Someone who has been visually blind all their life wouldn't see what we see with our eyes. Maybe we do have other senses that we don't use much, that we discard as mere imagination or coincidence. And maybe some people sense much more than others, and we couldn't tell whether they really sense or are charlatans without being them. The picture we make of the universe is limited by what we are able to sense and by what we focus on, when we focus on what we see with the eyes emotions are seen as not fundamental, but we would get a very different picture by focusing on emotions first.

"when we focus on what we see with the eyes emotions are seen as not fundamental, but we would get a very different picture by focusing on emotions first."

Interesting comment. I once went through an art gallery with my eyes closed and touching things. No, I was not supposed to touch things, but the urge to do was too strong to resist. Touch is feeling and our feelings (emotions) are feelings. Those might not be the best words to use for my experience but to know the world through touch is so much more intimate than to know the world through sight. When we know the world through sight it is far away from us relative to knowing things through touch.

I'd suggest that the first thing to understand is that senses work upon differences - gradations, distinctions, and invariants under movement - in an environment. To see something is to see its contour against a background, its varying specular qualities on its surface in light and so on. To touch, similarly, is to feel the differences in grain and texture as one moves a finger or hand across a surface. So too with the other modalities of sense. In other words: difference (or rather, distinction) is information. The modalities of sense we have are probably those with allow us the best 'access' to variations in differences. Sight is exemplary because light and movement provide a great deal of differentiation in an environment from a point of view, and hence information. Something relatively uniform (for animals of our size), like air pressure, on the other hand, is probably not super useful to have developed as a sensory modality (we don't primarily navigate our environment by sensing changes in air pressure).

This kind of explanation would have to be coupled to a good evolutionary history to give the full picture, but that's a rudiment of an answer, I reckon.

Are there possibly other universes or dimensions in which the physical world utilises different physical phenomenons that are beyond our depths of understanding? — Susu

I'd suggest that the first thing to understand is that senses work upon differences - gradations, distinctions, and invariants under movement - in an environment. — StreetlightX

I agree with SX. We don’t see the physical world as such. We just seek its informative differences. So there is already the further thing of a self that is being constructed as part of sensation. And the senses evolve in such a way as to find the means to create “physical” differences even where there are none really.

A good example is hue perception or colour discrimination. Yellow and red aren’t objectively physical qualitities that we had to evolve to see. Instead they are differences we manufacture to make the basically similar look violently different ... at a glance.

A tiny change in reflected wavelength provokes an abrupt change in hue response. And this then allows us to break up a cluttered world, reflecting light in a very compressed spectrum, break out with all the multicolour glory of a rose garden.

Seeing colour is simply a fast way of seeing surfaces that are likely to identify some object, like a leaf or fruit or petal. The “physics” being seen is the fact that an object tends to be made of the same stuff and thus has its own characteristic reflectance. So the most fractional differences in reflectance can become extremely informative. The shape of the object leaps out because it’s hue makes it distinctive.

Shape also pops out when there is the contrast of movement. A leaf will flutter and be seen as a coherent change.

So ultimately, we are wired to understand the world as a collection of objects of interest against backgrounds of indifference. Sensation is attention. We are seeking a primal differencing in terms of what matters to us. It is not the physics of the world that is experienced, but the contrast that is a world with us in it.

And so we evolve powerful mechanisms for homing in on coherent objects that pop out against generally disinterested backgrounds. When it comes to hue perception, the fact that it isn’t about objective physics becomes really strongly apparent. Colour is just a shortcut for identifying non moving shapes in a cluttered visual environment.

I agree with SX. We don’t see the physical world as such. We just seek its informative differences. — apokrisis

How do we recognize things if we only "just" seek differences?

Sensation is attention. — apokrisis

Attention is the amplifier or suppressor of sensations depending upon the present goal in the mind.

I individuate, therefore I am. ;)

We don’t see the physical world as such. — apokrisis

Why we don't see the physical world? Strange way to put it, as if it were possible to experience the physical world in an absolute way.

I can see we are not aware of the totality of what is going on around us by our evolved senses but what we sense is still grounded in the physical world.

Fundamentally any body of knowledge that represents a good account of how the world behaves is validated by the senses, otherwise something else is going on, like supernatural monkey business.

I can see we are not aware of the totality of what is going on around us by our evolved senses but what we sense is still grounded in the physical world. — Nils Loc

But what I am challenging would be that presumption that "the physical world" is the ground - the thing-in-itself to be truthfully represented by a brain experiencing that world.

Sure. I am still arguing realism and not idealism. There is a world. It will constrain our wishes. Evolution would favour a relation with it that is "accurate", or "truthful", or in some sense "grounded". But the relation is in fact only a pragmatic one, a semiotic one.

The brain hasn't evolved to be a model of the world in some objective and disinterested sense, but quite the opposite. It has evolved to be an Umwelt - a model of the world with the individuated self in it. And this makes a huge metaphysical difference.

The relationship is grounded in that forming of a sharo self~world difference. The subjectivity of sensation makes evolutionary sense because the construction of a subjective point of view is the primary goal.

Fundamentally any body of knowledge that represents a good account of how the world behaves is validated by the senses, otherwise something else is going on, like supernatural monkey business. — Nils Loc

Again, you seem to want to argue that an objective view of the world would be somehow the design goal here. So you would judge the evolution of sensation against that criteria.

But that presumption is completely unhelpful for understanding the psychology of perception. What evolves is subjective experience - the ability to model a world with a self as its centre. And from there, we can see that the ability to ignore the world - to push it into the background and deal with it automatically as not worth our attention - is one of the driving evolutionary criteria.

The more I can guess right, the less I need to actually check. The more I can forget or ignore, the wiser I am getting as a "reality modelling system".

An enactive or ecological approach to perception stresses how little "reality modelling" the brain has to do in fact. All the information is out there all the time, just laying around. So the work the brain has to do is mostly about forming a sense of self - arriving at the constantly changing attentional viewpoint which is "me ignoring pretty much everything going on so I can execute whatever little wish or fancy that constitutes my highly subjective point of view".

I individuate, therefore I am. — apokrisis

...therefore I am - what?

You don't just individuate or else you could never call yourself a human being.

Our minds are not differential machines. They are categorical machines. Categories are different groups of similar items.

Categories are different groups of similar items. — Harry Hindu

Categories are differences that make a difference by grouping the differences that don’t make a difference.

A cat is different from a dog. A cat is indifferently a Persian or a Siamese. So as I say, the ur differencing is the attentional one that self interestedly sees an object against a backdrop. That perceives life semiotically in terms of signal found in noise.

Categories are differences that make a difference by grouping the differences that don’t make a difference. — apokrisis

Word salad.

A cat is different from a dog. — apokrisis

Yet a cat is similar to a dog. They are both mammals. As a matter of fact, everything is part of just one category - reality, or nature.

That perceives life semiotically in terms of signal found in noise. — apokrisis

Exactly. Our minds favor patterns over the randomness. Minds are more at ease with patterns than with randomness.

Yet a cat is similar to a dog. They are both mammals. — Harry Hindu

Sure. We pay attention to the differences that matter and are indifferent to those that don’t. Thanks for confirming this applies to any level of acts of categorisation.

That isn't what I said. Read the ENTIRE post again and respond to the ENTIRE post and we can continue to show that everything is interconnected under one category (nature) and not seperate after all.

Are we now talking about the natural as opposed to the artificial or the supernatural? And if you are conceiving of some fundamental unity, how does that relate to the OP discussion about the sensation of a world of differences?

We were discussing how minds perceive the world - as differences or as categories. I never denied that we make distinctions. What I do disagree with is your proposal that that is all that we make. We also make out patterns and similarities. As a matter of fact, recognizing and finding patterns is consoling to minds. It is what minds seek to do.

What I do disagree with is your proposal that that is all that we make. — Harry Hindu

Which I never said. So get it right.

I said there are differences that make a difference distinguished from differences that don’t. So in gestalt fashion, sensation starts with that conceptual, figure-ground, symmetry breaking. And thus sensation is evolutionarily self centred or semiotic from the get-go. The differences either matter or don’t matter to some embodied self.

You have been nitpicking away because you never paused to listen.

Which I never said. So get it right. — apokrisis

You don't even understand what you said. I called it word salad for a reason.

I said there are differences that make a difference distinguished from differences that don’t. — apokrisis

You are saying that there are only differences - those that make a difference and those that don't. Never mind that your using two different meanings of "different" in your sentence. You are simply being artful, not coherent, with your use of words.

It would make more sense to say that there are differences that matter, or are useful and those that don't/aren't. But then aren't there similarities that matter, or make a difference, and those that don't? The fact is that they all matter, or make a difference, depending upon the present goal in the mind. The difference or similarity that doesn't matter now, matters later when you have a different goal.

Yawn.

A good example is hue perception or colour discrimination. Yellow and red aren’t objectively physical qualitities that we had to evolve to see. Instead they are differences we manufacture to make the basically similar look violently different ... at a glance. — apokrisis

I still don't get why the difference of red and yellow in any particular circumstance wouldn't indicate a true physical difference (though there could be different ratios of receptors for those things between people). It seems "objective qualities" according to your view are just plain impossible so the term becomes confusing, further more if what is objective always requires a individuated view.

Self-generated experience without a sense object at all might make this more compelling, where by some previous experience the brain imposes a difference that overrides what would otherwise be sensed on average, or there is abnormal hallucination or illusion that ignores what is not typically ignored. Objectivity is just a kind of shared and adjudicated difference by repeated and extended sensing, a kind of collective subjectivity a step up from individual subjectivity.

I can’t follow what you are agreeing or disagreeing with. But one of the points I am emphasising is that it is this very distinction - the one between a subjective self and objective world - that is at the heart of sensation-making. The difference between the two is what we work to achieve.

So we assign hues to “the world”. They are seen as “out there”. But we know they are psychological constructs. And that should give the game away.

Yellow is one of the four primary colours. And yet we don’t even have a “yellow” receptor that could fire in seeing that particular frequency. Instead yellow is the opponent channel for blue that is concocted by a balance of red/green cone opponency. Primates added back a third cone pigment as they became diurnal creatures, and used this shortcut to fill in with a virtual fourth pigment.

Moral is that colour perception presents us with an ecologically useful view of the world. It was never about evolving to represent the “physical reality”.

Predictable