>A Situation nothing.com> wrote:

>> On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:18:02 -0700 (PDT), s.j.lagoe@googlemail.com wrote:
>>

>>>On Sep 18, 1:19 pm, John J wrote:

>>>> The one bloke said he saw a ballerina for purposes of quotidian, IOW
>>>> conventional conversation. Of course there was no ballerina, but a
>>>> figure one might call symbol of a ballerina. In the end, reduction
>>>> removes the social meaning of the whole thing. It was clay all the
>>>> time. Or perhaps it was dog poop.

>>>
>>>Thats fine. Just substitute "ballerina" for "figure" then. The clay is
>>>there all the time. The figure for some of the time. Both different
>>>things with different properties.

>>
>> But the representational information structures of "ballerina" and
>> "figure" are not on the table. They are in the personal virtual realities
>> of the participating observers brains. Thus only a clay object is on the
>> table. I do not consider any attributes of that clay object as separate
>> objects.

>
>But the fact that you choose to believe there is a separation between the
>table, and the clay, is yet another representation you have placed on what
>you sense. The fact that you call it a "clay object" is no different than
>calling it a "clay ballerina".
>
>There is physical stuff out there in front of you with lots of properties -
>most of which you can't even begin to sense (like the microscopic viruses
>on and in the clay). How your brain takes the sensory data it is receiving
>and transforms it into the perception of the "clay object" as "sitting on"
>a "table" is all a function of what the brain is doing with the sensory
>information is is receiving, and not what is actually in front of you.
>
>There is no clear distinction between nouns and verbs except in how we use
>them in speech. The brain simply has the power to recognize and classify
>recurring patterns in the sensory streams and these recurring sensory
>patterns are the "objects" we sense in the world. How the brain will parse
>the sensory data is what creates our perception of our sensory environment
>being filled with objects.
>
>If you take the human out of the picture, you take with him the way he
>parsed the sensory stream into objects - so in that sense, you remove all
>our "perception" of objects from the picture when you remove the human.
>But the matter that makes up the clay and the table is still there, and
>it's inherent properties are still there, even if you don't have a brain at
>work recognizing them.
>
>Most of how the brain parses sensory data into objects is controlled not by
>socially imposed standards, but in the basic characteristics of the objects
>themselves. In this regard, it's valid to argue the "objects" are there
>even without the human, because the characteristics that make them look
>like objects, are there whether we are there to classify them or not. A
>straight line is straight whether we are there to look at it or not. A
>lump of clay has persistence to it whether we are there to notice its
>persistence or not, etc.