“Intersubjectivity” is also a troubling word for me, as it also is ambiguous.  It sounds like it is talking about a magical “intersubjective” force which, maybe like quantum entanglement, links two people’s knowledge.  While it could also be simply a non-magical representational model, where two people have knowledge of the other, in their brain, which is “calibrated” via our senses and communication with each other.

 

So, what do you mean by “intersubjectivity”?



On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:32 PM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Excellent, dear Waldemar, and all agreed!
Not only do psychotics isolate themselves since their world of intense perception but no capacity for value hierarchy can not be shared.
Neurotics also isolate themselves for the exact opposite reason. Their obsession with one and one object only can not be shared as that valuation is intensely personal and arbitrary.
So it is intersubjectivity which gives us reasonable access to reality as it is. Relationships with others have to work for that. Within shared paradigm (perceptions) and ideologies (values of what is perceived).
And we use both dogs and birds and technologies to help us with the stuff that we do not "directly perceive". We can just refer to this as indirect perception. Just like we extend subjectivity to intersubjectivity.
Then we hang on to our more or less qualified fantasies. Until they no longer work for us or have been disturbed enough by anomalies to have lost all credibility.
Neurotics just hang on to fantasies longer than others (conspiracy theories and tarot cards help them with that), psychotics jump from one impression to the next without connection between experiences.
Which is why they both become so socially dysfunctional. Autism belonging to the neurotic and narcissism to the psychotic.
Best intentions
Alexander

Den mån 29 apr. 2019 kl 19:28 skrev Waldemar Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>:
I am also in agreement with Alexander.

Careful examination of our sensory abilities reveals that we do not sense, and therefore perceive, the entirety of reality.
For instance:

  • Our visual system is limited in the range which it may perceive.  The best can sense/perceive ultraviolet to an extent which we cannot - it is true that some of us can apparently perceive some, limited ultraviolet, but this area is basically beyond our capacity.
  • Similarly, our hearing is restricted to certain ranges.  We cannot, for instance, sense/perceive infrasound, such as elephants can and which they regularly use to communicate.
  • In the same way, we cannot perceive a wide range of temperature.  Above and below certain temperatures what we perceive is pain, even if only briefly.
  • For dogs, the olfactory range is far wider and more sensitive than most, if not all, humans.

We can know that these missed facets of reality exist because we can construct means by which we may measure them.
But, we cannot directly perceive them.

In this sense, we sense/perceive only a portion of “reality.”
From that, we construct a sense of what is around us - assuming, of course, that our sensation/perception/interpretation apparatus is working correctly.
Which makes the construct of reality quite personal, since we a phenomenologically isolated.

However, we may “calibrate” our constructed sense of reality with others and arrive at a mutually agreeable interpretation of reality - even though our individual phenomenological experience of reality is not fully shared or shareable with others.

The argument that our “reality” is an illusion is wasted on myself.
“Not only do perceptual systems not evolve to capture the details of the real world, he argues, there's no reason to believe that the objects that we see have any correspondence to things that exist outside our minds.”
We may not sense/perceive/interpret exactly what exists out there in the world but we do perceive enough of reality to allow safety and survival.
There is a real world of physical objects obeying physical rules.
There is also a world of mental objects which may flount the physical world rules - we recognize that and consider it “fiction.”
Nonetheless, such “fiction” can influence the physical world and vice versa.

Hence, it is not too surprising that our representation of the existence is influence by socio-cultural factors.

So far, one’s representational impression of reality seems to be appropriately conceived and described as being termed social constructivist.
Which is where our need for interpersonal “calibration” of our own reality is so very important.
Our social constructivist representational reality may not or is even surely not absolutely representational but by communicating with others we arrive at a working model.
It is interesting that one of the first things that psychotics appear to do is isolate themselves - ie, they “turn off” their access to calibration.
When that progresses to a perception of “reality” which does not square with that of the rest of us, we say they are delusional and hallucinating.

Oh well, I could have made this shorter:

  • I agree with the concept of linguistic-social-cultural construction of reality.
  • I also agree with

  • I also agree with the idea that 
Waldemar A Schmidt, PhD, MD
(Perseveret et Percipiunt)
503.631.8044

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. (A Einstein)

On Apr 29, 2019, at 7:24 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I completely agree with Alexander’s comments about the active nature of perception.
 
If you want a quick walk through regarding a ToK and modern perceptual model of perception, see this blog on Perception and Perceptual Illusions. This helps with concrete examples to “see” how active perception is: 
 
Also, here is a blog I did on the mind and the concept of informational interface:
 
Best intentions,
G
 
 
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Alexander Bard
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2019 10:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The perceptual and socially constructed Nature of Reality?
 
If the assumption is that perception is a passive phenomenon, then it is best to walk out of one's chair blindfolded and just wait how many seconds it takes before you stumble into a wall and hit your head big time. Perception is anything but a Cartesian theater as anybody except an autist in a wheel chair experiences every minute of their lives. The world is not frozen for us to passively observe it at a distance. We are involved as agents in our own perception. So perception is fundamentally active and not passive. And it is constantly interactive, involved with the world within which it exists. So any comparison with say virtual reality and computer games becomes instantly irrelevant as Heidegger would agree. Perception then walks off and fantasizes about itself in the world but as soon as hard reality ("the real" in psychoanalysis) hits us again we are forced to alter our models of the world (and our own place within it). If we get a really hard hit, and it is collective, then that is called a paradigm shift. We change world view because we are forced to when the old world view no longer works or makes sense.
 
Best intentions
Alexander
 
 
Den mån 29 apr. 2019 kl 16:11 skrev Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>:
Hi TOK List,
 
  The “thought of the day” is the question: To what extent do we perceive reality and to what extent is reality a construction, either at the level of perceptual consciousness or at the level of the social construction of reality?
 
Brent’s point below is to remind us that our experience of reality may well be likened to a virtual reality or information interface. Here is a clip from the article Brent shared, which argues our perceptual world is a virtual informational representation of the outside world. [It is worth noting that the basic question regarding the distinction between how things appear to us and the actual reality outside is, of course, a very old one in philosophy]. Here are some key quotes from the Wired article:
 
“Not only do perceptual systems not evolve to capture the details of the real world, he argues, there's no reason to believe that the objects that we see have any correspondence to things that exist outside our minds.”
 
 "When you click a square, blue icon to open a document, the file itself is not a blue, square thing," he says. In the same way the physical objects that we see are just symbols, and the space-time in which they seem to exist just on the desktop of our specific interface to some objective reality beyond. Like any interface, it must stand in causal relationships to an underlying structure, but it's all the more useful for not resembling it.
 
Let me add to this question perspectives on the linguistic-social-cultural construction of reality. This is related to Brent’s comments and the wired article, but it is also different in that the focus here is more on linguistic concepts and those kinds of meaning making structures (i.e., systems of justification), rather than sensory-perceptual phenomena (i.e., experiential consciousness) although, of course, there are relations between these domains. What follows are two articles that raise interesting reflections on the social construction of reality.
 
The first is on Mayan culture and their conception of “personhood”. This gives rise to the question of “To what extent is our construction of personhood constructed and how might it be constructed differently in different cultures”
 
The second is about the cultural conceptions and constructions of fatness, gender and sex:
 
Best,
Gregg
 
 
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Brent Allsop
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2019 3:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: use ToK to understand subjective phenomenology and objective science
 
 
Hi Gergg,
 
That looks nice.  I’m obviously kind of biased, but it seems to me you are glossing over the qualitative nature of reality, like redness and greenness.  It seems to me everyone needs to understand that the qualities we think are qualities of stuff “out there” are really qualities of stuff in our brain.  We have no ability to perceive qualities of anything ‘out there”.  For example Donald Hofman really understands this very important stuff, as you can see in this wired article.
 
Anyway,  my very biased 2 cents worth.
 
Brent
 
On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 9:14 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Lists,
  I am working on a blog or general document that attempts to explain how the ToK System provides a new way to understand both ourselves in the world and provides a scientific account of the world and our place in it. I don’t think there is a [synthetic natural scientific humanistic] philosophy that really does this in a successful way. Some, like Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory get close. But I think the ToK does this better than any other system. And that is one of the reasons it is valuable. It offers a much greater picture of consilience between humanistic and scientific modes of thought. Attached is a draft. I welcome thoughts if you have them.

Best,
Gregg
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