| Annotation Metadata
|
^"permissions":^"read":ӶӺ,"update":ӶӺ,"delete":ӶӺ,"admin":ӶӺ°,"user":^"id":6,"name":"Sarah Oberbichler"°,"id":"G8dppt2kb1","ranges":Ӷ^"start":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ36Ӻ","startOffset":0,"end":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ37Ӻ","endOffset":2568°Ӻ,"quote":"Let us now examine several of the traditional issues from the perspective of Powers’ model. What would it mean for perceptual statements to be incorrigible? In the framework of our model this question needs to be more explicit. We must specify the level of the model to which we are directing our analysis. Is there a level which provides the data for incorrigible statements? In what sense would any levels’ input be grounds for incorrigibility – from the perspective of the model?\nIf the first-order sensory signals are “the only environment that higher systems can respond to” (Powers 1973, p. 95), and if these signals represent no more than the intensity of some basic physical effect, then it is clear that no amount of summation, transformation, or computation of these signals can reveal to the perceiving system what has caused the physical effects that constitute its input. The system acts on the lowest level to keep these signals’ intensity close to a certain reference value, which is to say, it acts to keep them invariant. On the higher levels, the input signals are compounded and so are the reference values. What is being kept invariant there (and in that sense constructed out of simpler invariances) are permanent objects, permanent concepts and, finally, a relatively permanent and reliable world. The reference values that constitute these invariances are set and adjusted from the top. From level to level they are sent down to the bottom level of sensory functions. And since it is these reference values that control the activities that can modify the sensory signals, one can say that, in principle, what the system perceives is controlled from the top of the system’s hierarchy. We now apply this model to ourselves, as organisms.\nWithin the framework of each level, particularly the lower levels, what we perceive cannot be doubted. We do not doubt because what we perceive is modified by our own activities. This successfully precludes any attribution of ontological significance to what we perceive. There is no “given.” There is no lowest level which is free from the organizing principles. If “the given” is really (in some sense of the word) the disturbance of level one, then it is not discriminable within the structure of the model. The disturbance is modified in order to produce the input to level one. It is modified by our behavior and the modification is an analog process. Epistemologically this is of paramount importance: The disturbance, whatever it may really be, is never sensed discretely but merely creates a fluctuation in the total sensory signal. Hence the organism can never discern to what extent a fluctuation is due to disturbance and to what extent it is due to its own activity. Thus there is no level which is organization-free perception. There is no dichotomy between perceiving and interpreting. The act of perceiving is the act of interpreting. The activity of perceiving consists in constructing an invariance. Isolating, selecting, focusing, attending, are all a part of this process.","highlights":Ӷ^"jQuery3210169141624291851422":^°°,^"jQuery3210169141624291851422":^°°,^"jQuery3210169141624291851422":^°°Ӻ,"text":"","category":"Argumentation2","data_creacio":1592301331110°
|
