Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 18:54:54 +0000
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: reply to Howard -- but not really


Carrol

Only trouble is that the majority of the interesting scientific objects 
have no such corrospondence and cannot be thought of in these terms - 
the idea of  holding a physical mirroring of an ideological entity, 
especially a non-existent one  is a very entertaining thought however, 
like reading Tolkein and imagining it to be history. The haunting 
thought of the  Lacanian 'imaginary real' springs to mind where it is 
more a matter of the representation of nature and the object being a 
part of a pre-symbolic reality, in the act of symbolization the there is 
always a lack between the representation and 'raw nature'. The base 
'Real' is not this pre-symbolic/raw nature for this is an impossible 
state and obviously not even imaginable, it is in that act of 
symbolisation that you produce an unbridgeable gap in the reality 
symbolized. This gap may be the closest we can get to Max Planck's 
'Reality' - but here I'd suggest that every form of the 'reality' is 
plainly constituted through phantasy. It's important to avoid the 
reification of the real by imagining that any science at any level get 
beyond the gap into the real (the pre-symbolic )... This is not to say 
that the representation of a phantasy, whether it is the 'gay gene' or 
an actual one legged table does not take place as neuroscience proposes 
but rather that they are working at best within the gap.

regards
steve


Carrol Cox wrote:

>Howard Engelskirchen wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi Ruth,
>>
>>Yes, it does help.  Still, I wonder if you could spell out the category
>>error.  Also, if you take "literally" and "certainty" out of it, does
>>"correspondence" still have the same sting?  The version I argued for speaks
>>to an accommodation between our representations of the causal structures of
>>the world and those structures sufficient to reliably guide practice.  [clip]
>>    
>>
>
>Antonio Damasio, _Descartes' Error_, p. 104.
>
>If you look at this page you will see that at least in one instance of
>perception, and at one neurological 'level,' there is a close enough
>correspondence between the object and the brain for it to be very nearly
>a literal (physical) _mirroring_ of the perceived object in the brain.
>The (geometrical) shape of the stimulus is reproduced by the
>(geometrical) shape of the pattern of neural activity in the visual
>cortex.
>
>Carrol
>
>
>
>     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>  
>


--- StripMime Warning --  MIME attachments removed --- 
This message may have contained attachments which were removed.

Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list.

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- 
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---


     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---