Imagine living in a world where you're the only human and there are no reflective surfaces.
How would you know you had a head? You would see through your eyes, breath and eat with your mouth, touch your hair and face, etc. But you would have no "proof" your head existed because while you had constant direct experience of your head performing its functions, you would have no 3rd party objective confirmation that you had a head at all.
How does the knower know itself outside of its experience?
@Tfmonkey
1) Touch of hands can be still compared to touch of head.
From that touch, a measurment can be made. Plant your head into sand to get a picture.
Also:
2) you see your nose.
Just joking obviously. I get your point.
@Tfmonkey Maybe saw himself in dream.
@Tfmonkey
This is like the gay cousin of the "I think therefore I am" formulation. You'd never have an OBJECTIVE confirmation because how do you know the 3rd party is even real? Look, it's like Daredevil. You close your eyes, then touch your head all over and create a mental image of what shape you are. Simple as. You yourself ARE the objective arbiter, because your experiences are proof enough for your purposes.
Cont...
@Tfmonkey And if this is leading to some "how do you know your experiences are even real or that you're not in the matrix" then my response is simple: I have absolutely no reason to assume the current reality is not reality. Therefore, I won't even consider hypothetical alternatives as they are nothing but unfalsifiable wastes of time. There's no reason to not proceed with the assumption that my current experiences represent reality, therefore I won't deviate.
@ButtWorldsMan the purpose of a thought experiment isn't a puzzle you "solve", it's there to put you into a mental state of mind to think of something in a different way.
BTW, you're describing the principle of Incorrigibility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorrigibility
@Tfmonkey It's still lamer than cogito ergo sum
@ButtWorldsMan The thought experiment is about "the self", which you cannot see, but which you experience in every moment.
Try to come up with a better thought experiment.
@ButtWorldsMan except, no. You cannot know "you are" simply because thinking is occurring.
Who is thinking? How do you know "you" are a singular "I" or not?
The saying "I think therefore I am" makes a lot of unquestioned assumptions.
I'm not the first one to point this out. Nietzsche did as well: https://qr.ae/py97b7
TL;DR "Without our authorization or permission, the thinking happens, after which we latch onto it and claim it as our own."
@Tfmonkey Thinking occurs, therefore entity capable of it exists.
@Tfmonkey This is all well and good for incessant bickering over thinking and word games about thinking and whose thinking is the thinkiest thinking, but all I care about with regard to philosophy is pragmatic "thinking." Is this world real? I have no reason to assume otherwise, so I'll "assume" it is. Am i, as a thinker, an individual or a hive mind? I don't care. It's a waste of time to consider anything other than I as an individual because my whole life is I. Therefore I am.
@Tfmonkey You wouldn't know for sure. Your senses aren't utterly reliable to perceive what is true.In that case your only certitude is that something thinks. You know you think because you wouldn't possibly interrogate yourself over trying to know if your head is still here or not.
And if you think, there must be something doing the thinking. Let's call it the 'I'.
I thinks, so you know I exists.
I think, therefore I am.
And I am not certain I have a head.
But someone should give me one...
@Tfmonkey This sounded like you were smoking some Mary Juana through most of the post, until the last sentence, where you brought it all together and I understood what you were getting at.
"Ah, the point emerges." - Beatrix Kiddo, Kill Bill Vol. 2.
You're always creative in your streams with your "It's like" and "Think about it this way" examples. Maybe if you didn't have the trauma in your past you'd have been a great teacher. Males were always the only ones whose History classes I enjoyed.
@RoninGrey There are drugs which can induce different states of consciousness, but they often dull your reason so you can't communicate what you're experiencing and you sound like a retard.
I thought about being a teacher once, but it's too political and the pay is dogshit. Plus fuck the government.
@Tfmonkey @RoninGrey @ButtWorldsMan you guys are fucking retarded you would know that you have a head cuz you can touch and feel it and see its shadow on a wall or a floor, you can see your nose, you can pull parts of your face in to view like your lips and see that there is something there, you can get the shape of your face using your shadow and hands
@37712 @Tfmonkey @RoninGrey i don't need to be tagged in here. I've said my piece and am waiting for monke to address my rebuttal before saying anything further.
@Tfmonkey @RoninGrey I resemble that remark
@Tfmonkey skin yourself and observe the shape of your body first hand. Have you ever seen a man eat his own head? If not you haven't seen everything.
@Tfmonkey What about mirrors?
@Tfmonkey the knower knows nothing and merely observes and comments upon it. There are superfluous aspects of our reality we struggle or are unable to see and experience. While the left brain speaks, the right remains quiet and content
@Tfmonkey This is similar to the depersonalization experiment one can feel if they attempt observing themselves from the outside looking back at themselves, particular the face.
In that very short moment, one can possibly observe the observer.
@Tfmonkey
There is no spoon.