| Topic: | representing rocks |
| Posted by: | Amilcar |
| Date/Time: | 03/01/2004 20:40:49 |
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JS wrote: "If my first experience with the rock" . . did you notice you're use of the word "the" instead of "a"? I take from that when you 'represent' that specific rock later, you'll have that specific rock indexed as the one that gave you that experience (pain/pressure) at that time at that place (on the floor/ground). Whether you'd later remember which specific rock it was may be doubtful -if someone moved it for instance. Assuming it's really your first experience with a rock, i doubt that you'd be developmentally able to create such a representation as that specific 'rock' and hold it stable. Assuming that you were at that age where you could make and hold a representation of (this 'rock'[=pain/pressure]), would this specific experience influence and color the rest of your experiences with other 'rock'(s)? How many other experiences with rocks would it take to dilute that one assocation (this 'rock' [=pain/pressure] to these 'rocks')? When and if you do dilute that association, is it because you just have a 'group of hard things' or have you created the category/class 'rock'? However if you were a rock climber and this was your first time on a particular mountain, we'd be asking a slightly different set of questions. A baby won't be able to make the distinction between the 'rock' and the 'ground' until it is able to grasp the rock as independent of the ground. In other words the baby has to differentiate between (make a category/class of) what's part of the floor/ground and what's not (balls, couches, etc). Of course things get a little grey as the baby might think that part of the rug is part of the floor because he/she can't move it because the couch is on it, or because it's just too heavy and don't have the motor skills or muscle strength necessary to move the rug. Of course associations slice-and-dice (abstract)! The question i pose would be in what way do you slice and dice that experience (how do you filter, store & retrieve information). As an adult, i can get playfully hit in the face or dis-respected depending on what my significant other intends with her action (and whether i accept that interpretation), and i can re-interpret it before or after i store it in memory. So GSM, perception 'is' continuous until the mind (pre-linguistic/natural partitions and linguistic/artificial partitions) creates categories to divvy up the world. However, once one of those 'natural partitions' are made, they're not continuous anymore. Rather these natural and artificial partitions are points of discontinuity where our brain differentiates between objects. We still percieve/sense continuously, but what we sense gets divvied and filed much like change getting sorted in a machine or a running river breaking its stride into two streams. A question about deleting, generalizing and distorting in relation to natural partitions (for both GSM and JS): Do you think natural partitions categories such as 'not part of the ground floor' or 'red') delete, generalize and distort? and if so, or not so, what do they (or don't they) delete, generalize and distort? Hopefully cogent Amilcar |