[Ham] Honestly, I'm amazed that you continue to talk to me. Our perspectives are about as contradictory as one can imagine.
[Case] It is one of the great mysteries of the age, no? [Ham] Yes, I'm familiar with audio and video feedback and its weird effects, such as infinite looping. I also realize that "introspection" is sometimes considered a conscious analog of this effect. But your problem, as with most objectivists, is the failure to understand subjective awareness as the central core of existential reality and not just an "effect". Man is not just a "mirror on the world"; he is its creator. The world of differentiated objects appears BECAUSE we experience it. Absent awareness and there is no world. [Case] Yes, I understand the problem but I look at it this way: We as organisms are products of this environment. We arise from the stabile conditions that have existed in this particular region of space and time for billions of years. We are uniquely suited to this environment because we have been shaped by it, to respond to it. Our senses provided us with reliable data because without reliable information we could not survive. It is the task of each individual to subjectively take sensory input and organize it internally into a model of "reality". These models are constantly tested against the "other" and modified accordingly. Our models are, as I said earlier, products of our biology and of our stored experiences. Frequently there seems to be confusion over reality versus experience. We as beings-aware have access only to our internal models. As Pirsig points out our senses necessarily are always of a reality that is in the past. We do not directly experience reality. Rather we act as storage for sensory representations of reality. One of the great tasks of humanity both individually and collectively is to sharpen our models and representations of the "other." We are not free to construct arbitrary models that do not conform to the "other". Doing so decreases the probability of survival radically. But we do have the capacity to use our internal models to reshape the "other". This capacity has been increasing geometrically in the recent past so much so that most moderns live in worlds almost entirely constructed of concretized ideas. So I would agree that each of us is the creator of our own internal worlds but this construction is constrained by and aims to conform to the mysterious "other". We are successful to the extent that our internal representations are in harmony or at least not opposed to the "other". [Ham] Where do these symbols and images come from if not from your experience of otherness? Even the concept of relationships - things relating to each other - is derived from you experience of otherness. That includes your perception of yourself as a being relative to other beings. The notion of beingness itself comes from experiencing other. [Case] Our internal representations are a product of our biology and our stored experience. [Ham] We remember what we experience. Experience is our awareness of other. Horsepower is not "part of an automobile"; it is an intellectual construct based upon physical principles of applied energy and force -- "manipulated symbols" that constitute the objects of our thought. Likewise, red is not part of an apple; it's the mental image that we see when light reflected from an object is missing certain portions of the color spectrum. In fact, when you say "properties defined by relationships external to themselves", you are making my point that they are properties of otherness, whether we are aware of them as "memories" or experiences. [Case] This notion of secondary attribute was recognized even by the early empiricists like Locke if I am not mistaken. You are quite correct that redness is not a property of apples as "other" but red is a property of our internal representation of apples. It is a property derived from or perception of apples. My comments on redness and your response to them illustrate the problem of confounding our internally accessible models of "other" with the "other" itself. I am only saying that we have good reason to have some level of confidence in our internal models as they usually serve us quite well. When we fail to recognize that our models are not the same as "other" we fall victim to what Dan refers to as illusion. But I think it is equal mistaken to conclude that because we have access only to the reflection of "other", "other" does not exist at all. [Ham] Again, what is measured by mechanical devices is "effects" not awareness. EEGs, PET scans, lie detectors, and the like monitor and track blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, and perspiration. These are not awareness. Intelligence tests compare recalled knowledge and comprehension against normative standards. The are not "forms of awareness"; they are applied skills. [Case] They are measures of the physiological processes that generate our internal representation; just as red is not inherent in apples but points to something useful about apples. [Ham] I do not dismiss the biological and neural complements of proprietary awareness. After all, awareness is a complex of physiological and psychic responses. What I'm objecting to is the idea that awareness can be objectively measured or quantified. Brain scans and hormonal activity can plot the physiological effects of conscious awareness, but such data do not analyze or confirm awareness per se. [Case] As I have indicated they are useful in so far as they provide indicators of what is going onin our brains as "other". For example studies of the brain tell us a lot about how we process information and construct our models. We know we have verbal and nonverbal understandings. We know that portions of our brains are also common to other organisms etc. We know that these brain processes affect everything from our world view to our mood. [Ham] For once, I'm inclined to agree with you. However, I regard pre-intellectual sensibility as primary to proprietary (individuated) awareness, rather than a state of sleep. [Case] I did not think sleep was an especially good example either but sensation is always prior to perception. It is pre-intellectual. Where as sleep is just non-intellectual. [Ham] This "environment" that you have elsewhere called "external" is what I mean by "otherness." It is our objective counterpart. I accept the fact that most, if not all, of our awareness is experiential recall. But that doesn't refute its source in otherness. [Case] I have tried to use this terminology as best I can in the preceding. I think the distinction between 'other' on our illusion of 'other' is often hard to make and is seldom clear in our discussions. [Ham] Except that conventional explanations do not account for the subjective factor whose origin is value sensibility. [Case] I guess I am just not convinced that it is missing from them either. Experimental psychology and the neurosciences are specifically aimed at it. [Ham] Essentially still yours, Crassly and materialistically yours. Case 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/
