Greetings, Regi et al.
My apologies for bringing a slow-moving vehicle into the fast lane here, but this discussion has prompted me to put together some thoughts I have had that have been loose for too long.
I took the time to read your essay on perception, Regi, that Mr. Stolyarov kindly provided a link to in another thread. I am not well-read in ontology or epistemology, so I cannot assess Mr. Stolyarov’s claim that your insight is the neatest thing in philosophy since sliced bread. I can say that what you’ve written strikes me as commonsense, which is no slight to your article, seeing that commonsense is so uncommon.
Moreover, it started to shine some light on the hash I found Rand’s epistemology to be. I could not digest what appeared to be an unnecessary divide between sensation and perception. It seemed to me that Objectivism was making an extra step out of the process of comprehending information I collected from my senses, and that it was a step that seemed to add nothing more than what my senses must have already told me.
Furthermore, Peikoff’s discursions into the sensations and perceptions of newborns and lesser animals struck me as tying Objectivist epistemology more to how our mind and senses work rather than what they do. The “how” is a subject for science, not philosophy. Thus, I found the whole edifice of Objectivist epistemology to be erected upon the quicksand of scientific discovery -- i.e., it could disappear as a great falsehood if science determined otherwise.
Add to all that my impatience with the fundamentals of philosophy, as opposed to its applications, and you’ll understand my appreciation for a clearly written exposition on the subject such as yours.
All that said, I would like to see if I’ve got the gist of your argument:
1. Existence exists.
2. Everything that exists has a unique identity.
3. Identity consists of qualities which both distinguish a thing from other things and also establish a thing’s relationship to other things.
3. Those qualities are prior to my awareness of them – i.e., they are metaphysical.
4. I perceive those qualities through my senses.
5. Because any given set of qualities is an identity, I perceive the identity of a thing by perceiving its qualities.
6. Therefore, my perception of identity is not epistemological.
7. Epistemology begins with my comprehension of what I perceive (i.e., what my mind does with the information it has collected), not perception itself.
Because reality is not in any manner dependent upon my awareness of any aspect of it, this is what makes sense to me regarding my perception of it. Unless I can somehow will a hallucination, I cannot alter my perception of what exists around me. My perception is what it is. It's metaphysical because it is a strictly mechanical process that exists and operates without regard to my volition (with the exception of choosing to focus my senses upon something). Therefore, epistemology begins with what I do with the information I perceive; or put another way, epistemology begins where I can start making mistakes. ;)
Regards,
Bill
(Edited by Citizen Rat on 6/30, 2:08pm)
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