dmb said to Krimel: I recently learned about an illuminating example of just how powerful concepts are in the act of perception. Leonardo da Vinci did his best to carefully observe the internal anatomy for a drawing of the same. We're talking about an attempt to copy the organs of a corpse onto paper while looking directly at the actual corpse. But Leo's medical knowledge came down to him, for the most part, from Galen, an ancient physician who was wrong about a few things. And these wrong things showed up in da Vinci's drawings. He didn't copy what he saw so much as what he knew. The concepts he'd inherited altered his perception despite the care he took to see clearly. And this is true with all our perceptions. To a degree even further than you suggest, we can only see what our concepts allow us to see.
Krimel replied: Wow, are you trying to tell me that the Great Leonardo was influenced by the giants upon whose shoulders he stood? Are you saying that even a genius working in the late 1400's got some details wrong? Next you will be telling me he was a Christian or perhaps Master of the Priory of Sion. ...Perhaps your tale would be bit more impressive if you did your home work better. The tale you tell is in the March 2005 issue of Scientific American Mind.... dmb says: Yes, of course Leo stood on shoulders, as we all do, but that isn't even close to what I was "trying" to tell you. And I did not learn about this example from any issue of Scientific American Mind. I learned about it by way of a site devoted to the work of Sir Ernst Gombrich, a philosopher of aesthetics who died in 2001. But let me take a different approach. It was Heidegger's phenomenological insight that we never experience the so-called sense data of which you make so much. My favorite example is the slamming of a door, because it is such a common experience. If one thinks about that experience its pretty easy to see that our understanding of what it is and what it means is immediate. Depending on the situation, you know right away that someone is angry or that the wind is blowing or you are immediately startled and perplexed. There is no sense data, no sound to ponder and decode. You just have an immediate impression. Later this might be altered by subsequent experience. The one who just stormed out of the room might be heard to say, "sorry" or "ouch" or you might hear a car start up and drive away. But the idea that the meaning of this event is to be found in the acoustic waves hitting the ear drum is really a rather old-fashioned idea. You'll find such notions in David Hume and other Modern philosophers but today we'd call that "naive realism". And, as Gav pointed out, you're working with the assumptions of SOM when making such points. And Wow. I like the sassy comebacks and don't mind the insulting little jabs, but I think you can do better. You've obviously run off to ask Mr. Google and in your mind this constitutes "homework". But dude, this is not just weak. Its irrelevant. You haven't even come close to addressing the point, which is that conceptions and not sense dat largely determine perceptions. This is a point Pirsig makes when he says that SOM doesn't acknowledge that there is a social level between "mind" and "matter". Care to take another crack at it? P.S. Craig, Steve and Marsha: Sorry but I can't really respond to you simply because I don't understand what your responses mean. Feel free to try again. _________________________________________________________________ Stay in touch when you're away with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_messenger2_072008 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
