X-Message-Number: 23905
From: 
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 10:02:21 EDT
Subject: Will, Frames

Scot Badger writes in part:

>Isn't the essence of the debate over the existence of
>an "experiencer" directly related to the presence or
>not of conscious will?

>Can you rightfully claim there is no "experiencer" and
>at the same time claim that conscious will exists?


"Will" is too vague a term. It might mean just intention or purpose or goal, 
and a program might have that. 

I use "consciousness" and "feeling" and "experience" as nearly synonymous. I 
don't say there is no experiencer; I suggest that the experiencer is the same 
as the experience. There is nothing "behind" the experience--that way lie 

homunculi and infinite regress. I'll try to clarify further on the Youniverse 
site 
before long.

Peter Merel mentions frames and phlogiston and epicycles. I'm glad to see 
someone else sharing these perspectives. The question of frames is related to 

"instrumentalism"--the view that the only requirement of a good theory is that 
it 
yield reliable and accurate predictions. The Ptolemaic theory of the solar 

system was a good theory in this sense, but nonsense in other ways. Many suspect
that quantum theory has similar faults.

Robert Ettinger


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