[From Bill Powers (2001.05.16.1938 MDT)]
Bruce Gregory (2001.0516.1056)--
The safest course of action is to adopt Richard Kennaway's approach and
completely disassociate the model from the world of introspection. I think
we know enough about the organization of the brain to know that anything
inferred from introspection is highly suspect, if not totally useless.
Perhaps you have some way of knowing about the world by some means that
bypasses your own perceptual apparatus. Since I have no such way, I have
had to rely on examining how the world appears to me. The names I gave to
the levels reflect what I found in looking fairly carefully at the world I
experience, without assuming that anything was "just there." That is, if I
could see relationships among things, then I assumed that some part of my
perceptual system is designed to report the existence of relationships, and
that if it were not for this sort of perceptual function, my world would
not contain any relationships. For "relationships" you can substitute the
name of any other level I have proposed, from intensities to system concepts.
In many cases, I found what seem to be non-physical dependencies of one
kind of perception on another kind, or other kinds. Objects (visual
configurations), for example, seem to be composed of what I call
sensations: remove the sensations, and the objects also disappear. However,
the same kinds of sensations many be present even if they don't appear as
parts of objects. So this suggested to me some kind of hierarchical system,
in which higher perceptions are functions of lower ones. I know of no
physical principle that makes such dependencies necessary.
By the same token, I think I have found that in order to control a given
perception at some level, it's necessary to vary perceptions of lower
levels. Again, there seems to be no physical principle from which these
requirements could be derived. These are primarily properties of my
perceptual system, and only secondarily aspects of the physical world, or
so I have concluded.
"Introspection" isn't really the best word for this process of skeptically
and analytically examining one's own experiences -- the experiences that
others perhaps prefer to label "the real world." But I don't know of a more
appropriate one.
Of course this view is anathema to anyone who believes it possible to
observe the world "objectively" -- as it "really is."
Best,
Bill P.