What of our experiences cannot be measured? What attribute of our life could not possibly be put under surveillance/monitor?
To think about it in a different manner, everything we do, emote, think can be measured in some way: be it language or numbers. Every bodily function can be measured, and if we choose, it could be monitored every second of our existence and recorded, graphed, and analyzed.
The point to which I'm driving at is that all that we experience, through the senses and mind, is (or can be thought of as) information. Our preferences to particular drinks, our inspirations, etc are combined bits of information.
What information do you have to add to this conversation?
H
(NB This line of thinking is still in progress, so I apologize for the skeletal definition)
To think about it in a different manner, everything we do, emote, think can be measured in some way: be it language or numbers. Every bodily function can be measured, and if we choose, it could be monitored every second of our existence and recorded, graphed, and analyzed.
The point to which I'm driving at is that all that we experience, through the senses and mind, is (or can be thought of as) information. Our preferences to particular drinks, our inspirations, etc are combined bits of information.
What information do you have to add to this conversation?
H
(NB This line of thinking is still in progress, so I apologize for the skeletal definition)
I don't know if every aspect of our existence could be monitored or under surveillance. We do have a constant stream of internal language accompanying our feelings, thoughts, etc. But no one else has access to this but us. If we choose to express ourselves using language, by writing or speaking, then we give access to other people. But we can always lie. Sure, feasibly one day a technology could be developed that would essentially read minds. Are you referring to such a possibility?
ReplyDeleteI've had a similar conversation with Abed before. I don't think it's necessarily a one to one relationship between language/numbers and everything we experience. Images play their role. I can hold the image of my mother's face in my mind. While it may be accompanied by thoughts surrounding it, I don't think these thoughts necessarily correspond to the fullness of experience evoked by the face. And what about a bit of music, without words, that gets stuck in my head? I think part of this discussion is that language is pretty necessarily a linear mode of expression. One word follows another. But there are clearly more "dimensions" than the linear in our experience. Again, when I hold my mother's face in my mind, I can talk to you at the same time and tell you how I feel about my mother, but I don't think the words and the image (and all the emotions and experience packed into that image) correspond perfectly.
Now, if you accept that images and music are other forms of experience, maybe you will say that these are also bits of information. We can say that. But I don't know of any feasible way that someone else could capture the experience that the mother's image creates within me. Even if we did have a mind reader machine, and it could see that I was thinking of my mother, I don't know if it would necessarily follow that the machine would be able to capture the internal experience I am having upon seeing this image.
J