Cameras are interesting as a way of captivating pictures and it may be that the whole process of recording of images and sounds is important here. It may be important in understanding the way in which ideas and images are stored and transmitted as aspects of what may be understood as 'mind', and human experiences , and this may have some significance in what may be the inbetween area, referred to in the idea of 'qualia'.

And why was he drawn to such a position? Because dreams are a great example of a cartesian theater in the brain. You can't simply export the movie to the external world as Dennett likes to do with perception. — Marchesk

Did Dennett say that was why he posited that dreams are "coming-to-seem-to-remember"? We all know there is, for example, a visual field and that it is produced in the cerebral cortex.We all know we can visualize things and remember things, so why would the fact that we dream necessitate a "Cartesian theatre". type explanation?

What wedge?

You cannot do that if you limit yourself to talking about the referent of 'the red flower' only. The flower is well understood. My experience of it is not. — Kenosha Kid

The problem is that proponents of "qualia" end up saying that we don't experience the flower at at, but that we experience only "quales" that represent it instead.

Helen Keller was such an interesting example of many issues which defy conventional understanding of the nature of perception, its limitations and the furthest scope of possibilities. It may be that so many of what is taken for granted is the mere basics, and writers like Oliver Sacks may depict more unusual feats of the human mind and perception.

I don't disagree about observing, but then I didn't speak about it. I am conscious of the representation. I am not conscious of building the representation. To that extent, then, the representation is presented to my consciousness, which is the humunculus you refer to. — Kenosha Kid

This is confused. You are not conscious of a representation, you are conscious of a flower. And it is not a representation in any case, but a presentation (a re-presentation refers to something which has been previously presented, but the flower has not been previously presented, except in different presentations of it). The flower is presented to your consciousness. The flower displays its qualities; which you can then talk about.

I'm comfortable with the fact that our models of reality will likely always be deficient and only ever be that: ever-improvong but never perfect models. — Kenosha Kid

So, you think we are better able to see (and I don't mean understand, but simply see) the world today than the ancients were, on account of our "better models"? I have a better model of a flower today than the ancients did, so I can see it more clearly?

The 'representation' wedge.

a continuous channel of re-processing, imagined as stretching from "object" all the way in to... er, yes, how does it end? — bongo fury

If the external world is a hypothesis, however compelling, however confident in it we are, then statements about it are statements about our beliefs in it. — Kenosha Kid

The external world is not an "hypothesis", but is where we live every day.

If all we know are "models" then we know nothing about perception because when we study the eye, the nervous system and the brain we are not really studying those at all, but we are merely studying "models" of some unknown things that appear as eye, nervous system and brain. The irony is that it is on the basis of thinking that we are studying the actual, eye, nervous system and brain, that some conclude that all we perceive are models.

You've lost me.

Yup

jamalrob actually did a pretty good piece on this way back

http://articles.thephilosophyforum.com/posts/the-argument-for-indirect-realism/

continuous channel of re-processing, imagined as stretching from "object" all the way in to... er, yes, how does it end? — bongo fury

In the eyeball of the homunculus, where it's processed into another representation that's recognized by the second homunculus, and so on.

Representations in the Kantian or Schopenhauerian sense.

We do re-present what directly hits our eyes and ears into an intelligible image that we can understand. We take whatever is "out there" and make intelligible.

If we didn't "re-present", we would have no world and no cognition. Cognition is only possible given biological constraints. Or we could be an amoeba of some kind, but we're not.

Call it whatever you like, but the manifest world is the most clear thing we are acquainted with out of everything.

Just because we cannot give an account of how the stuff of physics could possibly result in colour pheneomena or sound phenomena or tastes or anything else, does not mean what's manifest is problematic.

It is only by studying the given that we have science at all, not the other way around.

Sure, you can talk about us representing in that way. But if perception is understood to be representing something unknowable (which is in itself a contradiction) then the point that we don't know anything outside our representings stands. The idea that we don't know anything outside our representings comes from an analysis of our representings, taken as if they are veracious. It's a performative contradiction.

:ok:

By the way, I was arguing with everybody/nobody not meaning to pick on you or anything, just to avoid any misunderstandings.

It's just that this topic becomes more controversial than it should be, in my opinion, in terms of doubting that we see colours or listen to music - in some obscure manner to be sure, it drives me crazy.

:wink:

end rant/

I don't have any problems with the way you are presenting (ha!) your arguments here. Like, we can say we directly perceive a river, by virtue of the way we are so constituted.

Or we can say we mediate our presentations and say our perception is indirect, if direct perception is taken to mean that what we experience in everyday life, is what exists absent us. Which makes no sense.

Different senses have different kinds of receptors, so what name covers them all, if not perception? — Mww

Sensation? That doesn't seem right either. I don't think I know the word for it, but I'm pretty certain perception isn't it.

The problem is that proponents of "qualia" end up saying that we don't experience the flower at at, but that we experience only "quales" that represent it instead. — Janus

I covered this here:

It also seems to me that philosophy has a problem tolerating useful words associated with outdated theories. "Sense data" being another example. Becoming apoplectic at its employment just means having to invent more crap terminology for data we receive via our senses, all because some stroky beard dipshit said incorrect things about it. — Kenosha Kid

So, you think we are better able to see (and I don't mean understand, but simply see) the world today than the ancients were, on account of our "better models"? I have a better model of a flower today than the ancients did, so I can see it more clearly? — Janus

No, you have a better model of a flower than you did when you were born, and so can see it more clearly. That's the correct analogy.

The external world is not an "hypothesis" — Janus

:rofl:

No, you have a better model of a flower than you did when you were born, and so can see it more clearly. That's the correct analogy. — Kenosha Kid

How is the model "better" ? Are you seriously claiming that I can see a flower more clearly than I could when I was five years old, because that would be the implication of your 'ever-improving' model claim? Or is it not that I learn, at some early stage, to recognize flowers as distinct from other objects in the environment, and once I do that i can see flowers with as much clarity as I will ever achieve?

:rofl: — Kenosha Kid

That all you got? How can it be right to say the external world is an hypothesis, when we all experience a world external to our bodies within which we conduct our everyday lives, prior to even thinking, let alone theorizing, about it?

It's just that this topic becomes more controversial than it should be, in my opinion, in terms of doubting that we see colours or listen to music - in some obscure manner to be sure, it drives me crazy. — Manuel

Me too!

Or we can say we mediate our presentations and say our perception is indirect, if direct perception is taken to mean that what we experience in everyday life, is what exists absent us. Which makes no sense. — Manuel

I agree that it makes sense in one way, to say that our perception is indirect, if that is just to say it is mediated. I also agree it doesn't make sense to say our perception is direct, if that is taken to mean that the eyes are like "windows" that we look out of onto a world that is 'out there' in every detail identical to what we see. It is on the basis of the science of perception that we have come to see that this naive view is mistaken. On the other hand the naive view, for all practical purposes, is very close to our everyday experience, which probably explains why it is so hard to shake.

Are you seriously claiming that I can see a flower more clearly than I could when I was five years old, because that would be the implication of your 'ever-improving' model claim? — Janus

Can't speak for KK but in a way my ability to see and appreciate (for want of a better word) a flower has definitely improved since I was 5. Given that flowers are not just objects to see but also objects to contextualize (flowers as symbols, flowers as a functioning part of nature, etc) the fullness of my understanding of a flower has evolved. And, if I studied botany, I would see a given flower in an even more enhanced way and see things others might not. Objects can be seen and not seen - if you understand my meaning.

It is on the basis of the science of perception that we have come to see that this naive view is mistaken. On the other hand the naive view, for all practical purposes, is very close to our everyday experience, which probably explains why it is so hard to shake. — Janus

Fully agree. I was remembering a nice line from Cudworth saying "it's as if these objects taunt us", which they kind of do. I mean, we began this journey seriously, back in Greece when people noticed that a stick bends in water!? No, we see it bent, the stick is straight.

Fast forward to the scientific revolution and we see "action at a distance", which doesn't make intuitive sense at all, and it governs the planets, not only apples.

By now nothing makes sense, especially all this quantum weirdness. But as you say, we just can't shake off this naïve image. But if we lacked it, or any version of it, we would have no science.

It's very, very strange.

All the sophisticated stuff—yeah, I can acknowledge that, where "seeing more clearly" could be understood to mean 'identifying more features', but I was talking about bare seeing. Have you ever looked at a flower, or anything else, for that matter, when under the influence of an hallucinogen?

William Blake's "To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower " ?

So, here we have another sense in which a child might see a flower more clearly, more vividly, on account of not being distracted by all the sophisticated stuff; but that would be yet another discussion.

It's very, very strange. — Manuel

:up: Indeed it is!

It also seems to me that philosophy has a problem tolerating useful words associated with outdated theories. "Sense data" being another example. Becoming apoplectic at its employment just means having to invent more crap terminology for data we receive via our senses, all because some stroky beard dipshit said incorrect things about it. — Kenosha Kid

Let me help you by becoming apoplectic. Perhaps it isn't all because people are attributing beliefs to you based on past uses of the word, perhaps it's also because how you talk about perception makes it plausible to attribute those beliefs to you.

From what I've read of your posts on perception, it's quite difficult to distinguish what you've expressed from a sense datum flavour 'representational realist' who nevertheless has a very strong Kantian (non-representational) bent ("the external world is a hypothesis"). There's rather a lot of ambiguity which can be pivoted upon in that mixture. It's also quite difficult to tell if you're a direct or indirect representational realist (is seeing an object being in a representation relationship with that object - direct - or is it being in a relationship with a representation of that object - indirect) from how you argue.

In that regard, it's quite difficult (for me) to distinguish what your views are from the 'stroky beard dipshit views' about sense data. I take it on some amount of faith that you don't believe in them in the standard sense (copied from SEP).

In perceiving, we are directly and immediately aware of a sense datum.
This awareness occurs by a relation of direct mental acquaintance with a datum.
Sense data have the properties that they appear to have.
These properties are determinate; in vision, we experience determinate shapes, sizes, and colors.
Our awareness of such properties of sense data does not involve the affirmation or conception of any object beyond the datum.
These properties are known to us with certainty (and perhaps infallibly).
Sense data are private; a datum is apprehended by only one person.
Sense data are distinct from the act of sensing, or the act by which we are aware of them.

But yeah, never managed to understand how your view is distinct from a vanilla indirect realism with qualia thrown in, even though I've seen you disavow the usual term meanings.

I said "reading", not "watching videos". I come here to discuss with fellow well-read members, Harry, not to teach anyone what they can learn themselves. There's just too much 'idle (uninformed) speculation driven by intellectual laziness' going on lately.

Different senses have different kinds of receptors, so what name covers them all, if not perception?
— Mww

Sensation? That doesn't seem right either. I don't think I know the word for it, but I'm pretty certain perception isn't it. — Kenosha Kid

It is so odd, that the precursor to the human cognitive system, the mere transformation of one kind of energy into another, in a measly five modes of operation, in a near one-to-one correspondence, fully observable and reproducible......finds itself relegated to a non-entity. The exact opposite of what natural science is meant to do, but theoretical psychology grants because it just doesn’t know any better.

There’s no explanatory gap in sensibility, yet it finds itself forcefully conjoined to that which has one. What sense does that make to anybody?

Anybody????

Ref:
Perception is a brain function.
— Kenosha Kid

Can you put that more simply?

Activation.

Mr. Mww, nice seeing you puzzled for a change. :cool:

No explanatory gap in sensibility? Well the senses themselves don't cogitate. So there's no puzzle by itself here.

With cognition, problems do arise. Why do we have these senses and not other ones? Why not just have cognition alone?

Most importantly, why is that what we sense differs so much from the phenomena that causes the sensing. Such as photons hitting the eye, looking red and blue. Or vibrations in the air sounding like intelligible words or music.

Vibrating matter feeling like clay, or wood, etc. , etc.

So yeah, it doesn't make sense from this perspective.

I have a better model of a flower today than the ancients did, so I can see it more clearly? — Janus

You likely don't have a better model than the ancients. You have a flower, they had a flower. Both used eyes to "see" it. Perhaps your vision is better, clearer lens perhaps? That would allow you to see it better than the ancients.

My vision is fading, Five year old me would definitely see the flower better: better equipment. However, I have more experience with flowers, so I am better able to create a flower in my mind than five year old me. So which flower is more real, that which is "seen" in the yard, or that which is "seen" in my mind?

HA!!!

No.

Wait. Are you serious? I can’t tell.

HA!!!

No.

Wait. Are you serious? I can’t tell. — Mww

I'm just not following.