Addressing an objection to EOP

Here is an objection one might make to EOP (my theory of an Evolution of Perception). 

I am taking a ‘law of nature’ (ostensibly governing nature) and saying that is merely a ‘nominal’ cause for what we can only 'describe' but have no real way to explain beyond naming this law. 

Aren’t I myself citing an unseen cause for an action, i.e. some law and then simply calling that law ‘a perceptual schema’ that governs perception? Isn’t a perceptual schema itself just another ‘nominal cause’ i.e. a name for some know-not-what? 

That is the objection.

My answer to such an objection is that it mischaracterizes what I'm doing and not doing. Let me quote Isaac Newton. 

I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses [meaning he does not pretend to guess]. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.

He is simply seeing a regular correlation in nature and then generalizing it by giving it name, i.e. gravity. 

In EOP we are simply reassigning this general law about a regular correlation to what it is firstly a law of, i.e. perception, for that this correlation is found in our perception and our perception alone is the undeniable fact of the matter. No metaphysical hidden substance or power is proposed, we simply propose that these laws belong to nothing other than perception. This is not a hypothesis for it is an undeniable fact that this is an attribute of our experience. Because the fact that our perception is occurring and is a known fact to us, and the fact that we never hypostatize perception as a thing or object, perception could never be called an occult power or occult quality or occult anything. Newton was saying that the fact of the law in our observation is all we know, but it never occurred to him that no further hypothesis was necessary – only that he had no way to determine it. The given was sufficient for explanation - by way of a process of evolution of perception, as I have constantly explained. 

So the problem with the objection is forgetting that I don't posit a perception substance. I left it as it is -- as an action, a verb. We can all perceive mysterious changes in the phenomenon -- that occur somehow in our framing. To come to the conclusion we are perceiving the influence of our own accumulated lenses we merely extrapolate upon this. We posit less, not more, than materialism. 

Yes, a perceptual schema is (by itself) a nominal cause, a name of a cause without an explanation. But that is not where we end. We posit that we ought not posit. And the act of perception is not considered a second thing -- but the ONLY thing. As it is the only thing we cannot deny. What one cannot deny is not theoretical. Hence it is nominal in that it is the name of a cause, but we can see examples of its causation influence in our daily experience every day.

Now it does not claim to be an A that causes B. Rather B is none other than the ‘apparent’ effect of A. All that is happening is A. B (the phenomenon) is merely its apparent result. A is the way of seeing. B is what one sees as a result. Hence there is no causal CONNECTION as there is really only one thing. How one sees is not making something, it is in effect that thing itself.

It is true that we simply reassign laws of nature as laws of perception. But it previously wasn’t assigned to anything! It just sat unexplained. Hence is is a first assignment, not a re-assignment. And it assigns it to where we find it! It is the materialist that assigns it to somewhere else. Or to a mysterious theoretical substratum it cannot see or describe or prove. 

So the objection falls apart. It makes assumptions about the theory that aren’t there. Perception is not theoretical. It is the ‘substratum’ that is theoretical and occult. In EOP we do away with assigning it anywhere other than where we find it -- in perception. We leave things as they are. We don’t make any thing another thing. 

But yes it is a name. But if the theory of EOP is right, that perception is cause and phenomena effect, we stumble upon an account that requires fewer working parts. I will not deny that EOP is a theory. It can’t be proven or disproven. It’s just an idea of how things might be. And how they work. 

Now the problem with materialism and law as explained in EOPI was that how does a law govern? How does the thing know the law, or how does the law command the thing? Here you have two things -- the thing and the mysterious law. In EOP you keep it as one -- which is how it presents itself to us --- the law is none other than perception itself. And also, being a mind, its knowing is obvious. It is the very knowing -- in the Kantian sense. 

And finally all this is simply a rewording and juggling around of Kant. It has the advantages of Kant, without the disadvantages. 

There will always be an objection, but disproving it is not as simple as this objection makes it seem. Yes, some of the facts of the objection (it is still nominal, it remains mysterious) are true. However, it succeeds by doing LESS than materialism. It’s power is in what it removes, not what it adds. The objection fails to see what is removed. 

It is not simply parallel to materialism. It is less. It leaves the laws where we find them. And as it is not one thing causing another the issue of causal connection disappears. 

Now there IS a new duality. It is not the same duality, but a duality nonetheless. However, this is not a 2 world duality -- but a cause and effect one. And the analogy is take your eye and squeeze it and the world ‘appears’ to squeeze. And yet the world stayed the same. Only the shape of your eye changed. This is a gross analogy, but an analogy nonetheless. And not too much should be read into it. 

Yes there is a mysterious element still. Yet it removes more mysterious elements than it leaves. There is less to be wrong. It is thus simpler and (by virtue of being simpler) more likely true -- and that is a logical fact.