[SEQ RERUN] Mind Projection Fallacy

post by MinibearRex · 2012-02-23T04:13:53.346Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 1 comments

Today's post, Mind Projection Fallacy was originally published on 11 March 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

 

E. T. Jaynes used the term Mind Projection Fallacy to denote the error of projecting your own mind's properties into the external world. the Mind Projection Fallacy generalizes as an error. It is in the argument over the real meaning of the word sound, and in the magazine cover of the monster carrying off a woman in the torn dress, and Kant's declaration that space by its very nature is flat, and Hume's definition of a priori ideas as those "discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe"...


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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Righting a Wrong Question, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

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comment by Tyrrell_McAllister · 2012-03-09T00:16:49.124Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

But the Mind Projection Fallacy generalizes as an error. It is in [...] Kant's declaration that space by its very nature is flat[.]

If anything, Kant committed the opposite of the Mind Projection Fallacy. Rather than assuming that properties of his mind were properties of external reality, he claimed that many properties of external reality were in fact properties of his mind. For him, everyone else was committing the Mind Projection Fallacy by supposing that space was in the territory, when in fact, he argued, space was just part of our map.