How is noise any different to brightness and colour?

Representationalism in phil of mind isn't using the term "representation(alism)" in the same sense in which it's used in the visual arts.

In phil of mind the idea is that you're not directly aware of something. Rather, there's an additional layer, so to speak, where what you're aware of is your mind's (re)construction in response to external data.

I meant noise as in "noise vs signal"... white noise. It occurred to me that I didn't explain that.

The visual counterpart would be...muddled like a Jackson Pollock.

Or maybe we never sense the unrepresented. We just talk about it.

This is a fascinating issue. Can we conceive of "pure randomness"? Even white noise has a structure.

Related, I like to think of the sensation/emotion that we can conceptualize without being able to actually exhaust in this conceptualization. The idea of red is not redness itself, though we need the idea to point at redness and maybe to give it unity as an object. And yet once we have this idea, we can see that redness exceeds its concept. I just don't believe that a man born blind knows everything about red, though this connects to one's conception of knowledge.

Related, I like to think of the sensation/emotion that we can conceptualize without being able to actually exhaust in this conceptualization. The idea of red is not redness itself, though we need the idea to point at redness and maybe to give it unity as an object. — Hoo

Right. Another way to explain "noise" is that it's sensation unassociated with any form or idea.

Is it possible to see without interpretation? In other words... if you don't call it red, is it correct to say you've seen it at all?

Where there is the perception of noise, is there necessarily an accompanying idea of the uninterpreted... the unrepresented? IOW... is that the form associated with noise... the formless?

Where there is the perception of noise, is there necessarily an accompanying idea of the uninterpreted... the unrepresented? IOW... is that the form associated with noise... the formless? — Mongrel

This is a fascinating issue. Can we conceive of "pure randomness"? Even white noise has a structure. — Hoo

Hoo is right. Even noise has form. Any model of randomness still depends on identifiable boundary conditions. So noise comes in many colours - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise

So in an ontological sense, randomness comes in different varieties that speak to different states of global constraint. Randomness is an actual pattern. And "pure randomness" would be something "actually patternless" - what I would define as a vagueness (which is pretty unpicturable).

But then there is a further question of how good are we are psychologically at distinguishing the various shades of randomness in the world? And of course mostly we are quite bad because we are untrained in this level of pattern recognition. Or to put it another way, mostly in life it doesn't really matter.

Also our perceptual equipment has its own signal processing biases - like an increased sensitivity to noises in the range of spoken speech which "distorts" the bare physical pattern of energies the world might be producing. So to see types of randomness in their "wild state", we would have to somehow cancel out that kind of inbuilt perceptual bias.

Thus in a general way, we are seeing patterns that are really there in nature when we dismiss something as just "random noise". But as patterns, they are also patterns with the least possible meaning or message. In paying attention to randomness as itself "a perceptual thing" - a field of activity like the crackling sound of white noise, or the restless firing of static on an old vacuum tube TV screen - we are thinking about precisely that which we are normally set-up to filter out. We are representing as present what we would normally want to suppress and render absent. We are making meaningful what is usually interpreted in terms of a generalised lack of significance - a collection of differences that precisely don't make a difference.

I meant noise as in "noise vs signal"... white noise. It occurred to me that I didn't explain that. — Mongrel

It's still not really clear what you mean. Literal noise is just sound, and whether we're talking about representationalism or direct realism or anything else, you'd process it just like you would any other sounds, whether we're talking about speech or music or whatever--and after all, there is noise music for example, which literally incorporates sound that's otherwise usually parsed as noise.

Let's say that we're actually talking about white noise--either as sound or visual data, so either between-radio-station "static" or "snow" on a TV. Well again, whatever our philosophy of perception stance, we still process that data just like we process anything else. It's just different aural or visual data than other things but it's still particular sound waves/light waves that we process.

So I'm not sure what exactly you have in mind re or just what you see as the potential issue here.

I think you're agreeing that everything we encounter has some kind of form. We never encounter anything that's entirely formless.

One way to put it would be this: if that's true, then does that amount to idealism? Are you an idealist?

But then there is a further question of how good are we are psychologically at distinguishing the various shades of randomness in the world? — apokrisis

I don't think uninterpreted means random.

I don't think uninterpreted means random. — Mongrel

No idea how that is a response to anything I said.

I was talking about representation. How do you see that being related to randomness?

I was talking about representation. How do you see that being related to randomness? — Mongrel

I still don't get you. All I said was that we can surely have representations of randomness. When I look at TV snow, my interpretation is that I'm staring at "white noise". I see it positively as a characteristic natural pattern, a form, and so it is not uninterpreted or unrepresented.

I agree with that. So you never sense the uninterpreted or unrepresented. Right?

I think you're agreeing that everything we encounter has some kind of form. We never encounter anything that's entirely formless. — Mongrel

Yes, that's right. I don't think the idea of a "formless existent" is even coherent, really.

One way to put it would be this: if that's true, then does that amount to idealism? Are you an idealist?

I don't know what the connection would seem to be in your view. Anyway, no, I'm a realist, and on philosophy of perception, I'm actually a direct or "naive" realist.

Yes, that's right. I don't think the idea of a "formless existent" is even coherent, really. — Terrapin Station

So whatever exists is formed. I think that's true. And yet:

Imagine a candle melting. The wax had the form of a candle, and now it has the form of a puddle. But it's the same wax. So there's a difference between the wax and any particular form. (stolen from Descartes, obviously). How do you deal with this argument?

Perhaps without time there is no form...the wax always has form, regardless of when you look at it, the candle is just one form that wax, being what it is, can take.

Perhaps without time there is no form...the wax always has form, regardless of when you look at it, the candle is just one form that wax, being what it is, can take. — Cavacava

So the form only appears as distinct when we're looking at events over time.

Whoa. It has to do with becoming.

Just to clarify; when you're taking about form are you just talking about shape?

Well, first, I'm a nominalist who doesn't buy identity through time. So I'd say that it's not the same wax. Basically, my view is that of Heraclitus: "You can't step in the same river twice."

But let's imagine for a minute that it is the same wax in some sense. Part of the confusion there would be a scope problem. Just what are we referring to by "the wax"? One thing we might be referring to is paraffin, and specifically, a particular molecular composition re hydrocarbons. If that's what we're referring to, and we imagine it can remain identical through time, then indeed it is the same wax as a candle and as the melted puddle, and it hasn't changed form, because the form we're referring to is that molecular composition of hydrocarbons. (Actually, we'd be ignoring more fine-grained differences in the molecular behavior at least if we're talking about it in its solid versus liquid state, but we can ignore that out of charity, because we're trying to charitably talk about a sense in which we can say the wax is indeed the same.)

If we're instead referring to the candle, more or less wholesale, then it's not the same wax after it melted, because we were referring to the candle by "the wax."

Just to clarify; when you're taking about form are you just talking about shape? — Michael

Say you encounter some music. Later on, you remember the sounds. You aren't hearing the music now, you're remembering it. Form is what you're left with once the music stops.

Form usually answers a what-question. What is it?

The concept of the unformed as long confused me. I think Cavacava is onto something.... it has to do with becoming.

So I'd say that it's not the same wax — Terrapin Station

Everybody else would say it's the same wax. Candle melts, we're left with a puddle. Its the same wax.

Therefore, the wax is not identical to any particular form it takes.

Whereas Theseus' ship is identical to its particular form, according to one way of viewing the paradox. Same ship, different material.

Suppose that each plank on the Theseus is replaced exactly with a steel plank. Is it the same ship? & of course if each of the old planks were conserved and reassembled, is it the real 'real' Theseus?

That form and material are distinct was all the point I was making to Terrapin.

Everybody else would say it's the same wax. — Mongrel

Not everyone would say that, but even if so, I'm probably unlikely to be swayed by an argumentum ad populum.

Anyway, the rest of your comment seems like you didn't bother to read or you didn't understand my comment.

The idea of form being separable from its material/structure/processes is incoherent on my view.

Candle melts into a puddle. The wax in the candle is now in the puddle.

It's definitely the same wax.

Perhaps the "unrepresented" is a kind of retrospective formation. We experience things as they are presented to us. Then we say we represent them to ourselves, when we think about them or remember them. To re-member is to re-present. The scientific theory of perception posits that objects are imaged by or 'in' the brain; this seems to be one basis for representational theories. Another basis would be the logical idea that if something is presented to, and/or represented by, us, then there must be 'something' that is presented or represented.

To remember is literally to re-present... or try to, anyway. Yep... I'm more and more convinced that it has to do with time.

That form and material are distinct was all the point I was making to Terrapin. — Mongrel

Perhaps you could restate what exactly it might be that you are keen to discuss. Seems like you are channeling Banno at the moment. :)

What I am getting is that there is the usual hylomorphic issue when it comes to thinking of substantial being. We only know being when it is formed into some thing. And thus the notion of unformed being becomes deeply "other".

Somehow the stuff that accepts the form must be some kind of already formed material itself, and yet we just said that can't be. And so the "prime matter" becomes something itself immaterial - lacking the very definiteness we require of materiality. The material part of the substantial equation turns into something more akin to becoming - a potential to be.

So when talking about wax, we can try to talk about the matter that endures or is conserved as a kind of proper material stuff by saying its all still just a bunch of atoms. The arrangement is different - a candle stick vs a wax puddle. Or we could enlarge the view and talk about the entropy change that makes a (less materialistic) material difference. In some sense, a potential has been spent. Some part of what was an orderly candle with its waxy energy bonds has been dissipated in the light and heat that helped melt the rest of it into the more entropic form of a waxy puddle.

Yet still, atoms are a formed kind of stuff. Even energy is a formed kind of stuff - electromagnetic radiation or some other such thing. We still haven't drilled down far enough to hit bottom and discover what matter is once its formal clothing has been stripped away to leave it standing bare.

As we were discussing earlier, even randomness is only conceivable in the guise of already formed material patterns - possibility not naked, but corralled by boundary conditions to give it statistical regularity.

Sorry to be boringly repetitive, but it is precisely these considerations that lead me eventually mentioning vagueness as the primary material principle here.

In some way - some way that we would have to make metaphysically good on - the deepest level of materiality would be unbound action. Unlimited fluctuation. Energy unrestrained by dimension. Chaos without boundaries.

Talking about the world in terms of constrained form is easy. Imposing further rational pattern on found substantial actuality of the physical world is something that has become second nature to Homo mechanicus.

But conceiving of prime matter, pure potential, unformed possibility, uninterpreted existence, is at the opposite end of metaphysics - the hardest and last thing we would do.

But conceiving of prime matter, pure potential, unformed possibility, uninterpreted existence, is at the opposite end of metaphysics - the hardest and last thing we would do. — apokrisis

I think it is just here where have nothing more than intuition to rely on. Anything we might believe regarding "prime matter, pure potential, unformed possibility, uninterpreted existence" will be the result of a groundless (in the empirical or logical sense) leap of faith.