On Sep 27, 2012, at 1:43 PM, William Conger <[email protected]> wrote:
> Cheerskep confuses me. He claims that an artwork 'never brought him to the > a.e., as if it can 'communicate' anything at all. The artwork can only foster > certain cognitive functions, as any sensed experience does, and Cheerskep then > imagines something, a feeling, a story, a sentiment, a desire, and more, perhaps > and as he does that he also reflects on it, judges it, savors, it, or, to use > his favorite word, 'cherishes' it. If the artwork were to to communicate or > deliver something, it would then have the most-feared ontic status. And > Cheerskep rightly rejects the ontic status of something which is by its own > nature not physically measurable. I thought that thoughts are measurable at the level of congnitive activity in the brain: different colors on MRIs, etc. How is the mental, cognitive activity of receiving perceptions (from the eyes or ears, e.g.) different from congnitve activity of the thoughts (other cognitive activity) provoked by the perceptions? How is thinking of the referents (the "meaning") different from the thinking that the initial sensations produce? What is different? All I can think of is that a person (a) is aware of "recognizing" the sensations and (b) assigning "meanings" to them. That is, all of these cognitive activities are filtered through the mechanism of awareness and become equal mental activities. "Savoring," "cherishing," "being engaged," "being repulsed" are all emotional reactions to the way the mind/brain recognize and interpret the sensations, and they are directed toward motivating the person to some kind of action, e.g., stay and continue to be prompted by the stimulus or remove the stimulus (discard it, move away, etc.). The assigned "meaning" of any perceptions is a behavioral mechanism; its "ontic status" is that of a mental activity, and its function is to impel another behavior. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
