Spencer Sims, Outside Topic,

Date of class: 9-30-14
Book: Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield

In regards to Owen Barfield's Alpha &Beta thinking as they relate to collective representation, i was quite fascinated. In his approach, or at least how professor Redick described it, Barfield provides a lot of emphasis on the falsity of perception yet he still places value in the things not seen by the majority.He notes that people can perceive things differently even if sense organs operate the same and are engaging the same thing. he makes the comparison of how some people can look upon a totem or idol and each think it represents something different. This even applies to more abstract concepts like force, to roughly para phrase force is something that we perceive to be there but it is merely a power that we conceive to explain the unrepresented. See the true understanding of something is not directly derived from it without us projecting onto the senses. I took this to mean that he leans towards relativism in that even a collective representation, essentially our reality of a concept or object, can be influenced but what those perceive. so in the case of music one does not hear a song but detects sound with their ears. applying a consciousness awareness of patterns makes the sounds appear to be music.

In my mind this is a more pragmatic approach to the noumena vs. the phomena world. True understanding is not accomplished in sensory organs alone. Even in attempting to understand things in their true nature we apply, or are influenced by, a collective representation that inhibits the ability to conceptualize the true innate attributes of something.