Imaginative Rationality

[coberst]

Imaginative Rationality

All of our laws of natural science are human constructs that depended upon imaginative rationality in their construction.

Human understanding is about a process of developing imaginative models of reality and then testing those imaginative structures against what is perceived as reality. We comprehend our model of reality, i.e. our hypothesis, as being true when that model fits our comprehension of the situation closely enough for our purposes.

In our vanity we have tried to hide the true nature of imagination because imagination has been closely associated with the body, how ghastly the vulgar body when compared to the nature of gods. Can one be a god when one is required to drag along the body, especially when that body includes an anus?

Imagine how imagination works.

Imagination has a two part job: Imagination is part of the creation of image schemas and of the creation of elaborate models of reality. Imagination fits into the beginning of thought and into the resulting meaning of thought.

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) and Antonio Damasio inform me that before there is a concept of an object or an experience there exists already preconceptual structures that makes such things possible.

An object is an entity: such as a person, rock, tree, tooth ache, song, melody, etc. An image is a “mental pattern in any of the sensory modalities, e.g. a sound image, a tactile image, the image of a state of well-being. Such images convey aspects of the physical characteristics of the object and they may also convey the reaction of like or dislike one may have for an object, the plans one may formulate for it, or the web of relationships of this object among other objects.” Pge 9 damasio

How are such resulting images from the inputs from our five sensory portals formed into what might loosely be called the MITB (“movie-in-the-brain”)? Damasio says “I believe these qualities will be eventually explained neurobiological although at the moment the neurobiological account is incomplete and there is an explanatory gap.”

Consciousness is a matter of connecting this MITB with the self. Damasio cannot explain at this time the biological formation of the object but sets himself the task of theorizing about the second problem of consciousness; that is the parallel problem of comprehending the sense of self in the act of knowing.

Consciousness is the coming together of an object and the self.

Quotes from “The Feeling of what Happens” Antonio Damasio