From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: making sense of 'sense'
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 09:37:55 -0500


Geof/Hugh:

Based upon Hugh's opening salvo, Geof wants to have a discussion about
the sense of sense.  OK, here are my two cents for what its worth:

There appears to be an opposition, perhaps even a differend, between the
regime of mind and the realm of the senses. I remember back in the
sixties there was a popular aphorism, usually attributed to Allan Watts,
which stated:

"I've lost my mind and come to my senses."

During roughly the same time period, Leon Festinger developed his theory
of cognitive dissonance. I think there was some previous discussion of
the theory at this site. Roughly speaking, the theory regards the mind
or intellect as a conservative entity, which strives to maintain its
equilibrium.  If it receives sensory data that contradicts its world
view, this causes tension or 'dissonance' to occur. 

Common sense would predict that the subject would simply change its mind
to incorporate the new evidence. The reality, however, which has been
confirmed by experimental testing, is that exactly the opposite is more
likely to occur. A subject will usually find ways to block the evidence
by re-interpreting it in such a way that its pre-existing world view is
reinforced. This is why an argument between a liberal and conservative
or between an atheist and a believer seldom results in any radical
change of opinion. 

This theory also has philosophical ramifications. Even though I don't
have the time to go into it today, I believe it is related in important
ways to the epistemological holism that W.O. Quine presents in his
seminal essay "The Two Dogmas of Empiricism", the emphasis on
'difference' in Deleuze's "Logic of Sense" and the argument of the early
Wittgenstein that metaphysical ideas about religion, ethics, and
aesthetics are all literally non-sense, about which strictly speaking
nothing cannot be said, but which only can be shown.

Art attempts to overcome this numbing of the senses in various ways;
most of which for modernism and postmodernism, involve a kind of shock
tactics. In his discussion of Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin makes the
following comment:

"The greater the share of the shock factor in particular impressions,
the more consistently consciousness has to be alert as a screen against
stimuli, the more efficiently it does so, the less do these impressions
enter experience, tending to remain in the sphere of a certain hour in
one's life. Perhaps the special achievement of shock defense may be seen
in its function of assigning to an incident a precise point in time in
consciousness at the cost of the integrity of its contents. This would
be a peak achievement of the intellect; it would turn the incident into
a moment that has been lived."

One of the interesting things about this phenomenon is the way it is
reflected in a radical way by religious experience. The result of shock
can be that it sometimes makes an inroad into the intellect, beyond
these defense mechanisms, where it comes to reside as a kind of alien
body. In defending itself against the threat of this enemy within, the
intellect tends to polarize itself against it, giving birth to a kind of
Manichean universe. Paul, as the persecutor of Christians, is perhaps
the classic instance of this psychic development.  

Sometimes the battle is lost, as it was in the case of Paul, not merely
by capitulation to the enemy, but by means of a new integration that
fuses the two sides in a new manner, making them whole. The religious
traditions speak of this in terms of birth/rebirth, destruction/creation
and chaos/order, so overpowering is the experience. 

The Christians talk about being born again and becoming a child, Islamic
mystics invoke Fana, a kind of self immolation, which they often
illustrate  by using the classic metaphor of the desire of the moth for
the flame, and the Buddhists call it Nirvana, the death of the ego-mind,
a word that literally means 'a blowing out'.  

When the sixties spoke of 'blowing your mind' and 'losing your mind and
coming to your senses' it was thus invoking religious categories. This
experience was usually brought about by the sensation of hallucinogenic
drugs, of which the most popular was commonly referred to as Acid,
invoking the old paradox of self-reflexity within a universal substance;
namely, how can a substance be capable of dissolving everything without
dissolving itself.  

This refers us back again to the mystery of the senses. The senses
reveal to us the alterity, the sheer otherness of what we feel of what
it is we need to defend ourselves against; the senses literally
functioning as death's door. 

Yet we also sense obliquely this enemy remains somehow ourselves, for we
too are a part of this alien nature. This uncanny is both strange and
familiar. Although there may be distance, there is no separation. 

If the mind can be interpreted as a kind of Freudian defense mechanism
against the traumas of existence, then the senses are its shocking rub.
Death remains god's way of ribbing Adam.

Eric 

If the doors of perception could be cleansed, then man would see
everything as it is, infinite. 

 

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