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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