• Ayush Jain
    7
    Do you think it's possible to record the individual human experience?

    By that I mean, what each of us go through every second of our lives? The inputs to our senses, the thoughts that pass by, the emotions we feel? Our body to a certain extent is able to store these for a period of time. If it can do it, it can be argued that we might be able to parameterize the human experience. If we remove the bias that our genetics create, and assume all brains to be identical at the time they are created, let's assume that point is the moment we are born. Brain kind of acts like a computer, takes inputs from senses, gives output. Whatever principles, values, behavioral patterns we have today, have emerged from our experiences. Deep down all of us have a reasoning for the smallest of actions or decisions we take.

    Now, if we actually are able to parameterize the experience, we might just be able to recreate and capture the human experience. Essentially, you will be able to step-in your past, re-experience those moments. We might just be able to time travel in the past, only to observe though.

    Do you think this is possible?
  • Pantagruel
    3.5k
    I assume that this is the entire project of culture, to symbolically memorialize individual experiences such that they can be re-ingested by subsequent generations, creating a kind of continuity of experience. The only way to actually parameterize individual experience is through intersubjectively evolved concepts. There is no truly singular meaning.
  • Ayush Jain
    7
    I am just trying to understand if I can possibly record what goes through within us at every moment. For instance, even when the culture is being passed on to subsequent generations through whatever medium, there's a unique individual recipient, who will understand, digest, and internalize whatever has been conveyed (meaning might be singular this way). In the culture project, we are recording the input of what has already happened in the larger society. I am trying to go a little deeper and broader, and understand if we can parameterize any input whatsoever (essentially, the lifetime) that a conscious being receives.
  • wonderer1
    2.2k
    Do you think it's possible to record the individual human experience?

    By that I mean, what each of us go through every second of our lives? The inputs to our senses, the thoughts that pass by, the emotions we feel?
    Ayush Jain

    If you had stopped at "inputs to our senses" you'd have something somewhat technologically feasible (if not very practical). However, with thoughts and emotions you would be talking about highly invasive measurement of a huge amount of activity occurring in people's brains. It's not at all technologically feasible to measure and record the data that would be needed.
  • Tom Storm
    9.3k
    I am just trying to understand if I can possibly record what goes through within us at every moment.Ayush Jain

    Not sure I understand your ideas here. Memory doesn't represent what happened to us or how we felt. The self is like mercury. What we think we experienced changes which each recollection and evolves, often imperceptibly. The idea of a correct recollection of an event seems wrong. There is how you felt in the moment, which is specific to everything that came immediately before and after. It continually evolves: seconds, minutes, days, weeks, years later. I can't see how your idea would be useful. Rather than nailing down a single meaning and reproducing it over time in an attempt at a kind of synthesis, it might be better to celebrate the multiple interpretations of any event and realize that all we can do is try to make sense of our environment.
  • Pantagruel
    3.5k
    there's a unique individual recipient, who will understand, digest, and internalize whatever has been conveyedAyush Jain

    But how did that individual's version of whatever "meaning" arise? He didn't create it ex nihilo. It was constructed out of framing elements which evolved through social practices - words with already practically evolved meanings. Individuation and community are the poles of a spectrum, neither of which makes sense without the other, like materiality and ideality.
  • Wayfarer
    23k
    Do you think this is possible?Ayush Jain

    No, because experience is inextricably linked with a subject or a being, and recordings are always third-person.

    There was a fabulous early 1980s sci fi movie on this theme, Natalie Woods' last film before her premature and tragic death, which occurred during the final stages of filming.

  • Mww
    5k


    Where, in 3B neuroconnections/mm3 in the human brain, would the recording equipment probe be inserted, for recording the experience of reeling in a trophy fish, or, the memory of already having done such a thing?

    At what measure of mass density, does the recording device effect that which the device is suppose to record, synonymous with the quantum “observer problem”?

    The average human can’t explain his own experiences, so how would he be able to design equipment, to record what he doesn’t know how to find?

    Nahhhhh…..a gigantic, cast iron, capital letter “not possible” from me.
  • Tom Storm
    9.3k
    The average human can’t explain his own experiences, so how would he be able to design equipment, to record what he doesn’t know how to find?Mww

    Nice!
  • Vera Mont
    4.4k
    Essentially, you will be able to step-in your past, re-experience those moments.Ayush Jain

    Hypnosis needs to be a lot more precise and controllable. External recording not possible, unless (?until) compatible hardware is perfected and individuals are fitted with a recording device wired into their brain.
  • jorndoe
    3.7k
    For a brief moment, this is what a photographer saw:

    bip4miiqgy5pzolr.jpg

    But the recording is not the recorded.
  • Gmak
    15
    I think experience need to be differentiate from emotion. And yes, with the technology, I say that even the emotion, can be save. But I doubt it's something common: something for the wealthy maybe.
  • wonderer1
    2.2k
    At what measure of mass density, does the recording device effect that which the device is suppose to record, synonymous with the quantum “observer problem”?Mww

    :up:

    At what point in 'sensoring up' a human, have you created something that is no longer a human.
  • Mww
    5k


    Exactly like one of Zeno’s Paradoxes.….cover half the distance with each step. Sooner or later, you’re gonna get to a point where the distance is measured in terms of outer shell electrons of different things, both of which have, of course, disappeared.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    Yes.

    Essentially, you will be able to step-in your past, re-experience those moments.Ayush Jain

    Consider:

    X.

    IN A LIBRARY.

    A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
    To meet an antique book,
    In just the dress his century wore;
    A privilege, I think,

    His venerable hand to take,
    And warming in our own,
    A passage back, or two, to make
    To times when he was young.

    His quaint opinions to inspect,
    His knowledge to unfold
    On what concerns our mutual mind,
    The literature of old;

    What interested scholars most,
    What competitions ran
    When Plato was a certainty.
    And Sophocles a man;

    When Sappho was a living girl,
    And Beatrice wore
    The gown that Dante deified.
    Facts, centuries before,

    He traverses familiar,
    As one should come to town
    And tell you all your dreams were true;
    He lived where dreams were sown.

    His presence is enchantment,
    You beg him not to go;
    Old volumes shake their vellum heads
    And tantalize, just so.
    — Emily Dickenson

    Which demonstrates that the record of human experience is deeper than re-experiencing my own experiences -- with the old volumes we can even conjure up the experiences of those before us.
  • Wayfarer
    23k
    :rofl: Not enough chess jokes in the world.

    Beautiful. I was so taken by the Dickenson poem below I printed it nicely and framed it for my study. This one really speaks to me.

    This World is not Conclusion
    By Emily Dickinson

    This World is not Conclusion.
    A Species stands beyond
    Invisible, as Music
    But positive, as Sound
    It beckons, and it baffles
    Philosophy, don't know
    And through a Riddle, at the last
    Sagacity, must go
    To guess it, puzzles scholars
    To gain it, Men have borne
    Contempt of Generations
    And Crucifixion, shown
    Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies
    Blushes, if any see
    Plucks at a twig of Evidence
    And asks a Vane, the way
    Much Gesture, from the Pulpit
    Strong Hallelujahs roll
    Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
    That nibbles at the soul
  • Arcane Sandwich
    551
    Amazing. That's the best joke I've heard this month!
  • Arcane Sandwich
    551
    When Sappho was a living girl,
    And Beatrice wore
    The gown that Dante deified.
    Facts, centuries before,

    He traverses familiar,
    As one should come to town
    And tell you all your dreams were true;
    He lived where dreams were sown.

    His presence is enchantment,
    You beg him not to go;
    Old volumes shake their vellum heads
    And tantalize, just so.
    — Emily Dickenson

    What a beautiful thing to say.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    551
    Since we're sharing poetry, this one speaks volumes to me:

    These parties have not died nor will they ever die; because they represent two legitimate tendencies, two necessary manifestations of the life of our country: the federal party, the spirit of locality concerned and still blind; the unitarian party, centralism, national unity. Should the influential men of these parties disappear, others will come representing the same tendencies, who will work to make them predominate as before and will convulse the country to reach both the results they have obtained. The logic of our history, then, is calling for the existence of a new party, whose mission is to adopt what is legitimate in both parties, and dedicate itself to finding a peaceful solution to all our social problems with the key of a higher, more rational synthesis, and more complete than theirs, which, satisfying all legitimate needs, embraces them and melts them in its unity. — Esteban Echeverría

    This is the original Spanish version:

    Esos partidos no han muerto ni morirán jamás; porque representan dos tendencias legítimas, dos manifestaciones necesarias de la vida de nuestro país: el partido federal, el espíritu de localidad preocupado y ciego todavía; el partido unitario, el centralismo, la unidad nacional. Dado caso que desapareciesen los hombres influyentes de esos partidos, vendrán otros representando las mismas tendencias, que trabajarán por hacerlas predominar como anteriormente y convulsionarán al país para llegar uno y otro al resultado que han obtenido. La lógica de nuestra historia, pues, está pidiendo la existencia de un partido nuevo, cuya misión es adoptar lo que haya de legítimo en uno y otro partido, y consagrarse a encontrar la solución pacífica de todos nuestros problemas sociales con la clave de una síntesis alta, más racional y más completa que la suya, que satisfaciendo todas las necesidades legítimas, las abrace y las funda en su unidad. — Esteban Echeverría
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