Series:
Essay 8d:
Synopsis:
Self
Real-to-Real
I naturally see essence, then I convert essence into idea and I use it in abstract thinking
This is part 4 of 4 in Real-to-Real.
Real-to-real is the theme of this essay and the last three. I’ll sum them up. First, perception connects directly with material reality. Second, I naturally make sense of the things in perception-- I see the essences of things (as relevant to me). Third, an essence is a pattern that exists within the movement of matter, and it’s real. Fourth and last, I convert essences into ideas which I use in abstract thinking, then I take my abstract thinking back into material reality to see how it works. I do a reality-check. Real-to-real is an iterative process by which I understand the world, and by which we people, over millennia, have accumulated our collective knowledge of the world.
Just before I wrote this, I trimmed my fig tree while listening to a podcast. What an enjoyable way to spend a sunny afternoon! Consciousness is attention so when I’m attending to fig tree and podcast, enormous amounts of data flow from them into my consciousness, whether as light photons or vibrations in air. While perceiving them, they fill my consciousness, they become my consciousness in a direct, one-for-one matching in real-time (until I pay attention to something else).
Here’s the critical move. When I see a fig-tree branch (that is, when it fills my consciousness), I naturally make sense of it in a way that’s relevant to my purposes: is it fruit-bearing or not? I know its essence. The same essence that exists in the fig tree (in this case, regarding its fruit-bearing capacity) becomes idea in my mind. Afterwards, this essence continues in my mind as idea. Hence, the gigonormous amount of data that flowed from the tree becomes perception, and within that perception I see essence, and from that essence I create idea. Idea is the end-product that I retain in mind.
How did I do it? No one knows. No one knows how, during the act of sight perception, the light photons (which are material things) flowing into my eyes become immaterial consciousness, or how I naturally understand what I see. It’s all a mystery. Aristotle and Aquinas help with the mechanics, though. Aristotle said that intellect is identical with its object (in a certain way), which led Aquinas to say that the intellect’s nature is for itself to become the essence of the thing perceived. Just like in perception, the fig tree becomes my consciousness, and in the same way, my intellect becomes the essence of fig tree. Then my intellect converts that essence into idea. Or to put it another way: just like the eye naturally sees (and knows not how it sees), so the intellect reflexively makes sense of perception, seeing essence and converting it into idea. Intellect does it and knows not how.
OK, now I have in mind the nature of a fig tree’s fruit-bearing capacity, so I think about it. I decide to nip the green tips of branches to force the tree’s energy away from branch elongation and into fig production. Maybe I remove the high branches that don’t produce figs. A couple months later, I see that I was right: I got more figs and they came earlier in the season… but by removing the higher canopy, I exposed the figs to sunlight and some got burnt. What happened here? I understood certain essences of fig tree (as relevant to fruit production), I converted the essences into ideas, I engaged in abstract thinking about my ideas, I created a plan and acted on it, and then a couple months later, I did a reality-check and saw where my plan worked and didn’t work. Next year I’ll leave more canopy and see how that turns out.
Truth is correspondence with reality, therefore, to be true, abstract thinking must test itself in reality. William James waxes poetic on this feedback loop between sense perception and abstract thinking:
“They are wrapt and rolled together as a gunshot in the mountains is wrapt and rolled in fold on fold of echo and reverberative clamor…. Perception prompts our thought, and thought in turn enriches our perception. The more we see, the more we think; while the more we think, the more we see in our immediate experiences, and the greater grows the detail and the more significant the articulateness of our perception” (from Percept and Concept).
Intellect also tests for truth within abstract thinking. Remember that intellect reflexively makes sense of everything within consciousness, so when I’m thinking, my thoughts are in my consciousness and I automatically make sense of them. When I wake up at 3am, maybe I think about the podcast I was listening to in the afternoon. There’s no reality-check at 3am, so instead, I check my thinking for its internal and logical consistency, and for its consistency with my existing knowledge and memories of reality. At 3am I’m lost in thought, but so long as I do a reality-check in the morning, it works. Not doing a reality-check in the morning was like training martial arts during Covid. My buddy and me trained jiu-jitsu technique in my garage, but a lot of it didn’t work when we got back to the gym and competed against other BJJ players. Intellect must go into the real world for a reality-check.
Real-to-real means that perception is reality, essences are of reality, ideas anchor in reality, and then I think about my ideas and go back into reality to verify them. The magic is that somewhere in this process, somehow, there occurs a mode conversion, from material things into immaterial consciousness and back again into the material. Consciousness and material things flow together, back and forth, in endless iterations. Immaterial mind and material things are the two faces of my one, unified human reality, and all of it’s real.
Here's the upshot. Real-to-real means that perception, essence and idea all anchor directly in reality. We’re fully in our universe (not alienated), we can know our universe as it really is, and we’re getting better all the time. Our world is given to us as an open book, by grace of God.
Essays in this Series, Self:
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Real-to-Real (4 essays)
*Into the Buzz
*Making Sense
*Essence
*Real-to-Real --Here