#4 Descartes and the Senses

Transcript Philosophy Unveiled 4 Hello, this is episode number four of Philosophy Unveiled by the author Lane Friesen. My name is Rachel, and I’ll be doing the reading today. In the first episode, we looked at two different philosophers, Berkeley and Locke, and suggested that they were conscious in two separate cognitive strategies, which together work to do object binding. Session two presented a profile of the Mercy, and session three presented a profile of the Perceiver. Today, we’re going to look at yet another philosopher, Descartes, and how he handled the senses. Today’s episode will demonstrate that a third cognitive strategy does the top-down focusing for the first two. We’ve looked at two cognitive strategies called the Perceiver and the Mercy and we’ll now move on to a third called the Facilitator, and we’ll see that it handles speech. Descartes as a Facilitator agreed with Locke the Perceiver that objects are seen through a veil of perception. We conclude therefore that Facilitator thought is higher than Mercy analysis, in which Berkeley was conscious, in the processing stream. Now, is it above or below Perceiver strategy? Well, objects for Descartes had so much cognitively-influenced structure that they were sometimes viewed as demons. This certainly implies that they were bound together as entities; thus, Facilitator strategy is located above Perceiver thought and its binding. The internal world at times was so real for Descartes that he began to doubt the existence of the external. We conclude that Facilitator thought operates at a high level indeed. We’ll soon see that it mediates human reason. Now, both Locke the Perceiver and Descartes the Facilitator saw that ideas could be either simple or complex, and they agreed that simple ideas were subverbal . Since ideas as bound objects originate in Perceiver thought, and Facilitator strategy, according to neurology, handles the more complex verbal stream, we conclude that simple ideas are Perceiver-derived, and complexity develops in part as Facilitator strategy forms these ideas into words. Locke adds the fact that simple ideas come only from experience; this was not as clear to Descartes. We conclude that Facilitator strategy does not easily see the original Mercy characteristics or nodes. It interacts more readily, rather, with Perceiver ideas and thus links. Even as Facilitator analysis is separate from Mercy thought, so Mercy strategy is not really that aware of Facilitator thought - in confirmation, Berkeley the Mercy said that once we get a sensation of the tree, then it is a contradiction for the Facilitator to doubt that the tree exists. The tree for Berkeley as a Mercy is the sensation, and we can’t doubt that we had that. Thus, we conclude that Mercy strategy is perhaps as blind of Facilitator thought as it is of Perceiver analysis. It senses only the label of pain and pleasure that accompanies the various sensory modalities, and that (this) comes from something which is conscious. Now, for the Facilitator, ideas need to be expressed in words, and these words in turn affect Perceiver ideas, which are links between Mercy characteristics. Moving now to the relationship between Perceiver and Facilitator, Locke the Perceiver tells us that words, which we know belong to the Facilitator verbal stream, generate Perceiver ideas. This implies a link from Facilitator analysis and its words down to Perceiver strategy and its ideas. We will shortly present evidence that this link is one-way. Locke states that ideas triggered by Facilitator words may differ from linked characteristics as generated in his mind by Mercy thought - this distinction, between different sets of inputs, is part of what enables him to sense hypocrisy. Let’s move further. Descartes the Facilitator states that he sees both highly processed objects, and also very raw sensory input , that is, seeing, hearing and feeling. We conclude that initial sensory data, with no object identification, is coming in to Facilitator thought from the outside world. Since Berkeley with his Mercy analysis is aware of sensory data, and sees it in a processed form , we conclude that the initial Facilitator raw input is being sent down from Facilitator analysis to Mercy strategy. Since Descartes the Facilitator makes no mention of any label of pain and pleasure appearing in the raw input data stream, but Berkeley the Mercy says that he receives a label of pain or pleasure along with the sensory data , we assume that this label is being assigned somewhere on the path between Facilitator thought and Mercy analysis. Our task is to determine the precise location. Alright, let’s look at a diagram to illustrate the sensory input stream. Now, as we can see in the diagram, sensory input comes in first to Facilitator strategy, and in particular, that sensory input stream involves seeing, hearing and feeling. The Facilitator passes this information down through some strategy which we haven’t covered yet, which we will cover later, and after it goes through that strategy, there is a label of pain and pleasure assigned. It goes up to the Mercy, and the Mercy senses each separate sensory input such as seeing, hearing and feeling which you can see as a sort of dot right above the Mercy. So, for example, in our suggestion of Rufus the cat, how Rufus feels when you pet him, what he sounds like, and what he looks like, and those three objects together for the Mercy make up a cat. Now, for the Perceiver, the Perceiver is the one who makes the links between the objects, and he can use that set of links to classify many different things. But as you see right above the Perceiver is the Facilitator with an arrow down. What is the Facilitator doing? Well, he’s helping the Perceiver to bind objects. Well, the Facilitator works with speech. So, how does he do it? Well, have you ever looked at a photograph, and you’re looking at something. You don’t know what it is, and suddenly someone comes along and says, “Oh, that’s a cat,” and you say, “Aha, yes, of course.” Well, that’s Facilitator strategy helping Perceiver analysis to bind objects. OK, let’s summarize what we have learned in this episode. There are two separate cognitive strategies which work together to do object binding - Mercy strategy and Perceiver strategy. Another cognitive strategy labeled Facilitator strategy handles words and reasonableness, and it also handles raw sensory input in particular from seeing, hearing and touch. Facilitator strategy also sends words to Perceiver thought, and Facilitator strategy sends the raw sensory data to Mercy analysis. Of course, it’s filtered by something in between, which we will discuss later. And lastly, quite often philosophers are Facilitators. They may feel that objects are not real. So, what will we be covering in our next episode? I’d like to discuss something which Locke referred to as the substratum and this substratum is very puzzling to most philosophers and even Locke himself did not understand it fully, and he was not sure whether he should actually even include it in his writings, but he said that he had to. We’ll be looking at a fourth strategy in the next episode which helps to assign the label of pain and pleasure to the sensory input between Facilitator and Mercy, and we’ll actually find that the fourth strategy and the substratum are, in fact, the same thing. That concludes episode number four of Philosophy Unveiled. Thank you for listening.

Blip | December 23, 2007

Tags:. .external. .assume. .transcript. .perception. .inputs