Re: [-empyre-] Artists as internal mental sense organs

[Nancy Paterson <Nancy.Paterson@senecac.on.ca>]

> Art is therefore a means of enabling the parts of our
> minds that know, but can not speak, to participate in conscious life.
> Often, the only means of accessing that part involves the 
> cultivation of
> non-standard cognitive pathways and mappings. To assume the profession
> of artist is to become a surrogate sensor and (mis-)translator of the
> internally perceivable to the external world. 

'Digital representation' involves 'quantization' to restrict the possible values of an observable quantity or magnitude (or to 'express as multiples of a given quantity or quantum'). Quantization is essentially a metaphor. Digital and analog are different, but not opposite nor exclusive of one another. Computers were once analog, now they are digital. The computer is simply a tool - an application. Technology-base definitions, which are akin to encouraging a driver to navigate a course by 'turning left when you pass Farmer Miller's cow' are to be discouraged. Cows have a tendency to wander and such directions, while well-intentioned, are essentially useless. The cow keeps moving; technology keeps changing. As such the term 'computationalism' in use to describe 'mental states as computational states' may remain. What we need to discard is pre-suppositions about computation (logic, processing, etc.)
Nancy