The Genies Of Genius

"Leibniz says that monads are spiritual particles and are not perceived by consciousness, but by apperception."

I cranked up this text editor I use as a word processor and typed the above statement while watching a video on Monadology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFzV5Dan09o

The term "apperception" has intrigued me for a decade or so. I've only seen it used by others 4-5 times that I'm aware of. The first time I encountered this term was when I was subscribed to some discussion group and a guy from India used the word. I couldn't find it in my unabridged dictionary, and when I searched for it on the internet I only found a vague reference to something I wasn't familiar with.

The next time I saw this word used was in an article about expertise in the magazine Scientific American where it was used to describe how a person operating a system of expertise fetched information from a database created as a container for information about the specific area of expertise, in the article's case it used what needed to be there for a person to become recognized as a Grandmaster level chess player.

The person aspiring to become a Grandmaster in chess has to memorize all the winning games for the last century or so and and the strategies involved that lead to winning the big dance in chess each year. This is said to be a form of visualization very similar to what needs to be there to envision an imaginary careactor like the Hindu Goddess Kali with eight arms and a necklace of human skulls draped around her neck.

I don't know the game of chess. I barely know which way the pieces can be moved. I've never even learned a simple opening gambit. I imagine, however, that most anybody might agree that learning to institute an imaginary image of an eight-armed woman could get tedious. I don't know of any actual examples of living people with eight arms to serve as a model for "getting the picture".

An easier example would be the training received by many medical professionals in modern times. They establish a database of what the human body is like in their mind's eye through all the courses on anatomy and such. It's not a joke. They have to prove they can "see" all the body parts and the names of them in a foreign language.

Both the medical doctors and the Hindu followers of the Goddess Kali create living databases of the object of their visualizations. It's a very complicated process. The databases have to come alive in their adherent's psyche or they never get certified by their tor-mentors. '-)

Take the Grandmaster initiate in chess for instance. They can memorize all the chess moves that have ever been recorded, but if what they memorized can't provide them with the correct move when it's their time to move, then they never make the grade. They don't get certified by the real Grandmasters as being one of their own.

It's the same deal with doctors. They use the database they established in medical school and residency to make a diagnosis of the situation's needs. If they're right, and what they diagnose can be remedied, They make the brass bell on the cash register ring, and their jealous colleagues green with envy.

Diagnosing the winning move and exercising it is what systems of expertise are all about. It's not all fun and games. No matter how good at diagnosing an illness a doctor is his patient and even the physician himself can't fix what they find wrong.

That's why there is a need for a system of expertise to use as a vehicle to higher ground. The student of the Goddess Kali has to memorize every single feature of a specific statue of her. He has to create the same eyemage of the Pygmalion statue of her in his mind's eye down to the last detail. He has to answer to a person who has already done that, and it's a risky business.

The reason it's a risky business is that once that image of Kali has been me-mored and be-co-me-d with the adherent, then she comes alive and has a life of her own within the mind of her devotee, and she's not wearing a necklace of human skulls around her neck for nothing. When you confront an accomplished devotee of Kali, you have encountered Kali herself. Her response to an insult might cost you your life.

Reaching for and using the contents of an established database of expertise to make a diagnosis of whatever sort of expertise you've acquired is called apperception. It is a term coined by Leibniz to indicate the behavior of a genius who calls upon his genie to provide him with the desired results.

What? You didn't know genies and pearls are goddesses too? Fie!