ON HOW WE RESPOND TO SENSE-IMPRESSIONS AND HOW THEY AFFECT US SUBJECTIVELY

As human beings we find ourselves in a world that is constantly open to us and our senses as long as we are alive and so we mostly rationalize the things and experiences that we encounter based on how these things and experiences make us feel, for instance, we do not rationalize things first and then feel afterwards. All the opinions, beliefs and values that we find ourselves focusing on in life is a form of intentionality on our part due to the impressions that things give us in our feelings based on the pleasure, pain, avoidance of pain as well as survival and adaptation principles that shape the interior subjective world of our organism in response to our environment and its stimuli. A feeling can be experienced as either a physical instinctual response or as an idea or both together. Now what it is exactly that determines how we respond to the stimuli in our environment is a subjective condition that depends on a natural design issue in the sense of how we use our brain as well as depending on the exact type of organism the brain houses. When I mention a natural design issue, I do not mean intelligent design as such, but I do mean the contingent and necessary facts that led to the uniqueness that is our organism.
Now seeing as though our senses at all times are open to the world even when we are asleep, it is likewise true that our perceptions are always at work observing anything that catches our inner desires whether we are dreaming or fully awake, but in either case we are never without a perception of some kind and this perception is always where we are at present. Our perceptions when we are asleep are mostly taken over by feelings, desires, values and meaning, whereas when we are awake these basic feelings are supplemented by rationalizations of a certain kind. Normally whether it is consciously or subconsciously we tend to shape perception to fit our desires because the nature of reality in of itself is difficult to comprehend, so we need conscious rationalizations as a means to fit our desires and needs as well as to understand reality in some form, although imperfectly and incompletely. The more we are able to understand the objective world and its nature the less necessary it is to fulfil our inner desires and whims and this is because it takes a lot of overcoming and transcending of oneself to truly understand the nature of reality in any form. Normally it is the case that we as organic beings do not show much interest in any thing other than when it fits our desires and obvious needs due to the basic organic principles that I have mentioned earlier. So feelings based on impressions are mostly what we as organic beings are used dealing in that have their foundation on these basic organic principles. All of our basic judgements are combinations of these feelings that we are very used to having, very rarely do most people transcend these feelings to accommodate others or to pursue the objective knowledge of reality and its nature. The concept of intentionality that is found in phenomenology in which perception is fully taken up by a focused pursuit of desire or sensation as the motive of our behaviour is one of the levels of the evolution of consciousness that is most basic, for instance, this is intentionality is most evident when a person is intensely interested and caught up in something to the exclusion of everything else or other things and will not notice people walking past them or will not notice what time it is and so on. As I have mentioned elsewhere in my writings and will now point out again is the simple fact that perception and consciousness in organisms generally becomes more integrated and expansive over time as it evolves in organic beings from generation to generation and occurs as societies evolve also and is what I call "multi-perception". Intentionality is only a basic form of consciousness and is not the essence of all that consciousness is capable of being or becoming.
Consciousness in organisms as many writers have shown evolves and progresses within organisms that are capable of progressing, evolving and adapting to nature. Many evolutionists and paleontologists always take the opportunity to point out that not all organisms are making progress in evolution; they are also always showing the fact that progress is not a general theme in evolution, but this does not take away from the fact that some organisms are capable of progressing and in fact do. Desire itself in the different ways in which it expresses itself in organic life is a very crucial and vital aspect of organic existence and is something that needs to be investigated further so as to assess what it really means as a motive and as a necessary aspect of life and evolution. Without a desire for pleasure, happiness, meaning, values and purpose it would seem that life would not be worth living. Desire is a strong feeling of wishing, wanting and having. Why do we desire things? Because we think that these things that we desire will give us pleasure, joy, happiness or power. Desire in all its manfestations makes us imagine and rationalize all as well as anyting that fits the criteria of what things are worth desiring, so these developments have become part of organic existence as it has progressed. The most basic sense of desire that we all feel within us is an obvious aspect of nature's way of wanting us to procreate our genes in organic life and all other desires are modifications and extensions of this initial desire, but this feeling is latent in young children. Homosexuality exists because the initial desire for procreation has been modified to such an extent that it no longer exists simply for procreation alone, but exists for pleasure and happiness. Desire for pleasant things and experiences as well as a need to find meaning seems to be nature's way of making us pursue things as well as attain worthwhile goals beyond simply just procreating. Without the pleasure, joy and happiness that things can give us we would not be motivated to do things. When we are considering how the senses receive sense-data as well as in how the mind produces ideas and the truths concerning them we always arrive at the age old problem that exists between the so-called subjectivists and the empirical objectivists and how they view reality. The subjectivists for example, claim that all truths are subjective, which is a very strange and false assumption in itself, whereas the empirical objectivists who are influenced by Locke or the scientific method or both accept that there is both subjective and objective truths because you cannot have one without the other or because of the fact that both are part of our experiences as well as being an aspect of the learning process itself.
It is not too far of a stretch to suggest that with the subjectivists there is a psychological discrepancy between their own knowledge of what are truths and of how this knowledge relates to sense-data and the ideas they get from it; this discrepancy exists to such an extent that they have deluded themselves into thinking that there is no correlation between these two things and so they seem to think that all ideas of truths come purely and completely from some internal place within themselves. All scientists, mathematicians, empiricists and genuine philosophers know that our ideas of the truth can only be arrived at through objective and subjective means and that to come upon external truths requires a high element of objectivity and freedom of thought without distortion. Ontology, epistemology and phenomenology are the primary subjects for understanding existence, knowledge, truth and how we perceive it and how it affects us also as well as figuring out what we can or cannot know for sure. The ideology of positivism claims that only the knowledge that one gets from sense experience is real and credible, but the problem with this one-sided ideology is that it does not account for all the truths that exist that we cannot detect directly with our senses; positivism is therefore a one-sided and flawed ideology and of no real use to anyone who values an extensive knowledge of truths.
Not all truths can be known through the senses alone and so the use of reason, logic and mathematics must be employed to account for all the truths that exist that the senses cannot detect directly.
Truths from sense experience and truths from reasoning must be integrated together to attain to a fuller knowledge of the truths of phenomenon as well as things, but whether it is possible to attain to complete (absolute) truths of phenomenon and things is highly unlikely and this is because there is always aspects of the things-in-themselves of phenomenon and things that escapes our reasoning abilities; the complete nature of reality itself is not fully comprehensible to finite limited beings such as ourselves no matter how confident that we think we are in our ability to figure out truths. The ideology of perspectivism takes the view that any estimation and judgement of truths takes place from particular perspectives and therefore cannot be taken as definitively "true". The problem with perspectivism is that it claims that an incomplete knowledge of a truth due to one's perpective somehow renders your truth invalid because it is not complete. An incomplete truth without the unknown elements to make it complete is still a partial truth and is therefore still a truth nonetheless. The knowledge of truths become more complete over time as new insights are added to them and so they become more valid and certain. The ideology of perspectivism was developed by Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century and it suggests that no purely objective science or philosophy that observes things to be a certain way can exist as an objective truth because no ideation, conceptualizaion or thought as such can exist outside the influences of an individual perception. Nietzsche is pointing out that the ideation or conceptualizion of any single perception or thought is limited not only by its existence in our perceptions and bodies, but also by the assumptions and beliefs that are made by and which are formed by the perceiver's unique culture and history and particular situation. Nietzsche in his observation is only pointing out the obvious fact that we as humans are finite beings that only
understand our own ideas and knowledge and not things-in-themselves or the entirety of a phenomenon in a complete (absolute) sense. The whole point about the two words "objective truth" is that it means and also represents a truth that is observed to exist in nature independently of our tastes, opinions, desires, prejudices, feelings, beliefs and personal ideas. Nietzsche is attempting to make out that no singular human being is capable of observing truths in nature without subjective elements leaking in to contaminate it, but I think that he is wrong especially if a person rigorously eliminates all subjective elements from an observed truth. As long as an observer eliminates all subjective elements from an observed truth it can be considered to be an objective truth and for Nietzsche to suggest that this is not so simply because we cannot separate ourselves from our own thoughts is a very subtle and petty sophism. According to perspectivism the earth orbits the sun for some people and not for others or then again some people live forever while others don't from my perspective or point of view. Do you see how silly perspectivism can seem when you take it too far! Introspection is a very useful tool for understanding our own mental states, cognitive processes and behaviour. In the method an act of introspection we can analyze our own mental content as well as the nature of our usual mental processes and also the way that we usually respond to stimuli and so on and how it influences our behaviour; this is achieved by abstracting and objectifying these things out distinctly in isolation for analysis without personal feelings or desires interfering with our assessment of ourselves. In introspection we analyze the reasons why we get the thoughts and feelings that we do and also why we behave the way that we do; so the method of introspection concerns itself with both the form and the content of our psyche as well as our behaviour generally. Psychology is only useful when it analyses both our minds and our behaviour also, rather than just our minds alone which is only half the picture. When examining the philosophical concepts that are used by thinkers generally one will find that Nietzsche's concept of perspectivism is very similar to the concept of relativism. The concepts of perspectivism and relativism as ideologies that represent statements of truths, I must add, apply mostly to judgements of value and also to truth statements of a very specific aspect of temporary phenomenon and not to universal and eternal truths. Statements that are put forward that come under the category of perspectivism and relativism do not alter the obvious objective truth claims that are universal, eternal or general of which I gave a couple of examples earlier in regard to perspectivism. One could compile a long list of truths that are not altered or invalidated by the claims of perspectivism and relativism if one chose to do so. The epistemological concepts of externalism and internalism are two ways of categorizing the difference between ideas and knowledge that is either objective or ideas that are subjectively intuited as inventions and are thought out as a combination of objective ideas pieced together. Objective ideas are externally perceived to exist as coming from objective facts and things that give us knowledge as sense-impressions on our senses. Internal knowledge is a subjective combination of objective ideas pieced together in such a way as to yield original knowledge as inventions or creative acts of our own devising. Internalism in traditional epistemology is very different to how I have defined it myself for my own use and this is because I think that internalism in traditional epistemology as it is defined can lead to a type of relativism or perspectivism; this is bad because it makes epistemology subjective and circular rather than being a satisfactory definition of external (objective truths) and internal (subjective truths) that either become actual or are actual whether internally or externally. All one's inner tastes, preferences, values, needs and feelings, etc., that people feel generally can be classified also as subjective and internal truths. The exact classification of subjective and objective truths as well as internal and external truths overlap in many places and requires meticulous analysis to describe it; I know how to do it myself, but the method of understanding it is by dealing with one idea at a time and then first asking whether it is an objective or subjective idea; we also ask whether it only applies to internal subjective reality or whether it has a greater application also, for example, a subjective internal idea that begins as an invention or creation in our mind can end up becoming an invention or work of art in the external world. Also a subjective internal idea can remain internal and subjective if it is simply something that we feel or need, such as we prefer the colour red to the colour blue or we need soft music rather than loud heavy music, etc.