[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[John Carl]

>
> [Krimel]
> In the chapters I am talking about James talks about perception as
> immediate
> not pure. James thought perception was the integration, or making sense, of
> sensation.



And Royce disagreed with him and so do I.  The apprehension of sensation is
based upon a pre-conception - an interpretation of a "matrix" of possibility
that is formed socially - we are taught how to see.  Perception, is derived
from Conception.



> Concepts are ways of connecting past perceptions together. We use
> them to organize our memory. We break the world back up into parts and
> reassemble it according to the demands of the present. James acknowledges
> the interplay of percepts and concepts. But he says that concepts are
> derived from percepts and ultimately must be brought into conformity to
> them.



And Royce and Pirsig and me all disagree.  How are you gonna slice up
reality without some kind of pattern?  Either reality itself will suggest
its patterning and encode them from without, or the human device will encode
and decode according to patterns within.  There's no such thing as
"un-patterned experience"  That is, it's not empiricially demonstrable and
thus by the rules of pragmatism, doesn't exist.

This is an old argument, I know, but I don't think you were around while I
was laying it out for dmb and nobody's had much of an answer for the
argument, so I don't mind repeating myself.  Heck, it's pretty much the
status Bo-quo around here.