On 2 February 2014 03:42, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: To answer the question about the frogs. We imagine we are an "extended > frog" because of memory; without it we really would be stuck in the present > moment, a series of individual isolated moments - and completely unable to > function, of course. (If you haven't seen "Memento" do so because it's very > good AND it shows the illusion of continuity up very nicely.) > > Ironically I don't have any more time to write on this! Later... >
Actually I was lucky enough to see Memento when it was premiered at Sundance in 2001, I think. Great movie. Yes, I've got the bit about memory - this allows each "momentary frog" to perceive itself as an "extended frog". But now we seem to have conjured up a collection of momentary frogs each one of which imagines itself to be an extended frog with more or less history, if you see what I mean. What I'm interested in is why or how this could resolve into a singular momentary frog that has the impression of one history that keeps extending itself. One can see that this must be true of each of the momentary frogs, each stuck in its pigeon hole, so to speak, but the logic we are discussing seems to imply that each such frog is deluded and that its particular history (memory, that is ) never in fact changes. The more I think about this the worse it gets. I realise that I can never actually prove that I'm not just one of those momentary frogs stuck in a pigeon hole with my memories of a past history, because that frog could never observe any "transition" to a future moment (i.e. one not yet encoded in its memory) in which that proof would occur. But accepting that "I" am just one such momentary frog seems about as difficult as believing I am not conscious simply because I apparently can't appeal to consciousness to explain why I'm having the thought that I'm conscious (another thread!). I think this is what Hoyle was getting at with his flashlight: we can't seem to help thinking of ourselves successively as one frog at different times. His flashlight idea just pumps the intuition that though we can consider the pigeon holes in any order we like, we can't seem to avoid considering them in some sort of order, even if that order is merely logical, not temporal (because the temporal ordering is already in the pigeon holes themselves). David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
