[lit-ideas] Re: Earl Grey Or Lapsang Souchong?
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 15:50:55 +0100 (BST)
The penchant for changing thread headings with every post has been discussed
before, here it is just noted along with the charitable thought that some
people sometimes just can't help themselves...
As regards the post..
________________________________
From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
>In a message dated 5/14/2013 7:03:13 A.M. UTC-02, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
writes:
We should take v. seriously the idea that our "language" affects how we
"experience" or perceive the world: especially where "experience" is taken in
a very broad sense to include everything that can be experienced in any way
whatsoever, and where "perceive" is also taken in this very broad sense.
In this very broad sense, we might even say that we are what we "experience"
- or, more carefully, what we experience is the measure of what we are as
a matter of experience. [Popper would be wary of even this more careful
formulation, I think, but the point here is to bring out that we can use
"experience" in a very wide sense - certainly in a sense that goes far beyond
conscious experience.]
--- I agree. Alla Oakeshott: experience and its modes. I love this broad
'sense' of experience, since I am (like Grice was) an empiricist at heart
and disregard narrower uses of 'experience'. For Grice, for example,
introspection (as in introspective psychology) is experience-oriented, and thus
'experimental', even.>
But such a broad sense tends to vacuity and also is so undifferentiated as to
be potentially confusing, nevermind useless. It also raises a problem for
anyone who has (rightly) abandoned the view that "experience" is a given of
some sort. Rather "experience", at whatever level, is arrived at and is the
result of complex processes - and these processes are not as a rule themselves
"experienced" as part of the "experience" (they may not be, unless we stretch
the term pointlessly, be experienced at all): typically we may "experience" our
visual field but we do not "experience" in this same way most of the processes
by which the visual field is arrived at [an exception may be something like
'blinking' which we do experience]; and if I "experience" an emotion, like joy
[say on noticing that JLS has not needlessly changed thread headings], I do not
thereby experience the processes by which that emotion is arrived at or which
may underpin its existence.
It is almost hard to be too harsh on anyone who thinks "experience" is usefully
deployed in such a broad, undifferentiated, potentially confusing way - and in
a way that appears blind that to the fact that "experience" does not explain or
account for itself and its explanation typically lies beyond what is
"experienced" in that "experience" or what is "experienced" at all. [We might
add this broad, indiscriminate view of "experience" to the so-called "dogmas of
empiricism".]
My posts have not delved into the complexity involved even in understanding
something like the visual field, or even one aspect of it like "colour"; but I
alluded to some of that potential complexity when saying that seeing "colours"
as we do may be understood in purely physiological terms at a certain level of
experience. As it may not: for, depending on what level of "experience" we are
addressing, this seeing of "colours" may transcend purely physiological terms.
In so far as we are conscious of our visual field (i.e. insofar as the visual
field is experienced consciously), we are having an experience that may
transcend purely physiological terms but which may involve World 2: for we have
reason to believe that it is the conscious mind that 'flips' the retinal image
from its physiological form and decodes it so we experience the visual field as
we do when conscious - if we were rendered unconscious with our eyes open, the
eyes might continue to work
purely in terms of World 1 but what would be going on here would not simply be
a direct reflection of what would appear to us were we conscious.
Even at the World 1 or physiological level of "experience", many levels can be
distinguished within that World 1 level of processing; and the same may be true
at the World 2 level, where World 2 plays a role in 'decoding' the
physiological 'information' provided by the body.
So my remarks were directed at very broad points as to the role of World 1,
World 2 and even World 3 in forming human "experience".
For example:-
>McEvoy:
"But measuring the affect of language on "experience" is surely possible to
some extent: and when we begin measuring, we might begin to differentiate
aspects or levels of "experience", and find only some aspects or levels of
"experience" are affected by language. For example, the human eye works
similarly in most humans to produce the same colours: and this can be tested
scientifically [e.g. by way of pattern recognition tests where only persons
who differentiate colours in the same way can identify the pattern]. We may
find using these tests that we see the same colours in a way that is
determined by the eye, and which can be understood in purely physiological
terms
- and we may find that this level of experience is entirely unaffected by
language. So while 'glas' might have some indeterminate meaning in Welsh,
we may be able to show by tests that Welsh speakers see 'blue' and 'green'
as non-Welsh speakers do at this level of experience. And the same can be
said for Eskimos and 'snow': what they see at one level of experience may be
the same as for non-Eskimos:- what may be different is that because they
have a language attuned to different types of snow that, at this other level
of experience, they are more attuned to different types of snow than those
without such language.">
This is much that is left out in these broad remarks - for starters, that we
see the "same" colours may only be true as a matter of degree, and tests may
show this.
>McEvoy:
"This 'other level of experience' is experience mediated by World 3
content - in the example of the Eskimos, World 3 content as to different types
of
snow that is expressed via language. The first level of experience
mentioned above may be explicable purely in terms of the physiology of the eye
and
resultant 'sight' may be a level of experience purely at the World 1 level
- a creature with the appropriate World 1 physiology could see the colours
the same as us, at that level of experience, even if that creature
entirely lacked language or any access to World 3 content; indeed a creature
lacking any World 2 could see the colours the same as us, at that level of
experience, because that level of experience may be entirely a World 1 affair.
So (1) we should not talk of "experience" here without being clear what
level of experience we are talking about; (2) we are soon thrown back onto
the kind the differentiation Popper makes by way of his theory of World1-2-3
if we want to differentiate levels of experience properly; (3) we should
look at what tests might be devised here rather than engage in mere armchair
speculation, especially speculation drawn from a philosophical tradition
that has treated "experience" in a myriad of often indiscriminate ways.
Popper would suggest that there is a complex interaction of a World123
type going on in human "experience" [of which World 2 conscious experience is
only a fraction, and a fraction that cannot be explained without bringing
in World 1 and World 3]; and that the undifferentiated talk of "experience"
by philosophers [and their traditional blindness to distinctions of a
World123 type] do not help to disentangle this complex interaction; and that
we
should approach these issues scientifically as far as possible before
'philosophising'.
As usual, he may be on to something.
There seems to be some irreducible about experience in the sense that it
does not make much sense to get to the higher level of 'World 3'. It's like
Wittgenstein's
"Try to describe the aroma of coffee".
We have world 1: the experience of the aroma of coffee.
World 2 -- beliefs, desires, impressions, psychological states related to
the physiological state of World 1 related to our experiencing the aroma of
coffee.>
No, this example does not show that "the experience of the aroma of coffee" is
a purely World 1 affair. As soon as we have a conscious experience of the
aroma, then World 2 is involved in the experience - and World 2 may also be
involved in levels of the experience of the aroma even where these levels are
below the level of consciousness. So: there are levels of experience where the
detection of the "aroma" of coffee may be understood purely in World 1 or
physiological terms; but there may be levels of experience beyond this where
the detection of the "aroma" involves World 2.
>It's not clear what point would have to include the gamut of experiencing
aromas of coffee in an objective way in World III.>
I detect a confusion here: we do not experience in World 3. Human "experience"
exists only at a World 1 or World 2 level. But our World 1 and World 2 levels
of "experience" may be affected by World 3. This affect of World 3 on our World
2 and World 1 does not however mean that our experiences are themselves in
World 3.
The aroma of coffee is not perhaps the best example for beginning to see the
role of World 3 in "experience" [which role should not be confused with the
confused idea that such "experience", whether at a World 1 or World 2 level, is
itself in World 3 - rather World 3 plays a role in the formation of
"experience" at a World 2 level, and through World 2 mediation World 3 may
impact on World 1].
A better example might be where Smith has a toothache on two separate
occasions, but on one occasion he has ready access to dental treatment and on
the other occasion he does not. That Smith has access to the institution of
dentistry is not merely an aspect of World 1 but involves World 3 - including
the World 3 knowledge that underpins dentistry and dentistry as an institution;
and Smith's World 2 knowledge of this World 3 construct of 'dentistry' is not
merely a product of his World 2 but may be a product of his interaction with
this World 3 construct (and of others' interaction with such a construct).
While there may be purely physiological levels of Smith's experience of his
toothache that are entirely a World 1 or World 2 affair, there may be levels of
Smith's experience of the toothache that are affected by whether or not Smith
has ready access to a dentist - and in this way World 3 may play a role in
affecting Smith's World 2 "experience" of the
toothache, and dental intervention [which cannot be properly understood
without reference to World 3] may also affect Smith's World 1 "experience" of
the toothache, for example by removing the toothache.
Donal
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