What is the nature of perspective, if memory is composed of forgetting and remembering within the lens of that internal or projected story?
Perspective is the distinguishing element in humanity. Consider that vision is in principle like an optical instrument. Humanity is that lens that stands between an image and its reflection, deciding which things should be remembered, and what details to fade out of focus.
No machine may do this, except an acting being first give it direction. An autofocusing lens can perform this function, but it is only the viewer that may determine what objects it ought focus on, and so forth.
Action has been defined by Mises as that which distinguishes humans from insentient beings. Acting beings may observe, but then decide if what is observed is suitable, or unsuitable. Perhaps that observed is a state of being, the opinion of a friend, or even some foreign affair.
In fact human perspective may determine the favorability of those things observed which neither have an effect upon the observer, nor may be interacted with by the observer. The human mind instead weaves the story of a similar entity that might be subjected to the state observed. This is the act of empathy.
Empathy necessarily assumes that the actual beings subjected to the observed state share perspective with the empathizing being. The empathizing being considers not only if it may intervene and act on the behalf of another, but if humanity as a whole, or at least the totality of humanity concerned, ought to do so.
The purpose of illustrating this notion of distant observation is to elevate the concept of perspective from merely a self centered one to a group centered one.
The events of nature are filtered by the observer into preceding, simultaneous, and succeeding. This localization of the observer as simultaneous with some events, and preceding others, is the requisite for action. Action may be informed by the past, but may never effect it.
Is consciousness then the experience of the past required for an acting being to make judgements about the future, and act thereupon?
In principle yes, but in nature no. Consciousness cannot determine what actions actually will effect which events in the future, nor does it have any ability to act. Consciousness is merely an observer itself, but not of nature. Rather consciousness is that which observes an acting being, and makes judgements concerning that being, much in the same way an acting being observes the environment.
If consciousness in fact directs action, it is critical to understand how. Consciousness is more than mere experience, but rather experience told within a narrative, a meta-narrative in fact.
This meta-narrative informs the acting being which courses of action are 'good', and which are 'bad', but it does not do so from the perspective of the present, but rather from the perspective of the future looking back on the present.
Which past elucidates the judgement of consciousnes on the present? That is a question of the ages. What is the range of human experience? Can the ghosts of past consciousness invade the mind of the present? It is certain that they do, but the extent to which they may be heard is an individual matter.
In this manner is consciousness not real, but rather tesseral. It exists not in one reality, but rather the realities joined by simultaiety with a particular observer.
If the primary observer should understand the world from a perspective larger than itself through mechanisms like empathy, is it fanciful to assume that meta-narratives are constructed similarly of broader concerns than merely the individual being for which they illuminate action?
- Daniel Hoven
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