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Subjective difference between one's own and others' experience

 
 
Reply Sun 13 Mar, 2011 06:14 am
I would say that there is a subjective difference between my own experience and experience of others in that my own experience is directly accessible to me. Is this a well-formed statement? Is it meaningful? What can one deduce from it?
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existential potential
 
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Reply Sun 13 Mar, 2011 10:25 am
@Kallikanzarid,
Does it make sense to say that your own experience is accessible to "you"? This implies a distinction between the experience, and the "experiencer", a distinction that may be illusory. The notion of "experiencer" is an illusion, there is only experience.

"Thoughts think thinkers, thinkers don't think thoughts"-I think Krishnamurti said that.

you may be right to say that one persons experience is different from another’s, but that doesn't mean that there exists an "I" or "you", who experiences- that may be something that has been created through language...but I'm sure there are others on a2k who can make this point in a more succinct way than I can.
G H
 
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Reply Sun 13 Mar, 2011 01:35 pm
@Kallikanzarid,
Quote:
I would say that there is a subjective difference between my own experience and experience of others in that my own experience is directly accessible to me.

Some pattern-recognition processes may be innate and universal to all human brains, but other apprehensions of events and meanings for them may be colored by an individual's own unique past, his/her occupation and interests, and any conceptual pecularities of one's culture or its language.

apperception: The process whereby perceived qualities of an object are related to past experience. ... Perception as modified and enhanced by one's own emotions, memories, and biases.

Eric M. Rubenstein: The thesis of Psychological Nominalism claims that to be aware of something, x, one must have a concept for x. But there is a flip side to this. If one has a concept of x, one can be aware of x’s. With the concept of x in hand, that is, you can notice all sorts of things you didn’t notice before you had that concept. For instance, a physicist looks at a puff of smoke in a cloud chamber and sees an electron discharged. She comes to have non-inferential knowledge of something we might not, as she has certain concepts we don’t as laypeople, as well as an ability to apply them directly to her experience. In other words, perception is concept-laden, and depending on what concepts you have, you can perceive different things. --Wilfrid Sellars' Philosophy of Mind, IEP
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JLNobody
 
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Reply Sun 13 Mar, 2011 03:02 pm
@existential potential,
We probably should acknowledged here that not all of our experience is consciousness. I agree with Krishnamurti on most matters, especially the illusory nature of the experiencer. My experience goes beyond that which is owned by my ego. And "my" is a linguistic convention that reflects our cultural assumption of an agent of experience and action. Isn't it better to acknowledge the unconscious nature of experience and the unconscious drives the propel much of "my" actions?
JLNobody
 
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Reply Sun 13 Mar, 2011 03:41 pm
@JLNobody,
I'm sorry to have overstated my previous points. I meant to say, not that our experience is consciousNESS; I meant to say that it is both conscious and unconscious. And I meant to ask if it isn't better to acknowledge the unconscious character of much of our experience and the unconscious drives and predispositions that propel much behavior and shape many perceptions.
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