Re: [microsound] puff 'n stuff

[brett lockspeiser <blocks@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > it is senseless to say that
> >we are never fully aware of the present. our experience is
> >always experience of the present state of the brain.
> by the "present" I mean: outside stimulus that needs our immediate
> attention...I think the delay between external stimulus and it
> registering in the brain has been medically proven, no?

if you think about the situation in purely mechanical terms then it's
pretty straightforward to say that the effect of a stimulus on the brain
is delayed - all causal processes in this sense have this delay.

but when you start talking about these situatioons in terms of
'experience' it gets a little more complicated to keep track of just what
you're saying. *if* you say that experience is experience *of* the
stimulus than there is a delay - the traffic light turns green, photons
hit the retina, electric signals, blah blah blah, then you have the
experience of seeing the light turn green - but this experience of the
light turning green necessarily happens at a delay from when the light
actually turned green.

but (and maybe this is just boring philosophical semantics, but i think
there's something to it) if experience is a physical product of the brain,
then there is a very real sense in which it doesn' make sense to talk
about 'experience of the stimulus' - experience is always experience of
the brain, and it so happens that your brain has been effected and
structured by external stimulus - but that stimulus itself is not a part
of your consciousness at all. you never see the world, you just see the
inside of your head, but the inside of your head is causaly connected to
the rest of the world.

talk of 'experince of the stimulus' is also difficult because it requires
some sort of referential link between your brain and external objects.
what makes neurons in your head 'refer' to a traffic light? the two are
afterall just two physical objects. is it because the traffic light
effected the neurons? well, just about everythinig effects just about
everything else around it - so is everything always refering to everything
else? the idea that our experience is a representaiton of the world is a
post-facto gloss - one with a lot of sense too it, but one with a lot of
troubles as well. if you don't interpret experience to be "of" something
which is external to it, then experieince is always of the present, the
present state of the brain.

but really this is the kind of thinkning that causes car accidents, so do
be careful.

brett.