Walter, Horse and Group:
Walter--a book entitled “Visual Intelligence” by Donald D. Hoffman supports
your April 12 post 100 percent. Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:
“And this, we shall find, is typical of your visual intelligence. Its nature is to
construct, and to do so according to principles. Without exception,
everything you see you construct: color, shading, texture, motion, shape,
visual object, and entire visual scenes.
“ . . . Philosophers call this the phenomenal sense. Someone with delirium
tremens may see, in the ‘phenomenal’ sense, a pink elephant in the room,
even though the rest us do not. . . .
“We also use the phrase “what you see” to mean roughly “what you interact
with when you look. This is the ‘relational’ sense. Someone with delirium
tremens can simultaneously see a pink elephant in the phenomenal sense
and fail to see a pink elephant in the relational sense—if there is in fact no
pink elephant.
“A thing must exist to be seen in the relational sense. Suppose you are the
only thing that exists (a strange idea called solipsism). Then you could never
see anything else in the relational sense, since there would be nothing else
to interact with. You might still, of course, continue to see in the phenomenal
sense, since you might continue to have visual experiences.
“So when I say that your visual intelligence constructs what you see, I mean
‘see’ in the phenomenal sense: you construct your visual experience. When
you look at this book, everything you see, i.e., everything you visually
experience, is your construction: The thickness of the spine, the while color
and rectangular shape of the pages, the black color and curved shapes of the
letters.
“But when you see this book there is also, I hope you will agree, something
that you see relationally, something with which you interact. If so, that thing
is something I helped to create (by typing at a computer terminal), and
therefore I get to keep my royalty. Philosophical distinctions can indeed be
of practical value!”
Don’t you agree that the author makes the same basic philosophical
distinction that you and Horse make? As I understand it, the phenomenal
sense is Horse’s WE CREATE REALITY; the relational sense is his WE
ARE CREATED BY REALITY.
Your superb explanation of this distinction has persuaded me completely of
the rightness of your view, and I agree wholeheartedly that “taking into
account the two views of reality above has cleared up a lot of words,
sentences and quotations of others,” including, I’m glad to say, many of my
own.
Thanks for what I consider a truly groundbreaking post.
Platt
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