humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 8, 1:28 pm, Malrassic Park wrote:

> wrote:
> >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 exertion 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.
>
> My edition of ITOE shows that she began at the level of a chaos of
> sensations, not at the point of conscious awareness.



Although, chronologically, man's consciousness develops in three
stages: the stage of sensations, the perceptual, the conceptual--
epistemologically, the BASE of all of man's knowledge is the
PERCEPTUAL stage.

Sensations, as such, are not retained in man's memory, nor is man able
to experience a pure isolated sensation. As far as can be ascertained,
an infant's sensory experience is an undifferentiated chaos.
Discriminated awareness begins on the level of percepts.



She acknowledges the brain functioning at the sense-datum level, but
knowledge begins at the level of the percepts.

She and I have a slightly differing meaning of "consciousness" In a
manner of speaking, a human being living *only* at the level of the
chaos of the senses (as in an infant) can be considered conscious like
a lower animal would be, but I rather refer to that level of
consciousness that involves true self-awareness within the environment
and that is something that is *developed* in early childhood on up
until one's 20's. She uses "discriminated consciousness" as I suppose
I might just use "consciousness."


> The percept lies at the point of conscious awareness as a product of
> neural activity. I disagree that a sense-datum is processed into a
> percept for Rand because man is not able to experience "a pure
> isolated sensation," and "sense-datum" is the singular form. The brain
> is given a chaos of sensations, Rand leaves the details of the rest to
> the neurologists to work out someday.

Except to say that neurologically the brain must always have sense-
datum to function beyond the level of keeping the organs going (brain-
stem activity). Rand does not say that, but it is implied in the
paragraphs quoted above and other parts of ITOE : the hierarchy of
sensation on up to the conceptual. This is the major objection to
your "universals" -- without having had percepts from the senses
FIRST, there are no concepts.


>
> People do not have memories before 3-4 years of age because they
> have forgotten them

Rand says right up there in the quote provided that "senses, as such,
are not retained in memory." Because a human being's mind at a
perceptual level is *developed* from nil to complete over some 4
years, only those fragments that may have created something at a
perceptual level in those years can possibly ever be retained in
memory. Often the "chaos" does not abate until 5 or 6 years of age in
some people.


> >Perhaps you would like to argue for the high intellect of a
> >schizophrenic -- that John Nash was the ideal man?
>
> Fuck that shit, it was only a very good movie about an iconoclast, not
> idealistically driven as well as iconoclastic like The Fountainhead
> movie.

John Nash was a real mathematician along the lines that I would think
you could admire -- all sorts of "universals" rolling around in his
ahead. The movie was a highly sanitized version of his biography, by
the way.