[MD] Static latching & faith

[Arlo Bensinger]

Ham, Ant,

If I may briefly interject...

Ham stated "If I spot a cardinal on the branch of a tree, I experience it 
as a brightly colored red bird with a black capped head."

Ant replied "No, you first see a small red coloured patch with some black 
above it and a brown patch below it surrounded by green blobs.  You then 
hypothesis that what you are sensing correlates to a cardinal in a tree 
branch, both of which are three dimensional biological patterns in public 
space.  This recognition of the cardinal might happen quickly (i.e. 
Benjamin's Libet's half second delay) if you are near the "bird" or have a 
pair of binoculars."

I'd say, when exposed to the endless landscape around us, our 
culturally-appropriated value system (language) predisposes the noticing of 
"small red coloured patches", which are then in turn categorized (if 
post-selection intellecutalization concurs) as "cardinals". For the same 
reason that Pirsig was "unable" to see the green flash of the sun, or 
typical Americans are not able to "see" the many varieties of "snow" the 
Eskimos see, the "individual" does not aculturally select from the 
landscape, or that Germans had no word for "orange" within their language.

Thus, Ham "sees the small red coloured patch" when he selects it from the 
endless landscape based on a culturally-appropriated analytic knifing that 
is predisposed to, "says", to value small red patches.

Pirsig comments in Lila, "Eskimos see sixteen different forms of ice which 
are as different to them as trees and shrubs are different to us. Hindus, 
on the other hand, use the same term for both ice and snow. Creek and 
Natchez Indians do not distinguish yellow from green. Similarly, Choctaw, 
Tunica, the Keresian Pueblo Indians and many other people make no 
terminological distinction between blue and green. The Hopis have no word 
for time."

I just quoted this in my response to Platt, but this is worth repeating 
(Pirsig quoting Kluckhohn), " Every people has its own characteristic class 
in which individuals pigeonhole their experiences. The language says, as it 
were, "notice this," "always consider this separate from that," "such and 
such things always belong together.  " Since persons are trained from 
infancy to respond in these ways they take such discriminations for granted 
as part of the inescapable stuff of life."

Also, my last Pirsig citation, "They [anthropologists] found that the 
"ability to see reality" is not only a difference between the sane and the 
insane, it is also a difference between different cultures of the sane. 
Each culture presumes its beliefs correspond to some sort of external 
reality, but a geography of religious beliefs shows that this external 
reality can be just about any damn thing. Even the facts that people 
observe to confirm the "truth" are dependent on the culture they live in."

This predisposition to select certain "pieces of sand" from the endless 
landscape, while ignoring others, is an important prefix to the "noticing 
of small red patches". I know you know this, Ant, but wanted to jump in 
since this was on my mind.

Arlo