Krimel] All I can add is that you are doing nothing more to solve the problem than inverting it. Instead of saying that internal ideas are not "real" you want to say that any external reality is not "real". You are trading one extreme position for another. I do not think this is what James is after.
Ron: I agree, I think what james is after IS THE PRIMACY OF A SHARED INTERPRETATION, therefore shared perception, in order for this to happen (using trans-experiential concepts) there must be a continuose framework, a stream of collection which is primary (rationally speaking) . It's that illusionary quality defined by concept, (which is primary in percept). In otherwords, indefinable Dynamic quality. [Krimel] I agree on the importance of the "primacy of shared interpretation." In fact an ongoing theme in what I have been writing here for three years is that "objectivity" IS shared interpretation. But just to tweak what you say above: We cannot "share perceptions." We can share conceptual descriptions but not actual perceptions. That is the strength of concepts, they are encodable and decodable. They are communicable in exactly the way that percepts are not. When we focus attention on a concept it takes on the properties of a "pure experience" but we experience a concept as a concept. This is what allows concepts into the radical empiricist party. But we can discriminate concept from precept in the same way that we can discriminate reality from dream. The issue is further complicated by the fact that as a result of our unique combination of talents we can turn concepts into percepts. An automobile is a set of complex concepts that are reified. In fact almost everything we encounter in the modern world is a reified concept. [Ron] James says its there but he can't really say what it is because one CAN"T really say what it is. we are it. To be sure Krimel you are correct but also know that a reduction of experience to sensory data is a mistake also, so saying James feels percepts are primary to concept is'nt quite grasping the meaning either. He recognizes a necessity for some dynamic imputus but he states there is no way to actually "know" it. in a knowledge way, we "are " it and in that way we know it but in the "knowledge way we may not. If you can follow me. [Krimel] I follow you but let's be clear, the only sense in which I have attempted to 'reduce' experience to anything is in Dave's head. I have talked about the important distinction between sensation and perception and sought to look at the processes that lead to perception. I think it is important to know what it is we are talking about and not just spout a bunch of pie in the sky, feels good, hokum. Sensation is the interface between the inorganic and the biological. It is the encoding of inorganic data into a biological format. Perception is the biological process of making meaning out of data. Meaning is reduction in uncertainty and that is critical to any living thing. Living things exchange energy with their environments. Sensation is one way they do this. Perception is the process that helps to sustain the organism by reducing uncertainty about what's coming next. There is this temporal quality to experience that allows the blending of past, present and future at every moment. Those time delays from the impact of energy on our sensory systems and our recognition of the stimulus. During that short time gap, experience is slurred in time, ripples of the immediate and the immediately past form interference patterns that persist in memory. (that was a highly speculative completely idiosyncratic account, in other words I just made it up) or something like that. But something in this process slurs time. We are able to construct four dimensional images in three dimensional space. [Ron] I think since no one is able to really interpret James meaning and most see the side they want to, I'd say thats a dead ringer for dynamic quality. [Krimel] I thought James distinction between perception and conception eliminated the s/o duality while preserving what it feels like to experience both. I thought his analysis of perception as continuous and concepts as discrete, was excellent. In that sense then perception is a dynamic interaction with the environment while conception is the construction of static lens to filter that dynamic flux. I think I underestimated how conceptually bound some of our friends here are. 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/
