Perceiving the Given…
Estudia: Phi, I’ve got another question, but this one's about our consciousness.
Philo: Good, I hope I can answer it. What is it?
Estudia: There are stimuli, like light, sound and pressure that we experience when our senses detect them. So these sensations are first in terms of what we experience about reality. Shouldn’t we be trying to determine things about what is, quote, out there... unquote? I mean trying to determine facts about entities or things from the sensations themselves?
Philo: Some philosophers tried to do that, but their efforts were a waste of time because nothing can be inferred from random sensations. Think about what it must be like to be a new born. That is the kind of consciousness that only experiences sensations. Simple one-celled organisms react to sensations but that’s it. Babies and other more complex organisms are conscious alright, but they are at the first stage of consciousness which is the stage of sensation. My gosh, even plants, respond to sensations! Do you think that these types of consciousness can perceive objects or form concepts?
Estudia: No, I guess not.
Philo: You bet. Infants see things, but it takes them time and a lot of mental integration to begin to understand what they are experiencing. You see a coin sitting there, but you don’t just, quote, see, unquote, it. No, you have seen that shape and in your mind you know all kinds of related sensory properties of that coin. You know it is pretty smooth, but not perfectly flat. You know it is cool if you put it in on your cheek; hard if you bite on it; makes a clinking sound if you bang it on the table; can be used to buy things; clatters when dropped on the floor, can flip in the air, what it looks like on the other side, and on and on. This is the difference between perception and sensation. It’s big; it takes a lot of computational power, and is what makes your consciousness so powerful.
Estudia: Hummmm... So you are saying that I can’t experience the world directly with sensations.
Philo: Exactly, sort of. You become aware of entities, like the coin, but nothing more, just like the infant. But now you directly experience that coin on the perceptual level of consciousness. We are given the perceptual level by the nature of our consciousness and we are using that now to infer what it must have been like as a new-born. A world of sensations only is a world of chaos and confusion, but we automatically integrate the sensations and are presented with perceptual facts. From these percepts we constructed a vocabulary of conceptual words. When I say to you coin, or you think, coin, you are using a word to represent the concept of coin. Not that particular coin, but all coins and coin-like shapes and uses and on and on. But that is a level of consciousness over and above the quote, direct experience, unquote, of that particular coin. Now, at you stage of development, all the sensations of that coin are integrated automatically by your brain into a percept. That’s a given and so we can’t philosophically try to get under this perceptual level to understand anything about reality on the sensational level.
Estudia: Wait a minute. You’re not saying we can’t know anything about that coin other than what we perceive. That it’s a coin and that’s it?
Philo: No, no, no... I didn’t mean to imply that what we perceive is the metaphysical primacy of entities. The nature of things is not the question of philosophy but of science. Scientists know all kinds of additional things about that coin and may some day know the ultimate ingredients of the matter that composes it. I’m trying to get you to understand that your understanding of that coin as a coin is a primary on the epistemological level. Remember I said that epistemology is a branch of philosophy that studies means of knowledge. What we know, and how we know it.
Estudia: I guess if sensations are integrated into percepts automatically, then there is nothing we can say about that process — at least in ways about how to do it. Hmmmm.... that makes sense then. What we know and how we know it obviously depends on the way our consciousness works, and because the perceptual level exists, we work with it.
Philo: That’s right. But on the subject of conceptual thinking, the integration of percepts into higher more complex ideas called concepts we can and do get into the meat of epistemology and maybe you’ll have some questions about how we do that.
Estudia: Okay, but let me see if I understand. In our development, the sensation stage is first, followed by the perceptual stage, and finally we reach the conceptual stage. But philosophically, particularly epistemologically, the first stage is the perceptual stage. So our perceptual knowledge must be used to prove everything we know. In fact, our percepts are given; so we don’t have to require that we know things on the sensation level. We don’t have to be skeptics and say that we can’t know things directly via our senses; so we are out of touch with reality. In fact we are very in touch. Our sensations make us aware and our given perceptions allow us to be more fully aware and even better allow us to further integrate our awareness to yet higher levels of conception.
Philo: Bravo. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Go, be aware, perceive and conceive... I mean conceptualize.
Philo: Good, I hope I can answer it. What is it?
Estudia: There are stimuli, like light, sound and pressure that we experience when our senses detect them. So these sensations are first in terms of what we experience about reality. Shouldn’t we be trying to determine things about what is, quote, out there... unquote? I mean trying to determine facts about entities or things from the sensations themselves?
Philo: Some philosophers tried to do that, but their efforts were a waste of time because nothing can be inferred from random sensations. Think about what it must be like to be a new born. That is the kind of consciousness that only experiences sensations. Simple one-celled organisms react to sensations but that’s it. Babies and other more complex organisms are conscious alright, but they are at the first stage of consciousness which is the stage of sensation. My gosh, even plants, respond to sensations! Do you think that these types of consciousness can perceive objects or form concepts?
Estudia: No, I guess not.
Philo: You bet. Infants see things, but it takes them time and a lot of mental integration to begin to understand what they are experiencing. You see a coin sitting there, but you don’t just, quote, see, unquote, it. No, you have seen that shape and in your mind you know all kinds of related sensory properties of that coin. You know it is pretty smooth, but not perfectly flat. You know it is cool if you put it in on your cheek; hard if you bite on it; makes a clinking sound if you bang it on the table; can be used to buy things; clatters when dropped on the floor, can flip in the air, what it looks like on the other side, and on and on. This is the difference between perception and sensation. It’s big; it takes a lot of computational power, and is what makes your consciousness so powerful.
Estudia: Hummmm... So you are saying that I can’t experience the world directly with sensations.
Philo: Exactly, sort of. You become aware of entities, like the coin, but nothing more, just like the infant. But now you directly experience that coin on the perceptual level of consciousness. We are given the perceptual level by the nature of our consciousness and we are using that now to infer what it must have been like as a new-born. A world of sensations only is a world of chaos and confusion, but we automatically integrate the sensations and are presented with perceptual facts. From these percepts we constructed a vocabulary of conceptual words. When I say to you coin, or you think, coin, you are using a word to represent the concept of coin. Not that particular coin, but all coins and coin-like shapes and uses and on and on. But that is a level of consciousness over and above the quote, direct experience, unquote, of that particular coin. Now, at you stage of development, all the sensations of that coin are integrated automatically by your brain into a percept. That’s a given and so we can’t philosophically try to get under this perceptual level to understand anything about reality on the sensational level.
Estudia: Wait a minute. You’re not saying we can’t know anything about that coin other than what we perceive. That it’s a coin and that’s it?
Philo: No, no, no... I didn’t mean to imply that what we perceive is the metaphysical primacy of entities. The nature of things is not the question of philosophy but of science. Scientists know all kinds of additional things about that coin and may some day know the ultimate ingredients of the matter that composes it. I’m trying to get you to understand that your understanding of that coin as a coin is a primary on the epistemological level. Remember I said that epistemology is a branch of philosophy that studies means of knowledge. What we know, and how we know it.
Estudia: I guess if sensations are integrated into percepts automatically, then there is nothing we can say about that process — at least in ways about how to do it. Hmmmm.... that makes sense then. What we know and how we know it obviously depends on the way our consciousness works, and because the perceptual level exists, we work with it.
Philo: That’s right. But on the subject of conceptual thinking, the integration of percepts into higher more complex ideas called concepts we can and do get into the meat of epistemology and maybe you’ll have some questions about how we do that.
Estudia: Okay, but let me see if I understand. In our development, the sensation stage is first, followed by the perceptual stage, and finally we reach the conceptual stage. But philosophically, particularly epistemologically, the first stage is the perceptual stage. So our perceptual knowledge must be used to prove everything we know. In fact, our percepts are given; so we don’t have to require that we know things on the sensation level. We don’t have to be skeptics and say that we can’t know things directly via our senses; so we are out of touch with reality. In fact we are very in touch. Our sensations make us aware and our given perceptions allow us to be more fully aware and even better allow us to further integrate our awareness to yet higher levels of conception.
Philo: Bravo. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Go, be aware, perceive and conceive... I mean conceptualize.
posted by Rp | 12:20 AM
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