THEORY: CHAT mass-hallucination? (was: THEORY: Are commands to believe infelicitous?)

On Wednesday, June 15, 2005, at 08:10 , Joe wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
>
>> On
>> Umm - but if I said to any of my neighbors "I believe the rose in my
>> garden are in bloom", I would get some very odd looks and replies like
>> "What do you mean you believe they are! they bloody well are - take a
>> look!
>
>
> Of course, that implies your senses are trustworthy.  Something I have
> little evidence of.  But that's another story.
You have even less evidence that my neighbors' senses are trustworthy.

But I do not understand what you are trying to say. I perceive things in
my garden which appear to me to be roses; I have done this for many years.
  From what my neighbors and others in our road have said over the years,
they also perceive same things to be roses. I have been able over the
years to touch the things also - and only two days ago I was dead-heading
the bushes.

 From time to time my wife cuts things from the bushes which both she and
others assume are roses. Even when we have taken the cut specimens to
different locations, people who have seen and touched them have so far
always assumed they are roses.

Are you suggesting that not only my senses but the senses of people who
live in our road and of certain other people here in the south-east of
England are untrustworthy? Are we all suffering some sort of
mass-hallucination? Or what???

Ray
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http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

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