20000805.02
To recapitulate: Cognition does not entail the transfer of a
real object (Ding an Sich) or of its image into the mind; and the
knowledge of the object is not the exhibition of a mental image
thereof. On the contrary: cognition entails the unconscious
transfer by sensory perception of certain undefined
characteristics of the real object into the mind which is
modified by the unconscious transfer to generate a symbolic form
of the object. This symbolic form may be conceived of as a
functional or structural or biochemical or biophysical or
molecular alteration, modification of nerve cells, of their
dendrites or their axones. But although the theory is
susceptible to such a physical transformation or reduction, there
is, aside from the remotely related after-image phenomenon at
this time no empirical basis for such a conception other than
the logically compelling characteristic of the theory.
The potential biophysical confirmation of this theory of the
unconscious apperceptive formation of the symbolic forms should
not be misconstrued as a pre-condition for its validity.
although such biophysical confirmation would surely contribute
yet another dimension of significance to the theory. The
validity of the theory is heuristic: it explains cognition more
compleletly and more unambiguously than prior theories.
Admittedly, it is bases in part, and it accepts without criticism
Cassirers account of the symbolic forms. However, aside from a
certain verbal and literary awkwardness in its description, the
account of symbolic forms seems to me so self-evident as to be
immune to any radical criticism.
I interpret the theory of symbolic forms to claim, in
effect, that congition is not passive, but that it is the active
general of concepts (Begriffe) and representations
(Darstellungen) according to a pattern provided by symbolic forms
resident in or generated ad hoc by the mind. What the theory of
symblic forms, so far as I can ascertain, leaves unexplained, is
the source of ther correspondence between a symbolic form and the
object whose mental representation it makes possible, in other
words, the source of the pre-established harmony between the
symbolic form and that reality to which it refers. It is this
hitherto unexplained issue which my emendation addresses.
I argue that the symbolic form, be it as a function or as
the predicate of a function, is generated unconsciously by the
sensory interaction of reality and mind. The mind unconsciously
senses not the total reality of the real object (Ding an Sich)
but certain undefined aspects of that object, and this
unconscious sensation generates a template, the symbolic form
specific to that real object. Subsequent (or simultaenous)
sensation of that real object triggers an activation of an
existing symbolic form, or more likely of the development of
symbolic form, and it is this activated symbolic form which then
generates the cognitive experience, the cognition, die
Erkenntnis, of the particular object.
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