[MD] Wiki: Subject-object problem

[MarshaV]

Magnus,

Thanks for reading it.  I get very excited when I see how well the MoQ and Buddhism fit together and strengthen each other.  


Marsha  




On Aug 17, 2010, at 2:59 PM, Magnus Berg wrote:

> 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
>> 
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