We Do Not See Objects We Detect Objects

SteveKlinko

The Big Bang happens and a new Universe is created. This Universe consists of Matter, Energy, and Space. After billions of years of complicated interactions and processes the Matter, Energy, and Space produce a planet with Conscious Life Forms (CLFs). In the course of their evolution the CLFs will need to See each other in order to live and interact with each other. But what does it really mean to See? A CLF is first of all a Physical Thing. There is no magic power that just lets a CLF See another CLF. A CLF can only Detect another CLF through some sensing mechanism which must be made out of Physical material and which uses Physical processes. There never is any kind of Seeing in the sense that we think we understand it. There is always only Detection.

So a CLF might understand that it does not ever really See another CLF, but it will still insist that it Sees the reflected Light. The CLF would be mistaken if it thinks it Sees even the reflected Light. All it can do is Detect the reflected Light. Its sensing mechanism can only produce Physical reactions, like Neural Activity, that are correlated with the reflected Light. If the reflected Light is Red the sensing mechanism will fire Neurons that only fire for Red inputs. The CLF might be able to sense that the Red Neurons are firing. So every time these Neurons fire it can report that it is seeing Red. This CLF is only sensing particular Neurons firing it is not experiencing Red like we do.

A CLF like us Sees Red as a Conscious experience and is not aware of any Neural Activity. This Conscious Red Experience is how we Detect Red Light from the external Physical World. Further investigation shows, at least for now, that the experience of Red can not be found in Matter, Energy, or Space so we must conclude that it is something that transcends these things. Let us qualify the Space we know and call it Physical Space and then introduce a new Conscious Space as the place where our Conscious experiences occur. Conscious Space might seem like a strange thing right now but someday it could be an integral part of our Scientific understanding. Since we have proposed this Conscious Space it is only natural to wonder if there is a corresponding Conscious Matter and a Conscious Energy. Maybe Red is a type of Conscious Matter, and maybe Volition is a type of Conscious Energy. But these analogies are just speculations because whatever Conscious Space might be, it is probably not going to be like any kind of Physical Space.

TimeLine

Red can not be found in Matter, Energy, or Space so we must conclude that it is something that transcends these things. — SteveKlinko

If colour is not contained within objective parameters, why does having no intrinsic properties mean it transcends? Notwithstanding your authoritative tone, particularly with your random capitalisations of particular - albeit not so important - words, you seemingly ignore any explanation of the reasoning behind the subjectivity of perceptions. Colours don't exist, but light does.

ernestm

Colours don't exist, but light does. — TimeLine

If you are going to cast aspersion on others' thought, You should be aware that you are subject to your own criticism. Light does not exist any less or more than color. Possibly you are believing that electromagnetic radiation has a more specific reference in material reality, whereas color refers to something you perhaps regard as experience. But if you are thinking that, then there is also a scientific definition of color, as specific ranges and combinations of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is just as substantive.

TimeLine

Light does not exist — ernestm

:-|

Possibly you are believing that electromagnetic radiation has a more specific reference in material reality, whereas color refers to something you perhaps regard as experience. — ernestm

Nope.

Before we start to measure the non-sensical, perhaps you could elucidate why light doesn't exist. Actually, don't.

ernestm

I didn't say that light does exist. You said that light exists and color doesn't. I said that light doesn't exist just as much or as little as color. As that is difficult for you to understand, I will put it the other war around. Color exists just as much or as little as light does. That means the same thing.

noAxioms

But if you are thinking that, then there is also a scientific definition of color, as specific ranges and combinations of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is just as substantive. — ernestm

You seem to be referring to the experience of some color in your OP, not the scientific definition, which is a specific narrow range of frequencies that are grouped under the label yellow say.
As an example, scientific definition of yellow is light between about 575-600 nm wavelength. But the experience of yellow is more like the background of my avatar, which is a completely different thing. My avatar emits little if any light in the yellow range.

Even the scientific definition requires an frame or observer, albeit not necessarily not a conscious one. The wavelength of light is not a property of a photon at all but a relation between that photon and a reference frame.

Concerning your OP, we are said to see objects. It is how the word is used in language. The fact that your reductionist description reduces it to no particular point of seeing is not evidence for your conclusion. I can similarly prove a new immaterial space necessary for photosynthesis to occur since physical plants do not photosynthesize any more than a CLF sees things.

ernestm

That's true. But the experience of light has the same subjective aspect as color too. As any visual artist will tell you at far greater length.

ernestm

Similarly there are psychological experiments to verify that. The most popular example is now this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

ernestm

And if you really want to learn about post-enlightenment thought on the subjectivity of light, this is quite entertaining.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/comparing-renaissance-baroque-use-of-light-plane.html

Or if you prefer a written account:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaroscuro
and
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/renaissance_drawings/

TimeLine

I didn't say that light does exist. — ernestm

I know. That's why I quoted you saying light does not exist. Again, :-| .

As that is difficult for you to understand, I will put it the other war around. Color exists just as much or as little as light does. — ernestm

This is getting awkward.

SteveKlinko

↪TimeLine

If the experience of Red can not be found in the only things we know, Matter, Energy. and Space then speculating that there must be some other Thing out there is a completely logical step in the analysis. If you are a Materialist then of course you wont like that. If you think my Capitalizations are Random then you are not really reading what I say. It is my style and I will authoritatively say I'm not going to stop doing that.

SteveKlinko

I am guided by 20 years of reading about as many aspects of Consciousness as I could find. I have studied Brain Physiology and Philosophy related to Consciousness in my own Hobbyist kind of way. I decided that the Human experience of Red was a good first thing to study. It is something that should lend itself to Engineering analysis. I found that Science has hit a brick wall in that they cannot explain the Conscious Experience of Red. They are good at measuring Neural Activity in the Brain. But they really don't know where to go after that. In between Neurons firing in the Brain to the Experience of Red there is a huge Explanatory Gap as suggested by Joseph Levine in Materialism and Qualia. Philosophers have hit a similar brick wall and have come up with things like the Easy Problem and the Hard Problem of Consciousness.by David Chalmers. Also another good concept is the Neural Correlates of Consciousness proposition in The Quest for Consciousness by Christoff Koch.

Science is able to measure the Neural Correlates of Consciousness and this is the Easy Problem of Consciousness. Not to say that this is actually Easy but it seems to be Easy compared to the Hard Problem of Consciousness. All we know for the Experience of Red is 1) Neurons fire in particular places in the Brain, 2) We have an Experience of Red in our Conscious Minds. Number 1 is the Easy Problem and number 2 is the Hard Problem. The problem with number 2 is that we say we have a Red Experience but we don't take it to the next step and ask Where Is That Experience Happening? Materialists will say it's in the Brain without any real explanation of that. It is usually just a hope or a belief that it is in the Brain because they can never explain it. I have sympathy for that because everything else we know of has Materialist explanations. But I think we have come to the point where just for the sake of discussion we need to propose a new Conscious Space concept to talk about our Conscious Experiences. It serves to separate out and emphasize the truly odd character of Conscious Experience compared to what we know about the Physical World. Consciousness is in a World of its own. But ironically it is the only way we can know about the external World.

ernestm

↪TimeLine

Again, I didn't say that light does exist. You said that light exists and color doesn't. I said that light doesn't exist just as much or as little as color. As that is difficult for you to understand, I will put it the other war around. Color exists just as much or as little as light does. That means the same thing.

Please do not quote me out of context.

ernestm

If the experience of Red can not be found in the only things we know, Matter, Energy. and Space then speculating that there must be some other Thing out there is a completely logical step in the analysis. If you are a Materialist then of course you wont like that. If you think my Capitalizations are Random then you are not really reading what I say. It is my style and I will authoritatively say I'm not going to stop doing that. — SteveKlinko

Your style is fine.

You do need to extend

The problem with number 2 is that we say we have a Red Experience but we don't take it to the next step and ask Where Is That Experience Happening? — SteveKlinko

Different people reach that realization in different ways, and maybe it would be easier for your first example to choose an experience which is not based on sense experience, and work upwards from that, rather than downwards into material reality.

Easy Problem and the Hard Problem of Consciousness.by David Chalmers — SteveKlinko

I also find this thinking too reductionist. While I understand the inclination to seek such a hypothesis scientifically, it does nothing at all to resolve the actual problems of conceptuality, and so it actually does science a disservice. Personally I find the issue of individual consciousness itself turns into a solipsistic red herring. Most of the ideas I know are not my own, but other peoples', so by the same extrapolation you refer to, I don't feel that beliefs based upon them are my own beliefs either, but rather just inserted into me, like fake limbs, by other people. I have been led to understand that is a very rare experience, but that is how I feel about them, and I feel if all the things I had learned from other people did not exist, but I had some kind of 'self consciousness' regardless, it would probably be on the level of awareness of a pet cat.

jkop

All we know for the Experience of Red is 1) Neurons fire in particular places in the Brain, 2) We have an Experience of Red in our Conscious Minds. Number 1 is the Easy Problem and number 2 is the Hard Problem. The problem with number 2 is that we say we have a Red Experience but we don't take it to the next step and ask Where Is That Experience Happening? — SteveKlinko

The explanatory gap arises from a failure to distinguish 'the experience of red' in its constituitive sense (i.e. the physiological events that constitute having the experience) from its intentionalistic sense (i.e. your physiology's interaction with electromagnetic radiation). Both of those different senses are disguised in expressions such as "experience of...", "awareness of...." and so on. The former is your seeing of the colour whereas the latter is the colour that you see.

Seeing is direct, not representative: you don't see your own seeing which would somehow represent a colour outside the seeing (say, an unseen colour-concept, whose relation to the experience would certainly be hard if not impossible to explain!).

If you see the colour directly, then there is no gap to explain. The colour experience is partly set by the optics, and partly by your background capacities and habits which enable you to see it.

ernestm

The explanatory gap arises from a failure to distinguish 'the experience of red' in its constituitive sense (i.e. the physiological events that constitute having the experience) from its intentionalistic sense (i.e. your physiology's interaction with electromagnetic radiation). — jkop

But there is another sense, arising from association with experiences one has with red objects. These are often social. for example, red in the USA tends to mean 'danger' or 'stop,' whereas in China it has more the connotation of 'parade' or 'party'. While one certainly can explain such connections in terms of neurons, it's a rather useless pursuit. It makes more sense to think of them as abstractions, like mathematical relationships, As such these higher levels of association are between concepts, not brain cells, it makes more sense, scientifically, to use logical abstractions to define a model for those abstract relationships.

Science is only a philosophical method that creates predictive models of reality, built from interdisciplinary simplifications. Expecting the simplification to a physiological model to explain abstractions of thought is thus even wrong in scientific terms.

jkop

But there is another sense, arising from association with experiences one has with red objects. These are often social. for example, red in the USA tends to mean 'danger' or 'stop,' whereas in China it has more the connotation of 'parade' or 'party'. — ernestm

You can ascribe almost any meaning to a colour, because meanings are linguistic and social or cultural constructs. Colour experiences, however, are biological phenomena. There is no sense in which you could make us blind to red merely by ascribing it the meaning "invisible".

ernestm

↪jkop

Well, if you are interested in that, I did a quick search to find the most recent article on this topic here:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-5151-1_4?no-access=true

But it is $30 for the chapter. I have a pretty good idea what it says, but it would take me a week to write it properly, and I have to work on my application for a Masters in philosophy, in fact I am behind working on it, so please excuse me by saying, yes I understand your viewpoint, and I wish I had more time to discuss it with you. It is certainly one of the more mystical aspects of Wittgensteinian thought, and does take some time to grasp. Reading the tractatus, red book, and blue book is helpful. Some of the refutations of other logicians in the tractatus are a little complicated, but most of the rest of all three is quite readable.

SteveKlinko

↪ernestm

I also find this thinking too reductionist. While I understand the inclination to seek such a hypothesis scientifically, it does nothing at all to resolve the actual problems of conceptuality, and so it actually does science a disservice. Personally I find the issue of individual consciousness itself turns into a solipsistic red herring. Most of the ideas I know are not my own, but other peoples', so by the same extrapolation you refer to, I don't feel that beliefs based upon them are my own beliefs either, but rather just inserted into me, like fake limbs, by other people. I have been led to understand that is a very rare experience, but that is how I feel about them, and I feel if all the things I had learned from other people did not exist, but I had some kind of 'self consciousness' regardless, it would probably be on the level of awareness of a pet cat. — ernestm

Yes, original ideas are hard to come by. But your Conscious Experience of Red is your own personal Experience. I'm only saying that my interest is in exploring exactly how do we experience Red. I think it's a good starter goal. But of course what I'm really after is the Conscious Experience of Light in general. I am interested in all the Conscious Sensory Experiences that we have. So also Sound, Taste, Smell, and Touch. But Light is the most interesting to me with Sound a close second. Thanks for the style encouragement.

SteveKlinko

If you see the colour directly, then there is no gap to explain. The colour experience is partly set by the optics, and partly by your background capacities and habits which enable you to see it. — jkop

As soon as the Physical Light hits the Retina it is turned into something else as it transmitted to the Cortex. It is now Nerve Impulses and Nerve Firings. I think it's pretty well established that there is no Visual Experience without Cortical involvement. So what we see is the result of Neurons Firing. We don't Experience the Physical Light directly. If you rub your eye you can see Lights.because you are stimulating Neural Firings. There is no Physical Light involved in that. Also, where does all that Light come from in your Dreams? How about after Images where you continue to see remnants of the scene you were looking at? These Lights are all internal Lights that we have in our Conscious Minds. Bottom line is that we Experience Light all the time when there is no Light there. And when we are awake the situation is the same, we are seeing our own internal Lights but now the Conscious Light we experience is correlated with external scenes you are looking at.

Pierre-Normand

It is certainly one of the more mystical aspects of Wittgensteinian thought, and does take some time to grasp. Reading the tractatus, red book, and blue book is helpful. — ernestm

Those would be the Blue and Brown Books. The Red one is from Chairman Mao ;-)

ernestm

↪Pierre-Normand

Thank you. I really should read them again myself, it's been 35 years. Perhaps a week to answer the question is over optimistic.

jkop

As soon as the Physical Light hits the Retina it is turned into something else as it transmitted to the Cortex. It is now Nerve Impulses and Nerve Firings. — SteveKlinko

Sure, the light hits the retina and thereby starts a causal chain of biochemical reactions. But you say more: that the light would be turned into "something else", and "transmitted" to the cortex. :-}

Is it physically possible even for nerves and neurons to transmit "something..." (what?) ..as if the cortex would be a TV?

I don't think it is necessary for an observer's visual system to transmit anything when there is the presence of an object and light that reflects its present features. Only the latter are necessary for the visual system to see something.

I think it's pretty well established that there is no Visual Experience without Cortical involvement. So what we see is the result of Neurons Firing. We don't Experience the Physical Light directly. — SteveKlinko

Sure, nobody says that there is no cortical involvement. But something is wrong when a supposedly "scientific" explanation of how we see things amounts to the not so scientific conclusion that we never see things but a "result" of brain activity. The skeptic nightmare is further fuled by your talk of light which omits the real objects that reflect or emit it, and the usual rhetoric on illusions or hallucinations.

If you rub your eye you can see Lights.because you are stimulating Neural Firings. There is no Physical Light involved in that. Also, where does all that Light come from in your Dreams? — SteveKlinko

Your arguments are bad because 1) it is impossible to see unconscious, in the dark, behind rubbing fingers, closed eyelids etc. and 2) they exploit the ambiguity of the two different senses of seeing light: the experience of seeing (constituitive), and the experience of the light (intentionalistic).

How about after Images where you continue to see remnants of the scene you were looking at? — SteveKlinko

You're not seeing any images, including "remnants" of the scenes you were looking at. But when you see the scenes and then shut your eyes you might have the experience sustained in its constituitive sense. Like pinching your arm seeing can be sustained before the experience fades. Some recalcitrance might be a feature of the biological nature of experiences.

These Lights are all internal Lights that we have in our Conscious Minds. Bottom line is that we Experience Light all the time when there is no Light there. And when we are awake the situation is the same, we are seeing our own internal Lights but now the Conscious Light we experience is correlated with external scenes you are looking at. — SteveKlinko

If we only see our own internal lights, then how could they ever be correlated to something external that we supposedly don't see? It seems inconsistent.

TimeLine

I said that light doesn't exist just as much or as little as color. As that is difficult for you to understand, I will put it the other war around. Color exists just as much or as little as light does. That means the same thing. — ernestm

The long winter evenings must just fly by for you.

Wayfarer

But what does it really mean to See? A conscious life form is first of all a Physical Thing — SteveKlinko

Actually, that is not so. 'A conscious life-form ' is a subject, in our case - we assimilate the information from an object, but we also interpret it and integrate it into our already-existing knowledge. In other words, we judge its meaning. Physical things don't do that. The assertion simply assumes 'physicalism' is the case.

mcdoodle

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Wayfarer

↪mcdoodle

if you were the kind if critter that eats tobacco it would be something you ate, instead of something you smoke.

Harry Hindu

↪Wayfarer

What about a life-form that isn't conscious, like a starfish, that has eyes, but no central nervous system with a brain?

But what does it really mean to See? — SteveKlinko

What it means to see is that you are using light as a source of information about the world. We know this is true because we don't have any information about the world when there is no light. Actually, the only information we have is that there is no light symbolized by our visual field covered in black.

mcdoodle

if you were the kind if critter that eats tobacco it would be something you ate, instead of something you smoke. — Wayfarer

Yep, meaning is use :)

SteveKlinko

↪jkop

As soon as the Physical Light hits the Retina it is turned into something else as it transmitted to the Cortex. It is now Nerve Impulses and Nerve Firings. — SteveKlinko

Sure, the light hits the retina and thereby starts a causal chain of biochemical reactions. But you say more: that the light would be turned into "something else", and "transmitted" to the cortex. :-} — jkop

The next sentence says It is now Nerve Impulses and Nerve Firings. That's the something else.

Is it physically possible even for nerves and neurons to transmit "something..." (what?) ..as if the cortex would be a TV?

I don't think it is necessary for an observer's visual system to transmit anything when there is the presence of an object and light that reflects its present features. Only the latter are necessary for the visual system to see something. — jkop

It is the basic function of Nerves to transmit something. I'm not sure what your question is here. The primary Visual Cortex really is like a TV screen in that there is a topological copy of patterns on the Retina reproduced on the Cortex. The Cortical version is however a highly warped version of what's on the Retina. This pattern information is Transmitted over Nerve pathways.

I don't think it is necessary for an observer's visual system to transmit anything when there is the presence of an object and light that reflects its present features. Only the latter are necessary for the visual system to see something — jkop

I don't know if it's necessary or not but your visual system is doing that.

If we only see our own internal lights, then how could they ever be correlated to something external that we supposedly don't see? It seems inconsistent. — jkop

The visual system uses Nerve signals from the Retina to construct the scene we are looking at with our own internal Conscious Light. The Light scene you see is correlated to the external scene when we are awake. The Light scene you see when you are Dreaming is made out of the same Conscious Light stuff as the Light scene when you are awake but it is not correlated to any external scene. How the Visual system creates the Conscious Light scene is the David Chalmers Hard Problem of Consciousness as described in The Conscious Mind. The lack of understanding of how the Conscious Experience occurs is the Explanatory Gap as proposed by Joseph Levine in Materialism and Qualia. Maybe you are more familiar with the term Qualia in which case when I say Conscious Light it is the same as the Light Qualia. The fact that we don't know how this works yet is the 800 pound Gorilla in the Consciousness room.

SteveKlinko

↪Wayfarer

But what does it really mean to See? A conscious life form is first of all a Physical Thing — SteveKlinko
Actually, that is not so. 'A conscious life-form ' is a subject, in our case - we assimilate the information from an object, but we also interpret it and integrate it into our already-existing knowledge. In other words, we judge its meaning. Physical things don't do that. The assertion simply assumes 'physicalism' is the case. — Wayfarer

First of all Conscious Life Forms like us are Physical Things. That's just a fact. I say First Of All with the implication that there is a Second of All at least here. I go on to talk about the Conscious aspect of the whole thing.

We Do Not See Objects We Detect Objects

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