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avevale_intelligencerIn my reading today I come across once more the idea that "we do not experience the world directly," the reasoning being that our perceptions are filtered through our senses and only a fraction of the available information gets through.
I find two inadmissible assumptions here. The first is that there is some meaningful way of defining a living human being which excludes the body, the senses, the personality and so on. We are presumed to be idealised entities of pure mind imprisoned in gross fleshly shells which cut us off from the full wonder of creation. This is a very beautiful poetic fancy, and like most very beautiful poetic fancies, a moment's rational thought exposes it as utter piffle. While I do in fact believe that our minds come from, or live in, a different realm from that which our bodies inhabit (though the nature of that realm is not something about which I have any settled beliefs), as human beings we are a single, indivisible package, each element shaping and conditioning all the others, and to single out one such element as more "real" or more "human" than the others is nonsensical.
The second inadmissible assumption is that these idealised beings of pure mind, were they not fettered by these squalid cages of meat which cramp their style so, would have some inherent means of perceiving the universe which would be more "direct," more "true" or more "accurate" than our senses. This of course is the old SF standard of extra-sensory perception, in which we are not supposed to believe because it is not supported by scientific evidence. Again, it's a nice idea, but it seems more likely to me that the pure mind beings would have to evolve or construct other sensory mechanisms which would be just as limited as the ones we have.
In other words, the idea that "we do not experience the world directly" depends on definitions of the words "we" and "directly" which have no basis in fact. It's a half-baked, insufficiently thought through notion more suited for late night student discussions than serious consideration. As whole human beings, we experience the world as directly as it is possible to experience it, and through various devices we have expanded that experience to a considerable degree. There is no conceivable way in which we could make it more "direct."
And in my opinion, the limits on our perception of reality have been of considerable benefit to us in a number of ways, and will be so in the future; they prevent our minds from being swamped with irrelevancies; they enable us to make aesthetic judgments on those parts of reality we do perceive, and to be inspired to create art in imitation of our perceptions and expand them in that way; and they give us a sense of more to be discovered, which leads us to discover more.
Or am I wrong?
I find two inadmissible assumptions here. The first is that there is some meaningful way of defining a living human being which excludes the body, the senses, the personality and so on. We are presumed to be idealised entities of pure mind imprisoned in gross fleshly shells which cut us off from the full wonder of creation. This is a very beautiful poetic fancy, and like most very beautiful poetic fancies, a moment's rational thought exposes it as utter piffle. While I do in fact believe that our minds come from, or live in, a different realm from that which our bodies inhabit (though the nature of that realm is not something about which I have any settled beliefs), as human beings we are a single, indivisible package, each element shaping and conditioning all the others, and to single out one such element as more "real" or more "human" than the others is nonsensical.
The second inadmissible assumption is that these idealised beings of pure mind, were they not fettered by these squalid cages of meat which cramp their style so, would have some inherent means of perceiving the universe which would be more "direct," more "true" or more "accurate" than our senses. This of course is the old SF standard of extra-sensory perception, in which we are not supposed to believe because it is not supported by scientific evidence. Again, it's a nice idea, but it seems more likely to me that the pure mind beings would have to evolve or construct other sensory mechanisms which would be just as limited as the ones we have.
In other words, the idea that "we do not experience the world directly" depends on definitions of the words "we" and "directly" which have no basis in fact. It's a half-baked, insufficiently thought through notion more suited for late night student discussions than serious consideration. As whole human beings, we experience the world as directly as it is possible to experience it, and through various devices we have expanded that experience to a considerable degree. There is no conceivable way in which we could make it more "direct."
And in my opinion, the limits on our perception of reality have been of considerable benefit to us in a number of ways, and will be so in the future; they prevent our minds from being swamped with irrelevancies; they enable us to make aesthetic judgments on those parts of reality we do perceive, and to be inspired to create art in imitation of our perceptions and expand them in that way; and they give us a sense of more to be discovered, which leads us to discover more.
Or am I wrong?