On Jun 11, 2009, at 11:04 AM, William Conger wrote:
We don't of course, take a real tree into our heads when we see one,
but form an "idea" of the tree -- what some have called "image-text"
-- that is, a metaphor.
Ya see, now. Thass you're problem. You're trying to explain the
process of perception with an explanation that uses words from another
discipline--that poetry stuff.
Actually, a bit less sassy: It probably passes understanding by some
that the internal mechanism by which we represent the perceptions to
ourselves--i.e., how we know that we're "seeing" something--is a form
of metaphor, a standing in. The immediate perceptions seem (a)
immediate and (2) so completely bound to the stimuli that's it's hard
to distinguish the internal representation as a mapping of our
neuronal responses onto **not** the external object (we generally
don't confuse our impressions of a tree for the thing in the front
yard), but onto our other previous experiences of similar patterns, so
that we recognize ("re-know") this stimulus as probably a tree like
many others we have seen.
Try this:
Pay attention to whatever you are observing, whether by sight,
hearing, touch, etc. Now (if you're thinking of what you are looking
at), imagine the field of your vision as totally black, with small
points of radiation emanating from different spots, and perhaps
pulsating waves of that radiation, and different perceptions of dense
and less dense (representing different intensities of the radiation),
etc. It's probably quite difficult and improbably obtuse: what is this
odd scheme he's talking about?
Now, consider that what you are imagining is the way the objects in
the world "really" look.
Imagine you are perceiving them, not with human vision, but with some
other kind of electromagnetic sensing apparatus inside your head. Your
brain takes all the sensory stimuli and input and constructs a
"meaningful" array which you use to navigate and make your way through
the world.
Or do this: Imagine being able to perceive all the *other*
electromagnetic radiation (X-rays, gamma radiation, radio and
television transmissions, etc.) or sound waves (extremely high or low
frequencies). What kind of mental array would your brain produce to
display these stimuli?
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
