(Bruce Nevin 950706 11:04 EST) --
Bill Leach (950627.00:45 EST) Replying to Bruce Nevin (950626 19:52 EST):
Bill, are you claiming here that it is not possible to be conscious of
the lowest levels of perception?Yes... and no. It is probably not possible to be conscious of the lowest
level perceptions without some inference. It is extremely hard (at least
for me anyway) to concentrate upon a sensation to the exclusion of any
"knowledge" about the sensation (such as where the source of the
sensation is located).
[...] the "wiring" appears to preclude the possibility of an
individual sensor signal reaching the brain without some combining taking
place first ....
This presumes attending to one perception to the exclusion of all others. I
don't think that being conscious of a given level of perception entails
this requirement of being conscious of just one signal on that level to the
exclusion of all other perceptions on any level. Anyway, it's not what I
had in mind.
even if an individual signal could proceed directly to the
brain to some point where conscious attention could be provided to just
that signal, there is still the problem of structure. That scalar
intensity signal would be located within a structure of such signals and
by inference through experience the location within the structure is
related to the physical location on the body for the initiating sensor.
In my experience, consciousness in some way "goes to" the perception,
rather than the perception being carried to "some point where conscious
attention could be provided to ... that signal" (homunculus?).
Indeed, in his accounts of how he came to propose the levels of perception,
Bill Powers has described being aware of perceptions of a number of types,
including I believe intensity.
An important form of Buddhist meditation practice, vipassana (that's the
Pali word, vipasyana in Sanskrit), involves persistent, systematic
attention to low level perceptions, learning to focus on them and not be
distracted by higher-level perceptions. One attends to one small area of
the body at a time, to the exclusion of other areas. In this practice, it
is quite a revelation just what and how much can be an object of attention
among the low-level perceptions in a small part of the body.
I have a suggestion regarding memory and imagination. You reported being
unable to remember and imagine certain kinds of sensory detail. The
suggestion is to practice attending to that sensory detail in some ongoing
experience of the physical environment, and then recalling that detail of
the experience. After some practice with this, the suggestion is to
practice imagining variations on remembered experience, in full sensory
detail. The reason I suggest this is that in my experience this is a
learnable (or enhanceable) skill, and I would like to know if your
experience confirms this. Certainly, the ability to recall and imagine
visually is an enhanceable skill; I used not to be able to do this at all.
A number of practices termed "creative visualization" and the like depend
upon imagining preferred outcomes in as much sensory detail as possible.
The claim usually is that this in some way magically creates the desired
outcome. We can see how this practice would provide very specific reference
values for a great many perceptions. When such perceptions arise from the
environment, preparation of this sort might enhance our ability to control
those perceptions, tending toward the preferred outcomes that were
visualized. Much of such control is likely to be unconscious, hence the
notion that it happens somehow magically. Isn't Maxwell Maltz's book
_Psycho-cybernetics_ something like this? (I have had a copy for years, but
have not got round to reading it. I recall Rick saying he liked it.)
Bruce
