The spider is directly aware of the vibrations and indirectly aware of the fly. — Michael
other than the trivial fact that it is such that it causes us to see this or feel that — Michael
But it isn't. It's not 'directly' aware if the vibrations in the phenomenological sense of 'aware' (damn terminology problems again). I don't know spider neurology, so I'm going to replace it with human neurology instead.
Something like colour is modeled by a couple of regions in the brain (V4, BA7, BA28...). What we call an experience (what we relate when we're talking about it, what we react to, what we log) is several nodes removed from either the V4 region or the BA7 region.
When articles like the one you cited talk about 'directness' they're talking about it in system terms. Direct means that the internal states have access to it within the Markov blanket. It doesn't mean our experience has no intervening nodes.
So I'm not seeing the phenomenological argument that we 'experience' the model directly but the hidden state indirectly. In terms of intervening data nodes we experience both indirectly. Our experience neither directly reports the output of the V4 region, nor does it directly report the activity of the retinal ganglia, nor does it directly report the photon scattering from the external world object. It doesn't directly report any of them. So why give the modeling output from V4 any unique status in the process? — Isaac
This is the move I don't understand. On what grounds 'trivial'? — Isaac
It is better to understand it exactly as I described it in that last post: — Michael
The words "red" and "blue" in this context refer to some quality of their respective experiences. We are directly aware of this red or blue quality, and through that quality indirectly aware of some external cause that emits or reflects light at a certain wavelength. — Michael
But we clearly aren't referring to the properties of the experience. When I say "the post box is red" I'm clearly referring to the post box. The grammar could not be more clear. — Isaac
Do our everyday experiences provide us with information about the "intrinsic" nature of this external world? — Michael
Are the shapes and colours and sounds that we're familiar with properties of the external world or just qualities of the experience? — Michael
How much of what we see and feel is a product of us and our involvement with the world, and how much (if any) was "already there"? — Michael
Unless it is doing so randomly, then there has to be a match between property and experience? — Isaac
But being good, being fun, being scary, and so on are not external properties of things that are then "encountered". They refer to my state of mind (emotional rather than sensory in this case). — Michael
I just don't see a problem with calling that property 'being scary'. — Isaac
The fact that you and I can look at the same photo and yet I see a white and gold dress and you see a black and blue dress proves this wrong. — Michael
You seeing white and gold dress and me seeing a black and blue is not remotely random — Isaac
A broken window isn't a property of the ball. — Michael
What we call that intrinsic property seems to be the sticking point. — Isaac
because those are the words that refer to the quality of my experience. So an intrinsic property is red1 if it causes most humans to experience red2. But there are some who might experience blue2 because their eyes and/or brain work differently. — Michael
I don't see how that follows. — Michael
Most humans are trichromats. The very rare tetrachromats aren't wrong in seeing different colours to the rest of us. — Michael
Because that's the consequence of what we know about how brains work. — Isaac
Again, allowing some aspects of neuroscience to inform your understanding but denying others — Isaac
Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine, 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere. — Chalmers, 1995
How do we know that? How have we updated our model of what's happening in tetrachromats?
By following the evidence from neuroscience. By accommodating what we've discovered about how brains work into our understanding of perception.
Again, allowing some aspects of neuroscience to inform your understanding but denying others — Isaac
Neurology doesn't explain the hard problem of consciousness. We know that changes to the eyes and changes to the brain affect first-person experience. We haven't reduced first-person experience to brain- or body-activity. — Michael
One such is the idea that there's some internal'redness' which we directly experience. There's no mechanism for such a thing, and what mechanisms we can see suggest it isn't happening. — Isaac
What we know is that if I see a red dress and you see a blue dress then our first-person experiences are different, and that the colour terms "red" and "blue" refer to whatever it is that differs in our experiences. — Michael
Which most people accept is true, given that the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been solved. — Michael
I've no interest at all in being lectured with a series of random assertions from nobodies off the internet. Provide arguments, cite sources, or at the very least show a little humility if you don't. I can't for the life of me think why you'd assume anyone would want to learn what some random people happen to 'reckon' about cognitive science and systems theory. — Isaac
Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (19 September 1901 – 12 June 1972) was an Austrian biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory (GST). This is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, applicable to biology, cybernetics and other fields. Bertalanffy proposed that the classical laws of thermodynamics might be applied to closed systems, but not necessarily to "open systems" such as living things. His mathematical model of an organism's growth over time, published in 1934,[1] is still in use today. — Wikipedia
Also I have no interest in being lectured by another dry, opinionated academic who thinks that cognitive science and systems theory have any priority, beyond their own personal set of prejudices, in respect of philosophical questions. — Janus
One step back. The declaration of an internal state and an external state (necessary simply by declaring the object of our thought to be this and not that) Requires that there is what we call a Markov boundary between the internal and the external states. This is (again no ontology yet) simply a statistical feature of there being internal and external states, there simply must exist in any network those nodes which connect to the external states and the internal states. These are the Markov boundary (and anything within them is inside the Markov blanket). — Isaac
I don't see how we 'know' this. Certainly not scientifically. All the data we have scientifically seems to show that experiences cannot be said to have properties such as colours. There simply isn't the mechanism.
So do we 'know' it phenomenologically? Again, I don't see how. All we have phenomenologically is that I seem to think the dress is blue and you seem to think its red. There's nothing in my experience which tells me why. — Isaac
Do you say the same about being fun, good, scary, painful? You don't understand how these words refer to some feature of the experience and not (just) the external stimulus? — Michael
I cited the source, Ludwig von Bertalanffy. If you're into systems theory you ought to know him. — Metaphysician Undercover
A system can be defined as a set of elements standing in interrelations. Interrelation means that elements, p, stand in relations, R, so that the behavior of an element p in R is different from its behavior in another relation, R'. If the behaviors in R and R' are not different, there is no interaction, and the elements behave independently with respect to the relations R and R'. — General System Theory
The characteristic of the organism is first that it is more than the sum of its parts and second that the single processes are ordered for the maintenance of the whole. — General System Theory
Your claim was that neurological "systems" follow the laws of physics. Bertalanffy's claim is that "open systems" (biological systems) do not necessarily follow the second law of thermodynamics. — Metaphysician Undercover
Biologically, life is not maintenance or restoration of equilibrium but is essentially maintenance of disequilibria, as the doctrine of the organism as open system reveals. Reaching equilibrium means death and consequent decay. — General System Theory
you do not employ a boundary between the system and the "internal". — Metaphysician Undercover
there are internal hidden states — Metaphysician Undercover
Is there something specific about my attempts that have failed for you, or just in general? — Isaac
he promotes, from the perspective of a particular kind of human, that which never occurs to him from the perspective of a human in general. — Mww
are you immediately considering, upon reading this, what part of your brain is doing what, or, are you immediately considering only the relation between your reading and my writing? — Mww
Attempts to supplant natural human subjectivity with mechanistic necessity. — Mww
even if your science is in fact the case, I shall never relinquish the metaphysical conditions for my purely rational intellect. And neither should anyone else, dammit!!!!! — Mww
My personal beef? Since we're griping. I think philosopher types think they're reporting from introspection, but are actually repeating stories they've learnt from culture, books etc and merely satisfying themselves post hoc that this, in fact, describes how they think. — Isaac
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