Thanks. The same thing I've been saying for the better part of ten years.

:wink:

Banno and a few others around here and elsewhere(mostly academics) have proven immensely helpful. No need to talk in terms of "qualia" or "quale".

No need to talk in terms of "qualia" or "quale". — creativesoul

I'm still worried about the coffee being bitter. One would think Banno could do better.

But then again, maybe Banno likes bitter tasting coffee. I like cauliflower. Dennett finds it repugnant.

I have a feeling that if we quined the relevant qualia, we could add cauliflower to the coffee, and nobody would object.

But those meaningful correlations might include the coffee being better when you drink it and the cat being black on a white mat. — Marchesk

Sure, with the introduction of language use, we can talk about and/or compare past and present coffee tasting, black cats, and white mats, and that's one worrisome way of doing so.

Just why and account of just what is materialism "self-denying and life-demeaning"? And then what's the alternative exactly? Those are the two questions that critics of materialism never seem to be able to answer. — Janus

Eliminative materialism, by definition, attempts to eliminate human consciousness and reason. Eg by saying it’s an epiphenomenon or an illusion. That is self-denying because them materialists are themselves conscious and endowed with reason.

The alternative I am contemplating is a form of non-naive materialism where our minds are not denied (because such denial is futile and absurd), but recognized as useful, effective and causal. That is the only intellectually honest form of materialism: one in which minds matter.

The question is why is it not possible for a materialist to hold spiritual, ethical and aesthetical values? — Janus

It IS possible, as long as he does not deny the existence and importance of his own mind.

I'm going to try and explain the bigger picture which might answer the questions in your subsequent posts. If I can borrow from fdrake's post to start with as he put it very succinctly

(1) Environmental hidden states underdetermine perceptual feature formation.
(2) Bodily hidden states underdetermine perceptual feature formation.
(3) Task parameters underdetermine perceptual feature formation.
(4) Priors underdetermine perceptual feature formation. — fdrake

Those four variables together determine the perceptual feature (or interoceptual feature like emotion). Public models influence priors because in a social group with language there's a significant advantage in maintaining a strong similarity in our priors (language simply wouldn't work without it - thanks @Banno for helping draw this particular thread together for me).

So the extent to which a perceptual feature (an object of conscious experience, if you like - that which we are conscious of) is determined by hidden states is limited. These variables will have different strength depending on the feature. Some might be most heavily influence by hidden sates (catching a ball, for example), others will be more heavily influenced by prior (emotions - see the Barrett paper I cited earlier). None can be fully determined by anything less than all four, and in normal circumstances all are fully determined by all four (there are no other factors).

Translating a conscious experience into words or social relevant actions (which is most of them) absolutely requires that task parameters and priors strongly dominate the modelling because they are the only areas where it is possible to maintain inter-translatability, and without that the whole use of language or social-relevant action would be unlikely to succeed)

So when modelling my interceptive physiological signals in a task where a socially-relevant action is expected (or likely), I'm going to be reaching for models which are more publicly shaped so that my responses are more likely to have the expected result.


To your specific questions, with that in mind...

How does that work for animals? Fear and aggression are important for survival, and they're not exactly querying themselves for reports on conscious experiences. — Marchesk

Animals need to model the causes of their internal states no less than we do to help make predicatively useful responses, and if those responses are socially-relevant, they will need to be modelled on something public. Obviously it would not be advanced language in this case, but observed behaviour.

In animals without the mental structures to create modelling hierarchies, I can see why certain responses are important for survival, and certain physiological states which prepare for or facilitate those responses, but whilst useful, I can't see more advanced modelling like emotions being necessary for survival.

Also in the moment when someone punches me, I'm probably reacting in anger, not stopping to do some reflection. That comes after the reaction. — Marchesk

Well, you'd have to do some research work to establish that wouldn't you? Which is what Barrett and Seth (and others) have done. The results are that no, you do not react in anger, because there is no neural correlate for anger.

You earlier said

I fully endorse what Dr. Seth is doing. — Marchesk

We're not going to get anywhere in his stated project if you just insist that whatever you feel is happening is what's actually happening. In order to map brain states to phenomenological reports, you have to accept what neuroscientists are saying about brain states, otherwise you're saying phenomenological reports are infallible in a way the neuroscience isn't. So neuroscience says there is not an identifiable neural correlate for anger - we've looked really hard and can't find one. You've two choices 1) insist that because it feels like there must be one to you then that's the case and neuroscience just isn't trying hard enough, or 2) accept that something feeling like it's the case is not necessarily proof that it is, in fact, the case and work out how those feelings might have come about.

As I said to Khaled, if you're of the former persuasion, there's no point in us talking (there's no point in talking to anyone). If you're just going to assume that the way things seem to you to be is the way they actually are regardless of any evidence to the contrary, then there's no point in seeking other views is there?

So does this mean other animals do not have experiences of colors, tastes, memories, because they lack the language to ask themselves about how other animals typically react? — Marchesk

Not necessarily. Public models don't have to be linguistic, they can be behavioural. All public models do is influence priors, anything influencing a prior as a result of cultural homogenisation is a public model.

Thinking about this some more, how would the words "afraid", "red" or "pain" have become part of language if there wasn't fear, color, or uncomfortable sensations to begin with? What exactly is the public model that we learn based on? — Marchesk

I'm no linguist, but the history of the origin of words is hardly a simple matter of us finding new things to name in the world is it? Words are used. It wasn't for idle fun that @Banno made this point earlier. It's quite important. Words don't need to refer, so the mere existence of a word does not imply that some exact referent of it exists. My guess is that if you look to the use of these words you'll find how and why they came about. Why do I tell someone I'm in pain? Maybe to get help, maybe to get them to stop doing something, maybe to feel part of a social group (where being in 'pain' might be a membership criteria). any one of these uses might be why the word came about. But none of these speech acts are going to work unless I can model the physiological signals I want to attend to in a way that is translatable to the people I want to do something for me. That's where the public models come in.

Interesting post.

I'm left with the impression that you and I both hold that fear is the only innate emotion.

Eliminative materialism being a philosophical position that is obviously deemed by the adherents to be important, cannot consistently deny the importance of the mind; to do that would be a performative contradiction. But the eliminative materialist can consistently deny that the mind is anything apart being a function of the physical brain.

Translating it back to make sure we're concordant: the priors=flippers, task parameters =pegs and the strength of the trigger = hidden states. — fdrake

Yep, that's it.

I think what I claimed is a bit stronger, it isn't just that the hidden state variables act as a sufficient cause for perceptual features to form (given task parameters and priors), I was also claiming that the value of the hidden states acts as a sufficient cause for the content of those formed perceptual features. So if I touch something at 100 degrees celcius (hidden state value), it will feel hot (content of perceptual feature). — fdrake

Yeah, I'd agree there and I think it's an important distinction because values of hidden states do more than just work for object recognition, objects can be in states.

in order for the perceptual features it forms to be fit for purpose representations of the hidden states, whatever means of representation has to link the hidden state values with the perceptual feature content. If generically/ceteris paribus there failed to be a relationship between the hidden states and perceptual features with that character, perception wouldn't be a pragmatic modelling process. — fdrake

Yes, to a point. I think you and I might agree on this in principle but perhaps disagree in extent. My issue comes when we translate values of objects of perception into words (like temperature) and so in doing model them with a heavy reliance on priors (to make them mutually understandable). The hidden values of hidden states certainly must be relatively faithfully represented by our models in order for them to function pragmatically, but the public models of those hidden values need not. They only need serve their social purpose of inter-translatability. Which is not to remove them entirely from the hidden values - there's nothing quite so useful for inter-translatability as strong reference to a shared variable - but it does reintroduce the effect of socially mediated priors.

Let's take showing someone a picture of a duck. Even if they hadn't seen anything like a duck before, they would be able to demarcate the duck from whatever background it was on and would see roughly the same features; they'd see the wing bits, the bill, the long neck etc. That can be thought of splitting up patterns of (visual?) stimuli into chunks regardless of whether the chunks are named, interpreted, felt about etc. The evidence for that comes in two parts: firstly that the parts of the brain that it is known do abstract language stuff activate later than the object recognition parts that chunk the sensory stimuli up in the first place, and secondly that it would be such an inefficient strategy to require the brain have a unique "duck" category in order to recognise the duck as a distinct feature of the picture. IE, it is implausible that seeing a duck as a duck is required to see the object in the picture that others would see as the duck. — fdrake

Yes, that's how I understand it.

That indicates that the elicited data is averaged and modelled somehow, and what we see - the picture - emerges from that ludicrously complicated series of hidden state data (and priors + task parameters). But what is the duration of a perceptual event of seeing such a face? If it were quicker than it takes to form a brief fixation on the image, we wouldn't see the whole face. Similarly, people forage the face picture for what is expected to be informative new content based on what fixations they've already made - eg if someone sees one eye, they look for another and maybe pass over the nose. So it seems the time period the model is updating, eliciting and promoting new actions in is sufficiently short that it does so within fixations. — fdrake

Yes. We could interpret a single saccade as a perception event if there's a model generated by it. It depends on the hierarchical level we're interested in

But that makes the aggregate perceptual feature of the face no longer neatly correspond to a single "global state"/global update of the model - because from before it is updating at least some parts of it during brief fixations, and the information content of brief fixations are a component part of the aggregate perceptual feature of someone's face. — fdrake

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here.

What that establishes is that salience and ongoing categorisation of sensory stimuli are highly influential in promoting actions during the environmental exploration that generates the stable features of our perception.

So it seems that the temporal ordering of dorsal and ventral signals doesn't block the influence of salience and categorisation on promoting exploratory actions — fdrake

Salience and categorisation effect models present in both pathways. Recall the poor monkeys with thier ventral and dorsal pathways severed. The model they use to handle the banana (knowing his soft it is, how heavy...) is informed by priors from the entire previous experience, but at the time of the perception event (thinking about a cortical level higher than a single saccade here), the two are not connected.

So, in your face example, at this higher cortical level, the movement from one feature to where the next feature is expected might be initiated by the link between the dorsal pathway and the sensorimotor systems which move the eye. These models are already in place in the fusiform gyrus, informed by object recognition models just above them (in the hierarchy).

So it seems that the temporal ordering of dorsal and ventral signals doesn't block the influence of salience and categorisation on promoting exploratory actions; and if they are ordered in that manner within a single update step, that ordering does not necessarily transfer to an ordering on those signal types within a single perceptual event - there can be feedback between them if there are multiple update steps, and feedforwards from previous update steps which indeed have had such cultural influences. — fdrake

That's exactly right, as far as I understand it.

The extent to which language use influences the emerging perceptual landscape will be at least the extent to which language use modifies and shapes the salience and categorisation components that inform the promotion of exploratory behaviours. What goes into that promotion need not be accrued within the perceptual event or a single model update. That dependence on prior and task parameters leaves a lot of room for language use (and other cultural effects) to play a strong role in shaping the emergence of perceptual features. — fdrake

Yeah. Essentially once models are generated in lower level cortices, they need not refer back to the signals which informed the model acting as a constraint on it (at the time of a perception event). But it will have been strongly influenced by them during the course of its formation (prior to the perception event). I know I've said this before, but this is why infant psychology is so fascinating, what we see in infant eye tracking experiments is the actual formation of some of these saccade level models.

But the eliminative materialist can consistently deny that the mind is anything apart being a function of the physical brain. — Janus

A VALID AND USEFUL function, yes, which therefore fails to eliminate anything in it.

We're not going to get anywhere in his stated project if you just insist that whatever you feel is happening is what's actually happening. — Isaac

It depends what you mean by "happening". Qualia proponents might insist that however it seems or feels is no more than how it seems or feels, regardless of "what's actually happening". The latter seems to be an attempt to force the discussion into neurological/behavioural terms.

In order to map brain states to phenomenological reports, you have to accept what neuroscientists are saying about brain states, otherwise you're saying phenomenological reports are infallible in a way the neuroscience isn't. — Isaac

Why do neuroscientists need to rely on the phenomenological reports of subjects? Why don't they study the phenomenological states of subjects instead?

It could equally be said: In order to map brain states to phenomenological reports, neuroscientists have to accept what subjects are reporting about their phenomenological states (to some degree), otherwise you're saying neuroscience is infallible in a way the phenomenological reports aren't.

So neuroscience says there is not an identifiable neural correlate for anger - we've looked really hard and can't find one. You've two choices 1) insist that because it feels like there must be one to you then that's the case and neuroscience just isn't trying hard enough, or 2) accept that something feeling like it's the case is not necessarily proof that it is, in fact, the case and work out how those feelings might have come about. — Isaac

There's no anger, but there's still these unexplained "feelings" that people continue to call 'anger'? And since neuroscience can find no neural correlate for 'anger' then the feelings must be wrong? Jesus.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. — Isaac

Probably because I was misinterpreting you. I thought you were construing the lower level "upwardly mobile" signals as being uninfluenced by salience+categorisation in their entirety, rather than being relatively less influential in their formation when compared to hidden state values (prior+task acting down and generating noise minimising expectations, hidden state induced discrepancies acting up to create noise).

The rest of the perceptual event stuff was to embed a single update step in the history of its update steps; which would restore instantaneous dependence on salience+categorisation through the priors+task parameters even if the upward acting signal wasn't salience+categorisation influenced in its "measurements" of the hidden state values. In other words, why the noise took those values and how the noise is incorporated is still prior+task dependent, so salience and categorisation play a role.

Seeing as you already agree with that (I think) and I was addressing a misinterpretation, I don't think it's relevant.

The model they use to handle the banana (knowing his soft it is, how heavy...) is informed by priors from the entire previous experience, but at the time of the perception event (thinking about a cortical level higher than a single saccade here), the two are not connected. — Isaac

I would expect that larger saccades do involve higher cortical levels, since they're informed by the emerging concept of what has been foraged already (see start of face, look for rest of face). Within fixation microsaccades probably don't, they seem more similar to heartbeats to me - some low level organ function maintenance phenomenon. But people are also more likely to be aware (so a perceptual event has occurred) of larger saccades - you can even feel particularly large ones in your eyes!

If salience and categorisation do influence both dorsal and ventral signals even in the dorsal/ventral severing case, and language can influence both those signals, is the point you're making that language and culture only effect the integration of both streams because they're particularly high order processes? I guess I don't understand the link of the dorsal/ventral stream dissociations to the role language and culture play, if salience and categorisation effect both, and salience and categorisation in humans have language and culture acting on the emerging perceptual landscape through the priors.

As I said to Khaled, if you're of the former persuasion, there's no point in us talking (there's no point in talking to anyone). If you're just going to assume that the way things seem to you to be is the way they actually are regardless of any evidence to the contrary, then there's no point in seeking other views is there? — Isaac

When it comes to denying emotions like anger, then yeah I'm going to have to strongly object. But thanks for answering my questions in detail.

I'm left with the impression that you and I both hold that fear is the only innate emotion. — creativesoul

What about love and social bonding???

There's no anger, but there's still these unexplained "feelings" that people continue to call 'anger'? And since neuroscience can find no neural correlate for 'anger' then the feelings must be wrong? Jesus. — Luke

Indeed. What the hell?

Although anger and aggression can have wide-ranging consequences for social interactions, there is sparse knowledge as to which brain activations underlie the feelings of anger and the regulation of related punishment behaviors. To address these issues, we studied brain activity while participants played an economic interaction paradigm called Inequality Game (IG). The current study confirms that the IG elicits anger through the competitive behavior of an unfair (versus fair) other and promotes punishment behavior. Critically, when participants see the face of the unfair other, self-reported anger is parametrically related to activations in temporal areas and amygdala – regions typically associated with mentalizing and emotion processing, respectively. During anger provocation, activations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area important for regulating emotions, predicted the inhibition of later punishment behavior. When participants subsequently engaged in behavioral decisions for the unfair versus fair other, increased activations were observed in regions involved in behavioral adjustment and social cognition, comprising posterior cingulate cortex, temporal cortex, and precuneus. These data point to a distinction of brain activations related to angry feelings and the control of subsequent behavioral choices. Furthermore, they show a contribution of prefrontal control mechanisms during anger provocation to the inhibition of later punishment.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28863-3 — Distinct Brain Areas involved in Anger versus Punishment during Social Interactions

That study by Olga M. Klimecki, David Sander & Patrik Vuilleumier takes anger to be a real emotion with neural correlates and behaviors.

A nice colorful graphic of the eight emotions.

Similarly, in the 1980s, psychologist Robert Plutchik identified eight basic emotions which he grouped into pairs of opposites, including joy and sadness, anger and fear, trust and disgust, and surprise and anticipation. This classification is known as a wheel of emotions and can be compared to a color wheel in that certain emotions mixed together can create new complex emotions.

More recently, a new study from the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow in 2014 found that instead of six, there may only be four easily recognizable basic emotions. The study discovered that anger and disgust shared similar facial expressions, as did surprise and fear. This suggests that the differences between those emotions are sociologically-based and not biologically-based. Despite all the conflicting research and adaptations, most research acknowledge that there are a set of universal basic emotions with recognizable facial features.

https://online.uwa.edu/news/emotional-psychology/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20American%20Psychological,situations%20they%20find%20personally%20significant. — The Science Of Emotion: Exploring The Basics Of Emotional Psychology

So there is some evidence for that anger and disgust form a basic emotion which is developed separately by social factors.

So neuroscience says there is not an identifiable neural correlate for anger - we've looked really hard and can't find one. — Isaac

Do you believe it is accurate to say, according to the conceptual act theory of emotion (the Barrett paper you linked earlier and I reread) that while there are no neural correlates that match the aggregate state of "anger", there are neural correlates that match conceptualising (summarising inferentially) sufficiently similar neural correlates together with "anger"?

Even if the role "anger" plays is as a character in a play, that doesn't make it cease existing, it might exist with a changed interpretation (that it's no longer a natural kind with a devoted and human-wide neural mechanism for it, it's instead a contextualised inferential summary for arousal and valence). Ie, there are angers which "anger" marks as a post-processed, publicly accessible, summary.

Perhaps like this picture (from Dennett's "Real Patterns") is two elephants (angers), each may be described as "an elephant" (an instance of anger), even though they are presented (simulated) differently.



(Though that the two things are distortions of the same base image might break the analogy; it could be that the neural correlates of state classes conceptualised as anger wouldn't "feel the same" if you took one process and put it into another brain - the patterns might differ quite a bit over people)

ARE there really beliefs? Or are we learning (from neuroscience and psychology, presumably) that, strictly speaking, beliefs are figments of our imagination, items in a superseded ontology? Philosophers generally regard such ontological questions as admitting just two possible answers: either beliefs exist or they do not. There is no such state as quasi existence; there are no stable doctrines of semi realism. Beliefs must either be vindicated along with the viruses or banished along with the banshees. A bracing conviction prevails, then, to the effect that when it comes to beliefs (and other mental items) one must be either a realist or an eliminative materialist. — Real Patterns

I haven't read that paper before. Looks like Dennett will be defending quasi-realism about certian mental content like beliefs. I always wondered what a proper definition for quasi-realism is.

When are the elements of a pattern real and not merely apparent? Answering this question will help us resolve the misconceptions that have led to the proliferation of "ontological positions" about beliefs, the different grades or kinds of realism. I shall concentrate on five salient exemplars arrayed in the space of possibilities: Fodor's industrial-strength Realism (he writes it with a capital 'R'); Davidson's regular strength realism; my mild realism; Richard Rorty's milder than-mild irrealism, according to which the pattern is only in the eyes of the beholders, and Paul Churchland's eliminative materialism, which denies the reality of beliefs altogether. — Real Patterns

That is interesting. Could make for it's own thread on forms of realism. But we could apply Dennett's five flavors of realism to qualia as well, and wonder why he's on the Churchland side when it comes to conscious sensations, whereas he's a mild realist about beliefs.

We're not going to get anywhere in his stated project if you just insist that whatever you feel is happening is what's actually happening. — Isaac

Isaac's words above could easily be those of a staunch idealist arguing with Moore. Moore's point was that whatever an idealist claims about the illusory nature of the physical, she still jumps out of the way of on-coming tractor trailers.

Moore on phenomenal consciousness: deny it if you like, you still understand your own behavior (and that of others) in terms of it.

Surely Dennett would have thought of this: that simple irrational belief underpins science in general.

if you were Dennett, how would you counter this?

if you were Dennett, how would you counter this? — frank

I don't know, maybe the illusion is useful? It was adaptive for creatures to evolve that belief that they were phenomenologically conscious in some real manner. He has used the computer desktop metaphor before in talks about evolution and consciousness.

I guess what I'm asking is: if you succeed in creating doubt about the content of consciousness, doesn't that doubt invade everything you think you know?

How do you make the physical sciences immune from this doubt?

Or do you need to? Can you just say that science is a body of *true* statements where *true* means generally accepted?

No, because phenomenal consciousness is generally accepted.

Hmm.

How do you make the physical sciences immune from this doubt? — frank

Good question. I would as soon doubt the existence of neuroscience as I would anger.

Khaled's picture of what is going on prevents him form seeing the obvious falsehood. We have a person who says things such as "being scared is the experience you have on a horror ride" and "I am unable to feel scared because I have urbach-wiethe disease", but Khaled is obligated by his mistaken picture of mind to say that this person does not know of what they speak. — Banno

I got into this with Isaac as well. What does it mean to "know of what you speak"? If it is purely being able to use the word, then yes even if you can't feel fear you know what fear is since you are able to use the word. But I don't think that's a reasonable model for understanding. Talking to a vietnam veteran about the horrors of war when you've never fought yourself you'll likely be met with "You don't know what you're talking about". It is in that colloquial sense that I mean that the person who can't experience fear doesn't know what fear is, I don't mean to say they can't formulate sentences with the word.

But then again, an 8 year old (or a parrot) can formulate sentences about integral calculus if you teach them. But I'm pretty sure we can agree they don't know what they're talking about.

It is in that colloquial sense that I mean that the person who can't experience fear doesn't know what fear is, I don't mean to say they can't forumalte sentences with the word. — khaled

Or like how a sociopath learns to fake emotion and lie to manipulate people. A sociopath can say they love you and empathize with your situation, while at the same time plotting to empty your bank account.

Here's an intereting Radio Lab podcast on deception. One segment discusses a a pathological liar and how they conned a bunch of people who cared for them.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91612-deception

Good question. I would as soon doubt the existence of neuroscience as I would anger. — Marchesk

So we're back with Chalmers and a certain amount of ontological anti-realism, which just means questioning the usefulness of labels like physical and mental, especially if those words are causing more confusion than clarify.

Maybe that's where Dennett eventually landed, assuming he's still alive.

You're doing it again.

So neuroscience says there is not an identifiable neural correlate for anger - we've looked really hard and can't find one. You've two choices 1) insist that because it feels like there must be one to you then that's the case and neuroscience just isn't trying hard enough, or 2) accept that something feeling like it's the case is not necessarily proof that it is, in fact, the case and work out how those feelings might have come about.

As I said to Khaled, if you're of the former persuasion, there's no point in us talking (there's no point in talking to anyone). If you're just going to assume that the way things seem to you to be is the way they actually are regardless of any evidence to the contrary, then there's no point in seeking other views is there? — Isaac

You're taking talk of phenomenology as implying neurological theory. How about:

3- Recognize that despite there not being a neural correlate for anger, you still feel angry when punched.

This is not to say that there is a neurological correlate that has not yet been found (though you keep insisting it is for no reason) this is to say that the connection between neurology and phenomenology is not well understood. You clearly feel angry when punched, despite there being no neural correlate for it.

It is, in fact, the case that I feel angry when I feel angry (don't know why I have to say this). This is a very different statement from "Since I experience anger as this distinct thing then there must be a neural correlate for anger". I never once made a statement to that effect about any emotion. So you either didn't understand me or you're misrepresenting.

I'm just going to answer you all at once because you're all saying the same thing "because I feel angry, anger must be a thing (the thing I feel)"

How do you know you feel angry? You know you want to punch something, you know your heart is racing, you know you're inclined to growl, your speech has got louder, you're thinking less rationally... but how do you know that lot is 'anger', or even any specific collection? If you had all the same features but without the racing heart, would you still be 'angry'? How about if we took away the desire to punch something? If we kept the same collection but added a compulsion to laugh out loud, are we still dealing with anger?

From the other side, if I was skipping down the street laughing and singing and said "I'm really angry" would you just accept that, or be inclined to think I'd used the word wrongly. If the former, then how do we learn how to use the word in the first place?

So when you say "I feel angry, so there must be such a thing as 'anger'", what is it you're committing to the existence of? The loose grouping of physiological states? - seemingly not, as this would be just a taxonomic question, we can class things however we please. The physiological states themselves? - again, seemingly not as these are not denied by what I'm saying, and yet there's still problems. Your personal preference for identifying some group of physiological states? - would seem odd to defend what amounts to a private language.

So I'm left no clearer from this latest barage of indignation what exactly you're all insisting exists.


A second issue which seems common to you all is the reach of phenomenal experience. Take an example of referred pain. A sufferer might say "I'm in pain, I think there's something stabbing inside my thigh and it's shooting down my leg". The doctor will carry out a series of examinations. On finding no nerve or tissue damage in the thigh he might think about referred back pain. We take no issue with him saying something like "I know it feels like there's something stabbing inside your thigh, but there isn't, you're mistaken. What's actually happening is that you have some tissue damage in your back". Or, if he finds no damage there he might consider the pain neuropathic, or even (worst case) made up entirely. Either way, we consider his knowledge of physiology to trump our gut feeling about the cause.

Given the trivial normality of such an occurrence, I'm baffled by the resentment that anyone might dare do the exact same thing with mental processes. Why would you assume privileged and accurate access to your mental states when you already know you have no such privilege over your bodily states?

The phenomenological end result is the thing we're taking seriously (the feeling of pain in the thigh, the feeling of anger), not the phenomenological 'gut feeling' about how such a result came about.

So if I say 'anger' is a public model of certain physiological states coupled with socially-mediated contextual parameters from the environment. That is not denying the end result. It's explaining how it came to be. Interoception detects certain physiological states, environmental cues provide context, learned cultural artifacts and language provide options - you land on 'angry' as the best model for the cause of those physiological states. That's an explanation. It doesn't deny anything except your arbitry armchair guesswork as to how your mind works (which I'm not going to apologise for denying).

Seeing as you already agree with that (I think) and I was addressing a misinterpretation — fdrake

Probably my bad. Yes, I do agree.

If salience and categorisation do influence both dorsal and ventral signals even in the dorsal/ventral severing case, and language can influence both those signals, is the point you're making that language and culture only effect the integration of both streams because they're particularly high order processes? — fdrake

In a sense, although language affect the two stream disproportionately. People with certain types of aphasia have associated difficulties with object recognition, but not with object manipulation. Something might even be used (to an extent) without any apparent ability to recognise what it is. Capgras syndrome doesn't affect fine motor treatment (patients aren't expecting the imposter to have irregular features, or be taller, or something). The models which identify objects 'duck' exist in a quite separate part of the visual processing cascade than those which tell us how to interact with it. There has to be a feedback in a higher order model to say "I reckon it's a duck, check if it's got a bill, duck's have those", than the basic saccade-controlling models which say "there's an edge, they usually end with corners, check along it and see". The former is heavily language and culture dependent, the latter much less so - and all other stages in the hierarchy are somewhere in between in terms of influence.

I think we're talking past one another.