Scruton on the subject
- From: Neinstein <sct@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 1 May 2007 15:58:43 -0700
I'm reading the "Subject and Object" chapter of Roger Scruton's "An
intelligent person's guide to philosophy" and need some opinions of
this philosopher's views before I throw the book in the bin at this
point.
The passage that has put me off and given me the suspicion he's not
worth reading is the following...(p50)
"Some would say that there is an inner realm, an aspect of mind which
is hidden from all but the subject...which only I can know...After
all, pain is not the same as pain behaviour and the peculiar
awfulness
of pain is never known except by feeling it. But is this true? Have
you ever watched by a sick-bed, and said to yourself 'What I am
seeing
here is only pain-behaviour, the awful reality is something else,
something hidden, something only he can know'? On the contrary: you
have seen _exactly_ how awful it is, and you can hardly bear the
sight..."
He says elsewhere that "We must recognise the priority of the third-
person case, which sees the mind from outside", and "We udnerstand
the
mind not by looking inwards but by studying cognitive and sensory
behaviour".
This is a shame, because up to that point I was enjoying the book,
especially his arguments against post-modernism.
His argument seems to rely on an uncritical acceptance of
Wittgenstein's private language argument eariler in the chapter.
"Wittgenstein suggests we could not use the terms of our public
language in order to identify and refer to (the private experience
of ) the mind". This is sophistry, as an individual anyone can see
this is sophistry. Everyone knows the difference between actually
experiencing pain and empathy for that experience. Scruton seems to
contradict himself, elsewhere he says we have criteria for
distinguishing the meaningful from the meaningless despite the lack
of
"correspondence" (to reality), and yet he then places all faith in
"public" language.
.
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