[MD] Mystics and Brains

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting craigerb at comcast.net:

> [Platt]
> > What happened in the past and predictions of what will happen in the future are
> > present assumptions. 
> 
> But isn't what we experience in the present full of assumptions also?  There
> appears to be a ragged person on the other side of my fence.  Then I remember my
> neighbor had put up a scarecrow.  Won't I assume my current perception is wrong &
> my memory right?

Your present perception of a ragged person is a misnomer. Your present perception
is devoid of conceptions like "ragged person." Such conceptions follow the present
moment -- a step behind the present as it were. The term I used, "present
assumption" is likewise a step behind the present, but closer to the present than
ideas or images of specific past or future events.   

> I see a car moving up the street.  What is the difference
> between my current perception & my memory of where the car was an instant ago? 

Like I said at the outset, ". . . everything that changes changes in the present." 

> Why is what I find valuable enough to remember more of an assumption than a
> fleeting perception?  Aren't they both reliant on brain states?

Valuation and pure perception (devoid of concepts) are inseparable. As you
perceive the present, so you evaluate the present. The two are instantaneous and
conjoined so as to be one. The "brain state" of perception includes evaluation.
Later such notions of "assumptions" and "fleeting perceptions" arise.



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