From: Scott Roberts (jse885@cox.net)
Date: Thu Sep 15 2005 - 17:58:22 BST
Ian,
Well, we may be about at the 'tis/'taint stage of the argument, but once
more into the breach...
[Scott] said
One cannot make artistic "creation" out of art "objects"
Ian said:
I'd agree for practical purposes. (It almost generalises to - you
can't make things of category "process" out of things of category
"objects".)
Scott:
Don't forget that I included dance and music in the category of art objects,
which could also be called processes, so one needs to be very careful here.
It is specifically the process of artistic creation that I am saying cannot
be built out of artistic objects/events.
Ian said:
But when you say
You cannot make perceiving out of percepts (like brains and nature)
I'd have to say that's precisely where you're wrong.
You can if they're the right percepts.
You can make processes out of objects, if they're the right objects.
Scott:
I agree that processes can be made out of objects and other processes.
Whether one can make perceiving out of percepts is the point at issue.
Ian said:
That's the wonder of conscioiusness. It's self-organising. You just
don't like the recursion. How can a brain think WITH meat whilst
thinking it IS meat. The error is to discount that reality. The
"crossing levels" from percept to perceiving is precisely what makes
the logic of the recursion work.
Scott:
While I say consciousness is always more than self-organising, recursion,
etc. It is awareness of any of these spatio-temporal processes, which cannot
itself be a strictly spatio-temporal process because it creates the
spatio-temporality of the observed processes (including neural activity,
self-organising, and recursion).
Ian said:
What you call the category error is indeed my category "jumping".
(I wish I'd never used the word level.)
Although I'd normally invoke Hofstader again on this point, I notice
that Pirsig gets very close to this in Lila Ch12 (I think) about the
tiny isthmus between otherwise completely independent levels. Higher
patterns built on / emergent from lower patterns, but actually
completely independent, completely different kinds of thing,
completely different categories, once emerged. It's this isthmus that
allows recursive "loops" to occur, "strange loops" that would
otherwise appear "illogical"
Scott:
All this has no bearing on my position. More complex yet stable forms can
emerge, they can have strange loops with other categories, but all this
falls in the category of percepts, which are all spatio-temporal. Perceiving
creates that spatio-temporality, and so cannot be described or explained in
terms of the spatio-temporal.
- Scott
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