@FBM,
Quote:Phenomenologically, I don't experience a car. I experience sights and sounds and, due to past experience, associate that with pain if it were to hit me. I don't assume anything, I don't think about it at all (there's no time to do philosophy in such a situation), I don't formulate beliefs on it, my body reacts somatically in the way it has been conditioned to by past experience, not philosophical speculation. [...]
Somatic. Not philosophical. If a 5-year-old child moves out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, are you going to claim that s/he has done complex philosophical reflection in order to arrive at the decision to move out of the way? Are you going to claim that this 5-year-old child is making an ontological/epistemological/metaphysical statement? It seems more likely to me that s/he is simply reacting somatically, without deep philosophical reflection.
There's nothing somatic about it. Anyone in this situation does a lot of thinking and assumes quite a lot (steps not necessarily sequential, it all happens in a split second):
1. see incoming vehicle, and
believe one's senses (i.e. assume the vehicle exists)
2. estimate
prima facie risk based on circumstances (is it a big car or a bicycle?) and experience (that's what a toddler can't do)
3. opt for escape based on
prima facie risk and sense of self-worth (a suicidal person can decide to stay and die)
4. calculate and visualize with a reasonable degree of precision (depending on the risk involved) the trajectory and speed of vehicle
5. calculate and visualize one or several escape routes
6. check that self can escape without breaking major life goals or moral imperatives (essentially a moral call: eg is one is with a toddler or spouse, one cannot escape without making a serious attempt at saving toddler or spouse, even at the risk of one's own life - note that this moral call involves some calculation as per the trajectory of toddler and spouse relative to one's self and the vehicle's, which I won't get into, you get the drift)
7. escape with spouse and toddler in tow
What's important is that one is doing real thinking here. Based on very real assumptions, even if one is unaware of them. There's nothing somatic about it. I would invite your comments of step 6 in particular. How can the body make a moral call? Steps 4 and 5 are also interesting and speak to our capacity to envision and model in our mind different scenarios prior to a choice. It's pretty deep thinking when you think of it, the kind of which a computer cannot do at this point in time.
Step 1 (assume the vehicle exists) is key relative to our discussion. If it was a "self" flying in your direction, you wouldn't assume it exists. You wouldn't trust your senses. But you do it for a car. Why? Because a car is material and a self isn't? Is this why you asked how much a self weigh?
Yet anything essential is invisible to the eye.
Why can't you trust your sense of self, like you trust your other senses?
Interestingly, we're back to traffic lights, a theme proposed earlier by Setanta. She was right in the sense that beliefs are all about making choices based on limited information. That may be where it is relevant to talk about situations involving bodily harm: a pressing choice is at stake for one's survival. As you said yourself, this choice is rarely based on philosophical considerations. In your case, philosophical considerations would lead to your instant death due to the irrelevance to the real world of your philosophy, so it would indeed be quite unwise to apply your philosophy in the real world.
But your choices are nevertheless based on real assumptions and on real thinking that have epistemological and moral implications. You are doing epistemology without being aware of it, like Mr Jourdain was saying prose without even knowing it.
