Alexei writes:
" Fact is,
certain pigments refract and absorb light in a particular way, such that when
these modified light waves hit the rods and cones of my eye, they stimulate a
particular electrical signal that travels through my optic nerve to my visual
cortex and is -- quite literally -- interpreted (we see upside down,..."
Aw, hell, Alexei, you don't have to go to those lengths to resurrect your use
of "stimulus". Just cite a spoken word: sound waves "stimulate" my ear drums.
Or, better yet, a sung word: "Vincero" by Luciano.
But read again what you wrote and I wrote back:
You said, " "if you would prefer a different term you can use stimuli and
responses instead of interactions."
My response was simply to convey why I don't "prefer" 'stimulus-response':
"Alexei, I'm afraid I have difficulties with "stimuli and responses". My
guess is that 'stimulus-response' will be associated in most minds with notions
of narrow, restricted, predictable and effectively mechanical responses:
Pavlov's dog, electrical shocks, Digitalis, pin-pricks in the lower limbs to
test
reaction in a spinal-injury victim. My position is people's "responses" to
what they call "works of art" are infinitely more variable than that."
In other words, I was objecting to the connotations of 'stimulus-response',
the notional images arising in the mind of someone who reads those words. The
experience of a contemplator of a performance of "Hamlet" or a painting by
Rembrandt feels minimalized by any subtle suggestion that what's going on is
just
stimulus-response, like with Pavlov's dog. I even went so far as to say, "I
don't claim the words are "wrong" here. Because no words have a "the meaning",
no words are "wrong" (except in some arena of agreed-upon stipulations)." And
it's exactly because there is no "the meaning of" that words in some sense
"have" -- and that would make them dependable tools for conveying precisely
what's
on our mind -- that we need to be alert to what likely associations will
"color" the notions occasioned by our words.
So, Alexei, I feel it's quite uncaring of you -- stoney-hearted, actually --
when you ask if I'd prefer 'stimuli-response', and then, when I reply I
wouldn't, for you to say, "It doesn't matter that you don't like the term."
Meantime, if your notion of "stimuli" is such things as refracted and
modified light waves, I leave you to them. When I read a great novel the rich,
stormy, associating notions that arise in my mind are occasioned by something
quite
different from the color and shape of the ink.
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