User:Thepigdog/book/chapter1-beginnings
All that we get is raw data, which we transform into meaning within our minds.
Our minds dont give an unbiased opinion of the data. The dont percieve certain truth or the fundamentals of actual world. Instead they construct reallity, out of nothing, by adding ideas.
The first idea is to simplify, by looking for repetition or pattern. An endless mass of data streams in. What can be done with it? Two eyes see the same image, the same but different. How is one image mapped to another. How is one point in one image mapped to one point in another.
The mapping is chosen so as to simplify by finding co-incidence. A red blob in one image is a red blob in another image. The mapping is chosen so that the red blobs coincide. This simplifies the data, because the two blobs become one blob, and a mapping.
Look now at the mappings, not the images. The mappings describe the shape of the objects in space.
Objects! The mind has created the object. Out of the seething mass of data the mind has created objects!
Objects are not inevitable. A cloud in the sky may be seen, and even tracked across the sky, but it is not an object. The clouds shape is always changing. What is, or is not the cloud is nebulous and constantly changing.
But out of the data, and an idea we construct objects. Are the objects real, or constructions of our minds? What is an animal? An animal is like a cloud, constantly changing. But the idea of an object allows us to see pattern in the data. So in that, the pattern of the animal is perceived.
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[edit] Objects
Out of the world of data, comes objects. Then everything is an object, even if nothing is permanent and fixed. An object is real, only as an idea. I am still me, if every atom in my body has changed, or if I am twice the weight, of half the intelligence. Still I remain identified as the same.
I remain the same, now and then, because the image of me may be mapped to the image of me then. A point on the image of my nose then, may be mapped to a point on the image of my nose then. And though every cell has long since gone, sloughed off by the running of lifes engine, still the pattern remains.
Recognition is a construction. It is not inevitable. Maybe I may change so much so that the illusion of me being the same person no longer works.
[edit] Identity
Having construct objects out of an ilusion in our minds, now we need identity. An identity is a tag or a label that we add to the object in our minds.
We are not in the world. We are in our minds. Tabatha Lane's beautiful face, and young body, remembered from quarter a century ago, is not out there. She is long gone or never existed, or was never the person we thought we saw. But still she exists, in our minds, and the tag or label is still there "Tabatha Lane".
The identity of objects is remembered, by remembering images of the object. When an object is re-shown it is compared with existing objects, to obtain a mapping from the rememmbered image to the current image.
[edit] Counting
Now we have identity, we can count the objects. The first farmer catches a bunch of goats. There is no number in his mind. He does not know one, or two, or many. Only the need to eat one day and the next, and the next exists.
The first farmer, alone except for his trusty dog, stairs into the darkness. In the morning will he have the same goats? Each goat has an identity. At morning's first light he wakes up and recognises each goat by name. The wolves went hungry tonight.
But goat, when butchered and cooked, is a delicious meal, and time passes, and there are many goats. More goats but each takes a smaller place in the farmers mind. Now the farmer picks up rocks, one rock for each goat. He doesnt record the identity of each rock, but each rock has an identity.
At night he identifies each goat and for each goat he puts a stone into his pocket. There is a mapping from stones to goats. One goat for one stone.
In the images from his left and right eyes he maps points in the image in his left eye to points in the image in his right. Now he does the same with stones and goats. The stones in his pockets are mapped to the goats, in the clearing around him. One stone for each goat.
In the night a wolf finds a goat alone. Blood is everywhere, and flesh is ripped apart. In the morning the farmer maps the stones, one stone per one goat. There is a stone without a goat!
[edit] Number
There is one goat, or one stone, or one woman or one tree. Take out the oneness by itself and give it identity. It is an object, and it is the first number.
Now put one with one. One goat with one goat. One stone with one stone. One woman with one woman. It has an identity, and it is not one. Name it two.
Then there is two goats with one goat which makes two with one goats. Name this three goats.
Now there is a symbol "three" which identifies an object, which is a property of goats, or stones, or women, or trees.
[edit] This number and the next and the next
Take a number of stones in my pocket. Now I have one more stone. And again and again. Putting stones with stones becomes addition.
I am at lunch. My fat boss desires some wine. He buys one bottle. "Only one" he says as we need to get back to work. We drink a toast to his health, and the sun moves in the sky. The sun is hot and the women have dark asian skin and beautiful eyes. Time passes and we are feeling fine.
The bottle is empty. The waiter comes by and asks if we want another one. We have to get back but we are feeling fine. One more bottle seems good now.
We discuss the future. Our words slur. The ideas are out there, just beyond our reach, and each moment, another, another, and another ticks by as silky smooth notes in flow of the music. Our minds crackle and disconnect. We are aliens now, alone in our thoughts, but another moment easily slips by.
In magic now, without pre-cognition, the waiter emerges from thin air. "Would you like another bottle?" The answer is as inevitable as the passing of the seasons.
So if one bottle seems a good idea, and drinking one more bottle will make drinking the next bottle seem like a good idea, then all the bottles are already drunk. Like chocolate biscuits in a packet, I only went to eat the first one, but then there was only the wrapper.
[edit] Relationships
What we perceive is not the objects, but the relationships between objects. How then do we perceive objects? We dont see the objects, only their relationship to each other.
An object has attributes, name, colour, size, weight. Dont these objects describe the object? But everything is an object now. The colour red is an object. It has an identity. If we see the same colour again, we know it is the same one. So when we percieve that the dog Max is Red we are seeing a relationship between objects.
Two identities are linked, the dog Max, and the colour Red. Look at the identities alone and what is left is a single point of identity, meaning nothing, other than the identity alone.
But join them,in a relationbship, and they form part of the pattern of relationship that has structure. Now how can we recognise the structure of this relationship?
