reed-1996b.html

Reed, Edward J. The necessity of experience.

1. ecological information "allows us to experience things for ourselves"

balance between primary and processed experience"

3 - "when I meet you face to face there is no limit to the possibilities of exploration and discovery."

no inherent limit on information

5 - we organize time to emphasize 2nd hand experience <!-- Spanish culture doesn't -->

Gibson's theory ties people to how they encounter their world

11 - everyday experience should be the basis for philosophy

16 - Kant suggests dual strategy

a. embrace ordinary experience

b. don't assume the our experience gives us perfect knowledge

21 - Western philosophers, scientists and artists recreated experiences to fit with their theories

their theories such as pointillists

experience

is this exotic? (such as suggested by Jimi Hendrix)

or everyday? (Shakespeare)

24 - key assumption for the disaster is that there is an interface between our cognitive powers and the real object

25 - "causal theory" is that there are two steps to perception

this is a trap

Bertrand Russell

if physics is correct

then primary experience cannot be true

30 - Gibson breaks through this all the sensations are incidental or even useless

"the useful aspects of perceptual process are the stream of activitites - looking, listening, feeling, scrutinizing, checking - that yield meaningful information and shapes our experiences of a world full of significances, both valuable and dangerous."

36 - "the question "How shall I live" -- "can only come from a philosophy that is engaged with the world of primary experiences"

38 - Dewey

the quest for certainty is elistist

negative freedom - freedoms from constraints <!-- see Sen -->

42 - talking about Dewey

"We experience the world in terms of what it means to us"

49 - philosophy only has authority " to the extent that philosophers will risk being wrong in service of our collective human experience to understand and improve ourselves"

50 - "Practical action and thought can improve us, even if they cannot perfect us."

practice in practical action "This will require education that emphasizes personal experience and its growth and conditions of daily life that foster genuine collaborations and cooperation."

51 - modern philosophy wants universal truths, not ideosyncratic experiences

this philogophy undermines our ability to understand true to life experiences

which leads to undervaluing experiences

and then to a degraded environment that is impoverished and dangerous

we "machine" our minds to fit with the workplace

the car has automated urban design - certain features are assumed

57 - in the content that our senses can be fooled sometimes and that you can't always tell "No idea has been more pernicious in the Western traditoin thatn the assumption that knowledge equals certainty, which equals a divorce from everyday experience"

67 - "to be alive is to enjoy risks andlearn from mistakes - something must or our instutions deny us on a daily basis"

"basic truth of human life that lived experience is central to our well-being"

Chapter 4 is about the degradation of the workplace environment

76 - We place students in environments that do not support learning and then complain that they are deficient in learning.

78 - technology is being used in a damaging way

"The issues is not one of technology but of what Lewis Mumford called technics: how we use the technology."

81 - "Our civilization fancies that it exalts individuality, but what we really honor is the search for rapidity and certainty - at the expense of wisdom."

machined experience, reduce choices to a menu, workers have to stick to the menu and, often, let the computer make the decision