<snip> [Colin Hales] No, it's better visualised as 'being a not-mirror' :-) Imagine you embedded a mirror in your head, but you were only interested in everything the mirror was not. That is, the image in the mirror is manipulating the space intimately adjacent to the reflecting surface. Keep the space, throw the reflecting surface and glass away. What you are interested in is 'being' that space, not the mirror. When you do that the 'movie screen' that is the experiential field becomes part of you. Yes it's a play, only 1 viewer who literally 'is' the theatre, no regressing homunculi.
[David Nyman] Oddly, I think I *see* what you mean (and I use the term advisedly). One of the problems we experience in discussing these issues (certainly I do, anyway) is the lack of a really effective way to share powerful *visualisations* of what we're proposing. Not everything we're trying to express is formalisable (at this stage anyway) in mathematical or strictly logical terms. I've tried to express before this image of the relationship between what-is-functioning-as-perceiver and what-is-functioning-as-percept, and the picture in my head was always something like you describe. And the key aspect is that you *are* this relationship, your grasp of the situation is unmediated, there is no regress. For me, this is the primary intension of 'exists', and it lies at the heart of what I confusingly referred to as 1-person primacy - meaning only that you can't come by any of this unless you *are* the entity in question. The commitment is total - there is no way of climbing outside of this to study the situation 'objectively'. [Colin Hales] Glad to 'see' that you 'see'. :-) It is very interesting to see how much trouble people have with this and it is very ironic because it is the position we naturally inhabit (all observation is subjectivity), yet the subjectivity delivers the capacity to behave objectively so brilliantly we think we have actually stepped back from it... but as you say... "there is no way of climbing outside of this to study the situation 'objectively'" Yet that is what we scientists insist we are doing! Without subjectivity there's no 'objectivity' (in the form of an 'as-if' or virtual objectivity) to be had. The descriptions we define as 'objective' and describe 'objectively' are merely generalisations in respect of appearances of what bruno would call 'objective' (actual) reality...what it is that is actually there, whatever it is that is the 'underlying reality'..... That also delivers the appearances into your brain/via your brain, which as actually made of the underlying reality, not of anything we divine through the appearances it delivers. Indeed I would hold that our subjective experience (subjectivity)is our one and only intimate and complete connection to the underlying reality and it is the existence of it (subjectivity) 'at all' which is most telling/instructive of the true nature/structure of the underlying reality, not the appearances thus delivered by subjectivity. As I think I have said before: 'seeing' is evidence of the underlying reality and its capcity to deliver 'that which is seen'. The latter delivers two sorts of evidence a) more evidence of the organisation of the underlying reality b) what we regard as objective evidence used by scientists in formulations of emopirical laws that organise the appearances but tell us nothing about the underlying reality because we throw (a) away for no reason other than it is our culture to do so. There's a lot more to observation than merely 'that which is seen'. The act of seeing at all is also observation. Metaphorically... if you hear "X is true" being said you get 2 lots of evidence, not one: c) some evidence in support of the proposition that "X is true" d) more definite evidence of the proposition "somebody said something" 'that which is seen' corresponds to "X is true" The underlying reality is the 'somebody' Science calls any consideration of the 'somebody' as evidenceless non-scientific metaphysics and spurns/eschews it when is is actually _more_ evidenced! in that (d) is a better supported claim than (c) That's about the lot on 'observation' except to wonder when mainstream science (in particular cosmology and neuroscience) finally 'get it'. This simple cultural foible hides the key to 'everything'. The belief that the 'underlying reality is actually made of quantum mechanics (as opposed to being merely described by it) to me looks like a mass delusion of the most bizarre kind. Thomas Kuhn should be marching up and down with placard saying "NO MORE EVIDENCE-ISM" "EVIDENCE DISCRIMINATION UNFAIR TO UNDERLYING REALITY". :-) cheers, Colin Hales --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
