[MD] Value orientation of sensory cognition

[plattholden at gmail.com]

Hi Marsha,

The "Sensory Cognition" paper you posted can be easily translated into a 
Pirsigian value orientation without any change in its meaning. In fact, the 
changes add to its meaning in a profound way. For example, I've substituted 
some value terms in the fourth and fifth paragraphs (in caps):  


On 21 Aug 2010 at 16:00, MarshaV wrote:

Marsha:
Maybe James had some insights, but I hope you have not missed the paper I
posted the other day.  It is very modern and up-to-date (2004):

        Sensory Cognition

It appears then that the objects of our sense organs are not really objects at 
all; they only appear to be. This is tellingly illustrated in experiments 
tracing people´s eyes as they scan a photograph. The eyes do not dwell on the 
"objects" in the picture, but VALUE their outlines, where the greatest 
contrasts lie. As Gregory Bateson (1979, 107) explains, "the end organs [of 
sense] are thus in continual receipt of events that correspond to VALUED 
outlines in the visible world. We VALUE distinctions; that is, we pull them 
out. Those distinctions that remain WITHOUT VALUE are not." This then suggests 
a third point: that our everyday awareness of the world, what we see and hear 
and touch and smell, critically depends upon the VALUE distinctions our sense 
faculties are capable of "MAKING" -- indeed, the world ordinarily only appears 
in the forms VALUES MAKE.  

In this sense, cognitive awareness is both categorical and constructive. First, 
the receptor neurons of the sense organs, according to cognitive scientist, 
Christine Skarda (1999, 85), are "VALUE -specific in terms of their response 
characteristics. Each VALUES maximally (i.e. with a burst of intense electrical 
activity) to a specific type or class of stimuli, such as certain wavelengths 
or intensities of light, temperature, sound, etc. Even putatively "pure 
sensations" depend upon the elementary schemas that constitute the VALUE 
responsive structure of the sense organs. This initial process, however, only 
yields isolated neurological signals that at this stage do not yet amount to 
VALUED objects or characteristics.

No problem for we Pirsigians in this "scientific" description of perception. It 
jibes nicely with his premise that the world is not made up of subject and 
objects, but rather consists of a structure of values.

Platt