| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"John Jones" |
| Date: |
22 Oct 2004 07:10:14 PM |
| Object: |
Perception and reality |
Perception is prior to a report of what it sees. It is the report that is
compared with reality, not the perception.
JJ
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: Perception and reality |
22 Oct 2004 09:39:37 PM |
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"John Jones" <jiversjivers@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:clc7h5$bpk$1@titan.btinternet.com...
Perception is prior to a report of what it sees. It is the report that is
compared with reality, not the perception.
JJ
ANTICIPATION OF PERCEPTION [A167/B209] (Associated by Kant with the categories
of reality, negation, and limitation.) "All knowledge by means of which I am
enabled to know and determine a priori what belongs to empirical knowledge may be
entitled an anticipation". Sensation, as having essentially an intensive
magnitude, cannot be so determined a priori; however, an anticipation of
perception is possible because from the analysis of space and time as forms of
intuitions we can make "pure determinations...in respect of shape as well as
[extensive] magnitude".
For the mind of man is not passive wax upon which experience and sensation write
their absolute and yet whimsical will; nor is it a mere abstract name for the
series or group of mental states; it is an active organ which moulds and
coordinates sensations into ideas, an organ which transforms the chaotic
multiplicity of experience into the ordered unity of thought.
But how?
1. - Transcendental Esthetic
The effort to answer this question, to study the inherent structure of the mind,
or the innate laws of thought, is what Kant calls "transcendental philosophy,"
because it is a problem transcending sense-experience. "I call knowledge
transcendental which is occupied not so much with objects, as with our a priori
concepts of objects."-with our modes of correlating our experience into
knowledge. There are two grades or stages in this process of working up the raw
material of sensation into the finished product of thought. The first stage is
the coordination of sensations by applying to them the forms of perception-space
and time; the second stage is the coordination of the perceptions so developed,
by applying to them the forms of conception-the "categories" of thought. Kant,
using the word esthetic in its original and| etymological sense, as connoting
sensation or feeling, calls the study of the first of these stages
"Transcendental Esthetic"; and using the word logic as meaning the science of the
forms of thought, he calls the study of the second stage "Transcendental Logic."
These are terrible words, which will take meaning as the argument proceeds; once
over this hill, the road to Kant will be comparatively clear.
Now just what is meant by sensations and perceptions?-and how does the mind
change the former into the latter? By itself a sensation is merely the awareness
of a stimulus; we have a taste on the tongue, an odor in the nostrils, a sound in
the ears, a temperature on the skin, a flash of light on the retina, a pressure
on the fingers: it is the raw crude beginning of experience; it is what the
infant has in the early days of its groping mental life; it is not yet knowledge.
But let these various sensations group themselves about an object in space and
time-say this apple; let the odor in the nostrils, and the taste on the tongue,
the light on the retina, the shape-revealing pressure on the fingers and the
hand, unite and group themselves about this "thing": and there is now an
awareness not so much of a stimulus as of a specific object; there is a
perception. Sensation has passed into knowledge.
But again, was this passage, this grouping, automatic? Did the sensations of
themselves, spontaneously and naturally, fall into a cluster and an order, and so
become perception Yes, said Locke and Hume; not at all, says Kant.
For these varied sensations come to us through varied channels of sense, through
a thousand "afferent nerves" that pass from skin and eye and ear and tongue into
the brain; what a medley of messengers they must be as they crowd into the
chambers of the mind, calling for attention! No wonder Plato spoke of "the rabble
of the senses." And left to themselves, they remain rabble, a chaotic "manifold,"
pitifully impotent, waiting to be ordered into meaning and purpose and power. As
readily might the messages brought to a general from a thousand sectors of the
battle-line weave themselves unaided into comprehension and command. No; there is
a law-giver for this mob, a directing and coordinating power that does not merely
receive, but takes these atoms of sensation and moulds them into sense.
Observe, first, that not all of the messages are accepted. Myriad forces play
upon your body at this moment;; a storm of stimuli beats down upon the
nerve-endings which, amoebalike, you put forth to experience the external world:
but not all that call are chosen; only those sensations are selected that can be
moulded into perceptions suited to your present purpose, or that bring those
imperious messages of danger which are always relevant. The clock is ticking, and
you do not hear it; but that same ticking, not louder than before, will be heard
at once if your purpose wills it so. The mother asleep at her infant's cradle is
deaf to the turmoil of life about her; but let the little one move, and the
mother gropes her way back to waking attention like a diver rising hurriedly to
the surface of the sea. Let the purpose be addition, and the stimulus "two and
three" brings the response, "five"; let the purpose be multiplication, and the
same stimulus, the same auditory sensations, "two and three," bring the response,
"six." Association of sensations or ideas is not merely by contiguity in space or
time, nor by similarity, nor by recency, frequency or intensity of experience; it
is above all determined by the purpose of the mind. Sensations and thoughts are
servants, they await our call, they do not come unless we need them. There is an
agent of selection and direction that uses them and is their master. In addition
to the sensations and the ideas there is the mind.
This agent of selection and coordination, Kant thinks, uses first of all two
simple methods for the classification of the material presented to it: the sense
of space, and the sense of time. As the general arranges the messages brought him
according to the place for which they come, and the time at which they were
written, and so finds an order and a system for them all; so the mind allocates
its sensations in space and time, attributes them to this object here or that
object there, to this present time or to that past. Space and time are not things
perceived, but modes of perception, ways of putting sense into sensation; space
and time are organs of perception.
They are a priori, because all ordered experience involves and presupposes them.
Without them, sensations could never grow into perceptions. They are a priori
because it is inconceivable that we should ever have any future experience that
will not also involve them. And because they are a priori, their laws, which are
the laws of mathematics, are a priori, absolute and necessary, world without end.
It is not merely probable, it is certain that we shall never find a straight line
that is not the shortest distance between two points. Mathematics, at least, is
saved from the dissolvent scepticism of David Hume.
Can all the sciences be similarly saved? Yes, if their basic principle, the law
of causality-that a given cause must always be followed by a given effect-can be
shown, like space and time, to be so inherent in all the processes of
understanding that no future experience can be conceived that would violate or
escape it. Is causality, too, a priori, an indispensable prerequisite and
condition of all thought?
The Story of Philosophy - The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers of the
Western World by WILL DURANT
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671739166/
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=h8ednXrXIbDvJd7cRVn-oA%40comcast.com
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| User: "Sir Frederick" |
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| Title: Re: Perception and reality |
22 Oct 2004 07:51:39 PM |
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John Jones wrote:
Perception is prior to a report of what it sees. It is the report that is
compared with reality, not the perception.
JJ
"Report" equals "story". "Reality" is never known, only a pragmatic
virtual information structure called report or story.
Each personal collection of stories is then assumed real, by that person.
"Reports" are multilevel.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcneill@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
We wait for light, but behold darkness.
ISAIAH 59:9
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
ADAGE
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
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| User: "John Jones" |
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| Title: Re: Perception and reality |
05 Nov 2004 09:58:16 PM |
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What reality is never known?
Do you mean it cannot be known?
What cannot be known?
JJ
Sir Frederick <mmcneill@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:4179AB1B.2E2843B2@fuzzysys.com...
John Jones wrote:
Perception is prior to a report of what it sees. It is the report that
is
compared with reality, not the perception.
JJ
"Report" equals "story". "Reality" is never known, only a pragmatic
virtual information structure called report or story.
Each personal collection of stories is then assumed real, by that person.
"Reports" are multilevel.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcneill@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
We wait for light, but behold darkness.
ISAIAH 59:9
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
ADAGE
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
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| User: "danti" |
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| Title: Re: Perception and reality |
06 Nov 2004 06:43:18 AM |
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"John Jones" <jiversjivers@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:cmhi4n$d9e$1@titan.btinternet.com...
What reality is never known?
Do you mean it cannot be known?
What cannot be known?
JJ
that which lies beyond your limited senses...........
Sir Frederick <mmcneill@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:4179AB1B.2E2843B2@fuzzysys.com...
John Jones wrote:
Perception is prior to a report of what it sees. It is the report
that
is
compared with reality, not the perception.
JJ
"Report" equals "story". "Reality" is never known, only a pragmatic
virtual information structure called report or story.
Each personal collection of stories is then assumed real, by that
person.
"Reports" are multilevel.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcneill@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
We wait for light, but behold darkness.
ISAIAH 59:9
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
ADAGE
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
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| User: "Ryan Tanaka" |
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| Title: Re: Perception and reality |
06 Nov 2004 03:10:02 PM |
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"John Jones" <jiversjivers@btopenworld.com> wrote in message news:<cmhi4n$d9e$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
What reality is never known?
Do you mean it cannot be known?
What cannot be known?
JJ
It's impossible for an individual to percieve all events in the world
happening at once. Only a god can do that, and I think it's safe to
say that there are no gods walking among us. We have communication
technologies which allow us to understand things that are happening
outside of what we can percieve, but since language is an abstraction
of an idea, there's always a loss of information in the process.
So reality is a concept that's always multi-dementional as long as our
perceptions as human beings remains finite. Einstein's special theory
of relativity also proves that even time events are relative, and
there's really no such thing as an event that can be viewed as being
absolutely simultaneous.
Ryan
--
http://www.ryangtanaka.com
Sir Frederick <mmcneill@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:4179AB1B.2E2843B2@fuzzysys.com...
John Jones wrote:
Perception is prior to a report of what it sees. It is the report that
is
compared with reality, not the perception.
JJ
"Report" equals "story". "Reality" is never known, only a pragmatic
virtual information structure called report or story.
Each personal collection of stories is then assumed real, by that person.
"Reports" are multilevel.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcneill@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
We wait for light, but behold darkness.
ISAIAH 59:9
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
ADAGE
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
.
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| User: "John Jones" |
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| Title: Re: Perception and reality |
12 Nov 2004 09:56:43 PM |
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It's impossible for an individual to percieve all events in the world
Of couse the individual perceives all events. Events are not transferable.
JJ
Ryan Tanaka <yidijm@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8db67b6f.0411061310.5d565338@posting.google.com...
"John Jones" <jiversjivers@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:<cmhi4n$d9e$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
What reality is never known?
Do you mean it cannot be known?
What cannot be known?
JJ
It's impossible for an individual to percieve all events in the world
happening at once. Only a god can do that, and I think it's safe to
say that there are no gods walking among us. We have communication
technologies which allow us to understand things that are happening
outside of what we can percieve, but since language is an abstraction
of an idea, there's always a loss of information in the process.
So reality is a concept that's always multi-dementional as long as our
perceptions as human beings remains finite. Einstein's special theory
of relativity also proves that even time events are relative, and
there's really no such thing as an event that can be viewed as being
absolutely simultaneous.
Ryan
--
http://www.ryangtanaka.com
Sir Frederick <mmcneill@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:4179AB1B.2E2843B2@fuzzysys.com...
John Jones wrote:
Perception is prior to a report of what it sees. It is the report
that
is
compared with reality, not the perception.
JJ
"Report" equals "story". "Reality" is never known, only a pragmatic
virtual information structure called report or story.
Each personal collection of stories is then assumed real, by that
person.
"Reports" are multilevel.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcneill@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
We wait for light, but behold darkness.
ISAIAH 59:9
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
ADAGE
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
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