From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 11 2005 - 10:36:28 BST
Scott, you are right about the paragraph you quote, and perhaps I
didn't notice the significance, because there are several other
paragraphs around it that re-inforce the "difference" he's making
between the rainbow and tree, rather than the similarity ...
My misreading may have come from the two sentences at the foot of p15
... I may have missed the question "Does it follow ... rather than a
statement, and because the negative answer is split across the page
break, the all important "not" being over the page. That said I can
see the sentences that re-inforced the (non-existent) distinction he's
making between trees and rainbows ...
On p15 ... the second para beginning "You know from memory ...
is wrong about the existence of the rainbow being dependent on being
seen, in any aparent common sense way. Those light rays are there (in
any standard model of physics) to be intercepted by any experimental
detector set in their path, in just the same way as the light
reflected from a tree.
The distraction from his point is in talking about "hallucinations" of
rainbows and trees, which is not relevant to the point about seeing
trees and rainbows via the external sense organs - IMHO.
The point that clinched my negative interptretaion is the first para
on Chap III on p22. ... " the rainbow .... the eye plays no less
indispensible part than the sunlight or the raindrops .." This is just
not true, or is no more true that if he's used tree and "particles"
rather than rainbow or raindrops. The intangibility of rainbow is
irrelevant to his examples, and just confuses the issue, and
introduces errors (irrelevant to his point, I'll now grant).
The rainbow is a complete red herring. His point is about "seeing" anything.
Anyway I'm happy to go with your interpretation (of p15/16) that he
didn't intend to make this distinction between rainbows and trees.
Good news for Barfield for me. Happy to be shown wrong.
BTW the hearing sound (not thrushes) is confirmed by p20,
"This I may say LOOSELY that I hear a thrush singing, but in strict
truth all I hear by virtue of having ears - is sound" (ie the thrush
requires some further interpretation / representation).
Ian
On 7/11/05, Scott Roberts <jse885@cox.net> wrote:
> Ian,
>
> Ian said:
> I stand by the physics criticisms (which was my only criticism) ...
> the involvement of our "seeing" (direct or interpreted) is no
> different whether we are looking at a tree or a rainbow - my only
> point ...
>
> Scott:
> But that is just what he says: [p.16-17]
>
> "But if the 'particles' [of the tree] (as I will here call them for
> convenience) *are* there, and are all that are there, then, since the
> 'particles' are no more like the thing I call a tree than the raindrops are
> like the thing I call a rainbow, it follows, I think, that -- just as a
> rainbow is the outcome of the raindrops and my vision -- so, a tree is the
> outcome of the particles and my vision and my other sense-perceptions.
> Whatever the particles themselves may be thought to be, the tree, as such,
> is a representation. And the difference, for me, between a tree and a
> complete hallucination of a tree is the same as the difference between a
> rainbow and a hallucination of a rainbow. In other words, a tree which is
> 'really there' is a collective representation. The fact that a dream tree
> differs in kind from a real tree, and that it is just silly to try and mix
> them up, is indeed rather literally a matter of 'common sense'".
>
> Ian said:
> But one of us must indeed have misunderstood what he says about seeing
> and hearing ...
>
> He quite clearly says (to me) we literally only hear (sense with our
> ears) sounds. We interpret "thrushes singing" in our minds. (Ditto for
> sight) And I agree with him, or I've misunderstood him.
>
> Scott:
> He distinguishes two phases in perception: sensation (the "raw sounds",
> color patches, etc.) and figuration (construction of "objects" like rainbows
> or trees). But this is a psychological/philosophical issue, not physics.
>
> Ian said:
> We are just talking about the bleedin obvious ... there is an
> immediate sense and an interpreted sense involved in any "sensing".
> ((ie Our aural sense organ responds to 440Hz pressure variations
> directly, we interpret middle-C in relation to some scale of tonality
> in our brains.)
>
> Scott:
> Right. So where is his physics error? And of course his point is that we
> *forget* this "bleedin obvious" when we base other supposedly "objective"
> accounts (e.g., of the origin of language and intellect) in supposing that
> sensation and figuration have not changed over the centuries.
>
> - Scott
>
>
>
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