It means to classify the same things differently.
To see different things is to carve it all differently. — bongo fury
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
I think Keith Frankish has a better approach (illusionism) — Marchesk
I do experience seeing colors and hear sounds. — Marchesk
You're mistaking the map of neuroscience with the actual territory of whatever a conscious brain is. — Marchesk
No, classifying is descriptive. It's part of the language game. — Marchesk
Part of the confusion over the hard problem is failing to understand the difference between describing the world and experiencing it. — Marchesk
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
You relate your recent memories using a narrative of 'experiencing' seeing colours and hearing sounds. — Isaac
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
When hidden state X... — Michael
...the hidden state is red, — Michael
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
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
We probe the world and it responds in certain ways based on the nature of our actions and perceptual dispositions. — Joshs
Recent biological models accommodate a relentlessly interactively self-transforming impetus within ecosystems, within organisms, within cells and within dna environments. — Joshs
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
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
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.
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
My question is, what is it that is hidden here?
We have quite detailed descriptions of the process. — 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?). — Janus
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
If nothing is hidden, then what colors do tetrachromatic birds see which we don't? — Marchesk
Hence "that which appears to us in itself" leads nowhere, signifies nothing.
The question is ill-formed. Antigonish. — Banno
This is talking about how neural network models might represent neurons, not how the physical instantiation of those models represent the external world. — Isaac
If you like. In which case philosophical issues consist in folk attempting to express inexpressible intuitive answers.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
'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
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
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
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
why think science fares any better? — Marchesk
Should I doubt that narrative? — Marchesk
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
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