It means to classify the same things differently.

To see different things is to carve it all differently. — bongo fury

No, classifying is descriptive. It's part of the language game. We experience the dress differently. Part of the confusion over the hard problem is failing to understand the difference between describing the world and experiencing it.

color and shape are part of the visual experience. The difficulty of squaring that with the correlating brain function is the well known hard problem. — Marchesk

...or a pointless distraction, depending on one's outlook...

I think Keith Frankish has a better approach (illusionism) — Marchesk

I thought Frankish was sympathetic to Dennent's arguments, I haven't followed his work much, but I've read a couple of his papers. I'd be interested to hear what the differences are.

I do experience seeing colors and hear sounds. — Marchesk

You relate your recent memories using a narrative of 'experiencing' seeing colours and hearing sounds. That doesn't necessarily have any bearing on what's really happening. I get the appeal of starting with one's current narrative, but I can't see the sense in rejecting everything until we find something which matches it.

Animistic cultures, for example, have a strong narrative which explains most physical processes in terms of willful intent in inanimate objects. It would be crazy to pursue the physical sciences rejecting any hypothesis which don't adhere to that narrative.

Sometimes we just have to reject narratives which no longer seem compatible with other things we've come to believe (such as neuroscience). So...

You're mistaking the map of neuroscience with the actual territory of whatever a conscious brain is. — Marchesk

...is only true if you beg the question by assuming your current narrative is actually the territory.

No, classifying is descriptive. It's part of the language game. — Marchesk

So is seeing-as. It's reaching for suitable words and pictures.

Part of the confusion over the hard problem is failing to understand the difference between describing the world and experiencing it. — Marchesk

Well put. The difference is artificial, like the problem.

I don't think Pinter juxtaposes a real, physical world, with a world of appearances. It's not as if the real thing is hiding behind the sensory depiction of it. The first words in the book are:

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation.
— Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order p1

He doesn't go on to say much about the world as it is in the absence of any observer, because (I think) in his view, there's nothing to be said about it. — Wayfarer

So the question is, from Pinter’s vantage what is left of reality when we remove color, shape, features and individual appearance? Is a wavelength of light devoid of these properties? I think Pinter believes it is. For instance, he argues “Physical motion is real but altogether different from the moving window we perceive.” How would he know? Different by what standards? I think I have the answer. You were right. Pinter does not posit a real physical world of shapes or colors or gestalt features. The real objective world he posits is based on the simple rules of the Game of Life. He says observer-independent reality is simple , mechanical. not gestalt-based but rule-bound:

“A law involving just two—or a small number—of separate objects is said to be simple. And when a simple law acts on every pair of objects in a swarm, resulting in a complex global pattern of the whole throng, the overall pattern is caused by what is called an addition of simples.”

“Physics would not exist if it were not possible to analyze phenomena of the world by decomposing them in this manner into elementary interactions. We are able to do this because nature itself is constituted that way. It appears that all of the physical world is an addition of
simples.”

“Simple rules, acting over and over on each of a large number of objects, are able to give rise to astonishingly complex collective behavior. In fact, they often generate repetitive patterns having great regularity and symmetry.” “Animal perception isn’t designed to see elementary physical relationships between subatomic particles, and bring these low-level events to awareness.”
“The perplexing intricacy that we see in the world is actually the cumulative result of simple laws that have been operating for billions of years, creating patterns upon patterns.” “The midlevel universe has energy and mass, but does not have “features”” It also has ‘information’.

In mentioning mass, energy and information, I dont believe he is speaking here of observer-dependent features of the natural world but of that world as it is intrinsically. One might ask what an observer-independent rule could possibly mean. How is a rule , mass , energy or information not a gestalt? Pinter wants to claim that the gestalts humans impose on the world in order to create uniform objects, shapes, features and pattens adds a lawfulness not present in the actual material world. Put differently. he takes the Humean approach that gestalts are the result of evolutionary guided causal processes. But he wants to hold on to the idea of a primordial , or ‘simple’ lawfulness in material reality.

I think it is this semantic realism which cause hi
to see a rift between subjective sensation and feeling on the one hand, and objectivity on the other.

“Claims about mental phenomena depend ineliminably on the meanings of terms such as feelings and sensations, and cannot be treated as the objects of physics are treated. One can study the material universe while pretending there is no mind, but one cannot study mind while pretending there is no mind…phenomena which don’t allow themselves to be studied objectively are not material phenomena. This suggests that we may define material phenomena to be exactly those phenomena that are amenable to be studied objectively, as formal systems. Phenomena which are not amenable to being treated objectively are not material. They are phenomena of a different kind, located in a different order of reality.”

Question : If the world is ‘material’ because of the way it responds to our interactions with it, why can’t we study our mind the same way, by reflecting on it ? Isn’t this what phenomenological analysis does? And what is the difference between phenomena such that only some are amenable to objective study while others are not? What makes physics a formal system and science of mind a non-formal system?

As Pinter knows, the reason one can study the material universe while pretending there is no mind is the same reason scientists in the past have studied the mind while pretending there is no mind. Pinter recognizes that in the past accepted notions of scientific objectivity required that we ignore individual differences in the sense of meaning of material concepts. But this is not true for all sciences. Recent biological models accommodate a relentlessly interactively self-transforming impetus within ecosystems, within organisms, within cells and within dna environments. Neurophenomenologists draw from these approaches to understand consciousness and language in naturalistic terms that don’t require ignoring subjective perspective in favor of a formalistic objectivism. The problem isnt that the mind operates differently than other aspects of the world, it is that we have for too long assumed, as Pinter does, that “subjective categories such as sensations and impressions are nothing but
the way they feel to us”. This is precisely the view that phenomenology and enactivism are challenging by showing how feeling arises out of social ecosystems rather than from purely ‘private’ feeling( (Wittgenstein also
showed the primarily expressive and discursive function of feeling. By the same token, if we jettison Pinter’s realist assumption to conceding the simple causal lawfulness of material reality we need no longer see feeling -based subjectivity and what would be called objective nature as belonging to separate realities


His is a one-way interaction. We probe the world and it responds in certain ways based on the nature of our actions and perceptual dispositions. On the basis of these constraints and affordances we build gestalt models of the world , imbuing it with all sorts of features different from its ‘own inherent ‘simple’ lawful objective reality.

“It is nature’s prohibitions that guide our hand as we segment our world and form a model of it. Although there may be alternative ways of segmenting reality
—hence different, non-similar world models may be constructed—few are actually possible: The prohibitions whittle down the possibilities to a very few, or perhaps to just one.”

This sounds like Popper; we asymptotically approximate a final picture of the world.

What’s missing here is a recognition that the we dont just model the world, we continuously rebuild it , and this means that the constraints and affordances that we receive from the world as feedback from our engagements with it change along with our constructions in a reciprocal process. The material world Pinter sees as having certain set simple properties responds to our constructive efforts by changing those properties.

Pinter uses the image of a hollow bust of Caesar. We are inside that bust and want to know the features of the outside of the bust so we infer the outside from our explorations of the inside. I suggest a better image is the at we have created a giant bust of Caesar as a shelter that we live inside of. We have reasons to try and improve the structure in various ways in order to make it more weatherproof as well as aesthetically pleasing. The very process of constructing these improvements through invention of new tools , new means of labor organization and the feedback from the structure itself redefines what is at issue for us in our empirical endeavor. This reciprocal shaping and reshaping taking place between us and the objects of our investigations not only is a better depiction of science than ‘modeling’, it can apply equally well to a pre-living world.

Pinter senses that his minimalist version of causal realism doesn’t quite do justice to the powers of what he calls gestalt perception, but he leaves us with the confusing picture of subjectivity as a wonder that emerges mysteriously out of a mechanistic ground.

“An easy answer might be that the material world of physics is the foundation which is the platform for all reality:
Complex objects are constructed out of the material “stuff” that exists in physical reality. In this perspective, matter and energy provide the foundation: Everything composite, manifold or structured is fashioned out of matter and energy. This is the commonsense solution. It’s not wrong, but it’s simplistic. Like the philosophy of materialism, it disregards Gestalts, which provide a
whole new opening to reality.”

You relate your recent memories using a narrative of 'experiencing' seeing colours and hearing sounds. — Isaac

It's going on as I type this. I also have recent memories of an external world. Should I doubt that narrative? If what we think we experience in the moment isn't what we experience, then why think science fares any better?

Seeing is what is meant when we say "person A sees a red dress" and "person B sees a blue dress."

To take your approach, the grammar is clear; they're seeing different things. — Michael

I don't think it's in accordance with common usage to say they are seeing different things. They are both seeing a dress, and presumably of the same shape, but one is seeing it as red and the other blue. If one was seeing a dress and the other a dog, they would be seeing different things.

By things, I believe Michael meant colors, such that there is a different visual experience of the same dress. Otherwise, what would be all the fuss?

But it's obvious they are seeing different colours; that is already given in the example, and it can readily be explained by pointing to differences in the visual systems of the two people; without any need to claim that they are seeing two substantively different things, If one saw a dress and the other a dog, then that would not be explainable in terms of systemic differences in the two visual systems.

Maybe we could categorize a bit...?

• The perception = the perceived (the same)
· hallucinations, phantom pain, dreams, fantasies

• The perception ≠ the perceived (not the same)
· other people, supper, the ground you walk on, tornadoes

So, in a way, by this categorization, a hallucination is a mistake: thinking it belongs in the ≠ category, but it doesn't. "You're just seeing pink elephants that ain't there."

And, solipsism is a mistake thinking others belong in the = category, but they don't. (I'm ditching solipsism here by assumption if you will, yet, by that assumption it categorizes that way, and that'll do; no proofs here.)

Then there's synesthesia, which is a bit of this, a bit of that, or can be.

Anyway, the idea is just that we already have various ways of talking about these (repeated) topics, and trying to somehow make some more concise could lead down less tread avenues. Don't know if this one can work, tho'. Doesn't get into neurology for example.

When hidden state X... — Michael

...the hidden state is red, — Michael

What sort of thing is this "hidden state"?

What is it that is hidden? What is added to the description by including this word?

If there is a "hidden state" that causes each of us to see the cup, then that hidden state is part of our shared world. We might give it a name. I suggest we call the hidden state that causes us to see the cup, a cup.

I suggest we call the hidden state that causes us to see the cup, a cup. — Banno

The hidden state or better, processes, that cause us to see the cup are the whole set of conditions: environment, distance, position, cup, lighting and our visual systems ( have I forgotten anything?).

What sort of thing is this "hidden state"? — Banno

I don’t know, it’s Isaac’s thing. I’m just going along with it.

If the world is ‘material’ because of the way it responds to our interactions with it, why can’t we study our mind the same way, by reflecting on it ? — Joshs

In one sense, we obviously do, but go back to the origins of phenomenology (speaking of which, the first entry in Pinter's voluminous bibliography is 'Bayne T, Montague M (2011) Cognitive Phenomenology'). As you well know, Husserl critiqued Galileo's depiction of the world in terms of a formal, mathematical structure, and its division into the domain of primary and secondary attributes. The paradigmatic approach of modern science drawn from Galileo and Descartes is to presume the complete separation of the subjective and objective domains. And it holds for any and all kinds of objects. That is why mathematical physics has been paradigmatic for science generally, and why scientific materialism wishes to apply its methodology and mathematical certainty to every domain of knowledge. But that attitude failed completely in the earliest attempts at formulating a scientific approach to psychology, namely in the introspective, first-person reporting of experience by Wilhelm Wundt, which was predictably chaotic and formless and completely unrepeatable.

Husserl's epoché is intended to step out of that dilemma by short-circuiting the sense of division between subject and object, world and self. That's why the embodied cognition (Varela and Thompson) has been able to so fruitfully explore the resonances between phenomenological method and Buddhist philosophical psychology (abhidharma). This is because the Buddhist attitude, similarly, is not grounded in the sense of separation of self and world (in the early Buddhist texts, you frequently encounter the term 'self-and-world' as a designation of the nature of experience, which are said to be 'co-arising', an expression you also find in phenomenology.) The momentary 'dharmas' of the abhidharma are not constituents of objects (as were the material atoms), but moments of lived experience. In that sense, abhidharma is inherently non-dualist in a way that modern scientific method couldn't be.

So, 'studying the mind' is different to studying (say) the motions of the planets or of solid bodies or the tides or movements of animals, for the obvious reason that in this case, we are what we seek to know. We can't stand aside from our own mind and treat it as an object of instrospection (as Wundt tried to do). It requires a very different stance or attitude - something which is pioneered in some of those very enactive/embodied cognition approaches you frequently bring up. It is the domain of 'mindfulness-awareness'.

That essay I have pinned to my profile (co-authored by Evan Thompson) on 'the Bind Spot of Science' is about exactly this point:

Behind the Blind Spot sits the belief that physical reality has absolute primacy in human knowledge, a view that can be called scientific materialism. In philosophical terms, it combines scientific objectivism (science tells us about the real, mind-independent world) and physicalism (science tells us that physical reality is all there is). Elementary particles, moments in time, genes, the brain – all these things are assumed to be fundamentally real. By contrast, experience, awareness and consciousness are taken to be secondary.

What’s missing here is a recognition that the we don't just model the world, we continuously rebuild it. — Joshs

Pinter doesn't miss that - he comments extensively on the implications of the 'neural binding problem'. The whole point of his book is that we (and all creatures) are constantly engaged in that process. That is how cognition works, but we mistakenly identify what is going on in our own minds with what is 'out there'.

We probe the world and it responds in certain ways based on the nature of our actions and perceptual dispositions. — Joshs

Indeed we do. And because of quantum physics, we have come to realise the role the mind plays in constructing the outcome.

Recent biological models accommodate a relentlessly interactively self-transforming impetus within ecosystems, within organisms, within cells and within dna environments. — Joshs

Indeed, as I mentioned, Pinter provides a voluminous biography which references many of these texts. He's very much part of those developments, not at all an antagonist of it.

And what is the difference between phenomena such that only some are amenable to objective study while others are not? What makes physics a formal system and science of mind a non-formal system? — Joshs

It's conceptually more simple to analyse the motions of bodies because they can be wholly described in terms of simple measurements and the addition of same - the 'addition of simples'. Science of mind is different in principle, because it's first-person (there's been some debate about the validity of the notion of first-person science between Chalmers and Dennett, with the latter predictably ridiculing the very notion.)

For instance, he argues “Physical motion is real but altogether different from the moving window we perceive.” How would he know? Different by what standards? I — Joshs

The rest of that passage is quoted here:

Moreover, the brain has a specialized module to create the sensation of motion, and when we have the experience of moving—or watching something move—the awareness of motion is based on a sensation of visual flow induced in conscious awareness by the brain. What living beings perceive as motion is an artifact created by the mind. Physical motion is real but altogether different from the moving window we perceive.

This is validated with reference to the neural binding problem mentioned above. To quote from it again:

There is a plausible functional story for the stable world illusion. First of all, we do have a (top-down) sense of the space around us that we cannot currently see, based on memory and other sense data—primarily hearing, touch, and smell. Also, since we are heavily visual, it is adaptive to use vision as broadly as possible. Our illusion of a full field, high resolution image depends on peripheral vision—to see this, just block part of your peripheral field with one hand. Immediately, you lose the illusion that you are seeing the blocked sector. When we also consider change blindness, a simple and plausible story emerges. Our visual system (somehow) relies on the fact that the periphery is very sensitive to change. As long as no change is detected it is safe to assume that nothing is significantly altered in the parts of the visual field not currently attended.

But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene (Kaas and Collins 2003). That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. — Jerome S. Feldman

That's the point that Pinter makes about 'figments' - that qualia, and indeed not only qualia, but the 'subjective unity of perception', cannot be detected as objectively existent. Yet, they're real, and to deny it, leads to Dennett's absurd 'eliminativism'.

I would ask the question, in what sense can motion, space and time be considered to exist outside any perspective or point-of-view? When we perceive 'the passage of time', what is it that is aware of duration, the period between two moments? When we perceive space, what is aware of what is nearer, and what is further away? Those elements are furnished by the mind (which is in line with Kant's metaphysic of time and space). In other words, time and space do not have completely 'observer-independent' status. They're reliant on perspective. But take them out of the picture, and what can be said to exist?

In short, I don't think Pinter's book is incompatible with phenomenological philosophy and psychology.

My question is, what is it that is hidden here?

We have quite detailed descriptions of the process.

So what do you think - is there something hidden in plain sight, so to speak?

What?

My question is, what is it that is hidden here?

We have quite detailed descriptions of the process. — Banno

Yes, we do, and nothing that appears in our investigations is hidden. It is only that we can ask the question as to what that which appears to us is in itself that leads to the notion that there is anything hidden.

It is only that we can ask the question as to what that which appears to us is in itself that leads to the notion that there is anything hidden. — Janus

Yes!

Hence "that which appears to us in itself" leads nowhere, signifies nothing.

The question is ill-formed. Antigonish.

The hidden state or better, processes, that cause us to see the cup are the whole set of conditions: environment, distance, position, cup, lighting and our visual systems ( have I forgotten anything?). — Janus

The question can't be answered from the level on which it posed. Which is why it

signifies nothing. — Banno

It is only that we can ask the question as to what that which appears to us is in itself that leads to the notion that there is anything hidden. — Janus

That's odd. Let's say you see the an image of the blue dress before hearing anyone else has seen it. You show it to someone. They see a gold dress, but don't say anything at first. You don't know that they've seen a different colored dress. So how do you account for that if it's not hidden?

I was just listening to Mindscape podcast episode on animal perception. The discussion was all about how animal perception differs from our own, and how that stretches the imagination to try and understand what it's like to have non-human experiences. The word used for some of the harder ones was ineffable.

If nothing is hidden, then what colors do tetrachromatic birds see which we don't?

So what do you think - is there something hidden in plain sight, so to speak? — Banno

The experiences we don't have, which isn't in plain sight. Thus the notion that subjectivity has a private aspect to it.

hidden states

, ; so it becomes clear that there are two senses of "hidden state" at work here. One is neumenal, the other statistical.

Wasn't @Isaac the one who started talking in terms of hidden states? He could probably expand on what he was referring to.

Yes. Perhaps @Isaac's hidden states are not the same as @Michael's.

Or the error may just be mine. I'm puzzled by what seems an ambiguity.

I dont see how it could be answered from any "level", since it cannot be answered from our experience, by stipulation.

If nothing is hidden, then what colors do tetrachromatic birds see which we don't? — Marchesk

We only know what others experience by report or by analogy to, or extrapolation from, our own experience. Same with animals, minus the reporting.

So the in itself of others' experience shares the same epistemic status as the "absolute" constitution of things, it seems to me.

Hence "that which appears to us in itself" leads nowhere, signifies nothing.

The question is ill-formed. Antigonish. — Banno

That's one way of looking at it. Some would say that the fact we can ask the question signifies an imaginative capacity to at least grope for an intuitive answer. Also seeing the ultimate nature of our existence as an absolute impenetrable mystery may lead to a very different orientation to life than dismissing the whole question as nonsense would.

This is talking about how neural network models might represent neurons, not how the physical instantiation of those models represent the external world. — Isaac

The physical instantiation is the model. the thing represented by that model is neurons. The point being that we cannot determine the reason (why) for the thing, through reference to the reason (why) for the representation. So we cannot determine whether the neurons act representatively, through reference to the model, because the model represents how the thing behaves, not the reason (why) for that behaviour.

That's one way of looking at it. Some would say that the fact we can ask the question signifies an imaginative capacity to at least grope for an intuitive answer. Also seeing the ultimate nature of our existence as an absolute impenetrable mystery may lead to a very different orientation to life than dismissing the whole question as nonsense would. — Janus

If you like. In which case philosophical issues consist in folk attempting to express inexpressible intuitive answers.

Yes that seems to be one conception of philosophy. I think its more in the domain of art, literature, music and religion. But then there is a long philosophical history of trust in intellectual intuition from the Presocratics through Plato, the Neoplatonists through to Spinoza. Hegel, Whitehead and arguably some continental philosophy.

'studying the mind' is different to studying (say) the motions of the planets or of solid bodies or the tides or movements of animals, for the obvious reason that in this case, we are what we seek to know. We can't stand aside from our own mind and treat it as an object of instrospection (as Wundt tried to do). It requires a very different stance or attitude - something which is pioneered in some of those very enactive/embodied cognition approaches you frequently bring up. It is the domain of 'mindfulness-awareness — Wayfarer

I should mention that mindfulness awareness is not quite what Hussel or Merleau-Ponty had in mind. For them there is no purely reflexive non-intentional awareness. All awareness is self-transformation, it is about something other than itself even when reflecting back on ‘itself’.

So we are already studying the mind when we study the motions of the planets or the tides. We are merely doing so in the mode of the naive naturalistic attitude. We can also study these phenomena from within the transcendental attitude, by showing how such material phenomena emerge as higher constitutive performances of intentionality. Notice that this is the opposite of what Pinter is doing. He is attempting to explain mental features such as gestalt perception as evolutionarily formed products of simple mechanisms of material reality.
But since he can’t find a way to reconcile the causal mechanisms of material reality as he formulates it with the gestalt patterning of animals , he settles for a dualism and hopes for some substance to be found within physics at some point in the future that will bridge the gap between mind and matter. There is no such problem for phenomenology, since they deconstruct Pinter’s causal metaphysics and reveal it to be derivative from intentional processes that precede both mind and matter.

What’s missing here is a recognition that the we don't just model the world, we continuously rebuild it.
— Joshs

Pinter doesn't miss that - he comments extensively on the implications of the 'neural binding problem'. The whole point of his book is that we (and all creatures) are constantly engaged in that process. That is how cognition works, but we mistakenly identify what is going on in our own minds with what is 'out there — Wayfarer

I think you both miss that. By rebuilding I don’t mean adding an emergent mental reality onto a more primary material one that it cannot alter but is based on, I mean altering the rules of the ‘material’ reality. Pinter posits two distinct realities , the mental and the material, each with their own rules, and neither realm can change the rules of the other. Even if physics is reformed as he suggest it may be , such that it can account directly for gestalt perception , we would still be dealing with a set of fixed rules, only now places within a single reality rahther than dual realities. Phenomenology dumps Pinter’s rule-based material and mental realities in favor of a united reality that is relationally relative through and through. This is what I mean by rebuilding the building.
Pinter leaves the foundation intact , they reinvent it over and over.

That's the point that Pinter makes about 'figments' - that qualia, and indeed not only qualia, but the 'subjective unity of perception', cannot be detected as objectively existent. Yet, they're real, and to deny it, leads to Dennett's absurd 'eliminativism'. — Wayfarer

Pinter is closer to Dennett than you might think, and although I don’t think Dennett understands phenomenology, Pinter understands it even less. Dennett offered a spot-on critique of Strawson’s argument for qualia and panpsychism, which could apply as well to Pinter’s embrace of qualia. I dont agree with Dennett’s eliminativism , but I find Pinter’s panpsychist dualism and qualia notion to be in some respects even more ‘eliminativist’, by which I mean it misses the intricate relational textures that Dennett recognizes in living systems( Pinter’s sympathy for
Penrose’s quantum solution to the hard problem is a giveaway here).

Recent biological models accommodate a relentlessly interactively self-transforming impetus within ecosystems, within organisms, within cells and within dna environments.
— Joshs

Indeed, as I mentioned, Pinter provides a voluminous biography which references many of these texts. He's very much part of those developments, not at all an antagonist of it. — Wayfarer

His reading of these texts is skewed in favor of free energy-based predictive processing approaches , which many ( including Andy Clark) lump together with phenomenologically informed enactivism. But like the pp approaches, it relies on a split between internal representation and outer world , whereas enactivism is non-representational. Pinter, like pp, say we dont see reality directly, but the phenomenologists say we do see reality directly ( to the things themselves!), within various modes and attitudes of comportment (objective naturalism, personalism, etc).
Are you familiar with enactivist critiques of pp, and of Clark’s attempts to package pp in enactivist clothing? This will give you a sense of my beef with Pinter.

Yes. That's what I'm saying. We have (and have had) all sorts of narratives by which we explain the world, some of them have been shown to be worse than others. We shouldn't treat them as is they immutable.

why think science fares any better? — Marchesk

Science isn't competing with narratives, science is just another narrative, but the way science is carried out makes the narratives it offers very appealing in terms of their utility.

Should I doubt that narrative? — Marchesk

A 'Hidden State' in active inference terms is just a node in a data network which is one (or more) node(s) removed from the network carrying out the inference.



The 'S' on the left are hidden states. They're not hidden from 'us' (the organism), they're right in front of us, I can see then touch them, feel them. They're hidden for the network doing the inference because that network can only use data from the sensorimotor systems ('o' and 'a' in the diagram) with which it has to infer the cause of that data (the external states). I probably should use the term 'external states' but that gets as much flack from the enactivists who then bang on about how it's not really 'external' because we form an integrated network with our environment. So I could call then 'nodes outside of our Markov Boundary', and no-one would have the faintest idea what I was talking about...So 'hidden states' seemed the least controversial term... Until now. But this...

If there is a "hidden state" that causes each of us to see the cup, then that hidden state is part of our shared world. We might give it a name. I suggest we call the hidden state that causes us to see the cup, a cup. — Banno

...is exactly what I'm arguing for. There is nothing whatsoever about these 'hidden states' which prevents us from naming them. In fact, I think that's exactly what we do. The 'hidden state' I'm sitting on right now is called a chair. It's hidden from my neural network because the final nodes of it's Markov boundary are my sensorimotor systems. It's not hidden from me, I'm sat right on it.

Of course this all depends on your theory of selfhood (what is 'me'?) but that's probably a whole 'nother can of worms we don't want to open here.