What we sense and what we percieve.

Re: What we sense and what we percieve.


So you are asking 'can mind know matter?'.

chris2a wrote:


No, there's no clear dividing line. Things out of the imagination and pure fantasy become realized daily, while some things that we were sure were real turn out to be impossible. Robots, for instance, were a thing of science fiction long before the first real robot ever saw the light of day.

To your second question I am tempted to answer with another question: From where, do you think, does you power of imagination come?

As for the difference between what we sense and what we percieve, I'd say the key is focus. While you're driving a car there are thousands of different pieces of sensoral information coming at you continuously. You're sensing them all, since that only requires your precence. You're not percieving them all however. There is a focus here, deciding what is important and what is not, and this is your perception. Your perception decides how sensorial material is arranged and presented to you as a continuity.

I don't know Cyra - Imagination needs matter to exist - I think.

Meaning, a Dragon is merely a large lizard that can breath fire - a Unicorn is merely a horse with a horn. We needed to experience Horses and Horns before we could imagine unicorns.

TTF

Fantastic. A very interesting observation. So can we say that perceptual cognition is a process that is global to, and consequently only partially dependant on, aggregate sensory information? Perhaps imagination is a cognitive process that helps us generate either singular or multiple extrapolations of experience that do not necessarily adhere to real world facts or physical laws. I like your reasoning.

Why don't you cut out verbiage and just ask 'can we know matter?'? What's all this 'cognitive sensory, information', jargon for? Keep it simple man for Gods sake.

We can only observe matter as it appears to us, which inherently alters it because we observe things as notional universals. Sense would refer to the simple act of observing (without identifying anything - an empty observation) and perception the occurence/identification to consciousness of its object. Matter, as something physical, is notional, but we can still get glimpses of its unperceived stated if we do not observe it, as in Young's famous double slit experiment. We observe matter, but we cannot directly see what underlies this matter.

Thailon:

It sounds like the Galilean distinction between Primary and Secondary qualities of matter - am I right?

Descartes believed that this could be corrected by careful judgement.

TTF

John Jones




Well, it seems that there is a man that can know matter. His name is John Jones. Since he speaks of knowledge of matter that means that he knows what matter is.

So, why don't you tell us what knowledge you have about matter?

We are matter observing matter.

Cyracuz



Perhaps you are right. Do you know any site in internet where rocks talk about human beings? I would be fascinated to see it.

Fine. Here it is then:
We cannot ask 'can we know matter', without knowing what we mean by matter. It's just simple grammar. And 'matter' is what we have agreed that the word signifies.
I think the original questioner wants to use the word 'matter' or 'physical reality' incorrectly so that a sense of the mysterious can be evoked. To ask 'can we really know matter' is to be deliberately vague on how the word 'matter' or 'real' is being used, and this is not a sufficient basis on which to construct a theoretical answer, or to give any sensible reply at all.

We are matter observing light bouncing off matter - not being able to decide whether light is matter - hoping what we are observing accurately reflects what we claim we are observing.

Cyra - I don't think it is that neat or clean. If it were - we would never make mistakes about the matter we were observing - like thinking what we see is a solid as opposed to millions of spinning bit's that in reality have very little matter to them.

TTF

JJ-

If I define the stuff in my brain as matter can you tell me whether it has a format when I read the word "questioner" in your post which is any different from the format when I read "bouncing" in TTF's post.

the tree
Through the sense of sight, an image is focused on my retina (a sensory stimulus). It is an image of a fractal object consisting of a fundamental image element (in this case a branching line segment that looks like the letter "Y") repeated on uncountable levels of scale.

But if I cannot perceive that what I am looking at is a tree, does it ever enter into my reality?

thinkfactory: It is the Hegelian distinction about perception. Could also be interpretted as a quantum mechanical view. Observation causes matter in a physical form to emerge that does not exist outside of observation. Matter is notional.

Splen:

I am having trouble following your post. I want to clarify... I was saying light bounces (reflects) off matter and enters our eye. I think I read your post as reading my post as saying that light bounces off the brain.

I simply want to clarify my previous post - because even as I read it... it is vague... at best .

Thalion -

Understood. I think this is also hinted at (although no way near as developed as quantum mechanics) in Galileo and Descartes.

Can you develop the concept of the word (since I am more adept at Ancient philosophers) "notional". I could read some Hegel but would love your short cut!

Cyracuz -

What say you? I am hoping for your reply so you can clarify why you think that we can observe matter. I would love to hear your argument.

TTF

What we see as 'solid' is as solid as we know it to be.

You mean, can you map an event in brain matter to certain words said, or read, at the same time? Yes, as far as your instruments will let you. I broke mine. I will have to borrow yours.

Hegel's Notion is the synthesis of Being and Essence, without being concretely real; it lacks physical existence. It's similar to Plato's conception of the Ideal form and is a universal (Aristotle - although Hegel also uses the word) in that it is the inparticular thing. The Notion of a house is the essence of a house as it exists (being) but does not physically exist; it is only the notion of a house. It might sound contradictary to speak of something involving existence in its concept but not existing, but it is the concept of existence and not the actuality of existing.

I don't know about Galileo, but you very well may be right. Where did he refer to this? Descartes was an early phenomenologist that is similar to Hegel in this respect, although it must be noted that Hegel differed from Descartes in some respects. He believed that things exist as ideas (Notions) beyond what is observed (which Descartes did - his conception of a triangle) as well as physically in Nature (Descartes suggests that there is something other than myself b\c I do not call observations to mind willingly.) Descartes believed in Hegel's nature, but doubted observations from nature. Hegel believed observations to be the synthesis of the Notion in Nature (matter is observed - as I said, matter is notional) which makes both the Notion (Descartes's pure idea) and Nature (Descartes's other - maybe God, maybe an evil spirit, etc.) both valid, and our observations are the synthesis of both. Therefore, we never directly observe nature because our observations of nature are also notional (universal/conceptual.) Descartes doubted that what we observe is real, although Hegel showed that what we observe is inherently rational b\c we observe it as a notion that we understand, and what is real and what is rational are the same thing if rational concepts and realistic nature are synthesized in our observations.

I hope that made sense. I'm sorry for all the parenthesis, but I'm trying to compare the two to make the relation clearer.

I was absolutely stunned when I got to the part in the Phenomenology when he proved that matter is not "existant" outside of observation and that the observation of matter is reduced to probablities (wave theory!) if one believes that matter does in fact exist physically rather than notionally. It took over another hundred years for Bohr, Schrodinger, Wheeler (et al) to determine this from science.