| | Cal, perhaps you could tell us what you disagree with in the following statement, which is from Rand's IOE:
Although, chronologically, man's consciousness develops in three stages: the stage of sensations, the perceptual, the conceptual--epistemologically, the base of all of man's knowledge is the perceptual stage.
Sensations, as such, are not retained in man's memory, nor is man able to experience a pure isolated sensation. As far as can be ascertained, an infant's sensory experience is an undifferentiated chaos. Discriminated awareness begins on the level of percepts.
A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of "direct perception" or "direct awareness," we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery.... (It may be supposed that the concept "existent" is implicit even on the level of sensations--if and to the extent that a consciousness is able to discriminate on that level. A sensation is a sensation of something, as distinguished from the nothing of the preceding and succeeding moments. A sensation does not tell man what exists, but only that it exists.) (p. 5)
Also, according to Objectivism, man is aware of reality, not of some representation of reality from which he infers its existence, which is what is meant by a "direct" perception or "direct" awareness in this context. According to you, neither perception nor awareness can be direct, because it involves "interpretation," by which you evidently mean what Objectivism means by an "integration of sensations." If so, then we may be arguing at cross purposes, using different words to mean essentially the same thing.
- Bill
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