Comments

  • Response to The Argument article by jamalrob
    There is no mirroring going on. — jamalrob

    And no photographing. No creation of internal representations from which further on or later on to extract information. Just learning to respond appropriately to stimuli.

    What complicates, and creates the big myth of internal words and pictures, is skills of specifically conscious responding, which entail the skill of (less consciously) choosing among external words and pictures to point at the stimuli, and the skill of self-stimulating to choose external words and pictures to represent past or non-present stimuli. (Source, kind of, here and here.)

    Calling even the most expert practice of such skills a 'photographic memory' would be misleading. Just because an embodied brain can remember perfectly well doesn't mean that it, like a camera or a pre-connectionist symbolic computer, creates or stores any internal symbols.

    Any meaningful controversy about directness or realism or informativeness of representation needs lifting out of the head: it can be about actual words and pictures, instead of mythical mental ones.
  • Some Remarks on Bedrock Beliefs
    find the concept so incredulous. — Isaac

    @StreetlightX has been prepared to defend this kind of barbarism but doubtless he has no shame. :worry:
    And you, Sir?
  • Response to The Argument article by jamalrob
    Perhaps what the salient parts of the disagreement are depend on what camp you're in? A difference that looks different from both sides. — fdrake

    Yes, good point, and a good example: was the article even committed to or advocating some positive doctrine called direct or naive realism? I gathered not.

    Can't we be questioning mental representations altogether?

    I was hoping so.
  • Response to The Argument article by jamalrob
    Talk of thoughts being "about" things, in a sense needing subsequent unpacking, can too easily become talk of the thoughts "representing" the things, in a sense more suited (category error?) to words and pictures. Thoughts-in-the-head become pictures-in-the-head. But such a progression is unnecessary. Thoughts are "about" things in that they are the brain so shivering its neurons as to adjust its readiness to act on those things. Conscious thoughts, in particular, adjust its readiness to select among symbols for pointing at those things. This kind of thought is thus (whether waking or dreaming) thought "in" symbols, and consequently prone to making us think (mistakenly, though often harmlessly) that the symbols are in our heads.
  • Where do you think consciousness is held?
    5 is a gateway drug leading to 4.

    (Emergent) "property" and "phenomenon"... too suggestive of a substance/goo/woo.

    (Emergent) "aspect"?
  • Response to The Argument article by jamalrob
    That's the question that's being asked. Is that thing that's missing for people with blindsight something that happens "in the head" of the rest of us or is it a property of the external world object? — Michael

    So, what's missing for them has to be a picture in the head if it's anything in the head?
  • Response to The Argument article by jamalrob
    that thing that's missing in cases of blindsight — Michael

    Just to be clear... a picture in the head?
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    What are dreams? — Harry Hindu

    Dreams are off-line thoughts: thoughts unaffected by the normal requirement of their having to somehow answer to each other and to the organism's present environmental predicament. For example there is none of the usual (waking) differential adjustment of readiness for action relative to different drives or threats, based on continual observation of the changing visual and auditory scenes, which are now largely removed from view. So the off-line thoughts don't (whereas at least some of the on-line ones do) have to be "about" the ongoing scenery and the organism's path through it. On the other hand, nothing is to stop them from replicating (if only partially and incoherently) previous on-line thoughts of that kind. The question is whether this, if it is roughly what happens, implicates mental images, as we tend to assume it does.

    I suggest that it doesn't, if we get used to resisting the assumption, however entrenched, that thoughts (on or off-line) involve mental images anyway. But then, in other words, the phenomenon of dreams doesn't itself add a reason for accepting mental images, and is beside the point. It raises its own questions, well worth asking, such as: what are dreams (off-line thoughts) about? I would guess: roughly the same people and places that their more coherent on-line counterparts are about. The difference, crucial of course, is that off-line thoughts which are (through force of habit) about present scenery relative to the organism will answer less (than do their waking counterparts) to each other and not at all to the sensory evidence. But that doesn't leave the thoughts without a real scenery (and relative location) for them to be about; it merely describes it with a questionable degree of coherence, requiring perhaps a poetical style of interpretation.

    So, dreams don't implicate mental images by exposing a lack of subject matter for the dreams to be about: a gap that we might think mental images suitable to fill.

    Neither do they implicate mental images by needing to be themselves composed of such things. This is the misconception common to our talk about thoughts both online and off. Talk of thoughts being "about" things, in a sense needing subsequent unpacking, can too easily become talk of the thoughts "representing" the things, in a sense more suited to words and pictures. Thoughts-in-the-head become pictures-in-the-head. But such a progression is unnecessary. Thoughts are "about" things in that they are the brain so shivering its neurons as to adjust its readiness to act on those things. Conscious thoughts, in particular, adjust its readiness to select among symbols for pointing at those things. This kind of thought is thus (whether online or off) thought "in" symbols, and consequently prone to making us think (mistakenly, though often harmlessly) that the symbols are in our heads.
  • What determines who I am?

    It wer a col nite but we wer warm in that doss bag. Lissening to the dogs howling aftrwds and the wind wuthering and wearying and nattering in the oak leaves. Looking at the moon all col and wite and oansome. Lorna said to me, "You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name."

    I said, "What thing is that?"

    She said, "Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can."

    I said, "If its in every 1 of us theres moren 1 of it theres got to be a manying theres got to be a millying and mor."

    Lorna said, "Wel there is a millying and mor."

    I said, "Wel if theres such a manying of it whys it lorn then whys it loan?"

    She said, "Becaws the manying and the millying its all 1 thing it dont have nothing to gether with. You look at lykens on a stoan its all them tiny manyings of it and may be each part of it myt think its sepert only we can see its all 1 thing. Thats how it is with what we are its all 1 girt big thing and divvyt up amongst the many. Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the won and lorn and loan and oansome. Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our does. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part. I dont think I took all that much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatis it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal how its tiret of me and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tel you some thing Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it."

    I said, "Lorna I dont know what you mean."

    She said, "We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun we dint begin where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I dont know what we are to it. May be weare jus only sickness and a feaver to it or boyls on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen what Im going to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us. It dont think the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart."

    I said, "Whats it afeart of?"

    She said, "Its afeart of being beartht."

    I said, "How can that be? You said it ben here befor us. If it ben here all this time it musve ben beartht some time."

    She said, "No it aint ben beartht it never does get beartht its all ways in the woom of things its all ways on the road."

    I said, "All this what you jus ben telling be that a tel for me?"

    She larft then she said, "Riddley there aint nothing what aint a tel for you. The wind in the nite the dus on the road even the leases stoan you kick a long in front of you. Even the shadder of that leases stoan roaling on or stanning stil its all telling."

    Wel I cant say for cern no mor if I had any of them things in my mynd befor she tol me but ever since then it seams like they all ways ben there. Seams like I ben all ways thinking on that thing in us what thinks us but it dont think like us. Our woal life is a idear we dint think of nor we dont know what it is. What a way to live.

    Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.

     — Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker
  • Russel's Paradox
    Misstatement? — frank

    The problem is stated as "The set of all sets that do not contain themselves as subsets members." — EnPassant

    Hence @tim wood's and @SophistiCat's clarifications.
  • Russel's Paradox
    I think this is the correct answer from Snakes Alive: — frank

    That was one of several (prior to @tim wood's) where expertise of the reader had caused unconscious correction (and hence ignoring) of the mis-statement of the problem.

    ↪bongo fury


    Ironically, one (Lesniewski's) response to the paradox was to try to base arithmetic on a transitive part-whole relation. One that wasn't, like subset, derived from a non-transitive one. Part of the motivation, if I understood and now recall correctly, was to separate out a distributive sense of "set" (by which to attribute properties to each member) from a collective one (for attributing to the whole collection as a thing). A bit like the possible difference between talking (distributively) about,

    All sets that do not... — EnPassant

    and talking (collectively) about

    The entity — EnPassant

    so defined.
  • Russel's Paradox
    The problem is stated as "The set of all sets that do not contain themselves as subsets members." — EnPassant

    Subset is transitive — EnPassant

    Exactly. Membership isn't.
  • What determines who I am?
    I am not asking why a banana is a banana. — bizso09

    No, and neither would you assume that we have multiple bananas to be correlated with some number of subjective first banana experiences.

    ... or, would you?
  • Conflict Resolution
    Conflict Resolution

    Let us start by supposing that there are two opposing opinions on some matter. Is there a tried and true universally applicable method of determining for ourselves what's best to believe regarding the subject matter?     — creativesoul

    My emphasis, and probably not the OP's, in which case apologies for going off topic. Anyways...

    Something often missed is a variety of advantages which may be enjoyed by a discourse that tolerates both of two opposed opinions on some matter. I don't say that pointing this out will necessarily lead to world peace, but I do wonder whether the extent (admittedly partial) of its observable application might deserve further scrutiny.

    An obvious hoped-for benefit (of the mentioned toleration) is the peaceful co-existence of the disputants. But then, an associated cost is a notional divide between matters of fact and of opinion, which is of course a price almost universally thought to be worth paying. And so the conflict is merely deferred: have your opinions about this or that regardless of mine, but expect your factual claims to stand or fall against mine.

    What we usually fail to notice is that our disagreements about certain cases, if they are the intrinsically unclear ones, are often the largely unconscious method by which we keep the overall shape of the discourse in good repair, so that our usage of mutually exclusive terms remains just that.

    We disagree about borderline cases of, say, "acceptable abortion" not necessarily to ensure the "correct" judgment in those cases: even though that might be exactly what we think we are doing, such that if only we had our way... etc. The disagreements serve, rather, to maintain the myth (or social construct) of an extension of the word or concept, made all the more realistic by its having a fuzzy border: cases that are variously judged to be both included and not included. That in itself might be useful for the discourse; but what it also probably helps with is the parallel maintenance of the extension of a mutually exclusive concept, perhaps "murder".

    To the extent (debatable no doubt) that "abortion" and "murder" are recognised as mutually exclusive, the borderline cases of each fix a theoretical limit on the possible reach of the other. Any even alleged abortion then exemplifies (in the discourse) a clear enough case of non-murder. And likewise, any alleged case of murder is a clear non-case of abortion. What we can offer the recalcitrant extremists on either side, as an incentive to join in the discourse on this basis, is the surprising prospect of opinions creating complete unanimity with respect to judgements of clear non-cases, and therefore the impossibility of pointing certain words at certain cases, exactly as those same opinions seem to be expressing a free choice of what words to point at what cases. Not only do the enemy camps share common ground but their battles maintain it in good condition.

    The surprising result is explained when we notice that disagreements about borderline cases are themselves negotiated, because each party agrees (implicitly) to agree which judgements are real events inside the discourse, and which ones are, as exemplified by attempts to point "black" at white, or "murder" at abortion, simply invalid, and (literally) not counted. So speech acts will not be more (or less) defiant of others than is good for their credibility as contributions to the implicit shared project.

    Another, probably less emotive, example is consciousness. Ok, even more emotive...
  • Conflict Resolution
    Common sense — fdrake

    "that repository of ancient error"
  • Collaborative Criticism
    The First Chair

    A small
    Rickety
    Wooden chair

    Sits in
    The shadowy
    Corner.     — I like sushi

    Sure, a poem why not... but, given the title, should you be calling it a chair, already?

    And then, the adjectives... are they wise? Don't they sound a bit childish? Couldn't you "show not tell"? (E.g. "below their knees" for "small"; "swaying" or "moving" for "rickety".)

    Hey, criticism is fun! I wonder if receiving it will be quite as much so...

    The ‘First Chair’ here is, funnily enough, a means to furnish a narrative — I like sushi

    "Funnily enough" as in, "what a coincidence"? I don't quite follow. And, a means for you, here, or for people generally?

    that reveals something intrinsically human about our modes of thinking and how they adapt. No one really thinks there was some ‘First Chair,’ a eureka moment where an inspired carpenter rushed to their workshop to fashion their furniture idea. — I like sushi

    Cool.

    Such is merely a flight of fancy to highlight — I like sushi

    Again, a means by which you in particular or people generally may highlight...?

    how humans have explored the space they’ve found themselves a part of, and apart from, and managed to extract and contain this space in varying states of permanence through which a common yet often unconscious need has expressed itself and perpetuated through multiple cultural iterations. — I like sushi

    ... Ok, I think I get the abstract stuff about extraction and re-forming to express unconscious needs, but I ought to check: the multiple cultural iterations are tools and furniture getting made and replaced...?

    What would it have been to a human to create the very ‘First Chair’? Not merely to select a spot and sit down, but to actually fashion an item meant for the sole purpose of planting one’s posterior on. — I like sushi

    Cool.

    We could imagine a scene, millennia ago, where humans congregated at the day’s end to partake in social relations. They undoubtedly rested in this period, and therefore likely sat rather than stood. Would they have always sat in the same position or order relative to their fellows? Would that day’s achiever have had first choice of spot? Was there a strong social hierarchy involved that was symbolically reflected by each person’s position within the group? — I like sushi

    I get this. :up:

    Given the sparse dispersion of prehistoric humans it seems reasonable to assume — I like sushi

    Fair enough, but you mean "infer" from the given, not assume?

    that different cultural habits would’ve emerged where some tribe’s members — I like sushi

    I think you mean some members of some one tribe but it's coming over like all members of some one tribe?

    attached social value to ‘sitting positions’ as a marker for status, and others would’ve perhaps have been mostly, if not completely, unconcerned with such habits and rituals of daily social life. — I like sushi

    Not sure whether you mean different tribes or a single tribe is dispersed, and whether the seating conventions were or weren't acknowledged throughout the tribe. Also the extra "have".

    Such daily social occasions are clearly of high import to human society due to their frequency, — I like sushi

    You mean their being "daily"? In which case is that called "redundant" and to be trimmed? "Such social... due to their being daily", or something?

    All cool down to...

    A nomadic lifestyle would mean prehistoric tribes would likely have only carried what was deemed ‘necessary’. A Chair would probably not have been deemed ‘necessary,’ — I like sushi

    I'm not sure why you might expect a reader to buy that.

    but soft materials to sit on and possibly a piece of material for support (be it a tool/weapon of some description) to form a more ‘purposeful’ sitting space: still, not a ‘chair’. To have meaningfully constructed a ‘chair’ would be something quite different. — I like sushi

    Do you mean, not a "chair" in our sense of the word, or do you mean, not something clearly enough individuated (if that's the word) to be indicated by a general noun?

    Ok, the next two paragraphs suggest (I think) the former: before the "chair" we had the "sitting space" or "seat" or "seating layout" and the innovation recognised by the etymological ancesters of "chair" was an object that helped to facilitate the moving of a whole seating layout (with of course all of its attendant social symbolism)? Is that what the "space in-itself" stuff is saying?

    Not sure if I can read the last two paragraphs on that basis or not. So, interested to hear if I'm on track...

    :cool:
  • What counts as listening?
    the above is clearer. Hopefully? — Moliere

    :up: :cool:

    I was quite happily sampling Ground Zero in ten or 15-minute "bleeding chunks" (which I believe is the musicological term). Probably that was on the assumption I could then decide whether it was worth giving it a full 50 minute listen. Now though I'm far enough through to see why it was a particularly apt example (something about the 'dramatic arc'?), and also slightly ashamed that I shall now never have the experience of a first-listen-that-is-also-a-full-listen, if that makes sense?

    Especially if that was,

    the way the composer designed it to be heard — Julia

    Ashamed is too strong, but...
  • Collaborative Criticism
    ↪I like sushi
    Cool, it's up there in post #3, but I'll post subsequent edits down here. Reading yours now. Hopefully respond tomorrow.
  • Collaborative Criticism
    time’s up! — I like sushi

    Haha, I'm rubbish at deadlines. (I asked for an extension, but not so you would notice - my bad.)

    Anyway, I reckon we might be interested in each other's efforts. Expect copious opinionating on your style and content, and I will (in principle, haha) likewise be glad of the stimulation to improve mine for a possible future (much shorter) OP. 1058 words (as yet).
  • What counts as listening?
    Let's go along with this. The identity of a musical artwork is a set or class of sound-events identified through notation, recording, or both. — Moliere

    I'm stretched on the carpet and purring...

    So we could say, in the above that we heard the entire piece, at least. — Moliere

    Hang on, though... not to be ungrateful but, is "the above" the OP? So you are agreeing after all with the suggestion that an instance of an artwork can be served up in two halves and still be an instance of the same artwork? :grimace:

    I like how you [@TheMadFool] point out that when we push pause we're introducing something to our experience which the composer also uses in the artwork. That would be why the visual division served as analogue -- because the artist uses space in the case of paintings. — Moliere

    :100: :party:

    Still, I think I'm being won over by the identity theory posited by bongo fury, for now at least. — Moliere

    Still?? Despite the preceding? But I'm totally on board with you and the @TheMadFool for that preceding paragraph. So, what's coming?...

    Whereas pausing it does introduce a significant difference to the work of art, — Moliere

    I'm saying that your pausing it does definitely create a (longer) sound event which fails to count as an instance of the artwork, just (roughly) as your butchering of the Picasso fails to count as a reproduction of the painting. It potentially though not inevitably impairs the aesthetic merits of your listening experience, which is of a sound event obviously related to but not instantiating the artwork.

    the identity of the work of art is unchanged by my pausing it and starting it back up again. — Moliere

    Well, in the sense that the artwork is still either the set of continuous plays of the recording or the set of complete realisations of the score, whether or not you facilitated one of those plays or realisations on this occasion, yes. But in the sense that you got both halves and therefore all of one of the continuous plays or realisations that multiply instantiate the artwork, no.

    Hope that clarifies my position, and doesn't misrepresent @TheMadFool's.

    :cool:
  • What counts as listening?
    ↪Moliere
    Cool, not sure I was even aware of the SEP article, so you've returned the favour in kind :up: Did you find the article on his aesthetics, specifically? There's a link near the top of the main article, which omits the aesthetics.

    But I would recommend the main source, as it's perfectly concise also: https://monoskop.org/images/1/1b/Goodman_Nelson_Languages_of_Art.pdf. Page 114 and elsewhere for print-making from a plate... might be only in later books that he pretty plainly generalises that to photographic printing from a plate or negative. And very briefly to recorded music too.

    It's interesting to me to think of music in these two different categories - the notational vs recorded — Moliere

    Sure, but for me the crucial insight is that musical artworks are sound-events: or, usually, sets or classes of sound-events, identified either through notation or recording or both. As such they reward attention to fine detail and differences as much as any visual artworks, and for the same reasons. Having a criterion of identity by which to differentiate very similar physical objects or sets of objects that we mightn't otherwise have told apart is how we sharpen our senses. Which is why @TheMadFool is quite right that we are never invited to come back to a piece of music "right after the break". And why I was keen to read the OP as being about the identity of the stimulus, not the response.

    Notice there's nothing essentialist about this. It all falls out directly from G's nominalism. Like prints from a plate, plays of a recording can differ noticeably. As you say: "pops" or other distortions. We live happily with them, and carry on our (typically) obsessive comparisons and discriminations on the basis of the "identity" of reproductions from the original master.

    someone who has an ear for a particular orchestra or conductor likely has more narrow limits to someone who is just passingly familiar with some orchestral work. — Moliere

    Yes, we don’t want to spend our time on just any correct realisations from a score: is that what you mean? And with or without the aid of recordings we make discriminating choices. They just aren't the kind that we can base on a criterion of identity. They shade into other aesthetic questions like expression and aesthetic merit, which are also addressed in the book, if you're interested.

    Cheers
  • What counts as listening?
    Any clue what I'm on about? — ztaziz

    Sounds like what you already said. We notice more and more, and then maybe eventually less, and look for something new.

    Cool but heading off-topic.
  • What counts as listening?
    I wouldn't have noticed this pattern on listen 1? — ztaziz

    Good point. Being exposed to a stimulus isn't always noticing it.

    And 'hear' can mean notice. (As well as be-exposed-to: my preference in the OP.)

    Even so, what we can notice depends on what we are exposed to. And "small" differences in what we are and aren't exposed to (e.g. between the genuine article and two halves of it delivered separately) often make the most difference aesthetically.

    Not saying you were saying differently.
  • What counts as listening?
    What then? — jamalrob

    Decide whether the question is about whether or not we have encountered a complete and genuine instance of the artwork, or is instead one of any number of related questions about our processing of and response to whatever it is we have actually encountered.
  • What counts as listening?
    I've never experienced a musical piece being aired on TV being interrupted by ads. [irony]Maybe they're too short[/irony] or [understatement]maybe[/understatement] the producers intuit that any interruption to a piece of music amounts to altering it. — TheMadFool

    :100:

    No — Noble Dust

    :100:

    yes you did hear the entire piece. That is to say every audible bit of it did reach your eardrums and your brain did process it. — Outlander



    Often people differentiate between hearing and listening. — Outlander

    :ok: But often, as in the OP, and my comments so far, listening is just hearing, or facilitating hearing.
  • What counts as listening?
    But I wonder if there's some conceptual dimension here -- — Moliere

    :ok:

    -- like, is there something that spells out what a complete work is? — Moliere

    For notational music, we potentially care about and often prize the differences between sound events that hang on "small" differences between notational descriptions. IOW the score is what spells it out. Although, we care about a lot else besides, of course.

    With recorded music (whether notation-based or not) I think the situation is more like that of print-making and photography as analysed by Nelson Goodman: we prize the authenticity of sound events according to whether they trace back historically to a particular performance or, very often, an original master tape, or mix-down. Again, the identity of the work from instance to instance (from play to play, as from print to print) is important if "small" differences can be hugely consequential aesthetically.
  • What counts as listening?
    ↪Moliere


    I think I speak for both myself and @TheMadFool when I say we already agreed absolutely with all these implications of your OP for art and music, viz, the potential importance of experiencing the work as a whole.

    I am guilty, possibly, of excessive understatement ("yes, except").

    To hear an entire piece differing by one notational element is indeed to hear a different piece.

    Some departures from notational correctness will be more consequential aesthetically than others, but I wasn't for a moment meaning to imply that fewer (e.g. a single) departures must be less consequential.
  • What counts as listening?
    Did you hear the entire piece? — Moliere

    Except for the single un-scored pause, yes.

    To put it differently, you heard an entire piece differing (from the one you planned to hear) by one pause mark.

    Hey...
    ↪TheMadFool
    :gasp: yes! :100:
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    I find it interesting that you think that information only comes in the form of images, data, words, and symbols. — Harry Hindu

    It's more that I don't trust "information" to facilitate communication in a discussion like this, and would rather gloss it in other terms.

    What about neural firings? Is that information in the brain? — Harry Hindu

    In the context of some theory of neural processes, no doubt.

    If so, then information about what? — Harry Hindu

    Action potentials in other neurons, I'm guessing.

    Can neural firings be about the location of an apple relative to your body? — Harry Hindu

    Not in any sense of "about" that I can trust to help us in the present discussion. I would suspect that this is where an unreliable usage of "information" has already attached you to an unnecessarily abstract and mentalist notion of a "view".

    How? — Harry Hindu

    Ah, well if this means you are sceptical too, on this point, all good.

    It seems like you are confusing your sensitivity (the symbol) with the location (the symbolized). — Harry Hindu

    Massive difference between our usages of "symbolism" (and hence "information"): I'm talking about language games of pointing words and pictures at things. Animals and artificial neural networks can be trained in all (e.g. navigational) sorts of skills without having to engage in any such games, which involve an altogether higher level of social interaction. Even with more old-fashioned automata, they can at least be programmed to perform, albeit to a lesser standard, and then of course we can certainly examine the game of word-pointing played by the programmers. But with the automata themselves, as with animals and artificial neural-networks, there is no such game. Until the neuro-scientists get involved, maybe. Then (maybe) some neurons get pointed (like words) at things.

    Sounds like symbolism to me. Cue is just another name for symbol/signal. — Harry Hindu

    See above. There could be symbolism in the human theory of the animal behaviour. But not in the behaviour itself. (Unlike with human behaviour, where the behaviour itself nearly always involves language games.)

    Is the cue the same thing as the state of the environment, or are they different things? — Harry Hindu

    The same.

    Are you a solipsist? — Harry Hindu

    No.

    But you said that the illusion of consciousness doesn't happen. Is an illusion something that happens? — Harry Hindu

    I agree that the fact that we think that, or entertain the illusion that, we have mental images does deserve explanation, yes. Hence my attempt at that. On the other hand, I can't agree that it's a fact that we have mental illusions in the form of mental images. — bongo fury

    what are you talking about when you talk about "habits of interpretation" and "thinking in symbols"? — Harry Hindu

    thinking in (as in, preparing to select or manipulate) symbols. — bongo fury

    (For more and better, see Goodman's discussions, linked in my first.)

    What is a mirage? How do you explain an illusion of a mirage within the illusion of consciousness using neural firings? — Harry Hindu

    Again, I hope I didn't lead you to think that I'm saying that neural firings symbolise anything. To clarify: a mirage, just like an accurate perception, is somebody so shivering their neurons as to refine and adjust their readiness to select among symbols. Obviously, some circumstances (desert sun) lead, sporadically, to a disposition to select pictures deemed wholly inappropriate in revised circumstances. Other circumstances (refraction) lead to a similar mis-match, just more predictably.
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    Would you agree that the information in your "brain" includes objects' location relative to your brain, — Harry Hindu

    Not sure why "brain" is in quotes, but no matter.

    "The information in your brain", though... are we back to internal images, data, words, symbols? I'm not keen to agree to any assertions about what such alleged internal entities include and refer to: even though I can see how natural these assertions will seem to those who are comfortable with modelling the brain as a pre-neural-network symbolic computer.

    Obviously my skills in navigating myself require somehow being sensitive to what in fact are specific locations etc. I don't see that a theory of internal representations is required to explain the sensitivity.

    The swallow may fly south with the sun, not necessarily by consulting internal symbolic maps but, more likely, by inheriting and/or learning appropriate responses to all manner of environmental cues.

    Pleasant and informative could apply to a mind with images. — Harry Hindu

    Yes, but it could apply to me, too?

    I need a description that couldn't be interpreted to apply to minds with images, because you say those things don't happen. What is discerning patterns in the images and other objects around you like? — Harry Hindu

    Do you mean, what do I find when I try to examine and describe my thoughts and perceptions? As I was saying, although I'm as susceptible as anyone to conventional habits of interpretation which do tempt me into assuming ghostly entities inside me, I suspect that a more realistic account of the sense of / illusion of consciousness will probably focus on the effect of thinking in (as in, preparing to select or manipulate) symbols.

    What's it like? A continual, habitual and no doubt efficacious confusion of thoughts (brain-shivers) with pictures, producing either (1) an "illusion of consciousness" in the sense of a mistaken belief in mental images and/or mental matter, or (2) a "sense of consciousness", a correct understanding of the essential difference (albeit fuzzy) between man and beast.
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    What is a view? — Harry Hindu

    Well, the view from my window could (in one sense) mean my back garden, or it could mean an image of said garden created at said window. A photo, for example. Do you mean something else?

    What is looking at this screen like for you? — Harry Hindu

    Pleasant and informative. Good practice at discerning patterns in the images and other objects around me. And for you?
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    I'm asking you what scribble you are using to refer to the form the information about the world relative to your eyes takes. — Harry Hindu

    "Scribble", "refer" and "eyes", I think I understand. Not even sure about scribble, though. Do you mean the actual image on the screen, or something mental, or internal?
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    Think about your view of the world.
    — Harry Hindu

    As an image, to be stored and retrieved?
    — bongo fury

    No. As the form the information about the world relative to your eyes takes.     — Harry Hindu

    So, not as an image? (Or just not as a kind of image you would or could store or retrieve?)
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    I hoped you wouldn't ask that one :confused:
    — bongo fury
    Why? Is it a stupid or difficult question?     — Harry Hindu

    Haha, difficult. Working on it. :nerd:

    Would you say that dreams have images? — Harry Hindu

    "Have"? They relate to them, sure. I am keener than you (apparently) to avoid implying that a dreaming brain literally contains them. Especially if they have to be "mental".

    If you had a dream about a brain, could you draw a picture of it after you wake up? — Harry Hindu

    Sure. (Although I'd want to gloss "of it" as, e.g., "interpreting it" rather than "copying it" or other notions suggesting the dream was composed of images.)

    But the external image itself is an object (a picture, polaroid, drawing, etc.) that represents other objects. — Harry Hindu

    Yep. (Although of course many don't, e.g. pictures of unicorns, and abstract expressionist paintings.)

    How did your brain learn to represent things if it isn't something that it already does? — Harry Hindu

    Not clear what you consider the brain to have learnt, here... to participate in a language game of pointing actual words and pictures at things (my preference), or to host mental words and pictures that point at things?

    Would you say that a computer that performs facial recognition has an image in its working memory that it measures and compares to the measurements of other images in it's long-term memory? — Harry Hindu

    A pre-neural-network symbolic computer, yes. But that model no longer seems so appropriate in psychology.

    Think about your view of the world. — Harry Hindu

    As an image, to be stored and retrieved?
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    Do you need to commit to mental components?
    — bongo fury

    No, you just experience.     — schopenhauer1

    Okydoke, I shouldn't have taken this,

    The hard question goes beyond this and asks "How are the physical components equivalent to mental components". How is what you are saying addressing that? — schopenhauer1

    ... too literally.
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    Fair enough, you are committed to the existence of mental images as such.
    — bongo fury

    This is not something I have to be committed to.     — schopenhauer1

    Also fair enough. Are we then back to here,

    Then why are we even talking of pictures in the head?
    — schopenhauer1

    For my part, I thought they were included among your alleged "mental components"?     — bongo fury

    ?

    Do you need to commit to mental components?
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    What are dreams? — Harry Hindu

    I hoped you wouldn't ask that one :confused:
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    Ok.
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    There was never a standard model of brain function, at least not anything analogous to the standard model of particle physics. — jkg20

    Haha, yes I was being a tad sweeping there, wasn't I.

    I still haven't been corrected on my neurons reference either...
  • Looking for suggestions on a particular approach to the Hard Problem
    What is this entertaining of the illusion.. You are just pushing the goal-post and playing with language by saying "entertain the illusion" rather than "illusion". — schopenhauer1

    I was only trying to explain that on previous occasions when you might have thought I was committing to mental entities, I wasn't.

    It doesn't matter because the "hypothesis" is not the "feeling of" of the images. — schopenhauer1

    So... it does matter. Fair enough, you are committed to the existence of mental images as such.

    :ok:
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