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Ondrej Dyck (Aug 12 2025 at 14:25):He does not belabor the point.
He assumes that we are not privy to the inner workings of other people's minds. But we are at a loss to interpret the movement of people's bodies and the noises they make without presuming that they are acting. That is, that they have ends they are aiming at, they are using means to attain those ends. The reason they aim at those ends is that they perceive that the change in the state of the world is preferable than the alternative.
It is in this limited and fairly abstract sense that we "know" what people are doing when they act. The main point is that we cannot interpret human action from the physicist's perspective.
This also extends to science itself. We interpret theories about the world in the context of them being created by acting rational beings. We understand theories not on the basis of laws of brain chemistry but on the basis of laws of logic.
Ondrej Dyck (Aug 12 2025 at 14:57):How do I delete this :point_up:
Posted in the wrong location
John Baez (Aug 12 2025 at 15:28):You can delete a post of yours by clicking on the 3 vertical gray dots to the right of your post and clicking "delete".
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Aug 12 2025 at 20:25):Or a @moderators can do it if they're on browser rather than in the mobile app (as I currently am)
Ondrej Dyck (Aug 12 2025 at 22:26):Yeah, I'm on the mobile app, which I don't know how to use apparently :face_palm: