Experience and Abstraction

Experience is the raw material, we use to create the world. Experience is the whole-cloth that from which we tailor the world. By experience is meant everything we feel and perceive. It is everything: objects, emotions,sights, sounds,etc. I am making no distinction between internal, and external states or entities. The reason being that it is we who decide what is external and what is internal, by the way we cut up experience. Abstractions are cut up or tailored experience. Let us review the nature of abstractions. (I have written on many times before) Abstractions are sublated image-triggers. The term "image" refers to a one dimensional sense perception, that triggers a scenario in the mind of humans. It would be a mistake to think of "image" as a visual reference. It can be any sense perception: taste, sound, etc. The "image" then triggers a scenario. This is of course, how everyday consciousness works. We see, or hear something that triggers an activity or scenario in the psyche. Humans think in scenarios. An example would be a person is out walking , and sees a car that looks like one she used to own; immediately she is thinking about the old car and actions associated with the car. This is how everyday consciousness works. By sublation is meant that image-triggers can be lifted out of its original context, or setting, and be imagined in a different setting or context than the original. When we recall at will a scenario without doing the activity it has become an abstraction. We rehearse scenarios constantly, this is called imagination. There are unsublated image-triggers; these would be unconsciousness reactions to images or stimuli. Phobias are a good example of unsublated or unconsciousness image-triggers. The difference between an abstraction and an unsublated image-trigger is conscious awareness and control of the triggered scenario. Abstractions are conscious image-triggers. Elsewhere I have classed or divided abstractions into different categories according to the degree of sublation, which I have termed minds. The categories are: Individual, Private, and Standard minds; we shall revisit the minds later in this essay. Abstractions are information, and information must have a carrier. For information does not exist without a consciousness to apprehend it. An analogy would be if there were a television signal, but no television to receive the signal. In the case of the human psyche abstractions,or information is carried on the emotions. To put it simply, the human psyche is built upon emotions. As I have said elsewhere the sense of an "I" or personal identity that humans have is the emotional desire to expand. This is the continuous feeling of being alive, which when abstracted becomes the "I" or sense of personal identity.( For more on this see my "5 Meditations on Mind") So now let us move to the nature of experience. As I said before experience is everything; the whole show. Humans have developed tools to cut experience into parts (abstractions). Humans carry their knowledge in abstractions, and image triggers. These abstractions and image-triggers are grouped into minds. The conscious image-triggers are abstractions, the unsublated image-triggers comprise the unconscious. This is of course an unintentional division, so let move to to intentional divisions of experience. The most basic intentional division that humans make is between outside and inside experience. Sometimes this is referred to as subjective and objective experience; this has led to much confusion.(see my essay "On the Real World") Objective was originally meant to refer to the world of the Forms or Real World. The trouble with the division of the inside-outside is the line between the two is vague and fuzzy. The line also seems to move around. Are colors, or sounds inside or outside? Do light waves and sound waves have color and sound? Is pain subjective or objective? As can be observed from these questions, both inside-outside, and subjective-objective are very flawed ways of dividing experience. So let us now examine perception, and how perception becomes information. Information cannot exist without a carrier, because information is image-triggers. In order to show this is not a new observation, let us turn to a quote form Francis Bacon ( taken from "The Advancement of Learning"):"For whatsoever is capable of sufficient difference, and perceptible by the senses is in nature competent to express cognition's." Whatever can be viewed as having differences can become information for a consciousness; whether it be colors, writing, etc. Often the human mind has been compared with a mirror, which has caused innumerable problems. A better, but still far from perfect analogy would be the human mind compared with a radio receiver. This analogy shall become more pellucid as we examine the nature of physical reality, and shall help illustrate why I have often said "that the human mind moves in reality, but only a small part of reality." It must be noted that everything I am going to say about the nature of reality is highly speculative. We have divided physical reality into matter and energy. The trouble with this division is that matter and energy are the same entity. Sometimes we perceive physical reality as energy, and at other times as matter. Does physical reality intrinsically have these two aspects, or is our perception the cause of these aspects? The trouble with this question is there is no answer. Fro humans are not set apart from physical reality, but are part of physical reality. We also know that entities viewed from different perspectives, can be viewed as matter in one perspective, and energy from another point of view. Electrons are an example. We know a seemingly solid entity, if examined at from a far smaller point of view, becomes an activity, instead of a fused solid. It would seem physical reality is a wave-form. That energy cannot exist without matter, and matter cannot exist without energy; they are the same entity. So let us continue with our speculation that physical reality is a wave-form. We should now be able to make use of the analogy of human perception being like a radio. Our senses are tuned to receive the wave-form at certain levels, or frequencies. Although we have been able to expand our reception, by the use of microscope and telescope. We perceive the level or frequencies that are necessary for human survival, based of our size and rate of change (time: this also shows that humans are a wave-form), the frequencies we receive are interpreted as matter and energy. This is not to say, this is an illusion, hiding the nature of reality; it is reality. It only means we only perceive and move at certain level or frequencies in the wave-form of the cosmos. Back to our analogy of a F.M. radio, a F.M. radio only receives or reads the peaks of the F.M. wave, so we only receive or perceive a certain band or level of the wave-form that is the cosmos.This is why I have often said the human mind moves in physical reality, but only a small part of reality. So are the peaks of the wave-form read by an F.M. radio music or not? The answer is, it is music if perceived or received by a F.M. radio. There is not God's eye view or to use Empedocles's terminology "Holy Mind." So the reality we perceive is dependent on the use we make of it. It only becomes illusion or error when the perceived reality does not fit the use we have for it. The only way to judge perception is if it works to achieve the ends or goals of the agent. We shall now examine what is wrong with the F.M. radio analogy. The trouble is that there is an outside view of both the wave-form and the radio, there is a third term that can view both the wave-form and the radio. In human perception of the wave-form that constitutes the cosmos, there is no outside, or third term that can observe both, and cat as a judge. The other trouble is the radio is different from the wave-from it reads; humans are part of the wave-form. To use another analogy, we are much like an expanding ink blot carried along on the ocean currents, so there no fixed point of reference. This is the position of human perception and knowledge. This is why our ways of dividing experience between subject-object, and inside-outside are flawed beyond repair. the answer is of course, to get rid of these ways of dividing experience. Instead, we must recognize that our starting point is our knowledge; what has worked in the past and present. There is no Real World or objective reality. My proposal is that we start cutting up experience, by using my scheme of the three minds: Individual, Private, and Standard. Minds are collections of abstractions for a purpose or and end. That we judge our knowledge, and actions on how it helps or hurts the agent in achieving goals. The Individual mind is what works for the individual, the Private mind is what works for groups united by an emotional bond or common goals, and Standard minds are operations that should work for all agents no matter of emotional bonds. Standard minds are of course, activities like plumbing, and scientific experiments. We must acknowledge our current way of dividing or cutting up experience are flawed. That there is no fixed point reference. It is time to update our techniques of dividing experience, instead of using methods that were developed millenniums ago. END