Thanks for posting those papers — jorndoe

Glad you liked them. It's rich ground for study.

Didn't see the image you posted; is that from a different paper? — jorndoe

It's from a stock of image links I have. It'll be from a paper, but I don't know which, I'm afraid.

I guess they don't address the Levine / Chalmers thing directly, yet the models give their own insights. — jorndoe

Try this.

Strictly speaking, you know what you inferred. Inference is not extra-sensory perception. — Tate

Depends on the context the words are used in. I don't hold with 'strictly speaking' when it comes to definitions. Words mean whatever they're successfully used for. If I see a map showing where the pub is and it's a good map, then I know where the pub is. I don't see a need to complicate the matter by saying that I 'really' know where the mark for a pub is in the map.

Like 'see', inferring is part of knowing, not the object of it. What we know is the external state (or the proposition, as I believe the philosophers have it). How we know is by inference.

* In fact I distinctly remember reading a paper on that very subject, but I don't seem to have it in my biblio database. I might do a Google trawl for it later. — Isaac

@Banno. Found it.

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10066600/1/Friston_Variational%20ecology%20and%20the%20physics%20of%20sentient%20systems_Proof.pdf

Here it talks about something similar to the wider system approach you mentioned...

What are the internal states of the niche? And what are the causal regularities that they model? We suggest that internal states of the niche are a subset of the physical states of the material environment. Namely, the internal states of the niche are the physical states of the environment, which have been modified by the dense histories of different organisms interacting in their shared niche (i.e., histories of active inference).

The point was, that you haven't the premises required to logically conclude that there is no reason for the behaviour of neurons. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't need premises. I don't consider ants have bank accounts. I don't consider atoms have feelings. I can't for the life of me think why anyone would consider neurons having reasons for long enough to even consider the premises required.

If it floats your boat, be my guest, but I've as little interest in checking whether neurons have reasons as I have checking whether rocks have holiday plans.

Systems theory is extremely flimsy. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ha! But the notion that neurons have reasons is practically watertight?

What about those "hidden states"? Those unknown aspects disqualify this conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

Who said anything about unknown. We can know a hidden state. If we have a successful model of it, we know it. What more is there to knowing something?

if a (psychological) "theory" predicts both a behavior and its contradictory, it ain't a scientific theory now is it (unfalsifiable) — Agent Smith

Not at all, it predicts cognitive bias in those unaware of the issue and less so in those aware of it. Easily falsifiable by showing a general lack of cognitive bias in those unaware of the issue and a greater effect in those aware of it.

Take two people A & B. Inform A on comfirmation bias aka cherry-picking and keep the other, B, in the dark about this bias. Ask both to analyze their beliefs. There should be a noticeable difference betwixt the two in my humble opinion — Agent Smith

Uh huh. And which part of the published theory on cherry-picking predicted that would not happen?

Everybody knows about clickbait. So they become somewhat immune and it has to change. — unenlightened

Indeed. But the theory behind clickbait never said anything like "and even knowing about this won't change the model" so the actual psychological theory is not falsified by the behaviour. In fact, the vast majority of theories on which ideas like clickbait are built, actually include the prediction the knowledge of the process will lead to a change in habit, so the subsequent change in habit has added weight to the model, not falsified it.

every experiment involves deception - as soon as the subject knows what aspect of behaviour is being investigated, their behaviour is influenced by that knowledge. — unenlightened

...which itself is s psychological theory, supported by the evidence, and included in almost all psychological theory behind these experiments. Even Milgram was aware of the effect and worded his theory carefully to accommodate it.

a huge part of all social behaviour in humans is dependent on what one thinks of humans - one's folk psychology, and folk psychology is influence by so-called scientific psychology. — unenlightened

It's this latter claim we're discussing. I haven't seen much evidence yet.

Physicists do not have this problem as atoms do not have a folk atomic theory, that influences their interactions. — unenlightened

Well...tell that to the Copenhagenists.

Pre-publication: Bad methodology.

Post-publication: People altering their behavior (now they know).

Either way, disastrous for psychology, oui? — Agent Smith

Well, no.

In the first instance, psychology's replication rate is similar (marginally better, in fact) to medicine. Do you refuse medical treatment?

Bad methodology is bad. We learn better, we fix the problem. It's hardly a disaster.

In the second place, you've yet to provide me with any evidence of this actually happening, so I can't see it being anything more than your idle speculation. Again, hardly a disaster.

The theories of Freud have totally transformed public attitudes and behaviour regarding sex — unenlightened

Have they? Or was it the counterculture in the 60s very few of whom had even picked up Freud?

Besides which, has that rendered Freud's theories false? (I can't stand Freud by the way, and think he was a fraud of the highest order, so this is all theoretical). Very few psychological theories contain the conclusion "and no one can ever do anything about this, it will never change". Psychological theories are (or should be) about modes or habits of thought. I can't think of a single one which claimed anything more than a generality.

Replication crisis in psychology? — Agent Smith

What about it?

The general public read trashy women's magazines and watch tv, which are full of the latest freshly out of date psychology theory concerning losing weight, self improvement of all kinds,, and whatever the latest therapy of the stars is. — unenlightened

Absolutely. But do they actually change mental practices in any way which then falsifies the theory. Are these people actually thinking in a meaningfully different way from the way they thought prior to reading the trash?

they are also moulded by clickbait which is designed by psychologists - one doesn't have to understand to be influenced. — unenlightened

Indeed, but that's making use of a psychological theory, not falsifying one. Psychologists can use theories of human thinking strategies to manipulate human behaviour, but that doesn't' then falsify those theories, if anything it provides good evidence that they're right.

They don't read astronomy papers either, but they know space is big and think they have been abducted by aliens in space ships. That's a new phenomenon of human behaviour. — unenlightened

Yep, new knowledge definitely changes narratives, but this is a far cry from knowledge about psychological theories rendering those theories false. I'm not denying a mechanism exists whereby it could happen, I'm denying that it actually has (to any significant degree). If people read a lot of actual psychology and if they were plastic enough in their thinking to have those theories alter their behaviour, then those theories would be rendered false by their very publication. The mechanism is sound. I just don't see any evidence it actually takes place.

as we gain knowledge of our how our brains work, we will also be able to avoid the pitfalls we discover along the way. — Agent Smith

You've misunderstood my request (which is odd because it was quite simple) I was asking for evidence that this has actually happened, not a mechanism whereby it could.

I have an image of cognition occurring somewhere between one's body and those things that the body manipulates - embedded or extended cognition. To this we now add enactive cognition, that it is in our manipulation of things that cognition occurs. I'm puzzling over the extent to which the mathematics here assists in that choice, and I'm supposing for the moment that it is neutral. — Banno

Yes, that's right to an extent. If we look at, say, the ecosystem, then that will have it's own Markov boundary and all the organisms within it (and the non-living components) will be part of a network which could (theoretically) infer stuff about the nodes outside the Markov boundary of the ecosystem*.

The caveat is that there has to be networked data transfer for there to be inference, and that's a small problem with the enactivist account. Without suppressive feedback updating posterior distributions, it's hard to see how nodes could infer anything about the distribution of their neighbouring data points. So I struggle to see how one could create a Markov bounded system which includes the objects of our environment (but not, say the entire ecosystem) because there are so very clearly these two, non-inference, data nodes at our senses and our motor functions.

Having said that, some very smart people still hold to a full enactivist account, so I'm not in a position to gainsay them. The systems dynamics doesn't seem to add up, to me.


* In fact I distinctly remember reading a paper on that very subject, but I don't seem to have it in my biblio database. I might do a Google trawl for it later.

Read up on cognitive biases, the modern version of fallacies, and get back to me. — Agent Smith

Are you suggesting that people no longer suffer from cognitive biases?

I'm not expecting the transformation and thus the falsification of a psychological theory overnight - it'll be gradual, depending on what you alluded to which is how fast the information is disseminated to the people, but falsification is inevitable. — Agent Smith

So presumably has happened with a great many theories already? Providing an example shouldn't be too much trouble then.

I suspect every theory in the humanities is inclined to become either self-fulfilling or self-refuting as soon as it becomes public, but I wouldn't care to say which kind this one is. — unenlightened

Any theory in psychology that explains (human behavior) will also have to predict (human behavior). Yet, once we're in the know about such a theory, we can alter our conduct, thus falsifying the theory. — Agent Smith

You two have a very distorted view of the degree to which the general public read psychology papers! I'd venture the general public are aware of less than one percent of psychological theories and less than one percent of those are actually capable of changing their behaviour despite being aware of the theory describing it. The pool of people you're concerned about is vanishingly small.

So, it's a big black mark against procreative acts that they create a great injustice. — Bartricks

This is bare assertion. You've established they create an injustice. You've provided no argument at all that it is a 'great' injustice. You've not given any mechanism for measuring the scale of injustice, nor have you located this particular injustice on any relative scale.

They seem, if we focus on the person who is created by them, to be big moral loss makers. — Bartricks

Nope. You've shown they seem to be moral loss makers. Again, you've provided no measurement mechanism so have given no argument at all that they are 'big' moral loss makers.

remember, the benefits the procreative act confers on the person who is created can't be counted among them — Bartricks

False. You've confused the value of benefits with the degree to which they are deserved. If I get £1 where I deserve £10 an injustice has occurred, the £1 is considerably less than I deserve. This has no bearing whatsoever on the value of £1. You've taken into account only the degree to which they are deserved (more than is provided by life, generally), this is not the same measure as the degree to which they are valued.

So, once more, if you rack up $1m of debt to make $500 grand, you're a shite business person. And if you think the $500 grand is profit, you're an idiot. It's not profit. You're down 500grand. You made 500 grand - but you made it at $1m cost. — Bartricks

Uh huh. So is $500 grand valueless? No.

If you were comparing the scheme you outline to one in which $400 grand remained would it be a better or worse scheme? Better.

The injustice (or in your example's case, bad business practice) is irrelevant to the outcome. The outcome can be valued separate to the injustice.

If I don't get all the cake I deserve, that's the same injustice as not getting all the bananas I deserve. But since I like cake and I don't like bananas, the value of those two injustices is not the same.

All you've shown is that because we get less benefit than we deserve, and injustice has occurred, which is a bad thing.

What you've not taken into account is that those benefits have a value other than their role in the injustice. Their worth is not accounted for solely by the degree to which they were deserved. The goods of life may still outweigh the bads in value, even if they don't in desert, because the degree to which I deserve something and the degree to which I value it are not the same measure.

This is the best paper on the maths.

This one puts it all into context.

Put simply, a Markov boundary is the set of states which separate any system we're interested in studying from the parts we're not. So an individual neuron has a Markov boundary at the ion channels and the vesicles of the pre-synaptic membrane. A single-celled organism has a Markov boundary at it's cell mebrane. A brain (nervous system) has Markov boundary at it's sensorimotor neuron dendrites.

Statistically, it just represents that point in a probabilistic system where the internal and external states of that system are conditionally dependant on one another in terms of Bayesian conditional probabilities. So every internal state is associated (theoretically) with a most probable external state and the nodes which form the posterior distribution for the nodes maximising that equation are the Markov boundary. In the case of perception, these are the sensorimotor neurons. Anything outside of these is therefore a 'hidden state' only in that it doesn't directly provide posterior distributions for the internal Bayesian conditional probabilities the internal state is representing of the external one. Which is another way of saying that we have to infer the causes of the data from the sensorimotor system because that system is the last point at the edge of the part doing the inferring (sensorimotor cells cannot, themselves infer).

Does that help? Or make everything worse, perhaps...?

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

As ever, I have no idea what you're talking about. Why is there even a reason for the behaviour of neurons? They just fire according to physical laws, they don't have a reason.

The person deserves more benefit than they recieve. More. The shortfall represents an injustice. — Bartricks

Yep. That'll probably be why I said...

This is indeed all valid and sound. It soundly proves that there is a negative aspect to procreation, that it creates a situation in which there will be undeserved harm which is a bad thing. — Isaac

So tell us. How bad is that injustice?

If I don't get my fair share cake at the village fete, that's an injustice. It's a very very minor one. If a multiple rapist walks free, that's also an injustice. A very very monstrous one.

All you're doing is pointing out that an injustice has occurred. I agree.

Now the discussion about how bad an injustice it is, and whether that badness outweighs the other benefits of procreation (such as the benefit to others).

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.

I don't think that they were trying to be selfish. The argument was that if one didn't procreate, it wouldn't result in the existence of a person who would deserve benefits but be unable to get them. — DA671

Indeed. But it would create a person whose existence would bring enormous benefits to the other humans already in their community.

It takes a particularly selfish outlook not to even consider that as a relevant moral value.

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.

the deserved benefits they create are less than the person they create deserves and so we have an injustice overall, not justice promotion; — Bartricks

So? You've still not demonstrated anything about the degree of this injustice. Some injustices are only minorly bad, some injustices are monstrous. Simply pointing out that the goods of life are insufficient to outweigh the injustice is not evidence that they are insufficient to outweigh the badness this injustice has (which might only be very minor).

if the act is not performed there does not exist a person who is being deprived of the deserved benefits the act would otherwise have created. — Bartricks

Typical of the selfishness of antinatalists. The rest of us non-sociopaths are happy to consider benefits to others as worthy of taking into consideration weighing moral harms.

Maybe experiences are qualia, maybe they're brain activity, maybe they're something else. — Michael

Well, they'd have to be either qualia or some brain activity which no one, despite decades of research, has ever seen... Hence, qualia.

We know with quite some certainty what regions of the brain produce colour data. We know quite well what regions of the brain are involved in object recognition. We know quite well in what order those two regions are networked. So, as far as current knowledge of cognition goes, we do not 'see' a black and blue dress internally. We conclude that the retinal stimulus is from black and blue light, then afterwards, we determine that the object producing the black and blue light is a dress. There is no brain activity which could possibly correspond to the internal 'seeing' of a black and blue dress. The parts of the brain dealing with colour simply don't model stimuli from the parts of the brain dealing with object recognition*, they model stimuli from the retina.

* there are backward acting suppressive links which act to reduce data noise and refine priors.

** they can also be stimulated by the hippocampus in rehearsal for long term memory storage. I'm trying to simplify a very complex topic, but some bright spark is bound to pick up on the gaps.

I honestly think you might be a p-zombie. — Michael

Ah, we've reached that point have we?

Shall we go through https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Quining-Qualia-Dennett/b00cba53a3744402b5c52accea35bff6074a38a9 again?

If there is no hidden blue state then him seeing something blue has nothing to do with there being some hidden blue state. — Michael

No. There's a hidden red state, which he's less effectively taking a policy of treating as blue.

If the hidden state is "red" (as you say) but it causes person B to (wrongly) see a blue dress then the "blue" in "see a blue dress" doesn't refer to any property of the red hidden state. — Michael

We've been through this. If I mistakenly call the person in the doorway Jack when his name's really Jim, I'm still referring to the person in the doorway. I'm just doing so badly.

The 'blue' in person B's blue dress still refers to the colour of the hidden state. It just does so less well than 'red'. It's a policy which less effectively minimises the surprise function.

the words "red" and "blue" refer to some property of their respective percepts, not to some property of hidden state X. — Michael

If this was the case we'd have no explanation for why exposure to coloured non-objects (colour swatches) triggers activity in the inferior middle temporal region (associated with word recognition - among other things) which is not triggered by exposure to coloured objects.

The conventional explanation is that we respond to amorphous swatches by reaching for the right colour word, but we respond to coloured objects by deciding how the colour helps us identify what the object is.

By your hypothesis, the colour is a property of the percept, so we'd have to identify the object first. So how do you explain the lowered ventral stream activity in exposure to coloured swatches?

Therefore seeing has nothing to do with being stimulated by and responding to external stimulation (except in the trivial sense that stimulation is often what causes those of us who don't have blindsight (and who aren't blind) to see). — Michael

That's not a trivial sense. It's the sense in which 99.9999% of the population see. I can't understand how you could justify calling that a trivial sense.

We only use the term 'see', often still in inverted commas, to describe things like blindsight for lack of a better term, or because of the similarity to seeing proper. It's bizarre to take this very niche and ephemeral use and say that's what we mean by 'see', and not the use it's put to 99.9999% of the time.

We see when there is a visual percept, and the features of this visual percept (e.g. colour and shape) are not properties of whatever the external cause of the sensation is. — Michael

Where is this visual percept with properties such as colour and shape. Whereabouts in the brain is it stored?

the words "red" and "blue" refer to some property of their respective percepts, not to some property of hidden state X. — Michael

So where is your evidence for data traveling from the inferior temporal cortex where object recognition takes place to the BA7 or V4 regions which process colour? Such data would need to flow in order for us to 'see' the colour of the percept.

the features of that visual percept (e.g. colours and shapes) are not properties of the external stimulation but properties of that visual percept. — Michael

No, they're not. That's not how blindsight works. people with blindsight have non-striate stimulation from neighbouring cortices within the occipital cortex. They do not see any visual percept at all. No 'dress' of any description (mental representation or otherwise) is processed through the occipital cortex. The data the occipital cortex processes is output from neighbouring neural clusters, after which the ventral stream cortical hierarchies might identity a dress.

The only difference is that when we're awake the experience is triggered by external stimulation and when we dream the experience is triggered by "random" brain activity. — Michael

This isn't true. There are numerous differences in the neurological process of dreaming or imagining other than the source of the causal trigger, but aside from that, we're talking about seeing in terms of the process triggered by light entering the retina. That process does not involve a separate sub-process where we 'see' a mental representation of an object. Object recognition is done by s series of cortices in sequence through the ventral stream exiting the occipital cortex, it takes place after modeling things like colour and edge in the visual regions. We do not 'see' a representation of an object internally by any definition of 'see'. We can say that much pretty categorically since the order of processing is unequivocal.

The latter kind of seeing and hearing is separate from the former kind, and the latter can happen without the former (e.g. when we dream or hallucinate). — Michael

Can you see the red dress in your photos with your eyes shut? Or are you imagining the red dress when you have your eyes shut and seeing it when you have your eyes open?

There's a reason we have the word 'hallucinating'. It is to distinguish the activity from actual seeing.

Notwithstanding that. We are talking (when we talk about perception) not of hallucinating, nor of dreaming, nor of imagining, but of seeing. If there are multiple senses of the word, then in the case of the dresses you posted photos of, we are discussing that latter sense.

I only comment in this thread to register my sense of outrage at what is being done by Putin. That is all — Wayfarer

But...

my hope, and belief, also. — Wayfarer

...in response to....

I still think the Ukrainians will win, and resoundingly so. — Olivier5

...is advocating a policy (Ukrainians beating Russians in a war).

If you want to just register outrage, then just post "isn't Putin horrid". Pointless, but I'm sure everyone would agree.

That "response" is seeing a red dress or seeing a blue dress. — Michael

I don't see how. 'Seeing' involves light entering the retina. The response can't be 'seeing' it can only be part of 'seeing'.

You're saying that seeing1 hidden state X causes person A to see2 a red dress and person B to see2 a blue dress. Two different sense of "seeing". — Michael

No. I'm saying that second use is incorrect. Seeing a hidden state does not cause seeing a blue dress. We do not 'see' mental representations, we respond to outputs from Bayesian models as part of the process of seeing external hidden states.

For example, units in the network could represent neurons and the connections could represent synapses, as in the human brain. — Wikipedia, Connectionism

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

What does it mean to see differently other than to see different things? — Michael

Seeing is a process. Like riding a bike. Two people can ride a bike differently. They're not necessarily riding different bikes. They're riding the same bike (one after the other), but doing so differently.

seeing differently is seeing different things. — Michael

Not at all. See above. Seeing is the process of updating predictions about external states. Two people can have different predictions about the same state. Seeing differently does not necessitate seeing different things.

So person A and person B are not seeing the same thing, therefore one (or both) of them isn't seeing the hidden state X. — Michael

No. They're both seeing hidden state X. They're just doing it differently so getting different results. Seeing is a process.

An analogy, perhaps. You and I are both trying to guess what next week's lottery numbers are. You guess 2,4,5,6, I guess 7,8,6,5. We have different guesses, but the thing we're guessing the contents of is the same thing (next week's lottery numbers).

So what is person B seeing and what is the blue dress? Because it isn't hidden state X. — Michael

In that instance (where we're saying that person A is right), person B is 'seeing' the hidden state X, but the policy they're seeing it with is not the one which minimises the surprise function. In less technical terms (but inevitability, slightly less accurate terms), they made a bad prediction about hidden state X.

'Seeing' is an interactive process of updating predictions. So 'seeing' X is interacting with X in such a way as to minimise the surprise associated with a particular Bayesian policy toward X. It's what 'seeing' is. A process.

So person B can still 'see' the same hidden state as person A even though they respond differently to it because having a policy toward X is part of the process of 'seeing' X*.

* here X can refer to the hidden state 'dress' or the hidden state 'colour of dress'.