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Samantha Beebout's picture

body matters

While I agree that there is no way of knowing what's going on, I do think that settling on an approach can lead to a new set of questions. I think that there is a lot of validity to Dickinson's claim, in part because it is bolstered by what we know from other sciences (like the fact that physics says we don't really touch surfaces). However, I think Dickinson also allows me to go down a path of questions that I wouldn't ask if I didn't negate Descartes.

I disagree which Descartes because I don't think the mind and body are separate. We are not brains in jars and what we perceive physically is inseparable from what we perceive mentally. Dickinson seems to go along with this by stating that everything is constructed, and she pushes on it by challenging that all of our perceptions, and what we think we perceive, is a process of imagination in large part.

We can entertain the idea of construction, but we can never really know it. I can say I know I'm not seeing this or touching this, but I can't deny it or get away from it. It is interesting to think about how although things are constructed in the brain they work well enough to keep us surviving. I wonder what things we can perceive well-enough, then, and what things, maybe our perception of the sky, we can use more imagination on. Or are our sense always after the same pursuit of knowledge and observation?

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