Perception vs. Conception: prolegomena
From Plato’s cave, through the library, to the digital cave
1. Writing separated the knower from the known (Havelock).
2. But pre-phonetic writing was still mimetic: its symbols resembled what they represented. Sensory perception still provided the cues for understanding symbols through residual resemblance to real things, though increasingly schematic.
3. Pre-phonetic writing recorded events; the alphabet made it possible to record speech, the scaffolding of thought. The alphabet had no mimetic, sensory-based cues to what was recorded.
4. The alphabet detached thinking from behavior and made abstract thinking inevitable.
5. Alphabetic cultures privileged conceptualization over perception (the “West” - McLuhan).
6. Electronic media began a reversal from conception toward perception; digital media are completing this reversal, accelerating the erosion of literacy into digital orality.
7. The ultimate goal of perception is pleasure. The ultimate goal of conception is… pleasure. But these are two opposite kinds of pleasure.
8. In perception, pleasure is achieved through immersion, for which the dissolution of the self in sensations is a prerequisite.
9. In conception, pleasure is achieved by approaching the truth through intellectual epiphanies, for which self-detachment in favor of ideas is a prerequisite.
10. Basically, “perception vs. conception” also means “self-dissolution vs. self-detachment.”
11. The growing focus on perception is the effect of digital orality; it represents an anti-Platonic reversal that puts people back into Plato’s cave (of sensations), now a digital one.
See other books by Andrey Mir:
NEW! The Technological Imperative: Why We Develop Our Media. Essays on Human Agency and AI (2026)
The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology (2024)
Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect (2024)
