I had the chance to get to the book store last Friday, I picked up
relativity theory by Whitehead, Pragmatism by James and Man is the
Measure by Reuben Abel which is what I started reading first, It is
"a cordial invitation to the central problems of philosophy"
In it Abel confirms my suspicion that cutting edge experience
is just as much a product of prior recognition of associated
patterns :
"visual perception is discontinuous, seeing consists physically
of separate glances, each lasting about a quarter of a second.
(the world may disapear in the intervals and we would never know it)
The brain pieces together these distinct stimuli to constuct an image
of a stable and continuous world."
" What enters the eye is not really seen until it is organized by the
brain.
To see what is the case requires context, inference, concepts,
experience, interpretation."
he goes on to say:
" The selective nature of perception is also a consequence of the
fact that the number of sensory stimuli, or possible messages from
outside, is greater than we can receive and process. The channels
of communication to us are crowded and noisey; we must filter
stimuli. What we receive is usually what we expect, or want, or
believe, or are used to. Our eyes and brains coordinate how objects
look at different distances, from different directions, and
under different light, and show us an object to which we attribute
a constant size, shape, and color. To percieve is to solve a problem.
Our capacity "to find strands of permanence in the tumult of changing
appearences" (Polanyi) has survival value. Gestalt psychologists stress
how we tend to percieve well defined patterns and wholes which are not
really there, by integrating heterogeneous cues and filling in
contours."
Pirsig has termed this as undifferentited experience, I'm really not
sure if
there is such a thing.
Thank you for reading
-Ron
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