I will come back on this when I have time, but - to continue my suggestions re SF stories - "Flux" by Michael Moorcock addresses the "momentary frog question" rather nicely. Philosophically, at least, it is always possible that we ARE just momentary frogs.
On 3 February 2014 03:19, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. > -- 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.
