From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Aug 21 2004 - 22:51:41 BST
Paul,
> Scott said:
> Barfield, on the other hand does the job right (and as I've said many
> times, Barfield does all these things that I am criticizing the MOQ for
> not doing).
>
> Paul:
> On the other hand, as I recall Barfield from "Saving the Appearances,"
> he doesn't provide a metaphysics. He uses "the unrepresented" to
> designate that part of reality which he doesn't want to explain
> (although, interestingly, he sometimes refers to is as "particles") but
> has to assume is there and is independent of the mind. He also assumes
> that the mind is already there, waiting to convert these particles into
> representations.
"Saving the Appearances" was concerned with showing how consciousness, and
thus reality as it appears, has evolved over the past two and a half
millenia. So, no, it is not a systematic metaphysics, but an analysis that
such a metaphysics would be wise to take into account.
We are unaware of the unrepresented in our current state of consciousness,
but that doesn't make it independent.
>
> Scott said:
> The melody, or the note, exists ab initio as a whole (which implies
> partness, and being part of a greater whole), and the best analogy for
> this sort of thing in our experience is the idea.
>
> Paul:
> Is it?
I need to add that it is thought of the whole that makes it a whole. We
see the leaf as part of the tree because we can think how they relate,
because we remember how it grew on the tree, so we conclude that the tree
provided the nutrients, and so forth. It is listening that makes a melody a
melody, and so rather than have two realms (thinking and perception), it
makes more sense to think of their being one realm operating in different
modes, which in our current state of consciousness we call mind and nature.
The process that turns the unrepresented into the represented (our sense
perceptions) is a conceptual one, happening subconsciously.
>
> Scott said:
> So to call its pre-perceived state "pre-intellectual" or
> "undifferentiated" is a mistake.
>
> Paul:
> Only if you think, as you do, that ideas are fundamental reality.
True, but that is what I am trying to show, isn't it?
>
> Scott said:
> It is only that because we can't picture a non-spatio-temporal holon (to
> use Wilber's term) that leads us to assign these epithets, a fallacy
> deriving from what Coleridge calls "the despotism of the eye".
> Perception, then, turns the idea into an object of space, time, and
> mass, which is the same kind of thing as our turning our ideas into
> speech. This is how mind and matter can be discursively unified (felt
> unity is another matter, requiring Reason rather than understanding).
> Matter is the speech of the intellect of the other, mind is what I turn
> into speech for others.
>
> Paul:
> What is "the intellect of the other?"
Nature's intellect. Natura naturans, as it used to be called.
- Scott
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