[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[Ham Priday]

Hi Will --



> I too see much similarity with your view, you are probably
> farther along than I with mine.  However, what I am saying is
> that it is possible to experience the world without conceptualizing it.

I certainly do not deny this.  Experience is primary to conceptualization. 
You may have misunderstood what I meant by a "construct".  When I use the 
verb "objectivize" or "reify" as a function of experience, I'm talking about 
the ordinary process of converting raw value into discrete objects, not 
"forming concepts" in the abstract intellectual sense.

> When you speak of the brain being wired to screen out
> information, that is a disservice to the brain.  Speaking of
> drugs, an easy way to note how the brain is easily
> unwired is through the use of psychotropics.  By mimicking
> and disrupting neurotransmitters, it is possible to see
> how tenuous our present consciousness is.  What is
> interesting that under the influence of such things (which
> I do not condone as necessary), the brain is still fighting to
> make sense of what is happening.  Because of this need,
> new connections are made, and supposedly new revelations
> are acquired.  Many think these are more real, but they are
> only different ways in which the brain interacts.

Remember that the brain is the organ responsible for connecting our 
awareness with an objective world.  The neurotransmitteres are the 
connection lines.  If the sensory inputs are overloaded or too "busy", the 
image transmitted will be distorted and hallucinating, which is the affect 
of psychotropic drugs.  The human brain evolved over millions of years not 
as tool of intellection and conceptualization, but as means of survival for 
a creature that lacked the brawn and agility of its preditors.  As a result, 
our brains excel at spotting associations between objects based on 
similarities, alignment and grouping.  This is helpful for separatign a 
hunted animal from its herd, or for indicating which strangers belong to 
which tribes. When we match shapes and patterns, we quickly sort what to 
focus on from what to ignore.  Today, we're more likely to use this ability 
to navigation a new website, or to tell at a glance how many unopened emails 
we have.

In an article in seedmagazine.com, Vitaly Klyachko, a neurobiologist at the 
Salk Institute in Southern California, says that "synapses, by their nature, 
are probabilistic little devices. They don't transfer every type of 
information they receive."  Klyachk goes on to say that only 10 to 25% of 
the signals that a neuron receives will be transmitted across the synapse; 
the rest are "dropped" much like a cell phone call.   Known as the 
Semmelweis Reflex, the idea is that whenever new information comes along, 
our brains will check it against everything we already know.  If there's a 
contradiction, we're more likely to reject the new information, or at least 
be extremely skeptical of it, thereby conserving our existing knowledge 
against new information.

Another article in Scientific American states that "several decades of 
research have indicated that our capacity to hold information 'in mind' for 
immediate use is limited to a mere three or four items.  ...There are at 
least two primary explanations for this severe limitation in working memory 
capacity.  First, it could be that working memory capacity is essentially 
determined by storage space, and that some people have larger 'hard drives' 
than others do. The alternative explanation is that capacity depends not on 
the amount of storage space but on how efficiently that space is used.  Thus 
high-capacity individuals might simply be better at keeping irrelevant 
information out of mind, whereas low capacity individuals may allow more 
irrelevant information to clutter up the mental inbox.  High-capacity 
individuals may just have better spam filters."

As a subscriber to the view that human apprehension and knowledge is an 
orderly reduction of  "infinite
chaotic data", I'm persuaded that the cerebral function is more of a 
"limiter" than a "gatherer" of information.  And, because we are valuistic 
creatures, it is critical that our discriminative sensibility relate to our 
cognizant locus in experiential existence.  This necessitates a brain 
designed to filter out or exclude information which would otherwise corrupt 
our space/time orientation.

> It is possible to stop paying attention to the conceptualization
> aspect of existence (no drugs needed).  You may say this is
> just another conceptualization, but it's not.  You don't know
> until you have been there.  Everything does not fit into a little
> box, there is much more.  It can be called consciousness
> expanding (not conceptualism expanding).  This is outside
> your logic, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I agree that there is such capability, but it is psycho-emotional rather 
than intellectual.  We are able to enjoy a fine work of art or music, for 
example, by realizing the value of the piece holistically, rather than 
analyzing it as fragments.  Platt would say that the appreciation of Beauty 
is the ultimate DQ experience, and I agree that our response to esthetic 
value is more intensely felt than the value of factual knowledge, moral 
virtues, freddom, and perhaps even the life of a fellow human.  But, again, 
where we find value depends on our social conditioning, behavioral habits, 
and environmental circumstances.

Will, it seems as though we're "fine tuning" an epistemology on which we 
fundamentally agree, although it doesn't represent the MoQ thesis.  The 
Pirsigians will argue that all of the above is nothing but "patterns of 
Quality", including the conscious agent.  I don't know how to respond to 
that worldview.  Do you?

Thanks, and best regards,
Ham