not the 'same'. Basically, the entire edifice begins by assuming there are multiple entities experiencing the world. Using that to prove that there are multiple entities experiencing the world is an, um, underachievement.
The philosophical act of not taking something for granted doesn't get a good start with assuming its conclusion. Better to go back to nattering about qualia.