If you study any science, and any system of thought, one realizes that it is the mind that decides how to divide reality up into things, and therefore boundaries are indeed arbitrary, as they are totally dependent on how the sensory system, which is the brain perceives and processes stimulation ‘out there’. However, ‘out there’ is not really divided up into things at all, but it is useful to make distinctions, divisions, and cut reality up into pieces based on similarities and differences as a means to engage in the reasoning process at all.
The basis of logic still holds, but its foundation hinges on our ability to divide reality up into things, but where we make cuts into the pie is relative, and therefore arbitrary. Therefore things are not really separate from each other, there is the illusion of separation, but the concept of separation is useful, as one needs to assume separation in order to weld logic, and make conclusions about the world.
I posted this in another thread but it seems applicable here…
I was reading something about Schopenhauer’s take on “oneness” (as I believe it was referred). From what I gathered, he essentially came to the conclusion that ‘differences’ or ‘individual distinction’ occurs only where there is space and/or time to separate two observable entities. Space and time both being ideas, and thus human conceptions of preconceived boundaries, we can say that existence is likely not dependent upon them outside of the human mind. Therefore, if you pull space/time away from existence, all must be one – there are no boundaries to set individual distinction.
I believe he also theorized that this may be why we have an inherent capacity to feel compassion. We feel for each other, and even our environments, because we are essentially all one.
The sensory system, with which I assume you are including the brain, is a transfer system. As it transfers a stimulation across the nervous system from one place to another (from the senses to the brain in this case) there is no translation or interpretation yet. The sensory system does not perceive in a way that it ‘says something’ or comprehends or grasps the meaning of.
The sensory system must ‘say something’, or we would have no data to interpret or rationalize.
Touch a fire and sensory perception produces pain. I agree that you are not left with a reason why the pain occurs or how, but you are able to then interpret that pain into “hot”.
In a way, the senses are likely the key to our deductive reasoning. With sensory perception, you’ll experience the effect (or end result) first. Then you work backwards to determine what produces such an effect and why.
yes, I see what you are implying. It is not only the sensory system that produces comprehension, it is a complicated process. the first step involves the senses, which take in sensory information from the environment and pass it through many different neutral tracts in a hierarchical fashion within the brain. The latest research suggests that higher order reasoning and comprehension occurs through many different frontal cortical regions, and these makes evolutionary sense, so that if you suffer brain damage from stroke and injury, there is a decent chance that you can still keep, regain and relearn much of the function that was affected.
However, the original post wasn’t focused on the details of neuroscience, as I am only a amateur thinker on these matters, it was addressing a more fundamental philosophical issue of the very nature of reality, which one must take into account the universal rules of how reason occurs in the mind, and how this truth translates into a deeper understanding.
For instance: A very powerful exercise is when I realized that we only experience matter/reality as a filter through the body/brain, we would like to think that there is a concrete thing called matter out there, as at the microscopic and macroscopic level, there is only infinite expression of form. Form which isn’t quite matter, it cannot be pinned down. This is true because Form can be forever broken down by our minds into smaller or larger forms. An example: Zoom in on an atom, and you will discover that it is composed of electrons, protons and neutrons, now zoom in on one of those, and you will discover that that particle is composed of an infinite dance of smaller particles, now take one of those particles and zoom in on it, and you will discover an infinite number of sub-sub atomic particles, and so on. It goes on for infinity!
it seems to me that one senses infinity when one realizes all is just an appearance of united form, with never-ending occurrences…
statiktech wrote:
yes, higher order reasoning hinges on our ability for full perception, in which sensory information is gathered and interpreted correctly by the brain.
Take a simple example of this form of deductive reasoning:
All birds fly.
An eagle is a bird.
An eagle can fly.
And i know that not all birds fly, but assume the first premise is correct. To make the first two premises, one must have a vast knowledge of the environment, which includes not only reading about it, but taking what one reads and reflecting back against ones immediate experience. Then that information is used to draw up sound definitions by knowing what birds as a genus are, and what flight is, and making sure each term fits tightly to the definition. And sensory information is key, sensory information from books, from local forests, and then the higher circuits within the frontal cortex have to interpret the whole thing.
The reasoning process is deterministic in that sense, there is only one way, only one truth.
The physical eye does not say anything. There is no way you can separate yourself from what you are looking at. We have only the sensory perceptions. They do not tell anything about that thing - for example, that this is a computer screen. The moment you recognize that it is a screen, and a Sony one at that, you have separated yourself from it. So what you are actually doing is translating the sensory perceptions within the framework of the knowledge you have of it. We never look at anything. It is too risky to look because that `looking’ destroys the continuity of thinking. We project the knowledge we have of whatever we are looking at. Even if you say that it is an object without giving a name, like, for example, screen, knowledge has already come in. It is good for a philosophy student to talk about this everlastingly, separating the object from the word, or separating the word from the thing. But actually, if you say that it is an object, you have already separated yourself from it. Even if you don’t give a name to it, or recognize it as something, or call it a screen, a computer screen, you have already separated yourself from it.
All that is already there in the computer. We are not conscious of the fact that we have all that information locked up there in the computer. Suddenly it comes out. We think it is something original. You think that you are looking at it for the first time in your life. You are not. Supposing somebody tells you that this is something new, you are trying to relate what he calls new to the framework of the old knowledge that you have. If the information is not already there, there is no way you can see. Otherwise, there is only a reflection of the object on the retina. And even this statement has been given to us by the scientists who have done a lot of observation and research. There is no way of experiencing the fact of that for yourself, because the stimulus and response are one unitary movement. The moment you separate yourself, you have created a problem. You may talk of the unity of life or the oneness of life, and all that kind of stuff, but there is no way you can create that unitary movement through any effort of yours. The only way for anyone who is interested in finding out what this is all about is to watch how this separation is occurring, how you are separating yourself from the things that are happening around you and inside of you. Actually there is no difference between the outside and the inside. It is thought that creates the frontiers and tells us that this is the inside and something else is the outside. If you tell yourself that you are happy, miserable, or bored, you have already separated yourself from that particular sensation that is there inside of you. We maintain the separation and keep up a non-existing identity. That is the reason why you have to constantly use your memory, which is nothing but the neurons, to maintain your identity.
Truth in the sense that what is there when the light falls on the retina is an exact reflection of what is out there. However, when you interpret that image, the trueness of the knowledge that supports your interpretation is moot
In an attempt to bring this back around to the discussion of boundaries, and how these relate to sensation and perception, we must be aware that at once the apprehension of any object or stimuli in the visual field (or other sensory field) via the specific sense organ(s) that resonate with those fields is at once and immediately a boundaries-distinction, a boundaries-creating. ‘Representation’ is itself a somewhat antiquated concept - in most respects, a pure fiction - and has become unable to account for this process. Touching briefly upon linguistic analysis will also confirm this reality, as communication is recognised as a creative and active process, whereby information is not transferred directly from one individual to another via language symbols, but instead these symbols are used as tapestries or as canvas upon which the receiver (listener) imprints his own understanding and meaning by virtue of his predetermined internal content and context - the nature of the symbol, as defined by its existence within the current political and socio-historical fields, identifies the space within which interpretation and meaning-construction may occur, but the final image of content - despite its usual dependence upon this overall context - is an individual and personal matter: the product of an active process of creation. Representation is a concept implying a direct relationship or 1:1 status between subject and object - the problem is that this relationship not only is not of a 1:1 type but is in fact not even representative at all. The mind is a symbol-coding mechanism which is capable of taking sensory (field- or energetic vibrations) input and acting upon this data - all levels of sensation are interpretational, even the ‘simple’ physical act of light falling upon the rods and cones of the retina: certain wavelengths are apprehended while others are not, while at once the properties of the medium (in this case, the electomagnetic fields in the form of light-quanta) itself interpose upon this process of information transfer, quantifying and limiting the type and scope of elemental qualities capable of being apprehended. Transfer does not immediately imply representation, and we ought to consider that the idea behind the representation-concept itself is grounded in a false notion, that of an immediate and/or actual correspondence. . . there can be no correspondence between things, precisely because, as the topic original post here points out, all boundaries between things are of an arbitrary and mental nature. A supposed and accurate correspondence, being necessary for the direct transfer of uninterpreted information needed for representation to take place, is simply impossible where the things which are to be brought into correspondence themselves are necessarily and always a product of artificial, constructed and subjective boundaries distinctions which takes place prior to the act of potential information transfer itself.
This is not to say that boundaries do not exist - there are innumerable qualities and quantities of distinction and difference on all levels of reality - but it is to say that to be a bounds upon some thing is to be a limiting and defining space which at once separates as well as gives definition to; an internal vs external relation is established whereby the common quality between these becomes the context within which apparent separation lies - yet this common quality is at once a dependent feature on the arbitrary and subjective nature of the sensing or perceiving entity itself, its own biological forms and neurological structures. In otherwords, distinction cannot take place but for its existence within a subjective context which is wholly arbitrary with respect to that existential reality which lies outside of the subject itself. Boundaries-distinctions are a multi-levels distinction, a grasping at the hidden milieu within broader contexts which typically go unnoticed. Yet while this multi-faceted aspect of reality is quite existent on its own - in that reality is not “one thing” but is many things on many levels of organisation - this diverse world of interactive forces can only be expressed and experienced by a boundaries-imprinting and selective-rejective sensation that immediately imposes its will and internal order upon that which it seeks to experience and express. This is the inevitability of subjectivity, and cannot be escaped, ever. Were we to partake in an imagined objective or universal vantage point of experience, to apprehend immediately and completely the ‘out there’ without interpretation or selection-rejection, we would perhaps find even that there is nothing of this reality which corresponds to any of our concepts, experiences or intuitions - the speculation about such non-subjective realities remains pure fantasy and is an unproductive exercise in irrationality, where it seeks to divine any sort of real or factual claims about reality at all. So of course boundaries are arbitrary - everything about sensation and perception is arbitrary. This does not mean that boundaries do not exist, nor does it mean that distinction and difference do not exist ‘out there’ independently of human interaction, nor does it mean that there are not common rules or context which apply to the sensation and perception processes - what it means is, these rules and context are always of a subjective and creative nature, actively interpreting and constructing, whether from the human psychological frame of reference, the frame of reference of non-human psychologies of other life, the frame of reference seated within the elemental milieu of substances or forms, or any other sort of frame or perspective - there is always a frame, always a context. In this sense, all interaction - whether formal, energetic, sensational, conceptual - is of an arbitrary nature with respect to that which it seeks to interact with.