Skip to main content

holism in sensation, i.e., the sensus communis as a kind of Umweltglaube

I haven't the time to write this down right now, but hopefully I'll remember what the insight was when I read the heading.

It has to do w what STAq said (in commentary on De sensu) re mere sensation as judgment (think Husserlian synthesis here).  This is the condition for the possibility of perception at the highest level (thinking of vis cogitativa/estimativa here)...

and it has to do with the fact that perception is never of just this or that form of this or that thing, but of the whole concrete environment in relation to the perceiver (to misquote Phillipians: "...as something to be grasped at.")  In other words, it has to do with holism vs. particularism, being strongly in in support of a view of perception as holistic...

and it has to do with Aristotle's mention somewhere in De anima that the unity of perceptual powers in the same subject makes possible our perception of the unity of perceptual objects in the same object thing...but it extends this point to welt unity (which is the condition for the possibility of the unity-in-perception of this or that item).

Add to this Alva Noe's regard for perception as a kind of subset of holistic interaction...

as well as with the fact that this perception is a precursor of intellection whereby one is directed (thinking here of Aristotle's "the soul is in a way all things') -- not to the environment -- but to the world...to the universe... to ens commune.  In other words, the umwelt glaube had in perception is the necessary condition for a kind of metaphysical weltwissen had intellectually and which the stage/theater/background (not sure which) upon which this or that think is regarded as displaying itself to us as we judge it.

This idea is a big deal but I'm too tired to go on right now.

()()()()()

Perhaps add discussion of network of it-cans and I-cans, ala Husserl.

Also, compare the human qua intelligent with the subhuman animal thus:
Just as a human is, in a way, all things, so too the animal is, in a way, its environment (inasmuch as it owns or possesses or apprehends it).

Also, this holism in our regard for perception is needed for our being able to see a kind of continuity between intellection and perception.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson.  He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal.  My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this.  I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true.  Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist.  In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level.  No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies.  None of them thinks about the whole as such.  And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist).  None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well?  And why not parts of these parts, et...

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals  [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ].  Aquinas thus holds that it was not  all  death that entered the world through man's sin, but human  death.