Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

which everything is embodied.

Sensation

I suggested we might make better sense of things through a progression — sensation, perception, impulse, image, symbol — a progression very much centred on how we experience the world as embodied selves. It was seen that image — imagination — is how we process the world of our experiences and indeed our actions. And symbol — stories, art, literature — is how we communicate our world-view to others. We can, through symbol, communicate some of our observations, and gain some knowledge of the world surrounding us. It is not all story, ‘text’, or ‘interpretation of text’. But image is how we interpret our experiences of the world to ourselves, in the first instance. And hence there is something of a fixation with essence — for what, after all, is image about except trying to capture essence? Symbol — the communication of image — is therefore always a story of some sort, and trying to get a grasp of essence is the core of these stories.

When we form symbols to communicate with others — by way of describing in words ethical or aesthetic judgements, for instance — then this can have an effect on the ‘impulse’ that might be initiated via subsequent perceptions and sensations. So the sensation progression has a certain ‘reciprocity’. On the one hand, consciousness must exist before quality and value can emerge (bottom up). On the other hand, quality and value exist prior to consciousness — if indeed ‘prior to’ has any

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