(September 17, 2016 at 12:15 am)Bunburryist Wrote: Anyway – and maybe I should have just asked this up front – is there already such a concept in the world of philosophy? Does anyone have a similar concept?
Yes, sir. The concepts and ideas articulated in your op remind of Gregory Bateson. I think you might appreciate and enjoy Form, Substance and Difference; however, it is not easy reading (my classmates and I racked our brains trying to understand these ideas). In a nutshell, Bateson is all about trying to make sense of sense-making. Do we truly experience this world as it is or are our experiences simply the product of our internal sense-making processes? Is it possible to experience our world in a completely neutral way (beyond any particular sense-making process)? Is there an objective way of making sense of reality? These are the types of questions that Bateson tackles.
Excerpt from Form, Substance and Difference (The article appeared in The General Semantics Bulletin, no. 37, 1970):
"...I suggest to you, now, that the word "idea," in its most elementary sense, is synonymous with "difference." Kant, in the Critique of Judgment—if I understand him correctly—asserts that the most elementary aesthetic act is the selection of a fact. He argues that in a piece of chalk there are an infinite number of potential facts. The Ding an sich, the piece of chalk, can never enter into communication or mental process because of this infinitude. The sensory receptors cannot accept it; they filter it out. What they do is to select certain facts out of the piece of chalk, which then become, in modern terminology, information.
I suggest that Kant's statement can be modified to say that there is an infinite number of differences around and within the piece of chalk. There are differences between the chalk and the rest of the universe, between the chalk and the sun or the moon. And within the piece of chalk, there is for every molecule an infinite number of differences between its location and the locations in which it might have been. Of this infinitude, we select a very limited number, which become information. In fact, what we mean by information—the elementary unit of information—is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy. The pathways are ready to be triggered. We may even say that the question is already implicit in them." (Bateson. The General Semantics Bulletin, no 37., 1970, pp: 459-460)
P.S The link I provided was part of my class resources, so the university may restrict access. If this does happen, then try this link: Bateson Article (full length). The format of the first link will be easier to read. I hope this information has been useful, Bunburryist. Thanks for this thread
