I'm attempting to provide an adequate evolutionarily amenable account of all conscious experience from non linguistic through metacognitive. — creativesoul

Interesting. What's your present view of the non-linguistic phase? Those of us inclined to agree with this,

consciousness is the ability to attribute meaning. — creativesoul

... might assume there wasn't one?

Haha, it's almost that mystical. Still. Need to speed it up. But wrong when I do.

Day 23, 10.35: Slightly sharp.

14.45: Good.

16.40: Good.

18.55: Semitone sharp.

20.30: Good.

Off topic. Did you go here yet?

Too poetic — Banno

He he.

... leads to conflating pre-theoretical language less conscious experience, pre-theoretical linguistically informed conscious experience, and theoretical linguistically informed conscious experience. — creativesoul

Fair enough, but if the goal is to distinguish "conscious experience" from a non-conscious variety of something or other (experience?), and all three of your sub-categories fall on the positive side of the distinction, what exactly is the point of the proposed sub-division? Ah...

Only the first of the three consists entirely of directly perceptible things. — creativesoul

Ok, I'm curious to know in what way you aren't offering to help @frank here to,

Clean away the strawmen piled in the idea of phenomenal consciousness, — frank

?

Just interested.

For you, maybe.

Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism. — bongo fury

In your case perhaps qualism more than dualism.

Ok then,

science IS NOTHING BUT representation of reality by minds.
— Olivier5

Or is it the creation of texts and pictures by organisms able to play a social game of agreeing to pretend that these symbols point at the world, according to principles of pointing that differ in interesting ways from those of art, music and literature? — bongo fury

See? No minds.

But the philosophical challenge is to then get literal again. Lest your poetry be seized on. — bongo fury

You [too] want to settle: for different levels of description, not literally commensurable. Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism. — bongo fury

Minds do not come into existence... — Banno

At least, not literally.

their EM wavelength! — Marchesk

The objects (or illumination events) not the light rays. (Are what we see.)

With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum!

Why not have him complain:

with eyes designed to order and classify objects according to only a tiny fraction of the variation in their EM reflectivity!

Because they designed him to be a dualist? :wink:

If that was the case, science would have no authority and no effectiveness. And yet it works. — Olivier5

Hence induction.

Clean away — frank

Ah.

science IS NOTHING BUT representation of reality by minds. — Olivier5

Or is it the creation of texts and pictures by organisms able to play a social game of agreeing to pretend that these symbols point at the world, according to principles of pointing that differ in interesting ways from those of art, music and literature?

But the philosophical challenge is to then get literal again. Lest your poetry be seized on. — bongo fury

The main issue for me is that a description of a human being at a physical level should not contradict descriptions at other levels of abstraction. — Andrew M

Ok, it seems you can't agree about the philosophical challenge. You want to settle: for different levels of description, not literally commensurable. Then, unfortunately, I have to dispute your continual claims to have risen above dualism.

Day 23, 11.05: Silly amount of time waiting for high-low feels in (as it were) "response" to "images". But eventually reasonably sure, and tested positive.

13.40: Good.

17.20: Good.

20.26: Good.

00.05: Good.

Sure. Pretty much as you did there. Just never thought of whistling. So it's generally an internal "image", which I then check against the target here:

https://youtu.be/PuFwt66Vr6U. — bongo fury

(Sorry that important point was burried several posts in.)

I've found myself humming, but noticed that that may or may not be massively distracting, since I'm an octave down from the piano tone targeted. Another can of worms!

Cool stuff :smile:



Day 22, 10.50: Good. ... D'oh! Of course, turns out you were in G for yours. Although not for the subsequent jam. Although I replayed the test. And then some more jam. (Before my own test.) No telling, of course. (Whether there was influence.)

13.15: Good.

15.15: Just noticed at the last moment that my choice of pitch was undeniably influenced by the tone (an octave or two down) of the washing machine, which I didn't register as a potential musical context, but which immediately showed its influence when I tried to bring the image a semitone or two flatter. Which was doable, but very hard to get "feels" (of too high or too low) for. Lost track now, but I'll try my best against the backdrop... Haha, tried roughly a semitone down, but the washing machine had it after all.

21.35: Good

24.00: Semitone flat.

Internal qualia bad.

External qualia good.

Yes, I think discussion of this or a similar report a couple of years ago helped kindle my current intrigue.

60 per cent is high, but I was surprised by 14 for the westerners, too. But my surprise is irrelevant. I should go to Wikipedia. Soon...

Another curiosity: their example of,

means "mother" when the vowel is a constant high pitch, but means "hemp" when pronounced with a rising pitch. — Don Monroe

hardly implies an absolute rather than relative sensitivity. (Except in respect of a very broad and fuzzy division into high-class and low-class, which is not to be discounted altogether). Which I would assume was crucial. Unless...

it's the use of pitch per se — Daemon

So relative as well as absolute? Maybe not what you meant.

I don't know anything (or like you I've forgotten) about tonal languages but I would assume until corrected that their chief distinction from other languages like ours were in their marshalling of pitch intonation towards lexical as well as (as also for us) pragmatic distinctions (e.g. question vs statement). And then some of them would marshall absolute pitch and some of them (as do we for our merely pragmatic distinctions) only relative pitch. And I would have expected that a tonal language implicated in the acquisition of absolute pitch would be of the absolute rather than relative kind. Hence my curiosity about their example and your comment.

I think I'm gradually developing absolute pitch, only because when I think of a recording and then listen to it I often get the key right. — Daemon

So to the extent that you are bothering to compare the two absolute pitches (of the thinking of and the listening to) rather than looking straight past that, to the matching of step 1 to step 1, step 2 to step 2 etc., i.e. to the matching according to relative pitch, you are indeed striving to acquire. To the extent that you proceed as a proud relative pitcher, ignoring absolute in favour of relative, your progress refutes my hypothesis (OP) that the one (relative) is at the expense of the other (absolute).

Absolute pitch is no use to me anyway. Being able to identify and immediately play intervals is what I need. — Daemon

Was always my view too. The can't beat them so might as well join them comes partly from knowing (or failing to remedy) my limitations. Which are, mainly, losing track around modulations, some more than others obviously.

I knew a musician with perfect pitch who said it is a bit of a curse, a lot of music sounds out of tune. He said the piano with its tempered tuning irritates him. — Daemon

Sure, and then some that are happy with tempered are unsettled by the historical drift in standard, as related by @SophistiCat.

I think if I did want to improve my absolute pitch, I would use recordings of tunes or songs. — Daemon

Yes. Fingers crossed.

a whole new can of worms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Haha, no kidding.

I think that person is probably hearing music in fewer different keys, at least if a keyboard is involved. That could reduce the amount of equating of transpositions. And that could aid acquisition according to my hypothesis (OP).

That's exactly what I meant about how I think you see it. I hope that was clear.

Anyway, as I say, I think it's a promising area in which to offer you reasonable cause for doubt, all the same.

Dialog, by definition, is a conversation between two or more people. Inner dialog extends this idea in a metaphorical way. — Andrew M

But the philosophical challenge is to then get literal again. Lest your poetry be seized on.

Inner dialog (and music) is a good place to be literal about thinking, as it is relatively easy to recognise as being supported, even if not utterly constituted, by neural shivering. In the extreme, we might catch our lips (fingers) moving; but plenty of more central neural/neuro-muscular twitching is also noticeable.

Such recognition may not threaten anyone's intuition of purely phenomenal "sound" events, even if they begin to notice that shivering at some level always accompanies them. After all, perhaps the alleged theatrics are something weird emerging from the bio-physics of the more central shivering.

But it's a good place to start.

I wonder if this has to do with the perfect/absolute misnomering.

Plenty of truth (overdue for discussion) in the cross-modal association speculation. Will return to that soon.



Day 20, 08.35: Semitone flat.

11.40: Noticeably flat.

12.10: Maybe sharp.

15.15: Good.

21.35: Noticeably sharp.



Day 21: 07.15: Interesting to see whether this clear and convincing first choice image is caused by @Banno's "pain and pleasure" or is determining the pitch at which the latter is crashing the Cartesian concert hall... Turns out the image is half a semitone sharp of the target (the Ravel). But likewise also midway between semitone scale steps (I failed to register which steps i.e. whether the pattern had drifted far) of the other. So, more likely the second alternative.

17.25: Tempted again to test a first image on account of its vividness, but also aware it felt too low. Compared a semitone up, compromised, tested, was good.

20.20: Couldn't get sure at all. Over a semitone flat.

21.35: Good.

But the goal is to produce the pitch without the specimen or feedback. Do you have a strategy toward this end? — Metaphysician Undercover

The obvious answer would be "training". But that would depend on your question being a bit silly. I've probably misunderstood.

but what method would you use to distinguish one pitch from another, within the image? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't quite understand. If you mean relative pitch comparisons within an image then, as you say,

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

But this would be like ungrounded logic, you could have a complete scale in your mind, with nothing to connect it to reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

You get that the grounding is through feedback against a target specimen?

The actual "pocket compass" I'm using is youtube on my phone, specifically G4 as announced in the first chord here: https://youtu.be/PuFwt66Vr6U. — bongo fury

To you there is no fundamental difference between the way a human thinks and how a computer operates? — leo

I think Searle identified precisely the fundamental difference between the way a human thinks and how any contemporary model of a Turing-test-aceing computer operates. We have a proper semantics, while the computer might be relying on syntax.

This essay says it much better than I ever could https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
— Wayfarer

Great essay against the old, pre-connectionist, symbolic computer model of brain function, which I shall cite next time (and it won't be long) that I want to scorn the ancient myth of pictures in the head. Not an essay espousing the existence of ghosts (in machines), though. — bongo fury

If there is no internal world, why don’t you see what other people think? — leo

Why don't I see how their brain shivers are readying them to choose among which symbols to point at which objects? Why would you think that was a likely consequence?

They don’t really think? You’re a solipsist? — leo

Ditto.

Reminds me of the aliens in Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem trilogy. Their thoughts are always visible to one another as patterns of lights which are the result of their neural activity. They communicate directly in that sense. — Marchesk

Either (1) their brains are pre-connectionist symbolic computers, literally storing and retrieving symbols, in which case Searle's critique might or might not convince us to doubt whether they have a proper semantical understanding of their discourses; or (2) their neuroscience has advanced to the stage where they can see how each other's brain shivers are readying them to choose among which symbols to point at which objects.

Or (3) or (4) etc., of course.

So, perfection? — Metaphysician Undercover

Hopefully completing stage one. Have started to try and produce a (piano) g4 image in the midst of other music. With the obvious difficulties caused by having cultivated that image with a full musical context (the Ravel).

Maybe it's one of those things, like learning a language, easy when you're a child, but difficult when you're older. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, undoubtedly, that is well established. I gather there is plenty of research into the nature and location of a developmental window. As previously mentioned, I am deferring a proper review of that myself, but any discussion is welcome.



Day 19, 08.10: Slightly flat after last-second flattening.

16.00: Semitone flat.

20.50: Good.

Are the colors we experience out there in the world as such? Or are they generated by our conscious visual system? — Marchesk

Are our orderings of illumination events out there in the world as such?

Are the ducks in a row?

But what makes the visible light special such that it's colored, unlike radio and gamma rays? — Marchesk

I would need to translate that: what makes human visual orderings of illumination events special such that they are discernible by humans, unlike machine or alien or (dunno) insect (?) orderings of the same events?

Still don't see your point.

Yes, so what makes the colors real? — Marchesk

You lost me.

For the entire electromagnetic spectrum? — Marchesk

Not sure what you're getting at.

Do these hues correspond exactly to the three cone combinations in our eyes? — Marchesk

Isn't there a whole science about that, and the huge inexactness?

Do you think photons are actually colored? — Marchesk

I think illumination events are actually colored i.e. ordered into hues.

As physical waves, not experiences of color or sound. — Marchesk

There you go again.

The problem is those sounds and colors don't exist in external objects. It's rather sound waves and photons. — Marchesk

Why "rather"? Sound events and illumination events are clearly external and public.

The sounds and colors we experience are shivered into existence. — Marchesk

Shivered into classes and orders, more like. E.g. pitches and hues.

Ducks into rows, as @unenlightened might or might not be on about.

Okay, but if i'm brain shivering color and pain, that still needs to be explained. — Marchesk

Thought you'd never ask. What you are doing is shivering your brain to make it ready to choose among color symbols and pain symbols, thereby ordering and classifying external illumination events and trauma events. It's hardly surprising, when you shiver about it, that the readying would habitually (and usually harmlessly) infer that features characteristic of the events and the symbols were true of the shivers.

It's just if consciousness can be an illusion, — Marchesk

"Conscious" is what we call certain kinds of thinking, which are real brain shivers. Those kinds of thinking cause us to indulge fictions about an internal world, which are fictional.

Calling a fiction an illusion is an unnecessary conceptual hazard.

Or an external one? That sword can cut either way. — Marchesk

I'm glad you find that obvious. But you digress.

Have we been talking past each other all this time? — Mijin

We'll always have Paris.

No, I don't want to call consciousness an illusion. — Mijin

Are you sure you don't want to call it "the illusion that proves it's not an illusion"? Oh, hang on...

In fact, to me I don't see the point: it's essentially saying that we don't have feelings, we just feel we do. — Mijin

Likewise,

Indeed. Even the illusion is itself being conscious of something. — Marchesk

Thereby getting nowhere, but perpetuating the myth of an internal world.

Ok.