An Apple

[_Simon Belmont]

I was an idiot to think that anything could come of this thread. Sometimes optimism is a bad thing. Please eat the apple, Simon, and put it out of its misery.

What "came out" of this thread was Scratch's anger towards me.

[_Simon Belmont]

Simon, I think when you honestly examine the question of how you know that you are holding an apple and it is real, you must run into odd gaps in your ability to answer the question.

Yes, I do.

I think serious examination of one's own thinking must reveal a startling amount of mental gap-filling in order to make such simple things as holding an apple efficient so it doesn't take up unjustifiable amounts of energy and time.

Yes, we simply accept that the apple is there because it would take too much time and effort to prove it, and we're hungry.

Most of the process you have asked others to describe is built on assumptions that, upon reflection, are not verifiable.

I agree, and that's part of the point I am making.

For example, can you honestly describe to me the moment in your life when you first realized what an apple even was? Is there a real pre-apple moment in your life that you can accurately recall?

No, and part of the reason is that once an apple was introduced to me, I was told what it was. I trusted my mother at that very young age.

Leaving the apple for something more recent, we rely on reconstructed memories to form the associations for all things we interact with using our senses. Can you describe a moment from around the year 1999 when you first associated the idea of a thing of your choosing with the thing itself?

You mean like hiking in the mountains and seeing a strange wildflower, then going home and rummaging through field guides to find out what it was?

Anyway, I think absman came up with a great post from beginning to end.

Yes, he did. Thanks ABMan.

[_Polygamy-Porter]

I was an idiot to think that anything could come of this thread. Sometimes optimism is a bad thing. Please eat the apple, Simon, and put it out of its misery.

What "came out" of this thread was Scratch's anger towards me.

What came out was your expected persecution complex.

Feel justified for believing in floating ghosts of dead white native Americans now?

[_honorentheos]

For example, can you honestly describe to me the moment in your life when you first realized what an apple even was? Is there a real pre-apple moment in your life that you can accurately recall?

No, and part of the reason is that once an apple was introduced to me, I was told what it was. I trusted my mother at that very young age.

I'd like to slow down the back-and-forth and consider your answer here, Simon. You first answered the question, "No" - you can not describe to me the moment in your life when you first realized what an apple was.

But then you describe a scenario to me that more or less suggests otherwise.

How do you know that an apple was introduced to you and you were told what it was? How do you know it wasn't something that you picked up from hearing your parent's talking, your father asking your mother to pass him an apple, and seeing what it was he passed to her? How do you know your mother was even involved?

I think it's important to consider just how much of this you are filling in.

So let's revisit the question - can you describe to me the moment in your life that could be considered the threshold between pre-apple and apple? You asked about process. Let's take that question seriously.

[_Simon Belmont]

You're right, honor, I can't pinpoint when an apple became an apple to me.

I can't pinpoint when God became real to me, either.

[_Jersey Girl]

I couldn't get past the second page of reading. So, I'll just use this to play:

Belmont

Most have said (and I would have answered this way, too) that we receive messages from our five senses which are then interpreted by our brain, which then tells us "that's an apple."

We learn that it is an apple because others have identified it to us as an "apple".

What are the limitations of our five senses? Are there more "senses" out there that we are incapable of knowing about or understanding?

I'll take "intuition" for 200$, Alex.
:-)

[_honorentheos]

You're right, honor, I can't pinpoint when an apple became an apple to me.

I can't pinpoint when God became real to me, either.

Maybe I'm not ready to discuss real yet. I think your questions in the OP really are worth considering. I'm not sure if you meant it this way or not, but I think if we are going to discuss the process you asked us to in the OP, we should take it slow as we deconstruct the process and try not to shorthand it.

Right now, we seem to agree that we have this idea (or something internal) we call "apple" that we associate with an external thing. Yet, when we think honestly about it, we can not discern when or where we picked up this idea for our selves. At least, I can't. It seems you may be in the same boat as I am.

We can go in a couple of different directions from here when thinking about our situation. We could explore where the idea came from and how we arrived at it. Or perhaps we can ask if it matters where it came from - perhaps what matters is how we use it. Or maybe you have another option?

You choose. But I think we risk shorthanding critical points if we try to take on too much at once.

[_Bond James Bond]

Apple bong. That's the decision and the solution of the executive committee of the Chatters.

[_honorentheos]

Simon,

Since you've posted in other threads since this I suppose it is not a major breach of etiquette to assume you do not have a preference which direction we go next. So I'll take the liberty of advancing the discussion.

As I recall, we have come to recognize that the internal idea of apple has a subjective origin that we can not identify. I don't know where I acquired the idea of apple or learned to associate it with something else, and it appears you do not either. Yet we both have this idea.

At this point, let's discuss why we take it for granted that we have learned to associate the idea of apple with an external object.

My opinion - we don't think about it because it works. My idea of apple as I currently hold it is not significantly surprised by my interaction with the external object I associate with it. It does what I assume it will. Over my lifetime, my interactions with objects that match the idea of apple have either confirmed and strenghtened my idea of apple, or where I have been surprised by this interaction the idea has been modified and refined. Because of this strengthening and modifying, I would argue that every time I have to make use of the idea apple, or encounter an object that causes my brain to access memories dealing with apple, I am also refining the idea itself. It's largely consistent because of the amount of experience I have with making use of this idea, but it's still dynamic.

My idea - apple - is ever changing and modifying based on my experience with the world. It is different today than it was 5 years ago. Yet as with how I acquired this idea, this series of changes is mostly inaccessible to me. Sometimes a major surprise from an interaction that conflicts with the idea will become very conscious-oriented such as biting into a sour green apple or finding a worm. But most of the modification is so subtle I doubt we could be any more successful in reconstructing it than we were in trying to recall it's genesis.

So this brings up two points - first, the idea apple is dynamic. And second, we become only slightly conscious of the dynamic nature of our ideas when they are contradicted.

At this point you could suggest that we are taking this data in on faith. Which is true. But I'd argue that we are not placing faith in the reality of the objects we interact with, but in the accuracy and usefulness of our ideas.

Does this seem close to the point you were starting to make about the brain being the nexus of both sense-data interpretation and emotion?

And is there anything that you'd disagree with above?

Again, my interest is in taking your OP seriously.

[_Simon Belmont]

Simon,

Since you've posted in other threads since this I suppose it is not a major breach of etiquette to assume you do not have a preference which direction we go next. So I'll take the liberty of advancing the discussion.

As I recall, we have come to recognize that the internal idea of apple has a subjective origin that we can not identify. I don't know where I acquired the idea of apple or learned to associate it with something else, and it appears you do not either. Yet we both have this idea.

At this point, let's discuss why we take it for granted that we have learned to associate the idea of apple with an external object.

My opinion - we don't think about it because it works. My idea of apple as I currently hold it is not significantly surprised by my interaction with the external object I associate with it. It does what I assume it will. Over my lifetime, my interactions with objects that match the idea of apple have either confirmed and strenghtened my idea of apple, or where I have been surprised by this interaction the idea has been modified and refined. Because of this strengthening and modifying, I would argue that every time I have to make use of the idea apple, or encounter an object that causes my brain to access memories dealing with apple, I am also refining the idea itself. It's largely consistent because of the amount of experience I have with making use of this idea, but it's still dynamic.

I like this description. I agree with it.

My idea - apple - is ever changing and modifying based on my experience with the world. It is different today than it was 5 years ago. Yet as with how I acquired this idea, this series of changes is mostly inaccessible to me. Sometimes a major surprise from an interaction that conflicts with the idea will become very conscious-oriented such as biting into a sour green apple or finding a worm. But most of the modification is so subtle I doubt we could be any more successful in reconstructing it than we were in trying to recall it's genesis.

Is this also some sort of sub-conscious function? When you say the series of changes is "mostly inaccessible," that could indicate such a function.

So this brings up two points - first, the idea apple is dynamic. And second, we become only slightly conscious of the dynamic nature of our ideas when they are contradicted.

Good point; so when we bite into a sour apple, we become conscious of the dynamic nature of our idea of what an apple is supposed to "be" (in this case, taste like). And its taste is a sense that is interpreted by our brain, which responds with the "sour" mechanism (whatever that may look like).

At this point you could suggest that we are taking this data in on faith. Which is true. But I'd argue that we are not placing faith in the reality of the objects we interact with, but in the accuracy and usefulness of our ideas.

Does this seem close to the point you were starting to make about the brain being the nexus of both sense-data interpretation and emotion?

Yes, and I like the ideas you pointed out about the duality between our ideas of things and the reality of things. I think the brain is the nexus for our interpretation of everything ranging from emotion, to our ideas of physical objects (sensory input data). My question is, why are emotions almost immediately discounted as evidence, while our ideas of reality are not -- they are both filtered through our mind.