In this weeks philosophy class we ended up diving head first into ontology and metaphysics – the favourite field of many a philosopher. Or in other words, how does our information about the world connect to what is really there. The most interesting gateway to this problem to me is biology, since the richness of species and senses here on earth has a lot to show us of how limited our initial view of the world is. As Richard Dawkins would put it; we live in a middle- world. Only seeing and perceiving that which is important to our survival. I think it is very telling that babies get a kick of looking at faces, and that adults have a similar reaction to trees. A good camouflage technique when lying down is to make you look less human. People are important to people.I see we have spun away from ontology and metaphysics, and started talking about perception. But perception is really just the same thing. Cut the concept of perception into two parts. One part where our senses take in the input of our surroundings, and the other where we overlay our sensory input with knowledge of our own. Our mind actually pretty much does exactly what you see “the terminator” do, when he overlays the world with information. Our mind plays ball, so to speak, between every real world object in our vision and our memory. That’s why, when you see a TV, you not only know what it’s for, but if you dig deeper you can unravel in your mind it’s type and manufacturer, the possible location of the people shown on the surface and much more. That knowledge is not apparent in you initial perception; it is contained within your massive library of knowledge.
Knowledge about the world in this way is called “semantic memory”. A fitting name I think - knowledge pertaining to that situation. This phenomenon is what makes sociology interesting for me, because in those hundreds of calculations per second we are doing in our mind, we are at the same time constructing the social space around us. We are acting upon the knowledge we have, thus changing our actions. In addition to the information carried on objects, and the objective knowledge we have about people, humans also have something that is called theory of mind and mirror neurons.
The first; theory of mind , is the conscious knowledge that someone else is also conscious and can make calculations just as yourself. You know, in other words, that there is some commonality to your understanding of the world and this other persons understanding of what is going on. So theory of mind lets you anticipate other’s actions and respond accordingly.
Mirror neurons are cells in your brain that fire (are activated) just the same in two very different situations; 1) When you do an action, and 2) when another person performs the same action. This works both ways, so that an action you have not done before becomes encoded in your brain. Even without consciously doing so, you are teaching yourself social behaviour in your day to day interaction.
Just because mirror neurons, and our theory of mind deals with information and things that haven’t really happened yet – doesn’t mean that they aren’t real. They are just not obvious. Hence in our understanding of the metaphysical properties of the space we inhabit most of the time - the real world and social space – we must somehow account for all this “less than visible” activity.
Think about how rich our environments suddenly are! There is:
• Our visual input, the shadows of the metaphysical so to speak.
• Our information about those objects.
• Our information of the thought world of others.
• Our information about past, and future contexts.
Our imaginations stretches far beyond the walls of our apartments - something to have in mind when a room is full of people. That room is always going to be reeealy huge!
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