Entry 1664 — Back to Important Stuff
Today I”m back to my little third- or fourth-level theory of Intelligence. Here are my latest thoughts on it:
(1) I’m tentatively changing some terms: “pracsipience” to “practiceptual intelligence,” and “pracsipiceptual,” or whatever term I had for the awareness involved, to “practiceptual”; “cerebrasipience” to . . . I’m not sure. I want “x-ceptual intelligence.” Weird: may that’s it: “xceptual intelligence.” Too cute? My first thought was was “metapracticeptual intelligence.” I love the German “hohen,” for “high,” but am not so sure “hohenceptual” would work. It’s exactly right in meaning conveyed, but . . . I think I’ll leave the matter hanging for now.
Note to Marton: I’m claiming scholar’s use for my use of the ellipsis, so will not be sending you a royalty for use of it.
(2) Could the x-ceptual awareness be the first home of theology? I distinguish “theology: from “religion.” At the moment, I think of religion as the practiceptual worship of gods, and belief in various superstitions. Theology is an attempt to work up a philosophy (or, better, metaphysics) of religion—to explain Jehovah, for instance. Theology, in working almost entirely with abstract (really, imaginary) entities would seem surely to be a kind of practiceptual undergoing—“metaverosophy,” verosophy dealing rationally with entities one can perceive, metaverosophy dealing with all entities we are capable of thinking of, real and imaginary.
Digression: is there a difference between the imagined and any other kind of unreal entity? I tend to think not, but the closer an imaginary entity is to something real, the more plausible it becomes: God as a man who is hiding rather than beyond human perception is about as plausible as an imaginary entity can be, it seems to me. Or as a computer.
I can go along with the idea of the non-practiceptual awareness being caused, in part or wholly, by the need for a theology. The need for meta-arithmetic would likely be a greater cause, however.
(3) Might the non-practiceptual awareness be a place to escape perceptual overload for many? For our girl Emily, for sure. But for me, too. Which makes me think how my present ideas could make a psychotherapy book, and be useful: how to use your x-ceptual awareness to save your mind! Or show it as a kind of East Indian practice—which it is, to a degree.
That makes me wonder if I need to divide my x-ceptual awareness in two, one division involved only with . . . reality, the other with both reality, since it’s impossible fully to escape it, and the imaginary. Maybe call the first simply “Western x-ceptuality,” and the second “Eastern x-ceptuality,” each name being a derogatory epithet to a good number of people.
(4) The relationship of music to my new two awarenesses of the first rank is an interesting problem. Music is both highly abstract and highly concrete. The dance would be practiceptual: choreography above it.
I find I need a term for our over-all system of awarenesses. Perhaps, “supraceptual awareness?” That which contains the practiceptual awareness and its sibling, with portions of (so far) ten major awareness shared or separately under those two? One of the ten is the one I call the “compreceptual awareness”; so far I haven’t worked out a good definition of it but provisionally consider it always active, and the repository of a general overall picture of everything a person is experiencing during a given instacon, both his perception of the inner and outer environments, and his retroception of past experience. The supraceptual awareness, whoever, is just a name: it has nothing in it except . . . all the other awareness and sub-awarenesses.
Back to the dance. It must be the most practiceptual of the arts since it requires a continuing sense of what one’s muscles are doing. But the abstract patterning that choreographical creativity becomes involved with would require the higher awareness. Similarly music ascends out of simple practiceptual art into higher art as patterning takes over from simple instinctual love of basic sounds and rhythms. I think its ascent is faster than dance’s.
(5) I find this scheme of two awarenesses of the first rank (under the supraceptual awareness) to support much of my musings on verosophy and the arts versus survival, and all the other practiceptual activities I’ve previously listed, who knows where. Not surprisingly, it confirms many of my cultural prejudices such as my belief that visimagery (visual art) only became an art with the advent of non-representational painting, before that being a craft, albeit sometimes becoming more in the hands of its most gifted practitioners. I see only non-representational visimagery as post-practiceptual. Color and shape, of course, remain for it as important as sounds and rhythms are in music, but patterns, within compositions and intercompositionally (the way paintings and sculptures interact with other paintings and sculpture, and musical compositions interact with other musical compositions—by the artist involved himself, or by other artists, become much more important.
(6) Maybe “systeceptual awareness” may be a good term for the higher awareness, some relatively complex system (importantly) underlying everything that goes on in it. The trouble is that some practiceptual activities are systematic, albeit only tactically so. So, maybe “stratisysteceptual?” Just kiddink. I guess I now have two entities to name.
I can’t remember any more of my ideas, but know there were scores, all terrific. So this entry is about done. I may have gone about as far as I can with this topic: four entries and a little under three thousand words. Not much, and it includes a lot of digressions like this. It may be a good very rough start to the full presentation of my knowlecular psychology I’ve always hoped to compose.
.