I wish I could convince Cheerskep to do some reading in neurology. I've mentioned Antonio Damasio here at least 50 times. Yesterday I mentioned Jonah Lehrer's book, Proust was a Neuroscientist. Lehrer is not the investigating distinguished scientist that Damasio is but he is trained in the field and is now a writer. He is a first rate explainer of what the new neurology is discovering and he is relating these findings to what he considers to be parallel intuitve discoveries by such artists as Proust and others.
Let me quote just a brief passage from Lehrer's book: "...every memory is inseparable from the moment of its recollection". He is referring not only to Proust's intuitive recognition of how memories are remade (falsely) each time we remember but also to scientist Karim Nader (and colleagues) at NYU who experimented (2000-2002) with memory in rats and demonstrated how the process of remembering is easily subverted. Lehrer summarizes "...The more you remember something the less accurate the memory becomes." The term used is copied from Freud: reconsolidation. This book is filled with many other clear summaries of contemporary mind-body studies. My point is that nearly all of the former and well established ideas about how we think, how we experience, how we remember, how we feel, are changing very rapidly. These changes are due to the stunning advances in neurobiology and other fields that make use of new technology and imaging. True, "bottom-up" science of the body cannot yet answer many questions about how we are "in control" of our consciousness but it at least shows the undeniable fusion of body and mind, to the extent that our feelings drive and enable our thinking. Maybe it was five years when ago I urged our list to acknowledge the new strides in neurobiology because it is so crucial to improving access to our interest in the "aesthetic experience". If we can believe Damasio, for example, we would agree that the aesthetic experience begins with real body feelings, a psysiologicical source. Now, he has the (replicated)) lab data to back up his position. We, on the list, have philosophical tradition and attenuated guesswork. What the youg Lehrer is doing is to bring the science and the arts or Humanities together again. He calls it a Third Culture (as opposed to C.P. Snow's Two Cultures). That is the future, if there is to be one. If we don't want to be up to date on how science is aiding new approaches to philosophy, art, and experience, we might as well quit talking here. It's pointless to keep fussing over constructs that are now shown to be MISTAKEN AND INVALID. WC --- On Sun, 10/19/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: "Synonyms" > To: [email protected] > Date: Sunday, October 19, 2008, 1:44 PM > In a message dated 10/18/08 8:08:05 PM, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > > > By the same token that there's no baseball game so > is there no memory. All > > memories are reconstructed piece by piece inventions, > lies told anew with > > every "recollection". > > > I'd say there are indeed memories -- of sense data that > arrived in our > consciousness -- "visual memories" off this guy > hitting, that guy throwing; > aural of > the sound hitting the bat, the crowd cheering. > > I'll bet William's visual memories are much more > vivid and detailed than > mine. But I wouldn't say mine are "lies" if > by "lies" you have in mind > "knowingly > and intentionally false". Some of what I might claim > are memories of sense > data are not "veracious" because I simply > don't have the strong > visual-processing > apparatus that William does. So there are lots of lacunae > and blurry areas in > mine. Other alleged memories of mine -- the ones that are > allegedly "false" > because I have invented the alleged recollection -- > don't deserve to be > called "false" because the inventions aren't > intentional. Many times I've > thought I > recalled something I saw -- like, say, the contents of a > photo on someone's > desk -- but, when I revisit the photo, the > "recalled" details turn out to be > quite "imaginary". "Wow. I could have sworn > that..." > > > ************** > New MapQuest > Local shows what's happening at your destination. > Dining, Movies, Events, > News > & more. Try it out > (http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000002)
