Marty,
(that was fine).
As regards your contention that 'thinking' and 'perception' are so closely
related as to be synonymous, I'm writing a thesis which has this contention
at it's heart.
I have been looking at this question for some years, and honestly believe
that there is actually no such thing (for humans) as 'direct' (i.e. without
intervening cognition) perception. This is in spite of the fact that one of
the most influential people with respect to my own writings has been Prof.
JJ Gibson, founder of 'ecological approach to perception', at the heart of
whose writing is the proposition of 'direct perception'.
I actually believe that the reason we have such a complex brain is not so
much because of the need for 'intelligence' (which remains a tad elusive as
a concept), nor even just 'behavioural flexibility' (a better candidate),
but to *know* more - that is, we have evolved toward extended perceptual
abilities. That's how we out-compete animals which are faster, stronger,
have more stamina, and even BETTER SENSES than ourselves- we actually
perceive more, because, fundamentally, perception is best achieved by
accurate prediction. It's not about sensing the present 'directly' (because
of limitations on physical signal speeds, organic processing speeds, and so
on); sensation is what we use to measure, and fine-tune, our predictions.
In this context, conciousness (ie thinking about it) is the latest of our
evolved armoury, and is comparitively lame in speed terms (compared to
'older' processes), but is great at producing predictions in the presence of
little 'direct' evidence; it's a long-range tool.
So, basically, I also subsume ALL cognitive functions under the heading
'perception' (and I emphatically do include 'behaviour', which is
controversial, I know), and in the sense of the above, 'thinking about it'
does indeed come after what some people call perception, but it's to do with
differing speeds of different processes.
In other words, each of us is an uncounted multiplicity of processes; "I" is
not singular at all.
This all converges with the other discussion going on at the moment, to with
memes, - are they selfish, do they control us instead of the other way
round, are they a valid concept, and so on.
It seems to me that the 'highest' evolutionary form we know of is also the
one with the best developed perception - indeed, in the light of the above,
the two concepts amount to the same thing (nb- I'm not saying the 'most
successful', because that title would probably go to far less complex
organisms, if by succesful we meant 'number of', 'longevity of species',
'ability to survive widest variety of cataclysmic circumstances' etc).
So, there is a sense in which Hegel's proposal that "...the universe is
trying to understand itself" -(or words to that effect!) seems an almost
inevitable conclusion.
In that sense, that's all we are - an expression of the universe (which is
obviously an infinitely more complex entity than we are) trying to
understand itself. So, the 'understanding', and the 'understood' are two
sides of the same coin; there's no mind - matter duality after all - the
apparent dichotomy was a product of the particular metaphor being used.
By the same token, given that, in this context, 'causality' is a brilliant,
but ultimately limited, metaphor, we can say that it is actually barely more
competant than 'animism'; therefore, one can say that "memes are selfish,
and use us to replicate" (words to that effect) in the sense that this is
sort of animism, and is merely a potentially useful metaphor for a
particular aspect of reality, as long as we don't assume complete parity
between metaphor and 'actual' (I'm not saying we can actually understand the
latter without the former)
I think that should tie a few threads together.
cheers
ppl
- Original Message -----
From: "Marty Jorgensen" <mjorgensen@vpdinc.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: 06 November 2000 17:55
Subject: RE: MD Pirsig's letter - A response
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
> [mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of Dan Glover
> Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2000 11:22 AM
> To: moq_discuss@moq.org
> Subject: Re: MD Pirsig's letter - A response
>
>
> >Dan:
>
> >I don't think that I perceive. I perceive and then I think about what it
> >was. Often times I find the thinking that I do is actually an impediment
> >to my perception of Universe. That is Phaedrus' point with his hot stove
> >example and Robert Pirsig's point with his money analogy. We perceive
> >value and therefore perception of value is not part of reality; it is
> >reality.
>
> This is my first post - let me know if I'm not doing this right.
>
> I believe that perception is so closely connected to thinking that the two
> may be impossible to separate. Our brain / thinking processes filter,
> categorize and associate our perceptions so entirely that it may be
> impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. If this is true,
> how does one know if a perception is "direct" or not? Sitting on a
burning
> stove is an extreme example that I am not sure tells us anything except
that
> we are highly conditioned to avoid pain. I don't feel that you "think
about
> your perceptions", I believe that your perceptions ARE your thinking /
brain
> processes.
>
> Marty
>
> MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
>
> To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
> http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
>
>
> MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
>
> To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
> http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
>
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:00:50 BST