[MD] Wiki: Subject-object problem

[Magnus Berg]

Hi Marsha

Yes, that was an interesting paper, indeed. And it agrees with the MoQ 
on many accounts.

For example:
both the cognitive scientists we have cited and the Indian Buddhists we 
have examined concur that disjunctive (vijñāna) as well as synthetic 
(saüjñā) cognitive processes occur in nearly every perceptual event, 
corroborating psychiatrist Oliver Sacks’ recent observation that 
“whether it is color or motion, a double process of breaking down and 
building up, or decomposition and recomposition—whatever one likes to 
call it—seems to be unavoidable.”

This, in MoQ terms, is the level dependency. When a biological 
experience occurs, that experience is also, simultaneously, an 
intellectual event via the language of our nerve system. So, we have 
simply no way of distinguishing one from the other, they are two aspects 
of the same event. Not sure why they insists on dividing the event into 
decomposition and recomposition though.


Page 6:
if cognitive awareness is indeed “a function of the world and our 
biology interacting,” then its arising is clearly a function of the 
responsive structure of our sense faculties, our “biology,” together 
with the correlative stimuli, the “world,” which impinges upon them. 
These are not two essentially independent entities that just happen to 
come together, they are two aspects of a single, integral event.29 
Awareness of the world necessarily arises in the very forms—the 
distinctions and categories—determined by the structures and functions 
of the neural processes that subserve it. There is, ordinarily, no other 
way that perceptions could appear. The categories that are the “stuff of 
experience” are the same categories that are the “stuff” of the world. 
It is our subsequent analysis that bifurcates them.

The "single, integral event" is MoQs quality event. The categories they 
talk about are different types of biological events, sight, hearing, 
taste, smell etc. The "subsequent analysis" is made when the event has 
been transposed into an intellectual pattern in our brain, as described 
above. It can then be intellectualized further by experiencing that 
intellectual pattern more directly.


Page 7:
this apparent “world” is therefore also a function of the categories 
that constitute sensory awareness.30 This perspective involves the same 
kind of inversion we saw between subject and object above: it is not the 
“world” that determines the perceptions of an organism, but rather the 
perceptual capacities of the organism that determine its “world,”31 its 
environment.

We can of course only experience such events that our senses can 
perceive. Our reality can't extend beyond that, normally. However, our 
eyes can't see ultra-violet light for example. But if we're exposed by 
too much of it, we will suffer nonetheless. So in some sense, 
ultra-violet light *is* a part of our reality even though we can't see 
it. We only know about UV-light because we have external sensory organs 
that *can* see it. So using such instruments, we have extended our 
world. We haven't really objectified it. We're not able to experience 
the external sensor in the same way as our internal ones. But when we 
hear a good pilot of some vehicle, the vehicle and its instruments are 
described as an extension of the pilot's own body. That means that the 
world of the pilot is actually extended by those instruments when he 
drives the vehicle. The gyro instrument of a plane gets very tightly 
connected to the brain through the eyes, he can hear the engine and 
react very quickly to variations in revs, a F1-driver can feel the 
traction of the tyres to the asphalt and react instinctively when the 
grip fails, and so on.


Page 14:
It is a final irony that it is the virtual, not actual, reference that 
symbols provide, which gives rise to this experience of self. The most 
undeniably real experience is a virtual reality.... its virtual nature 
notwithstanding, it is the symbolic realm of consciousness that we most 
identify with and from which our sense of agency and self-control originate.


This was a cool quote. To me, the virtual reference is an intellectual 
pattern referencing another intellectual pattern in our brain, whereas 
an actual reference is an intellectual pattern referencing some other 
type of pattern, for example a previous biological experience. A virtual 
experience is for example Descarte's "I think".


All in all, a great paper, thanks for the link.

	Magnus





On 2010-08-17 11:23, MarshaV wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I'm only to page five, but I find this an extremely interesting paper.  Sorry I
> forgot the url:
>
> http://www.gampoabbey.org/translations2/Co-arising%20of%20SOWS-Waldron.pdf
>
>
> Marsha
>