Picture a sword
- Bebelle
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Picture a sword
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Re: Picture a sword
I pulled that off of a site called human-memory.net. I believe it answers your question. We are able to see a sword because we've seen a sword before, and the neurons associated with the sword we've seen, fire again when recalling the image of that sword. Since we are "reliving" or imagining the experience of a sword, the same neurons that fired with the first experience fire again. We are seeing a visual memory of the sword.
Because it is my memory of a sword, yes it is me that sees the sword. If you're getting at whether or not we really exist, that is something that can never be known.
Someone please correct me if the part about the brain is incorrect or incomplete.
- Burning ghost
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Re: Picture a sword
Also, be aware that in language we use "visual" prompts for understanding. Like when I ask "Do you see what I mean?", I obviously don't mean see with your eyes!
Language, communication, understanding and sense is a very complicated thing. The neurological explanation given above is but one way to approach the problem and frame some form of meaning. If you play around and flash between physical reductionism, analogy and metaphor, you'll fleetingly grasp at something in which the human condition is "embodied", for want of a better term!
The issue of temporality is a very difficult thing to get our heads around. We are seemingly "stretched out" across time and have to be in order to appreciate anything at all. Language really fails us in communicating the impression of immanent "being". These kind of things have been wrestled with by philosophers for eons! Maybe its nothing more than an illusion created by language we're wrestling with? Maybe the 'question' is a means of creating questions not a proposition that we have any real truth with which to answer (although in abstract realms with set propositional rules and symbols we can most certainly produce answers - mathematics being a powerful example of this, and one more obvious to anyone who has ever played any kind of game.)
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Re: Picture a sword
I search the mental archives for sword images - epee, gladius, scimitar, saber, piandao, foil, claymore, cutlass, bokken, rapier...
naked and sheathed, hanging at an officer's hip or on a wall, stuck in a body or a stone, broken on the ground, held in a hand, resting on a shoulder... shiny or tarnished or rusty or bloody; at rest and in motion, as I've seem in life or depicted on film, in paint or line-drawing.
I fixate on the best-preserved specimen in my memory collection: a silver broadsword, about 4cm long, with a loop on the pommel for threading the chain through, as I last saw it some 40 years ago.
But I can't keep the image before my eyes: it fades in and out, morphs with the face of the person I gave it to, and slides away into associations with that time, flickers as something attracts my attention to the present.
Oh yeah, that's me all right.
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Re: Picture a sword
Can you please explain the meaning of your post.
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Re: Picture a sword
It's a response to the OP questions:Maxcady10001 wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2017, 10:01 pm Alias
Can you please explain the meaning of your post.
So what is this sword that you are seeing and is it really you that it is looking at it?
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Re: Picture a sword
- Burning ghost
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Re: Picture a sword
Basically I just mean that in order to "picture anything", we must have a foundation upon which to lay our sensible experiences. That said it seems we must necessarily distinguish there to be some threshold after which we're capable of "seeing". This is likely entangled in the mishmash of inbuilt sensory appreciation upon which input is stored in memory and from which arises a general layout of our being about (in/around) a world.
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Re: Picture a sword
- Burning ghost
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Re: Picture a sword
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Re: Picture a sword
Exactly. The picturing the OP asks for is only "seeing" - which isn't all that difficult if you have actually, literally seen at least one example of the named object. If you don't know what the word "sword" means - say you don't speak English well enough - you can't conjure up an image of it, no matter how many you may have seen. If do know what it means and have seen some swords, you can call up an image, even if you are blind now. But if you were born blind and have never seen a sword, you can't picture one, even if you know what the word means. I wonder how a blind person imagines objects they understand but have never seen. "Picture" would certainly be the wrong term for that imaging exercise.Burning ghost wrote: ↑December 4th, 2017, 12:35 am Basically I just mean that in order to "picture anything", we must have a foundation upon which to lay our sensible experiences.
Actual, non-quote seeing can only be done with functional eyes. "Seeing" or picturing can only be done with the memory of something that has been actually seen. Imagining can be accomplished with the memory imprint of other senses. I wonder where imaging fits.
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Re: Picture a sword
- Burning ghost
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Re: Picture a sword
I imagine the 3rd Edition will have enough to chew on. Would probably be more manageable to print out the pages you need too rather than lugging a breezeblock of a book around! I rarely leave the house with mine and make damn sure I need a workout when I do! haha!
Enjoy
- SimpleGuy
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Re: Picture a sword
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023