I just wanted to register my agreement with the points
that Pat Hayes was making: (01)
PH> I think that what Debbie means by the above is
> only this: that reality is large and messy, but
> that 'truth' is always the truth of some
> idea/thought/ontology/assertion, so is always at
> the tidy conceptualized, thinking end of the
> spectrum. And Bill and Don are puzzled, because
> they are living at the tidy end and think of
> truth as a relationship to reality, so the word
> used alone seems to them to be more concerned
> with the reality than the concept or thought. (02)
I'd also like to cite some comments by William James
on this issue (excerpt below). The phrase "blooming,
buzzing confusion", which James used to describe the
sensory input to a baby, is often quoted out of context.
Following are three paragraphs of context plus the URL
of the whole book. (03)
John
_______________________________________________________ (04)
Source: (05)
http://psychclassics.asu.edu/James/Principles/prin13.htm
Classics in the History of Psychology -- James (1890) Chapter 13 (06)
The 'simple impression' of Hume, the 'simple idea' of Locke are both
abstractions, never realized in experience. Experience, from the very
first, presents us with concreted objects, vaguely continuous with the
rest of the world which envelops them in space and time, and potentially
divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects we break asunder
and reunite. We must treat them in both ways for our knowledge of them
to grow; and it is hard to say, on the whole, which way preponderates.
But since the elements with which the traditional associationism
performs its constructions -- 'simple sensations,' namely -- are all
products of discrimination carried to a high pitch, it seems as if we
ought to discuss the subject of analytic attention and discrimination first. (07)
The noticing of any part whatever of our object is an act of
discrimination. Already on p. 404 I have described the manner in which
we often spontaneously lapse into the undiscriminating state, even with
regard to objects which we have already learned to distinguish. Such
anaesthetics as chloroform, nitrous oxide, etc., sometimes bring about
transient lapses even more total, in which numerical discrimination
especially seems gone; for one sees light and hears sound, but whether
one or many lights and sounds is quite impossible to tell. Where the
parts of an object have already been discerned, and each made the object
of a special discriminative act, we can with difficulty feel the [p.
488] object again in its pristine unity; and so prominent may our
consciousness of its composition be, that we may hardly believe that it
ever could have appeared undivided. But this is an erroneous view, the
undeniable fact being that any number of impressions, from any number of
sensory sources, falling simultaneously on a mind WHICH HAS NOT YET
EXPERIENCED THEM SEPARATELY, will fuse into a single undivided object
for that mind. The law is that all things fuse that can fuse, and
nothing separates except what must. What makes impressions separate we
have to study in this chapter. Although they separate easier if they
come in through distinct nerves, yet distinct nerves are not an
unconditional ground of their discrimination, as we shall presently see.
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once,
feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very
end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact
that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came
to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space.
There is no other reason than this why "the hand I touch and see
coincides spatially with the hand I immediately feel."[5] (08)
It is true that we may sometimes be tempted to exclaim, when once a lot
of hitherto unnoticed details of the object lie before us, "How could we
ever have been ignorant of these things and yet have felt the object, or
drawn the conclusion, as if it were a continuum, a plenum? There would
have been gaps -- but we felt no gaps; wherefore we must have seen and
heard these details, leaned upon these steps; they must have been
operative upon our minds, just as they are now, only unconsciously, or
at least inattentively. Our first unanalyzed sensation was really
composed of these elementary sensations, our first rapid conclusion was
really based on these intermediate inferences, all the while, only we
failed to note the fact." But this is nothing but the fatal
'psychologists fallacy' (p. 196) of treating an inferior state of mind
as if it must somehow know implicitly all that is explicitly known [p.
489] about the same topic by superior states of mind. The thing thought
of is unquestionably the same, but it is thought twice over in two
absolutely different psychoses, -- once as an unbroken unit, and again
as a sum of discriminated parts. It is not one thought in two editions,
but two entirely distinct thoughts of one thing. And each thought is
within itself a continuum, a plenum, needing no contributions from the
other to fill up its gaps. As I sit here, I think objects, and I make
inferences, which the future is sure to analyze and articulate and
riddle with discriminations, showing me many things wherever I now
notice one. Nevertheless, my thought feels quite sufficient unto itself
for the time being; and ranges from pole to pole, as free, and as
unconscious of having overlooked anything, as if it possessed the
greatest discriminative enlightenment. We all cease analyzing the world
at some point, and notice no more differences. The last units with which
we stop are our objective elements of being. Those of a dog are
different from those of a Humboldt; those of a practical man from those
of a metaphysician. But the dog's and the practical man's thoughts feel
continuous, though to the Humboldt or the metaphysician they would
appear full of gaps and defects. And they are continuous, as thoughts.
It is only as mirrors of things that the superior minds find them full
of omissions. And when the omitted things are discovered and the
unnoticed differences laid bare, it is not that the old thoughts split
up, but that new thoughts supersede them, which make new judgments about
the same objective world. (09)
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