it means controlling something. — schopenhauer1

And how do rules control your behaviour when you do not have to abide by them if you don't want to?

Well that's a separate issue on whether people change the rules they think they follow. Clearly, that in itself is moving the goal posts and is not moral — schopenhauer1

Right. So I shouldn't change my current rules, that wouldn't be moral. What exactly are you hoping to achieve here then?

I cited the source, Ludwig von Bertalanffy. If you're into systems theory you ought to know him. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your source claims that systems are open, not that they have no definition. In fact he claims the exact opposite.

A system can be defined as a set of elements standing in interrelations. Interrelation means that elements, p, stand in relations, R, so that the behavior of an element p in R is different from its behavior in another relation, R'. If the behaviors in R and R' are not different, there is no interaction, and the elements behave independently with respect to the relations R and R'. — General System Theory

The characteristic of the organism is first that it is more than the sum of its parts and second that the single processes are ordered for the maintenance of the whole. — General System Theory

Your claim was that neurological "systems" follow the laws of physics. Bertalanffy's claim is that "open systems" (biological systems) do not necessarily follow the second law of thermodynamics. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nope, that's not what Bertalanffy claims. He suggests that biological systems reverse the direction of the second law, the flow uphill of it. The exact same process I described in as a gradient climbing function. It is temporary and doesn't defy any physical law.

Biologically, life is not maintenance or restoration of equilibrium but is essentially maintenance of disequilibria, as the doctrine of the organism as open system reveals. Reaching equilibrium means death and consequent decay. — General System Theory

you do not employ a boundary between the system and the "internal". — Metaphysician Undercover

The system and the internal are the same thing.

there are internal hidden states — Metaphysician Undercover

No, there are no hidden internal states. Internal states are definitionally those which are not hidden.

Do you say the same about being fun, good, scary, painful? You don't understand how these words refer to some feature of the experience and not (just) the external stimulus? — Michael

Yes. And no, I don't think those words directly refer to some property of experience either.

http://www.affective-science.org/pubs/2017/barrett-tce-scan-2017.pdf

Which most people accept is true, given that the hard problem of consciousness hasn't been solved. — Michael

I'm going to quibble here too, though with far less warrant. Most neuroscientists and cognitive scientists I've worked with (I can think of only one exception) think the hard problem of consciousness is nonsense. It may be popular among philosophers, but people in general are a much broader group.

What we know is that if I see a red dress and you see a blue dress then our first-person experiences are different, and that the colour terms "red" and "blue" refer to whatever it is that differs in our experiences. — Michael

I don't see how we 'know' this. Certainly not scientifically. All the data we have scientifically seems to show that experiences cannot be said to have properties such as colours. There simply isn't the mechanism.

So do we 'know' it phenomenologically? Again, I don't see how. All we have phenomenologically is that I seem to think the dress is blue and you seem to think its red. There's nothing in my experience which tells me why.

Neurology doesn't explain the hard problem of consciousness. We know that changes to the eyes and changes to the brain affect first-person experience. We haven't reduced first-person experience to brain- or body-activity. — Michael

No, but, like tetrachromy, it gives us some parameters. Some possibilities are shown to be unlikely given the data we have. One such is the idea that there's some internal 'redness' which we directly experience. There's no mechanism for such a thing, and what mechanisms we can see suggest it isn't happening.

The fact that we don't fully understand conscious experience doesn't provide license to just dismiss whatever aspects we do know anytime they become inconvenient to your theory. There's a hell of a lot we do know. Chalmers notwithstanding.

Most humans are trichromats. The very rare tetrachromats aren't wrong in seeing different colours to the rest of us. — Michael

How do we know that? How have we updated our model of what's happening in tetrachromats?

By following the evidence from neuroscience. By accommodating what we've discovered about how brains work into our understanding of perception.

Again, you seem to be allowing some aspects of neuroscience to inform your understanding but denying others

I don't see how that follows. — Michael

Because that's the consequence of what we know about how brains work. Either you're bracketing that out entirely (in which case out goes light hitting the retina, out goes perception modeling, etc) or you're accommodating it in your theories (in which case we don't experience red).

You seem to want to bracket out half of what we know but keep the other half. Bracket out what we know about working memory, but keep what we know about how different brain processes can cause a white/gold reaction in some and a blue/black reaction in others.

because those are the words that refer to the quality of my experience. So an intrinsic property is red1 if it causes most humans to experience red2. But there are some who might experience blue2 because their eyes and/or brain work differently. — Michael

There's that equivocation again though. You can't on the one hand invoke "their eyes and/or brain work[ing] differently" and then when I talk about the consequences of what we know about how brains work say it isn't relevant to our understanding of perception.

Either how the brain works is relevant or it isn't.

If it's relevant then you have to accept that you don't 'really' experience red either, it's just a post hoc narrative constructed by your working memory.

If it's not relevant, then you've no ground to say we don't 'really' see the dress because you're bracketing out everything about how the brain works. We do appear to see most colours the same so someone must be wrong about the dress.

Either that or we invoke qualia (without warrant and with all the associated problems).

A broken window isn't a property of the ball. — Michael

No, but 'that it broke a window' is. And if it breaks every single window it comes into contact with, then 'that it breaks windows' is a property of the ball.

So 'that it causes some humans to to reach for the colour terms 'white and gold' and other humans to reach for the colour terms 'black and blue' is likewise an intrinsic property of the dress.

What we call that intrinsic property seems to be the sticking point.

The fact that you and I can look at the same photo and yet I see a white and gold dress and you see a black and blue dress proves this wrong. — Michael

No it doesn't. You seeing white and gold dress and me seeing a black and blue is not remotely random, its in fact completely explicable by direct deterministic actions of retinal ganglia, occipital cortex activity and suppressive action of higher cortical functions. There's nothing even slightly random about it. The dress has a very distinct, measurable and predictable property of causing some humans to reach for the colour terms 'white and gold' and other humans to reach for the colour terms 'black and blue'.

But being good, being fun, being scary, and so on are not external properties of things that are then "encountered". They refer to my state of mind (emotional rather than sensory in this case). — Michael

Yeah, I think we're just going round in circles on this one. If a computer game is scary, then that is a property of the computer game that it scares you. It presumably doesn't do so randomly, so something about it causes the fear. I just don't see a problem with calling that property 'being scary'.

Do our everyday experiences provide us with information about the "intrinsic" nature of this external world? — Michael

What would be its intrinsic nature. Why would 'it causes me to respond thus' not be one of its intrinsic properties?

Are the shapes and colours and sounds that we're familiar with properties of the external world or just qualities of the experience? — Michael

Surely this question is the exact one that is answered by showing that the external world causes those experiences. Unless it is doing so randomly, then there has to be a match between property and experience?

How much of what we see and feel is a product of us and our involvement with the world, and how much (if any) was "already there"? — Michael

Now this question I agree is fascinating and underlies pretty much all of my research in the field. I don't believe it can be answered by introspection alone, we need to know how our cognition works to answer it.

It is better to understand it exactly as I described it in that last post: — Michael

I don't see the 'better'. The improvement is what?

The words "red" and "blue" in this context refer to some quality of their respective experiences. We are directly aware of this red or blue quality, and through that quality indirectly aware of some external cause that emits or reflects light at a certain wavelength. — Michael

This seems to equivocate over phenomenological and scientific senses. I can't see why you'd accept the (very unintuitive) scientific description of light, but then say that the (perhaps unintuitive) scientific description of 'seeing' has no place in your understanding of perception. Why does light get translated to wavelengths, but translating red to an output from the V4 region is disallowed. Light doesn't appear to be wavelengths to me, any more than red appears to be an output from my V4 region.

Also, this is still not really pinning down 'directly'. In what sense are we 'directly' aware of the experience of red that we're not as directly aware of the postbox? You seem to want to invoke some science to show that I'm not (contrary to how it seems) directly seeing the postbox, but then want to ignore that very same science when it shows you're not directly aware of it's redness either.

The spider is directly aware of the vibrations and indirectly aware of the fly. — Michael

But it isn't. It's not 'directly' aware if the vibrations in the phenomenological sense of 'aware' (damn terminology problems again). I don't know spider neurology, so I'm going to replace it with human neurology instead.

Something like colour is modeled by a couple of regions in the brain (V4, BA7, BA28...). What we call an experience (what we relate when we're talking about it, what we react to, what we log) is several nodes removed from either the V4 region or the BA7 region.

When articles like the one you cited talk about 'directness' they're talking about it in system terms. Direct means that the internal states have access to it within the Markov blanket. It doesn't mean our experience has no intervening nodes.

So I'm not seeing the phenomenological argument that we 'experience' the model directly but the hidden state indirectly. In terms of intervening data nodes we experience both indirectly. Our experience neither directly reports the output of the V4 region, nor does it directly report the activity of the retinal ganglia, nor does it directly report the photon scattering from the external world object. It doesn't directly report any of them. So why give the modeling output from V4 any unique status in the process?

other than the trivial fact that it is such that it causes us to see this or feel that — Michael

This is the move I don't understand. On what grounds 'trivial'? It seems of absolutely fundamental and manifest importance to every single aspect of our lives, language and thought.

I'm not entirely sure what you are referring to. By "optical illusions" do you mean things like sticks appearing bent when they are part in and part out of water? — Janus

Yes, plus a range of others. Something like...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilac_chaser

...or the Gorilla experiment I described earlier (not seeing a 'gorilla' walk on stage right in front of you because it's unexpected and your focus is elsewhere)...

These are harder to just do a kind of 'feel the stick' check on, yet the latter type particularly (filtered sensory processing) affects our phenomenal experience massively. We're quite regularly seeing things which don't match our other senses (and vice versa). I think we've always needed a narrative to explain that. The simple idea that we just directly see what's there doesn't seem to be sufficient here.

I'll need to think some more on this and undergo some digestion before replying. So, when I have more time... — Janus

Cool.

from the experiential point of view, we just see things immediately, directly. Which view is correct? In the senses relative to their proper contexts, both are, so there would seem to be no point arguing over whether indirect or direct realism is true is any absolute sense. — Janus

Possibly, but then do you not also experience some of the optical illusions, weird filtering, and changes of perspective that the multi-stage scientific model gives an explanation for. Do these experiences not need accounting for in any phenomenological description?

I think if you want to bring cognitive science into the discussion you need to be able to explain in terms understandable to the reasonably philosophically educated layperson what relevance it has to philosophical questions which seem, at least on the face of it, to be outside its scope, — Janus

I have been trying to do so, but clearly with less success than I'd hoped. Is there something specific about my attempts that have failed for you, or just in general?

So the thread topic concerns whether or not there is an "external world". We already know that from a general scientific perspective, of course there is an external world, because it just is various aspects of what is understood to be the world external to our bodies and/or the world which is "external" in the sense of being the perceived object of conscious awareness, which is being studied by the various scientific disciplines. So, in that sense science is predicated upon there being an external world. — Janus

The argument given for an external world doesn't rely on science as such, it's a logical construct... I'll repeat it here.

Any system is logically defined by having a boundary, otherwise it's just everything and we're not talking about something. That boundary can be fuzzy, ephemeral, leaky, or tight and clear, but it must be there just in order to talk about something, it must be this as opposed to that.

A self-organising system (such as ourselves) must, again by definition, work against the gradient of a Gaussian probability distribution, it must avoid dispersal by random forces if it is to maintain itself as system (no science yet, just maths). That is, that it must perform a gradient climbing equation (in information system terms), it has to otherwise it would disperse to a random distribution.

One step back. The declaration of an internal state and an external state (necessary simply by declaring the object of our thought to be this and not that) Requires that there is what we call a Markov boundary between the internal and the external states. This is (again no ontology yet) simply a statistical feature of there being internal and external states, there simply must exist in any network those nodes which connect to the external states and the internal states. These are the Markov boundary (and anything within them is inside the Markov blanket).

Back to probabilities. Anything inside the Markov blanket is carrying out this gradient climbing equation relative to outside the Markov blanket otherwise it would disperse according to a Gaussian distribution. In order to carry out this equation, it must maximise the terms of a marginal likelihood function (or minimise free-energy as it's sometimes expressed - two sides of the same function).

So any self-organising system (one which does not disperse randomly) must, by definition contain within it's informational architecture, a Bayesian model of the external world which, in minimising the surprise function of, it carries out this gradient climbing function and so avoids dispersal to Gaussian distribution (from which we could not possibly distinguish it as system (no this and that just homogeneous stuff).

I should be clear, I'm repeating here, to the best of my ability, how it was explained to me. This isn't my theory, it's that of active inference in general. The papers I cited earlier contain the details, but they can be a little impenetrable as presented. I've found the above explanation useful.

We can then go on to look at the sort of biological instantiation of this informational architecture, but there we really are just doing neuroscience and outside the scope of this forum.

So when you say this, you are pointing out the "thing" is part of the hidden state passed from iteration to iteration, and folk instead take you to be setting forth the philosophical notion of indirect realism? — Banno

Possibly. I've never gotten clear how indirect realism is using the term 'indirect' (nor, for that matter how direct realism is using the term 'direct'). One of the things I thought might come out of this discussion.

But yes, for my part, I'm simply pointing out that cognitive science shows us that 'seeing' is an iterative process and as such nothing is without intervening nodes. The mere presence of an intervening 'modelling' stage shouldn't mean that what we 'see' is the model because there's loads of intervening stages between the model and the experience too. There's just loads of iterative stages full stop. So looking for a 'direct' object-subject link (where 'direct' means no intervening stages) is a fool's errand. We'd end up in a place I don't think anyone wants to be where the object of our perception is an ephemeral, constantly changing snippet of a model sliced and diced for whatever we're engaged in that very millisecond.

On the one side we have the supposes think-in-itself, that which is supposedly behind our perceptions and hence supposed to be forever beyond our comprehension. It's "hidden"

On the other is the state of a neural network passed from one iteration to the next, or something like that.

Is that roughly right? — Banno

Yes.

's last post seems to sum it up for me. Perception is a staged process, one iteration to the next, as you say, and there seems to be a feeling among some that one stage somewhere in the middle must be the 'real' object of perception (rather than the external hidden state, we all seem to actually refer to). I've yet to really understand why they might feel that way.

Not a part of this discussion, but the issues raised in https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13247/phenomenalism, may shed some light on the motivation. Some seem to think that the connection between what we might call our current model of an external state and our 'experience' is somehow more direct than the connection between the external state and our current model. I was trying, in that thread, to point out that it is no more 'direct', it has no unique status in the process.

Unless we are going to say that the object of our perception is whatever is currently held in the working memory (at any given millisecond) then we have to accept that there are at least some data nodes between our response (us talking about, acting on, labelling, 'experiencing') and the object of that response. Once we've accepted that there are intervening data nodes, the search for the 'real' object becomes pointless. It might as well be the thing we've all been referring to it as for the last few hundred thousand years...the external object.

There is a difference between pointing to potential errors in common sense made by us individuals when we're 'riffing' our own ideas and pointing out such mistakes in an entire established body of scientific work in constant review by dozens, if not hundreds, of experts. The likelihood of them all having drifted off the rails of common sense, and you alone having spotted it are miniscule. A little more humility is warranted in the latter claim that might well be totally unnecessary in the former.

There is a clear distinction between knowledge and belief. — Janus

No one is ignoring that distinction. The terminology simply uses belief as any state of cognition which informs an action. Knowledge would be a specific type of belief which is supported by success in using it as a policy. As per above, this is the way 'belief' and 'knowledge' are used by a vast body of experts in the field. I'm sure there's an equally vast body of experts who use the terms differently. Their reasoning for doing so might be interesting to discuss, but the chances of either group having just 'got it wrong' by missing some obvious matter of common sense is tiny, so we oughtn't start there if we're to have such a discussion.

No one knows exactly how language evolved for obvious reasons. But I find it is more plausible to think it evolved in accordance with meaningful associations, in accordance with what people cared about, than in some merely arbitrary manner. — Janus

That you find something plausible is not an argument. People do know quite a lot about language, from linguistic science, vto the neuro-anatomy of language centers. We can study, for example, people who have trouble making verbal associations and see what differences there are in their language cortices which might explain that. What language processing remains in such patients tells us a lot about how language works. We can do more than just 'reckon' stuff.

I've said I think it is necessarily the case that it is contradictory to say that we are familiar with what is hidden from us. Perhaps you could explain why you think it could make sense to say that isn't so. Who is the one who has failed to present an argument? — Janus

It's not something amenable to argument. It's the technical terminology. It's a) too late, and b) completely unnecessary to change it now. If you don't think it makes sense, that's on you. Others are clearly fine with it. I don't think your opinion on the preferred use of technical terminology is a particularly ripe topic for discussion.

I know from self-reflection that making an inference is different than looking at something, and I gave examples of mistaking what I thought I saw due to pattern association, a matter of recognition not of inference, to support my contention. An inference is a process of logical deduction, how would you know such a process is going on unless you were conscious of it? — Janus

Again, 'inference' is the term used to describe a particular type of cognitive process. If you don't like the terminology, fine, but the entire field of cognitive science seems fine with it, so I'm not sure that a particularly interesting point of discussion either and, again, too late to change it now anyway.

I have no interest in being lectured by another dry, opinionated academic who thinks that cognitive science and systems theory have any priority, beyond their own set of prejudices, in respect of philosophical questions. — Janus

Then don't read my posts. You replied to me, not the other way round. You don't need to tell me you're not interested in my posts, just don't read them. Contrarily, you replied, with a load of random, unargued, uncited gainsaying. Doesn't sound uninterested, just sounds arrogant.

The matters you're discussing are either semantic (the use of the words 'hidden', 'inference', 'know'...) or scientific (the brain functions of language, perception, inference...) There's no shared, laymen, ground of rational thought because you presented no argument for your position, just declared a series of things to be the case.

If you don't like the technical terminology, fine, noted. It's hardly a topic for interesting discussion.

If it goes beyond a mere distaste for the chosen terminology, then make a case. The one thing we all share the same expertise in is rational thought. Make a case and we can discuss it.

We're are all "nobodies" here — Janus

I cited four papers written collectively by eleven experts in neuroscience, cognitive science and computational systems. I thought I was explaining those papers to some people interested in their conclusions.

I was clearly mistaken, so I apologise for wasting your time.

Back to the arguments...

Yes it does.

No it isn't.

Not necessarily.

Yes there is.

Great discussion. Can't wait to hear what you reckon next, do hurry.

That’s not how the definition was using governed. It referenced no actual government or community and the word just means there controls. — schopenhauer1

Firstly, how could you possibly know what they meant? Secondly, one is no more 'controlled' by one's own rule than one is governed by it. If you can change the rule any time you desire, then you are de facto controlled by your desires, not the rule.

It says govern, but the definition I pasted did not mention "accepted rules about behaviour". — schopenhauer1

One is not 'governed' if one gets to make up one's own rules. One is simply doing as one pleases.

It has nothing to do with belief. — Janus

the evolution of language is not by fiat, but by meaningful association and image. — Janus

if we are familiar with them then they are not hidden. — Janus

An inference is a rational conjecture; there us no conjecture involved when I am looking at something — Janus

There is no such thing as a "discrete system" in nature. — Metaphysician Undercover

An open system cannot be a discrete system because the environment is just as much a part of the definition ("open") as is the "system". — Metaphysician Undercover

...

I've no interest at all in being lectured with a series of random assertions from nobodies off the internet. Provide arguments, cite sources, or at the very least show a little humility if you don't. I can't for the life of me think why you'd assume anyone would want to learn what some random people happen to 'reckon' about cognitive science and systems theory.

You can understand a tree without knowing everything about it. Shift from knowing nothing about the tree to knowing something — Gregory

Yeah...shifting into Zen koan hasn't really clarified in the way you might have hoped.

Those distort so that it doesn't see completely but perception can see accurately — Gregory

And with English grammar...?

moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity. — schopenhauer1

Same thing. Key word being 'govern'. Not do as you please.

Propose, make a case, don't impose. I also separate discussions of ethics from law. Government/law and ethics is not the same but may overlap with personal ethics. — schopenhauer1

Everyone doing as they please (ultimately) is just not ethics.

ethic
noun [ C, usually plural ]
uk
/ˈeθɪk/ us
Social responsibility.
a system of accepted rules about behaviour, based on what is considered right and wrong:

The point is we already disagree, you and I.

So we've only two choices. We arbitrate (come to a binding agreement, someone imposes on someone else), or you do as you see fit and I do as I see fit (we do as we please).

Why would time change anything — Gregory

Well, it's not just time. Remembering something is a completely different brain process to the original inference and introduces several opportunities for data corruption, noise, and reinterpretation.

There seems something above and beyond community standards going on for things like when (or if) it is okay to harm an individual. Something that is irrespective of time and place of a community. — schopenhauer1

God?

Why is a person's dignity being violated something that must be based on some community standard? — schopenhauer1

Because the alternative is that everyone just does whatever they want. Again, if you prefer that system, that's your deal, but it just not what morality is.

Someone IS deciding in one, and in the other, no one is making that assumption for another, literally. — schopenhauer1

Yes they are. They're making an assumption that all the people who would benefit from the prospective person should suffer. They're deciding on behalf of others.

A second latter doesn't mean it's not direct perception. A few seconds doesn't have any meaning in that context — Gregory

Why not?

Clearly there are rules, the ones about not using people or violating their dignity by forcing upon them significant conditions. — schopenhauer1

So who gets to decide what the rules are?

Not bringing about 1 harms literally no one in its absence. — schopenhauer1

We've just been through this. The rest of the existing community are harmed by the absence. The claim is categorically false.

individual is the ethical locus — schopenhauer1

So, each person does exactly what they wish. Doing exactly what you want is not ethics, not by any definition at all.

The only alternative is that someone has the right of expectation that another will adhere to some behaviour even if they don't want to.

But then you can't avoid the question of who gets to set what that behaviour is.

You have three choices...

1. Everyone does whatever they want.

2. People are expected to behave in certain ways even if they don't want to. The community comes to a decision somehow as to what that behaviour is.

3. People are expected to behave in certain ways even if they don't want to. You, God, or some other arbitrary person, decide what that behaviour is.

community is not some amorphous entity either, but comprised of people with feelings, attitudes, ways of beings, and their own internal thoughts.. It is THAT which the ethics obtains to. — schopenhauer1

Nonsense. People's own private objectives are not ethics, it's just subjective. If I want a big car it's not ethics to get me one.

nor is there anywhere that it says that the projects must be carried forward simply because OTHERS have a notion it must (and so they get to impose it on other people). — schopenhauer1

That's exactly what morality is, a general agreement among a community as to what is best. Absent of agreement it's just personal preferences, not ethics. Total consensus is impossible, so you either have a general agreement to which people are expected to adhere regardless of their own view, or you have nothing but personal preferences - which is not ethics.

Because people are not to be used, even if it is for a "greater cause of the community". — schopenhauer1

Why not? More arbitrary rules.

If I have a project that I like, I don't get to impose it on others because the project cannot move forward and then claim anything that doesn't further my project is not moral, therefore I can do X things to other people, whether it is good/whether they want it or not. I also don't get to create harmful situations for them because it furthers my project. Again, it's aggressive paternalism. It uses people. It assumes what YOU think is good is good (for them). — schopenhauer1

Then you've no ethics. If the community don't get to have any expectation of anyone they don't personally agree with then all you have is everyone just does whatever they want. That's not ethics.