Has anyone seen my neutral pointer?

[Bunburryist]

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. 


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

I read the long version.  Reading talks/articles like that is like touring Paris in a day.  “Hey, can’t we stop there for a while?”  Every other sentence could be a thread!  And you could read it over and over and keep pulling stuff out. 
Of course, the implicit (material) worldview of the talk is as diametrically opposite to mine as possible.  The pleroma (the world of infinite differences) and the creatura (“mind”  which result from a culling of those differences) dichotomy is interesting, though.  In a way, that dichotomy exists in my thinking, only in exactly the opposite way.  Where as in his view it is ultimately the material world of infinite differences that is the reality, which leads to the neuronal processes culling all but those differences which it needs to “make sense” of that reality, in my view, we take a holistic experience and we pull meaningful differences from that experience.   (How physical measurement fits into my way of thinking is another thing for another thread.)  What’s missing from that view however, is what is missing from all physical description – and what is my starting point in thinking about what I am - my holistic experiences of color/space, thought, etc..  – none of which can be described or defined in physical terms.  That’s why behaviorism and it’s various descendants – functionalism, computationalism, etc. - are the “go-to” theories for materialists.

I looked at his Wikipedia page and one thing that popped out was that he spent time on New Guinea.  I just finished reading Gerald Diamond's (the Guns, Germs, and Steel guy) book World Until Yesterday, where he compares various aspects of hunter gatherer cultures - most in New Guinea - with modern societies.  A great read!  Some professional anthropologists weren't thrilled with it, but as Diamond says in his preface (I'm paraphrasing) - to do a comprehensive exploration of these ideas would require volumes.  It is, for the non-professional anthropologist, an interesting outline of a fascinating subject.