On Aug 21, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Krimel wrote:
> [Marsha]
> An analogy of what you're requesting might be like asking someone to explain
> Quantum entanglement using Newtonian proofs. Of course dmb's trying to
> explain the MoQ using James texts is just as ridiculous.
>
> [Krimel]
> I like James' distinction between percepts and concept. His treatment of
> them in Some Problems... is very good and worth your attention. But yeah, at
> some point it is time to move on. Many of the concepts that inform my
> understanding the MoQ didn't exist during James' time.
Marsha:
Maybe James had some insights, but I hope you have not missed the paper I
posted the other day. It is very modern and up-to-date (2004):
Sensory Cognition
It is prosaic, perhaps even tautological, to note that knowledge depends upon a
means of knowledge. We can only perceive what our organs and faculties enable
us to perceive, and this in turn depends upon the kind of stimuli their
physical structures are capable of responding to. This is what a “correlative
object” means: a “visible object” is precisely that which can impinge upon the
visual organ and elicit visual awareness. This appears to invert the usual
roles of subject and object, though, because now it is not the objects that
determine the form of sensory awareness, but rather the sensory capacities that
determine the “object,” that determine what kind of phenomena
can even become a cognitive object.17 Human eyes, for example, do not respond
to ultra-violet or infra-red light, nor can most of us hear a dog whistle; we
are blind and deaf to what other species can see and hear. In this fashion,
just as our analysis of color perception undermines our sense that colors truly
exist “out there,” so too does an analysis of sensory awareness undermine the
sense that we experience objects “out there.” This merits further discussion.
According to many analyses, sense organs only function when the stimuli
impinging upon them reach a certain threshold, triggering impulses in the
receptor neurons that, via various mediating processes, register in the
cortex.18 When sufficiently strong, these result in a form of perceptual
awareness. A number of implications follow from this simple process. First, the
entire process is temporal; it is an event. By definition, a stimulus is
something that evokes a change in the sense organ,19 distinguishing it from its
preceding state. And second, whatever stimulus leads to perceptual awareness is
necessarily distinguished from its surrounding context. We do not, for example,
normally notice subtle stimuli like the quick flicker of a fluorescent light or
ambient stimuli like the steady hum of a fan since they are either too rapid or
too regular to trigger our awareness—until there is a change. We only notice it
when the hum stops. Similarly, if everything in our visual field were
completely white (or completely black) nothing would be distinguishable from
anything else and we would be effectively blinded, as in the blizzard condition
called a “white-out.” The arising of perceptual awareness thus depends upon the
effervescent contrasts, the shifting temporal and contextual distinctions that
disjunctively constitute stimuli, not upon some solitary stimulus existing in
splendid isolation.
It appears then that the objects of our sense organs are not really objects at
all; they only appear to be. This is tellingly illustrated in experiments
tracing people’s eyes as they scan a photograph. The eyes do not dwell on the
“objects” in the picture, but follow their outlines, where the greatest
contrasts lie. As Gregory Bateson (1979, 107) explains, “the end organs [of
sense] are thus in continual receipt of events that correspond to outlines in
the visible world. We draw distinctions; that is, we pull them out. Those
distinctions that remain undrawn are not.” This then suggests a third point:
that our everyday awareness of the world, what we see and hear and touch and
smell, critically depends upon the distinctions our sense faculties are capable
of “drawing”—indeed, the world ordinarily only appears in the forms they draw.
In this sense, cognitive awareness is both categorical and constructive. First,
the receptor neurons of the sense organs, according to cognitive scientist,
Christine Skarda (1999, 85), are “stimulus-specific in terms of their response
characteristics. Each responds maximally (i.e. with a burst of intense
electrical activity) to a specific type or class of stimuli,” such as certain
wavelengths or intensities of light, temperature, sound, etc. Even putatively
“pure sensations” depend upon the elementary schemas that constitute the
responsive structure of the sense organs. This initial process, however, only
yields isolated neurological signals that at this stage do not yet amount to
identifiable objects or characteristics.20
...
http://www.gampoabbey.org/translations2/Co-arising%20of%20SOWS-Waldron.pdf
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