From:	"Ojaste,James [NCR]" <James.Ojaste@**.GC.CA>
Subject:	Re: [OT] Nuances of Language
Date:	Thu, 7 May 1998 12:15:29 -0400

David Buehrer wrote:
>/ >But isn't language used to symbolically represent a world that's
>/ >perceived abstractly?
>/
>/ Perceived abstractly? I don't quite follow...
>
>Sorry :) I was remembering my highschool days when we discovered
>metaphysics and had long debates about nothing, and subsequently
>wrote a sentance that bordered on being metaphysical.

We usually had debates about theoretical physics... :-)

>However, I will try to explain.
>
>I can look out the window and see a parking lot that has automobils
>parked in it. Most of the autos are cars, with an SUV and a couple
>of minivans. There're a wide variety of cars: two door, four door,
>sport, sedan, etc. There're also a wide variaty of manufactures:
>Saturn, Ford, VW, Honda, Chevy, Toyota, etc (the Fords seem to be in
>the majority).
>
>When using a word such as auto, it's easy to see that it symbolically
>describes an abstract idea. There really is no such thing as an
>auto per se, and yet there is in the eye of the beholder.

Ah. So you mean that the descriptions of "auto" is an abstraction
for what's there. I've got a problem with this ("description" as
opposed to "perception"), but we'll get to that in a minute...

>The word car also symbolizes and abstract perception. A VW Fox GL
>can be percieved as a car. A Ford Probe can be percieved as a car.
>
>You'd think that when you get down to the level of Ford Probe that
>you are no longer percieving abstractly. But you are. Think about
>everything that that perception represents (depending on who you
>are): sports car, fast, agile, two seater, babe magnet, middle aged
>pacifier, etc.
>
>It's not possible to not percieve something abstractly.

Ah. Here I disagree. When somebody perceives something, they cannot
possibly perceive everything about it. We can't *know* everything
about it. Therefore, our perception is incomplete - but not
necessarily abstract.

>On a biological level your eye first interprets the light that is
>reflected off of objects. Your brain then interprets this
>interpretation. You then assign values to the interpretation. Is a
>Ford Probe first and foremost a sports car? Or do you view it as a
>babe magnet? Or is it something that middle aged men by to reclaim
>their lost youth? Or is it just a car? Or is it a conglomeration of
>seperate machines engineered to combine their functions to produce an
>end result?

It takes more and more processing power to recognize finer details
in what you observe. In a blink, you can probably recognize it as
"an object I don't want to run into". A little more time, and it
becomes "a car". A little more time, "a sports car", some more time,
"a Ford Probe".

As this is going on, at each stage your mind is grabbing memories,
comparing sensations etc to a) figure out what the object is and b)
figure out what use it is. So the act of perception involves both
recognition and analysis. The analysis bit may well include
"babe-magnet", but also "fast transport" and "expensive".

>Whether you're reading or listening, you're interpreting abstract
>symbols to interpret someone else's abstract perception of the
>world. And when you communicate with someone you are attempting to
>share your abstract perception of the world with that person by using
>abstract symbols to define those perceptions.

This is a pretty rough way of trying to communicate what you mean -
I'm pretty sure I understand you only because I've thought a fair
bit about the nature of reality and you're describing what amounts
to 4 reality shifts... If you really care about what I'm talking
about, look at http://ojaste.ml.org/~ojastej/reality.html

>It's a wonder we can communicate at all :)

Heh. :-)

James Ojaste