I see the apple as distinct from my seeing already. [...]
— unenlightened

Okay so you conceive of your "seeing of an apple" as different from the real apple. That's all there is to it. That's what the debate is about. — Olivier5

Noooooo! ... "my seeing" nooooht a mental image (internal picture etc.). Just a person-sees-apple event.

I hope...

I would think that perfect pitch could be acquired by exercising the extremes of your vocal range — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes! This was an option I early considered, because a stimulus for the mission was being asked my vocal range by the leader of a choir I was enquiring about joining, and this reminding me that I had no idea, and this suggesting the possible connection that you mention. But then I realised that the extremes of my physical range are not only very fuzzy points on the line - which by itself not at all disqualifies them as an improvement on my even fuzzier mental notions - but would likely also quickly shift outwards by dint of the exercise itself. Maybe if and when I have absolute pitch and choirs are allowed to sing again, and I thereby get a more reliable gauge of my range, I might usefully connect the two.

Meantime, I'll try to describe my method (such as it is, outlined broadly above) in more detail, soon. Still, interested to hear of any attempts at this method that you mention.

I have an affinity for songs in a key of D, and can often recognize them as playing at the extent of my vocal range. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah but this very common claim of singers has always bemused me. Is there an assumption that melodies are generally bounded above and below by a key (or "home") note? (E.g. that the lowest and highest notes of a melody in D are probably a D and a higher D?) Or by some other particular step in the scale, a certain distance from home? Otherwise, how on earth is the choice of key supposed to determine how comfortably your range will contain both of the (and any) melody's bounds? :chin:

Once you can produce a specific note on demand, the rest is a matter of learning the intervals, musical training. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. My working hypothesis is that early and continued learning of the second skill usually trashes any early learning of the first. If I can, in my own case, rekindle the first, it'll be interesting to try and assess the degree and kinds of mutual support or interference between the two.

Playing by ear does not really require perfect pitch because the same tune can be played by ear in any pitch. — Metaphysician Undercover

Absolutely, hence @SophistiCat's example of Scriabin, and my chiding him for looking past that model to Mozart's, when it comes to ear training.



Super contributions, thanks all :cool:

The good news is that there are sound events and illumination events as they are commonly theorised and intuited: the sound of this instrument played on by this finger like this on that occasion, the colour of this dress played on by this light on that other occasion. And there is matching and non-matching of such events, and equally intuitive ordering comparisons, and hence equivalence classes (more or less culturally stable) and hence pitches and colours, in a perfectly adequate construal of ordinary aesthetic talk. :smile:

(1) There are no qualia as they are commonly theorised or intuited.
(2) People do not have minds, sensations, feelings.

(1) does not imply (2), but (2) does imply (1). — fdrake

Trouble is,

(3) There are no minds, sensations, feelings as they are commonly theorised or intuited..

Events, dear boys etc., events.

Are what we order into colours, pitches and timbres. Objects, only derivatively and more roughly speaking.

simply to explain what seeing is. — unenlightened

... Namely, an ordering or classification of illumination events. Which isn't something specially suggestive of either direct nor indirect... which are more germane to internal-picture philosophies.

I say 'more or less' because Mummy always insisted on taking more important things, like clothes, to a window before she bought them, to check how they looked in daylight, shop lighting being somewhat deceptive. — unenlightened

:ok:

You have to play on a violin to see what sounds it makes. And you have to let the light play on a dress to see what colours it makes.

A musical pitch is an equivalence class of sound events.

A visual colour is an equivalence class of illumination events.

A musical pitch is an equivalence class of sound events.

A visual colour is an equivalence class of illumination events.

(Duh.)

Well, I'll be. So shaman doesn't derive from and quite transparently mean sham??

Not even the other way around?? (No, sham is from shame.)

:gasp:

Intervals have a distinctive sound to them that has to do with the size of the interval rather than the pitch — SophistiCat

Amen to that. And they, not the absolute pitches, define the patterns. At least for most people, notably young children learning to identify musical patterns.

(that is with modern equal temperament). — SophistiCat

But not without? Perhaps you just mean: a relatively unbewildering range of distinct intervals (with equal temperament)?

Once you learn what each interval is called (minor third, perfect fifth, etc.), you can learn to identify them by hearing, regardless of the pitch. — SophistiCat

Yes, although very much not regardless of the context if you are a relative-pitcher. In other words some combinations of intervals are much more easily navigable than others. Whether this is true also for absolute-pitchers I don't recall. Although I vaguely recall the question having been asked.

And by learning to identify intervals, you learn to identify musical patterns at different pitches as the same pattern. (If they are the same pattern of intervals.)

(And perhaps, by learning to identify musical patterns at different pitches as the same pattern, you learn to identify intervals.)

Such basic music theory and ear training are part of a classical musician's training. — SophistiCat

Indeed, and the question arises, whether the aim is to develop the ability, ideally like Scriabin's, to play by ear based on recognition of intervals, or whether progress is generally to be measured rather against the standard of absolute pitch, ideally like Mozart's:

She could recognize notes pretty well, but only after hearing a reference note or chord. She never acquired an absolute pitch. — SophistiCat

I wouldn't overstate the importance of pitch recognition. I don't know if it's much more than a minor convenience for a musician or a party trick. — SophistiCat

But you wouldn't want to understate the importance (for composing and improvising, at least) of developing the ability to play by ear, would you? Isn't that what the ear training is for?

:up:

I had* an absolute pitch as a kid, before any musical training. I don't remember how my first music teacher diagnosed it (since of course I didn't know notes and couldn't yet play any instrument at five), but there must be some standard tests. — SophistiCat

I suppose piano teachers, especially, are always aware of the issue when engaging a young child. Because it may be the critical stage of development. But also because a keyboard is discussed as a diagram of the pitch dimension?

When she was practicing for a college entrance exam, she even had me drill her on identifying notes, intervals and chords. She could recognize notes pretty well, but only after hearing a reference note or chord. She never acquired an absolute pitch. — SophistiCat

Haha well here's where my admiration for absolute-pitchers gets distinctly tainted: by envy or musical insight, possibly both...

identifying notes, intervals and chords. — SophistiCat

Why intervals? Just to help find the notes? Or is it the other way round?

Is music about notes or about the intervals between them? ... is obviously a silly question, I appreciate that. But in that case, why the "only" in,

She could recognize notes pretty well, but only after hearing a reference note or chord. — SophistiCat

Funny how "absolute" still doggedly associates with "perfect", as in,

She never acquired an absolute pitch. — SophistiCat

... as though that was the ultimate aim?

Ok, maybe the plain fact is that note recognition facilitates interval recognition more efficiently than vice versa. Perhaps I will soon find out. :grin:

But in time I may retain the memory of the melody, while forgetting the original pitch. — SophistiCat

Ah! The relative-pitcher feels distinctly less envious at hearing this, an apparent admission of inertia in grasping the interval information. :wink:

Fascinating observations, thanks :smile:

He said he could stack them up to around 3 hours after which his accuracy would fall off. — frank

Was it about enduring a daily grind? Punctuating the passage of time with commercial breaks, maybe? Or how did he need not to rely on a clock?

I become immersed in a fake world and my emotions signify that part of me believes in what's happening. — frank

Yeah, I learned that other people see the plot twists coming a mile off. Sometimes you're meant to, as well, but I'm just not watching in that way. D'oh.

I have next to no sense of time. I was blown away when I found out that other people do. — frank

They do?? I too was unaware. At the scale of whole minutes, at any rate. I've known someone claim to have "absolute tempo", presumably involving measurement of time intervals of up to a second or two. I always guessed (without as yet researching it) that his level of precision in such a skill couldn't be radically better than most people's, but could only be, merely, even better. An absolute sense of tempo (however imperfect) seems fairly normal.

Such a state of affairs would seem to fit with my (makeshift and hopefully unoriginal) theory of Early Unlearning: we don't lose a nascent sensitivity to absolute tempo, because we aren't encouraged to completely ignore differences between slower and faster renditions of a pattern. (Whereas we are, with rare exceptions, encouraged to completely ignore differences between higher and lower renditions. We wouldn't criticise - nor praise - anyone's performance of a vocal solo on the grounds it was in an unusual key, even if we noticed.)

As for a sense of minutes-long duration, I suppose I would have guessed that at least half of a typical person's estimations of a ten- or twenty-minute interval would be out by at least a quarter, but it might be shown that they could probably train themselves to improve considerably. I'm not sure I can think of any situations at all where thus not needing to consult a clock would pay benefits. What are they? I think my emotional reaction to the training program would be like yours: intense aversion! Are there enthusiasts?

Sure: hope, disappointment, confusion, frustration, excitement, triumph, despair, pleasure etc.

Hadn't thought about emotional aspects, though.

Cool. Yes, I'm interested. My cousin has a genetic anomaly that's known to be associated with perfect pitch. She's always had it. She started playing piano at 3 years from watching her mother play.

But it's true that jazz musicians demonstrate the ability to perceive key transitions that normal people can't. Supposedly there is a study. I could find if you need it. — frank

Great. Happy to be introduced to research. I would hope to recognise some of it from previous encounters, but nonetheless. No real excuse for launching into the project, such as it is, without a thorough review. On the other hand I hope we and any other participants aren't inhibited from forming and comparing opinions based on a mixture of science and navel-gazing.

I'll start the thread in the lounge, for that reason. Any views, anecdotes, arguments, research or idle speculation welcome. :smile:

I start from the (questionable) assumption that my brain must have quickly destroyed all growth of the global, absolute sensitivity as soon as musical play led it to start to develop the local, relative sensitivity. [...continued p 94 aka the lounge, here]

There are ways that I'm different from most people. I mentioned earlier that I have a cousin who has perfect pitch. That's a very distinct difference and there is a genetic basis for it. — frank

Happens I'm about 3 weeks into an uncontrolled experiment wherein the subject (myself) attempts to acquire absolute pitch. I'm still hopeful of refuting your innatist aspersion, albeit unscientifically.

I aspire also (perhaps) to a Mary's Room type revelation: an additional dimension to my auditory perception. E.g. a 'global' quality attaching to the pitch of a sound, independent of its local relations to other, proximate sound-events (relative pitch). The kind of quality that apparently enables the possessors of absolute pitch to associate different keys with different moods etc.

I would be keen to share the unscientific data with any other interested parties (in a thread), especially if they were minded to share their own? E.g. recollection of their previous attempts, or description of attempts started now, or soon.

Absent that demand, I'll update this (single) post. So WTS if interested...

I don't at all see how qualia is so much more ghostly an apparition than any of experience, sensation, representation or mental state.

Not trying to be more-eliminativist-than-thou, but... ok, maybe I am.

But I'm surprised that embracing these other mentalisms is expected to clear the air in a debate with mentalists. As though it'll then be clearer what everyone is talking about.

You can't tell a blind person what it's like to see color, no matter the words you use. — Marchesk

Am I missing something or is it quite easy? E.g.

Seeing the colour of that surface is like hearing the timbre of that trumpet. Notice how timbre fills a region of the stimulus either uniformly or with a gradient specific to each of one or more directions, e.g. temporal and pitch-height? Colour is like that.

Again, this seems neutral with respect to the question whether we need to posit an internal as well as an external stimulus.

Two diamonds both identifying as an intermediate grey in most contexts will indeed be seen as contrasting greys in the ingenious context. For obvious enough reasons of unconscious inference.

How is this supposed to bear on the controversy whether there is a mental picture?

Is a zombie, with no mental picture, not expected to distinguish the greys, by the same unconscious reasoning?

Who said I didn't? — Olivier5

What, you mean in some very fleeting way, for a small moment, in some small corner of your mind?

Or were you able to maintain the mistake, in some subtle way? Art as illusion?

Yes, I was forgetting how entrenched that theory is.

So, for some such reason, you don't think pictures are generally patterns? Merely, illusions of patterns? Ok.

It's an illusion created by your perspective. — Olivier5

Not unless you mistook it for a horse, which you didn't.

It's a pattern you recognised with particular ease from your perspective, but which you may then impose with ease from almost any other.

It looks like a pattern but it is not one. There's no horse in the clouds. — Olivier5

But there is, of course, a pattern we recognise as a horse-picture.

Were I doing a PhD, — Banno

...then definitely use divers with one e.

Just interested in what you think. :smile:

I'm not at all sure if you are talking about images. :chin:

So it's not a problem, nothing to see here folks, but at the same time it's unsolved and we have basically no predictive power? — Mijin

When firings of the required kind occur in certain cells, the subject can to some extent produce, sort out, criticize, revise descriptions or pictures of a horse. The "image" and the "picture in the mind" have vanished; mythical inventions have been beneficially excised.

[...] we must construe informal talk of rotating images in some way that does not imply that there are images twirling in the head. — Nelson Goodman: Sights Unseen

Just like most people, I had to have a "penny drop" moment, where I realized that pain, color, smells etc are phenomena that occur in the brain, not in the outside world (or the body, in the case of pain), in a way we don't yet understand. — Mijin

Colors twirling in the brain?

It's easy.

Where do you draw the line [...]? — Beautiful Mind

Not a problem either.

Translation of talk about nothing into talk about something often takes some trouble...
— Nelson Goodman: Sights Unseen

Indeed. Especially when the writer keeps casually and carelessly using concepts that he also contends are meaningless. This can only lead to confusion. — Olivier5

Carelessness makes trouble, but scrupulous analysis takes it.

How can he possibly dislike something that by his own reckoning doesn't actually exist? — Olivier5

Translation of talk about nothing into talk about something often takes some trouble... — Nelson Goodman: Sights Unseen

But there just is no fact of the matter whether a word or picture is pointed at one thing or another. No physical bolt of energy flows from pointer to pointee(s). So the whole social game is one of pretence.
— bongo fury

Unless you're a biosemiotician? :chin: — bongo fury

Today, no biologist would dream of supposing that it was quite all right to appeal to some innocent concept of lan vital. — QQ

it's not all matter that is infused with some amount of 'consciousness'; but all life. — Olivier5

The alleged self-evidence of sensation is not based on any testimony of consciousness, but on widely held prejudice. We think we know perfectly well what ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, ‘sensing’ are, because perception has long provided us with objects which are coloured or which emit sounds. When we try to analyse it, we transpose these objects into consciousness. We commit what psychologists call ‘the experience error’, which means that what we know to be in things themselves we immediately take as being in our consciousness of them. We make perception out of things perceived. And since perceived things themselves are obviously accessible only through perception, we end by understanding neither.
— MMP — fdrake

Sorry (but also rather smug) to see I wasn't being at all original here,

If I'm wrong, and the appropriately confused machine might still be unconscious, I need alerting towards features of my own conscious thoughts that I am leaving out of consideration. However, I don't think the usual claim of unreflective and immediate certainty will be one of those features. Indeed, the confusion hypothesis suggests a reason for that kind of claim: certainty arose in our assessment of the status of the tree itself, but we mistakenly ascribed it to our confused (e.g. pictorial) characterisation of our thoughts. — bongo fury

Fair enough. I'm confusing all manner of abstract Forms with their Material supports. So much for my theory of how belief in abstract mental furniture arises from confusing internal and external materials.

Actual, physical books contain pages. They do not formally contain sentences. At best they can produce and reproduce sentences, which is different. — Olivier5

So, after the careless generalising, a strenuous particularizing.

Ok then, take two:

Thoughts are information, written down and processed by neurons.
— Olivier5

Interesting. Symbols? Sentences? Images? — bongo fury

Please elaborate, for the benefit of those for whom sentences would normally (without notice to the contrary) be classes of printed inscription or sounded utterance, and images would be classes of inscription or illumination?

What exactly is 'pre-philosophical' about images or symbols? — Olivier5

Not meaning it literally:

Symbols? Sentences? Images?
— bongo fury
Of course! Also humor, dreams, ideas and music. You don't have those? — Olivier5

A book literally contains sentences and images. Many societies encourage the view that brains do, too. I would need persuading. I thought you were about to try. But generalising to all of the things that a book can contain only metaphorically only punctures my intuition of the claim.

I can cheer you up. — bongo fury

Also, people spooking you out on a magic mushrooms forum reminds me that the wisdom proffered in my linked post probably derives from some very helpful advice that I was lucky enough to once receive, during a difficult session of precisely that species of very silly (though fascinating) indulgence. Which was, to see myself as a walking talking person, rather than from "inside".

People vary in their ability to hold mental images. — frank

And equally, of course, in their literal theorising of what "holding a mental image" actually amounts to.

Thoughts are information, written down and processed by neurons.
— Olivier5

Interesting. Symbols? Sentences? Images? — bongo fury

Of course! Also humor, dreams, ideas and music. You don't have those? — Olivier5

I was ready to be schooled in information theory, or some such. But you revert to a pre-philosophical declaration of wonder. Which is fine. Don't you want to refine it into theory plausible as literal truth, though?

Thoughts are information, written down and processed by neurons. — Olivier5

Interesting. Symbols? Sentences? Images?

I'm certainly not confusing thoughts with neurological events. — Olivier5

Ok, what are they for you?

And mentalists are people with telepathic capacity, which I don't believe in. — Olivier5

haha, at least that needn't be a substantive issue. I just meant, believing in mental furniture. Whatever you want to call that. Phenomenalism? Psychism?

that we experience qualitative sensations inside our head, such as colours, or the timbre of a musical instrument (the “sound of trumpet”). — Olivier5

That, to me, is mentalism: confusing thoughts (neurological events) with pictures (or other symbols) and with pictured (or otherwise symbolised) objects.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it — Russell, 1918

... leading on, we hope, to reconception of and improvement on the received wisdom. (Leading on to another round, etc.)

I always assumed that an "intuition pump" is to be admired as an artificial aid for getting the process going. Perhaps like agreeing of definitions "for the sake of argument", but more, er... erotic?

Seems to apply in the case of the Chinese Room, at least.

Turns out Dennett only really wants to disable all the pumps. Oh well.

Anyway, I'm often surprised at how amenable he (and if he isn't playing around) is to mentalistic talk.

We keep moving the goal posts, aka the Cartesian Theater fallacy. That's a fallacy I think was coined by Dennett, but ironically I think he himself violates. It's neurons encoding for this or that.. but then encoding itself has to be explained as for why it is mental states. The problem lies in positing a hidden dualism. Mental states exist, yes or no? — schopenhauer1

Quite.

I do think that the "neural representations" favoured by the likes of Dennett and Frankish (thanks for the links) are questionable as being probably ghosts of "the idea idea", and other mentalisms. Hence the prevaricating in 3.3 Who is the audience?. And the possible own goal, if

An appearance of something which isn't there.
— Marchesk

gets supposed as a thing located in the head, to the delight and justified exasperation of dualists everywhere. — bongo fury

Can't (yet) find a smoking gun to quote from Quining. But,

Fair enough. Let's talk of colours, smells, feelings, tastes, timbres and tunes then. — Olivier5

Hopefully, @Banno and Dennett mean, merely, external stimulus sets, while you mean, specifically, qualia (or some such) in the head?