humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 8, 2:39 am, Malrassic Park wrote:

> there; however, in the context of the preceding statements it only
> means that we have direct perception and direct awareness of these
> integrations of sensations called percepts. That is indirect
> perception of reality through percepts, not directly via perception.


That is why it best to distinguish "sense-datum" from "percepts."
Rand skips over the functions of the brain which are *entirely*
automatic such as what happens to the signal received by the brain
from the sensory organs. She begins at the point of conscious
awareness -- which is after the sense-datum is processed into a
percept -- this process is also *barely* volitional (i.e., still
*vitrually* automatic) in that from the moment of birth the brain does
this without conscious excertion when it builds its hierarchy of
perceptions. It takes a newborn 3-4 years to get to the level of
consciousness necessary to understand by abstraction of the percepts
his brain is casting. People do not have memories before 3-4 years of
age because of this low level of consciousness.


> A Direct Realist account would only allow for perception, not
> percepts, which is direct perception of reality not perception via
> percepts.
>
> There is a definite problem with appealing to science, real or
> imagined, when answering the problem of perception, unless one
> actually wants all knowledge to come by inference.
>


There is a definite problem with appealing to science when one does
not wish to be confronted with the ridiculousness of his preciously
held opinions.


> If someone wants to throw the first punch and bring up "schizophrenia"
> with regard to my theory, which is exactly what happened, then that
> leaves it wide open for a counter-punch. Maybe someone was just being
> too hard on me. Ya think?

Perhaps you would like to argue for the high intellect of a
schizophrenic -- that John Nash was the ideal man?