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 Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:32 am |
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Arthur C. Clarke 7/9 ART MATRIX - LIGHTLINK
http://www.lightlink.com/theproof PO 880 Ithaca, NY 14851-0880
(607) 277-0959 Voice
(607) 277-8913 Fax
(607) 277-5026 Modems
homer@lightlink.com E-mail
jes@lightlink.com E-mail
08/17/07 11:45pm
Dear Esteemed Sir,
ANTHROPOMORPHIZATION
Anthropomorphization is the assignment of qualities that rightly
belong to consciousness to things other than consciousness.
Whenever symbols are used to refer to referents, various
qualities of the symbol are used to refer to similar qualities in the
referent, especially if the qualities in both symbol and referent bear
a high degree of geometric congruency to each other.
Geometric congruency, or geometricity for short, means the
referent is square and the symbol is square.
That is highly convenient but allows us to easily forget that the
symbol is not the referent.
Another less obvious geometricity is existence, the symbol exists
and the referent exists.
In fact our very concept that the referent exist is BECAUSE the
symbol exists.
Since the only source of information the being has about the
referent is via the symbol, one can assert that everything one knows
about the referent comes from direct perception of the symbol.
Thus we consider that the physical universe exists because our
conscious experience of it exists. Because our conscious experience
exists we assume that what it is being used to represent exists also.
Thus in dreams or hallucinations we are fooled into thinking the
referent exists just because the symbol exists.
In such cases we are not lucid. Lucidity is recognition that the
symbol exists but the referent doesn't. One is lucid when one knows
one is dreaming, imagining or hallucinating for example.
We consider the physical universe has space because our
consciousness of it looks like it has space.
We consider the physical universe has time because our conscious
experience of it seems to have time.
We assign force to the physical universe because of our conscious
experience of force and impact.
Most people's convictions are based on the conscious experience
of impact. The impact seems more real than the consciousness
experiencing it, thus more credence is given to the alleged referent
causing the impact than to the experienced symbol of the impact.
Nonetheless the sense of actuality ascribed to the referent comes
directly and only from the actuality of the symbol.
To claim the referent is actual, but the symbol is inactual, is
one definition of insanity. The guy thinks he is seeing the physical
universe referent directly.
We also assign mass and energy to the physical universe because of our
conscious experience of mass and energy.
In each an every case we have taken a quality of the symbol and
assigned it to the referent.
The whole idea of cause in the physical universe is an
anthropomorphization of our experience of cause within ourselves. If
we had never had the direct perception of personal causal agency
within ourselves, we would never have had the idea to assign it to the
phyiscal universe too.
Notice that direct perception of causation is impossible in the
physical universe because of it's inherent dimensionality and
separation between parts.
One can see two events, but one can never see the causation
between them.
Thus assigning causation derived from direct perception of
consciousness, to the physical universe where it can never be observed
or proven at all, is a very wild step of anthropomorphization.
Assigning cause between events in the physical universe is an
extreme example of collapsing symbol and referent. It is useful to
our survival, but in the end its more important for us to know that
the apple falls, and not whether it falls due to lines of force or
curvature of space.
Such models of cause are useful to science because they lead to
predictions, and science would not progress at all with out them, but
if the world is a dream, then the entire phyiscal universe is a
virtual reality WITH NO ACTUAL CAUSE BETWEEN ALLEGED OBJECTS IN IT AT
ALL.
Why does the ball bounce off the wall in a sleep dream?
There is no causation at all between conscious pictures in a
sleep dream, a third party is projecting both ball and wall to give
the illusion of cause between them.
If the world is a dream even in the waking state, then all
physical causality is the same as it is in a dream, virtually real,
but actually non existent.
Anthropomorphization can be useful as analogy but is a
philosophical weakness if carried too far.
For example it would be an error to assign love and pain to the
physical universe just because we experience love and pain in our
consciousness.
Do we imagine that two electrons repell each other because they
suffer in each other's presence?
Do we imagine that electrons and protons are attracted to each
other because they feel pleasure in each other's presence?
Is nuclear force sexual lust?
Do we imagine that physical universe forces such as gravity and
electromagnetism are in fact conscious sentient wills seeking to
maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain?
Are we torturing something by bringing the north poles of two
magnetics together?
Using your right hand pick up your left hand and move it.
Did your left hand move because of force or pain?
It moved because of force.
Now use your right hand and threaten to stick a hot needle in
your left hand and watch you move it.
Were you moved to move your hand by force or pain?
Notice both force and pain are causitive, they cause us to move,
and many biological pathways involve both force and pain, but force is
not pain, and pain can not be built out of force and mass alone.
Pain is not MERELY a process in arrangements of force and mass.
"Love and pain can not of force and mass be made," because both
are conscious experiences and thus not part of the alleged multi
dimensional world.
It is also an extreme error to assign 'redness' to anything in
the physical universe at all, because redness is solely a quality of a
conscious experience. It's external referent is frequency, and
frequency and redness are two utterly different qualities in two
utterly different kinds of objects that have no absolute or necessary
relationship to each other.
In other words the assignment of redness to 5000 Angstroms of
electromagnetic radiation is an arbitrary hook together with no
underlying fundamental necessity that it should have been that way.
In fact in dreams one can hook redness onto any frequency of
light at all because THERE IS NO FREQUENCY OF LIGHT in dreams. In a
dream all there is, is conscious self luminousness. In dreams one
might just as well hook redness to 'X rays coming from the stars'
according to one's fancy of the moment.
Now one can argue that assigning conscious colors to SOME
frequency of light in the physical universe was necessary for the game
of evolution to take place, and right this might be.
It can also be argued that only a subset or particularly small
part of the entire spectrum of eletromagnetic radiation was necessary
and optimum for that survival to happen, that which we call visible
light. And again this is is probably correct.
However it can not be argued that it was better to assign redness
to 5000 Angstroms, green to 4000 Angstroms and violet to 3000
Angstroms rather than some other way around.
Further it can not be argued that any two beings can verify that
they both see the same color as the other, given the same frequency of
light, because each can only ever see their own consciousness and thus
can never verify that the other is seeing the same color as them.
We show two people the same frequency of light and say to them
this is to be called red, so now everyone calls it red, but who is to
say that some don't see it as green or violet or some other color we
never heard of. There would be no way to prove it one way or the
other.
The only thing that matters for survival purposes is that every
time the being sees a sample of 5000 Angstrom light, he sees the same
color.
WHAT color he sees is not relevant.
Since different people have different levels of color blindness,
and animals have a wide range of sight from black and white in dogs to
color in cats and birds and bugs, spanning many different frequencies
than the human being can sense, at no time can anyone be sure that
what anyone sees while looking at 5000 Angstroms of light is the same
as all other things that can also see that frequency.
The conscious color to frequency hook together is arbitrary.
Thus redness is not frequency!
Thus consciousness which has redness but no frequency, is not
photons which have frequency but no redness.
Thus conscious experiences are their own thing, their own object,
with qualities utterly of their own, some of which may be used by the
conscious being as symbols to map onto, refer to, referents in the
alleged physical universe.
Only the dullard continues to collapse symbol and referent and
continue to claim that there is no symbol and that he sees the
referent directly.
These are the 'consciousness is nothing and the brain is
something' crowd, of which I so tire.
In case you hadn't noticed.
You couldn't have the concept that the referent was something
unless the conscious experience of it were something also!
Your faithful servant,
Homer Wilson Smith
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homer Wilson Smith The Paths of Lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF Cross Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com In the Line of Duty http://www.lightlink.com
Sat Aug 18 00:02:42 EDT 2007 |
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