🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Fred Nickols (990505.1720 EDT)]--

Came across the following on another list (the learning organization or LO
list) and immediately thought to solicit reactions from CSG Netters...
Critique, anyone?  If I recall, no one on this list was particularly
impressed by Pinker's book and it might or might not be a good "lay
reference."

>Leo writes:
>
>>What I am going to say here, may make the confusion even larger, or it
>>may help Steve and others to narrow the gap between the 'real' world with
>>the world of imagination.
>
>>The whole world around us is a world of imagination. It is a translation
>>of the signals of our body-sensors into a picture in our mind. If we see
>>a house, this picture of the house is caused by the electromagnetic
>>photons from a source via our eyes into our brains. The brains create in
>>the mind a picture of the source. And the result is that we interpret
>>this picture as a house. So total brain and mind action. If we see a
>>colour, it is because most of the white sunlight is absorbed, and only a
>>certain frequency range is able to activate in the source radiation of
>>the electromagnetic photons.
>
>I am getting pedantic again here, but I think some points of reference are
>important. Just my overly scientific sorting process in action.
>
>Imagination and perceptional processes in the brain share similar
>networking functions and don't. Therefore they are not the same thing
>because there are significant differences in functioning. Although
>research in visual processing demonstrates occipital activity (the area of
>the brain that mainly processes visual information) that mirrors the same
>processing as actual vision. Differences however exist in other reasoning
>centers, excluding schizophrenics with visual hallucinations, and visual
>agnostics, who can not differentiate stimuli that like normal subjects.
>
>That explanation of the difference between internally generated stimuli
>from memorial experiences, imagination, and real time sensory data
>processing holds for all sensory inputs and interpretations.
>
>A good lay reference is "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker... a MIT
>Cognitive Scientist.
>
>What that little chunck of information means is, sensory data from the
>external environment is not the same as internally generated constructions
>of the environment. Hence, imagination is one or more steps away from the
>actual experience of processing information directly from the environment.
>An example might be the difference from experiencing sex with the lights
>on, and reading about it and imagining what it is like.
>
>Metaphors are more like the story of sex... might be fun... but doesn't
>have the same quality of data.

Regards,

Fred Nickols
Distance Consulting "Assistance at A Distance"
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
nickols@worldnet.att.net
(609) 490-0095