cartesian outsides inside

Eva Ekeblad (eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se)
Wed, 20 Sep 1995 17:58:04 +0100

Hi Jay

there must be more to say on how to build
>a non-mentalistic model of the abstract and the conceptual
-- a choreography of signs?
moving away from the bunch of dualisms labelled Cartesian.

I can see how fascinating it must have been to see the outside world

"by fitting the fresh eye of a bull into a hole in a window's closed
shutter, scraping off the opaque dark coat from the back of the eyeball,
and seeing then on the back of the eye the tiny inverted image of the scene
outside the window."

like Descartes did, according to a quote from
Herrnstein, Richard, J. and Edwin G. Boring. 1965. A Source Book in the
History of Psychology. Cambridge Ma: Harvard University Press.

but when stretching to grasp (what?) I can see that as for epistemology
this fascination leads into paradox upon paradox (impossible, in theory to
grasp... the scene outside the window, and yet we do it all the time)

the homunculus locked into the dark and stuffy room of infinite regress...
which somehow has something to do with a practice of mindhand
separations... having perhaps, after all nothing to do with the practice of
theory?

gotta run for my bus!
Eva