Thanks for your reply, Norm. It is interesting and useful.
I'm not sure whether you are a zealot, but I wonder if you have
considered alternative hypotheses to address the problem. It would be
valuable to do so, I think. Your ideas may not change, but they may.
There are some very powerful alternatives to the somewhat mechanistic
explanation that you have given. I think they would not directly refute
your analysis, but they may open up quite different lines of thinking
that you may find rewarding. In other words, one may accept the
biological and psychological explanation you have given and still not
find it entirely adequate to the problem of "seeing."
I wish we could talk in person. Ah, this is where e-mail begins to
break down, doesn't it. We could bounce references back and forth over
e-mail, but the real meaning may elude us. And isn't this precisely the
problem of seeing and looking? Your explanation of the mind's eye, if I
may use this phrase now, only raises further questions for me, rather
than settling them. What is there about the mind's eye that lets
us--you and I--share an idea and know together what we mean? The
chemistry of our brains may account for it, but I wonder . . . if there
are other things not revealed by brain chemistry--or by cognitive
matters of information processing. Herb would tell me that this is all
there is, but I still wonder. And I wonder, if it is all so clear, why
other smart people are not satisfied by the explanation.
Will your ideas be part of your dissertation? It will be good reading,
I am sure.
By the way, I think there is an important difference between "semantics"
and "inquiry." Semantics, in the sense I am using the term here, is a
set of established meanings that come from someone's work--reading
Vygotsky, for example. We may take up those meanings and work ahead a
bit along the path that they suggest. This happens often enough among
people--and, unfortunately, in many doctoral dissertations. Most of the
work lies in untangling the meaning of an author's words. This, to me,
is not inquiry. Inquiry is not about figuring out an author's words--an
important skill at the undergraduate level and at the master's level,
but only a small tool at the doctoral level. Inquiry is about figuring
out the world. I think there is a fundamental difference between a
semantic problem and a problem for inquiry. I suspect that many
doctoral students--in all fields--never reach a point where they
understand this difference.
I am interested in your thoughts on this matter.
Best wishes,
Dick
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