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4 The Animal Sensorium
roles in almost every situation we encounter: We move in and out of rooms,
get ourselves into our clothes, place things in drawers, draw water out of a well.
We may get ourselves into difficult situations. The container may have physical
boundaries which are hard to pass through: A person might be in prison, or
metaphorically, stuck in a situation from which he cannot escape.
Like elementary sensations such as pain or hunger—which point directly to
objective things, and are constituted by their own meaning—feeling-images
point to external things which they elucidate and to which they impart meaning. That is their purpose: For example you don’t explain the ‘container’
notion—you feel it, and know it as part of your primary consciousness of
how the world is. The feeling-image itself is the court of last appeal, and there
is no deeper source of meaning. If you need to articulate a thought verbally,
you draw on the way you experience it inwardly, and turn that feeling-image
into words.
In conclusion, all original meaning comes out of the rich and varied array
of sensations that we and all animals are born with. Under the guidance of
experience together with an underlying unifying process, sensations are fused
together to yield Gestalt image-schemas which have complex meaning. Original meaning comes from the primary Sensorium, but as sensations are joined in
multiple combinations, their meanings are brought together into compound
units which have derived meaning. Just as plants draw nourishment from the
soil through their roots, all thoughts draw their content ultimately from the
Sensorium.
The Grand Design
The most fundamental characteristic of the activity of living things is that it is
purposeful: It is carried out in pursuit of goals. An animal’s every act is shaped
by the objective purpose of the act. If creatures did not have goals then no
action would be possible: Indeed, without a purpose there would be no such
thing as activity at all, because activity would then be nothing but aimless
random movement.
Thus every living organism has goals which define and determine its behavior. Living creatures on this planet all have similar goals, which are directed
toward their survival and procreation. Clearly these goals are built into the very
design of their bodies and nervous systems.
The philosopher Daniel Dennett says that any active system—either living
or robotic—is designed to have what he calls intentionality: By this he means
that it has well-defined goals, and moreover, it acts rationally in pursuit of
4 The Animal Sensorium
roles in almost every situation we encounter: We move in and out of rooms,
get ourselves into our clothes, place things in drawers, draw water out of a well.
We may get ourselves into difficult situations. The container may have physical
boundaries which are hard to pass through: A person might be in prison, or
metaphorically, stuck in a situation from which he cannot escape.
Like elementary sensations such as pain or hunger—which point directly to
objective things, and are constituted by their own meaning—feeling-images
point to external things which they elucidate and to which they impart meaning. That is their purpose: For example you don’t explain the ‘container’
notion—you feel it, and know it as part of your primary consciousness of
how the world is. The feeling-image itself is the court of last appeal, and there
is no deeper source of meaning. If you need to articulate a thought verbally,
you draw on the way you experience it inwardly, and turn that feeling-image
into words.
In conclusion, all original meaning comes out of the rich and varied array
of sensations that we and all animals are born with. Under the guidance of
experience together with an underlying unifying process, sensations are fused
together to yield Gestalt image-schemas which have complex meaning. Original meaning comes from the primary Sensorium, but as sensations are joined in
multiple combinations, their meanings are brought together into compound
units which have derived meaning. Just as plants draw nourishment from the
soil through their roots, all thoughts draw their content ultimately from the
Sensorium.
The Grand Design
The most fundamental characteristic of the activity of living things is that it is
purposeful: It is carried out in pursuit of goals. An animal’s every act is shaped
by the objective purpose of the act. If creatures did not have goals then no
action would be possible: Indeed, without a purpose there would be no such
thing as activity at all, because activity would then be nothing but aimless
random movement.
Thus every living organism has goals which define and determine its behavior. Living creatures on this planet all have similar goals, which are directed
toward their survival and procreation. Clearly these goals are built into the very
design of their bodies and nervous systems.
The philosopher Daniel Dennett says that any active system—either living
or robotic—is designed to have what he calls intentionality: By this he means
that it has well-defined goals, and moreover, it acts rationally in pursuit of