( A ) lots of contrary positions with the same broad labels, this might be because perception philosophies intersect with broader theory of mind ones and philosophy of language ones to a large degree. — fdrake

:up:

see how much of a quibbling preamble is required to determine what is meant by "qualia", "functional property", or a perception instantiating a property vs having a property inhere in a perception etc — fdrake

Guilty, but that's characteristic of a) only having the experience to work with, not it's causes, b) being largely ignorant of the nature of those causes, and c) too many theories. All the more reason for divorcing things from theories about things.

the question is whether there is a genuine obstacle to taking our everyday experience at face value. There is a long history of philosophical objections to such naivety, and a considerable body of recent scientific objection. But related though they may be, there are two different issues here: one about the facts on the ground, that is, about how we get along in the world; and one about how we are to theorize how we get along in the world. If you object that we have no ‘direct access’ to things — whatever that means — that is a claim of theory, but it is a claim about how we get along, and implies that there is an obstacle between ‘us’ and ‘the world’. — Srap Tasmaner

When you're asking a question about the nature of qualia, you're really talking theory. Qualia _seem_ to happen whatever our theories about them. There is pragmatism though in understanding the limits of other pragmatisms. It may be pragmatic to proceed on the basis that qualia do or don't exist, but that just means it's extra important to be aware of when they don't or do seem to. Otherwise you end up rationalising facts to fit theories and you're just championing something willy nilly.

Same for the fidelity of our experiences. It's efficient to assume that our brains have this all covered for us by now, but when we hit something alarming remember that such pragmatisms are just that.

I won’t disagree, but only ask: why should this be so? But that’s too much, too fast. What does it mean to take a leap of faith? Do you know what it means? How? Again, too much. We feel this compulsion to take such a leap, or feel we have already taken it and want to understand what we have done, or we feel that we should above all avoid taking any such leap and are worried that we may already have done so, without noticing. This is all worth thinking about, and I haven’t even gotten to the word “faith” yet, and there’s surely something to be said about that. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, it's interesting, I think about it quite a lot. Personal view, I think faith is a necessary pragmatism. It's all well and good dithering on a philosophy forum and casting the seeds of doubt... In day-to-day reality, we need to act. I think human will necessitates little leaps of faith all the time, and it's a credit to the human mind that it's actually pretty great at leaping in the direction most of the time.

I don’t think we’re in a position yet to say what method can solve this problem — that before us is the possibility of a leap of faith and we are resistant, perhaps with good reason, to taking it. I don’t know how to solve such a problem. I don’t even understand why this is the problem we face, but it absolutely is. Before announcing how it is to be solved, I would spend some time trying to understand what sort of predicament this is, why it makes us uneasy, and see if we can learn, from the situation we are in, if it is possible to get out of it, and if it is, how. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, break it down, I dig your style. I don't think I'd argue that falsification is _the_ method, just a good method that we know works, certainly better than devotion to a particular thesis, admirable as that is in other ways. At root, falsification is open-mindedness but not to the extent that your brain falls out. It's not a barrier to proceeding in good faith, so it's very pragmatic, without being dogmatic or totalitarian.

Which is

No worries. It was fun anyway. — Mww

Always!

No, it doesn’t. But it can suggest too much included in the process. — Mww

So, in a crowded nutshell, what you're saying is that perception, as you understand it, is the end-to-end of the nervous system from stimulation of nerves through to awareness. All good, I understand. My understanding of the word is that it's the organisation of sensory information by the brain. So this is a matter for dictionaries and whatnot.

I used to visualize thinking as a two step process of low-level quantum combinations and selection from complex mental structures which is then followed at times by slow linear mature reasoning. — magritte

Jings! That makes it harder to wrap my head around, and I know quantum theory well. I see the occasional article stressing the importance of some quantum effect in brain function, so no doubt it has it's relevance. Personally I think of it functionally, and find Kahneman's two-system description compelling. No idea which bits (or qubits ho ho) might rely on quantum behaviour. Do you have any thoughts on the mechanics?

That's probably because you take it for granted. Naturalism tends to do that. Then it thinks it's 'explained' it. — Wayfarer

:fire:

I was going to say something else: the casting of everything as uncertain has a sort of methodological modesty about it — Srap Tasmaner

But also rigour. If you go in with the view that the answer to any sum is 5, you'll make a crappy calculator. The call to commit to the objective reality of what you see is a mere leap of faith. The true commitment to reality involves actively eliminating possible causes of our observations, not just only considering one (falsificationism).

Perception as brain function alone disregards the absolute necessity for causality of sensations, and at the same time, disregards the spatial distinction between the external cause and its internal effect. — Mww

Oh, is this your point? No, I don't think it does. In fact, I'd say that it organising suggests a thing to organise. Naming a function in a process doesn't suggest there's nothing else in that process.

Do you think reason can be understood as a brain fuction? — Wayfarer

Obviously, yeah. But also obviously you would not. I actually find the brain performing imaging much harder to wrap my head around than it performing reason.

So does that mean that if there were a 1-to-1 mapping, we could *prove* not just what something is, but that it is? — Srap Tasmaner

It would be a useful start. If there are other sources of our experiences (and there are, not just dreams and hallucinations, but biases, errors, and features of processing), and those sources aren't separable after the fact (and they're not), then there's always an unknown about whether we're seeing an object, some feature of processing data about it, or something else entirely.

Fortunately the brain is pretty good about making hypotheses about continuity of identity and similarity (it's a good categoriser, in ML terminology), plus we have other people to point out that, no, your gf hasn't turned into a wolf, that's just the acid man.

Just what I’d hoped. Would you agree the empirical occurrence, and the quality of it, as reported, belongs properly to the concept of sensation? — Mww

Indeed, I suggested sensation, but that's not right either. The issue is what the word 'perception' means, and it means the organisation of sensory information by the brain, and therefore is brain function. I'm not seeing an argument that it occurs elsewhere. I think we can assume a common understanding of the sending of that information to the brain until we hit a counterexample.

An octopus has a distributed nervous system, so a particular arm, being as clever as it is delicious, can make its own decisions, which means some local organisation of sensory information. But I don't know whether that could ever constitute perception. Man, I could go for some octopus for breakfast. A heavy sprinkling of paprika...

And I don't see how you can say that with a straight face. — Srap Tasmaner

It's pretty easy, you just don't cherry-pick reality. There's lots of famous examples.

This makes me very confused. Objects are mini theories, but don't worry about the theories using those objects imports to discourse? — fdrake

Why is that confusing? Otherwise you end up pulling in every theory when you wanted to talk about just one.

A 1-to-1 relationship exists between cone cells and the sensing of specific colors, a 1-to-1 relationship between the perception of a specific color and its neural correlate in the visual cortex, so why not a 1-to-1 relationship between subjectivity of the color itself and properties of some class of molecules or molecular array in the brain? — Enrique

It's not the molecules in the brain. When we drink the fake whiskey, a sample isn't sent up to the brain for analysis, rather signals about the sample are sent up. We can test this for ourselves. Water tastes much better when we're thirsty, meatloaf when we're hungry, etc. Objects appear the same throughout the day despite the ambient light changing. And different people see the same objects in different ways.

No matter how much you make the present better, for me, the facts remain of the circumstances. Life is what it is. — Cobra

Is the life of a slave much the same as the life of Leonardo DiCaprio then?

There is the fact that if you give a miserable man a winning lottery ticket you get a miserable millionaire ( https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-01001-001 ), but that isn't to say all miseries or joys are played out irrespective of circumstances. Slavery would make a happy person unhappy, which suggests that improving the lot of people overall would improve their lives overall.

But it's also interesting that bathtub gin + iodine + hair tonic tastes a bit like scotch, and we'll talk about this concoction, itself, tasting like scotch. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, it's interesting even that the second scotch tastes like the first too, even if not exactly alike, because it isolates the 'what it is like' from possible deviations of sensory information. If there were a 1-to-1 mapping, that would be a lot less interesting: same thing in, same thing out.

When we say, "It does taste a bit like scotch," we take ourselves to be talking about that thing, and we're not simply and obviously wrong to do so. — Srap Tasmaner

Agreed, but I've not argued that things taste something like themselves or other things, or told anyone they're wrong to do so. Wrong end of the stick, I think. I'm just saying there's no 1-to-1 map. Our perceptions aren't functions of objects from which we can prove the existence of those objects.

Isn’t a concept a mini-theory( fact-value distinction and all)? — Joshs

That's fair. Even objects are mini-theories :smile:

A really homogeneous area offering nothing to be cannot be given to any perception.

:up: Yes, it's an interesting thought experiment, and as I said earlier:

If I can differentiate the colours of the walls when all else is equal, that's a legitimate use case for the word 'qualia'. — Kenosha Kid

I expect in this case, as opposed to a hellish scenario in which an unchanging red wall was all I ever saw since birth, I probably could. It's not just space that contextualises but time too.

But this was just an extreme example. I'm not championing the idea of pure qualia, merely the means to ask how I experience the red of a red flower.

I’m not sure what you’re saying here, but my claim is that — plausible or not, convincing or not — the following is not simply incomprehensible — Srap Tasmaner

It's perfectly comprehensible. The characters believe they can create a thing that tastes like whiskey. That doesn't mean that one whiskey tastes the same as another, that your first whiskey tastes the same as your second, that whiskey tastes the same to you now as it did when you started drinking it aged 11, or that it tastes the same irrespective of whether you brushed your teeth.

In taking exception to your rendering, it is not incumbent on me to supply an alternative — Mww

If your counterargument is that there is a different authoritative definition, you ought to be able to cite it.

....is found the necessary causality not given in the first, re: certain properties. — Mww

That's the opposite of the case. If I was _certain_ that a given perception was caused by a particular object, then I'd be saying that such an object is necessary. The fact that all such objects, indeed the external world itself, are hypotheses, however confident I am in them, allows for the possibility of other sources. Therefore the hypothesised object is _not_ a necessary condition.

....is found that those conditions sustaining epistemological monism are apparently false, insofar as herein it is said there is nothing of those given properties of that object found in the brain. — Mww

I was unclear, I apologise. What I mean is that when I observe, say, a flower, there is nothing of the flower in my brain being somehow directly conveyed to my consciousness (like a Cartesian theatre). You're right that my brain belongs to the external world.

First......What do you tell the boss? — Mww

Btw I enjoyed this very much. I'd tell the boss that I had been slapped and how hard. We're not in disagreement that information flows from nerves to brains. We're in disagreement that this alone constitutes perception. Perception is the organisation of these messages, not the messages themselves.

it's that sense data as a concept itself stakes out a claim regarding the process that couples mind and world — fdrake

Your feeling that any such concept brings with it the trace of its theoretical origins and connotations is what I'm arguing against. Things first, theories second.

Taking an analogy with cosmology, it would scupper useful discussion to hold that the concept of the cosmological constant brings with it the assumption of a steady-state universe _because that's what Einstein intended_. It's much clearer to have a healthy divorce between concepts (sense-data, qualia, cosmological constants) and theories. The confusion arises from hauling in the theory uninvited, not:

Using sense data as you've been doing contributes to the mess. — fdrake

I haven't "used" it at all, except as directed by your good self. I've asked questions about the usefulness of the term 'qualia'.

It seems to me that you think in sufficient accord with sense data theories that you're happy treating the concept as transportable between perceptual theories — fdrake

Not really, unless "the concept of sense datum itself is useful" is the sufficient accord you're thinking of, which is a very low bar. For instance, one doesn't need to hold that unappraised perception is how we generally see prior to cognition, as per sense data theories. We know that sensory information pre-exists such a cognition, something more akin to @Mww "s notion of perception, for instance.

If you're using the word sense data as a neutral term, but you're also referring to it as somehow a neutral entity between theories of perception which they're all concerned with, you're paying the price of distorting the idea to do so. — fdrake

That second if... I'm not, that's the point, except in response to your more theory-centric way of thinking. We're probably going far too deep into what is essentially a complaint that the term 'sense-datum' has already been taken and can't, for weird reasons, be transported between theories, or between a theory and a more descriptive discussion, leading to a proliferation of terminology and an inability to define clearly where one ends and another begins. But...

how would you describe a theory of perception which didn't use sense data or qualia in terms of sense data and qualia? — fdrake

An example would be a more complete theory that can account for the existence or illusion of sense data and qualia. This would be as opposed to one that shows that such ideas are purely artefacts of bad stroky bearding.

It's useful to talk about sense data when you're talking about sense data theories. If you're talking about a theory which doesn't have sense data in it, there's no use for it. — fdrake

It's useful to talk about something when you want to discuss it too, not just theories about it or not about it. I don't need a theory of eggs to talk about them, which is helpful if I want to talk about eggs _in.order_ to describe a new egg theory.

I remember once using the word 'teleological' and my interlocutor dismissed me as a Jesuit. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

to my mind even thinking in terms of sense data is quite close to choosing a hill to die on, — fdrake

And to mine it shouldn't be until the thing we mean by it is ruled out. All it means is having to come up with new terminology to describe the same thing in order to avoid association with particular theories, when the thing being referred to isn't necessarily different.

If there is something it is like to see this particular instance of red, then I don’t just have the experience of seeing the thing which is this particular red color, I also experience myself experiencing it, am aware of having the underlying experience — Srap Tasmaner

I think this is also doing exactly what I was describing in conflating a concept and a theory about it. Qualia are a pretty simple concept. Blindfolded me, then steer me right up against a red wall so that it's all I can see, and unblindfold me. Then reblindfold me, steer me right up against a green wall so that it's all I can see, and unblindfold me. If I can differentiate the colours of the walls when all else is equal, that's a legitimate use case for the word 'qualia'. I don't need to have a stroky beard theory about it as well: the question is can I refer to it in my experience, and the answer would seem to be 'yes'.

It's precisely this "Did he say qualia? Then he must believe XYZ!" that I find peculiar to philosophers' way of thinking. Whereas if you say, I don't know, 'cosmological constant' in physics, all you're really saying is it's a thing worth having a word for. It doesn't automatically mean you believe in relativity, or dark matter, or inflaton fields because the terminology transcends theories. Very different mentalities.

But we were right the first time. Cakes do have properties that reliably produce specific taste experiences when eaten by the sorts of creatures they were made for. — Srap Tasmaner

Except they don't. It is precisely because there isn't a 1-to-1 map between the chemical constitution of a glass of wine or piece of cake and how it tastes that it's interesting. And therefore worth having a language for.

But there has to be groundwork laid for such displacement, experiences of things, just as there has to be for dreams and hallucinations. — Srap Tasmaner

You also have to be able to refer to it to explain it. Even if the explanation ends up telling us that the thing it's explaining is an illusion, that statement alone is useful.

There's also the possibility that sense data don't exist. — fdrake

Yes, I was saying this about qualia too. It may be, in the final wisdom, that it's not actually useful at all, for instance if, with advanced understanding, we build a refined language or otherwise employ a more fit one. However, with incomplete knowledge of how things are, how things seem is a useful thing to talk about, qualia included. Once we can explain how things seem, we can do away with seeming altogether.

Not all accounts of perception have something like sense data in them, and talking in those terms might shroud out equally plausible theories. — fdrake

But here you're speaking of the theories, not the term, right? Theories are liable to be wrong: they're ten a penny. My question is: does having a name for unappraised but still vivid perceptions help talk about how partially explained things seem? And maybe it does, for instance in the perceptions of enfants, or in perceiving a completely unfamiliar thing. Or maybe it doesn't, or won't in the end. Point is, the criteria for tossing the theory shouldn't be the same as for tossing the points of discussion. If it transpires in the final wisdom that there are no such perceptions, that's the criterion to drop the concept, surely? That's my meaning. Just as I'm not dumping on any particular theory, I'm not endorsing any either.

Which I'm thinking is frustrating to you, sorry, but I'm afraid I'm like that with almost everything. I rarely find theories something to pledge allegiance to, even quantum theory (my old field). When I do, it's based on lots of things (empirical evidence, acceptability of postulates, minimalisation of postulates, rigour of derivations), but we're discussing a field with a lot of unknowns. I prefer to talk about and around the knowns than die on a particular hill.

Not exactly. I’m saying that if perception is a brain function, then it has lost its established meaning, hence become a non-entity with respect to it. — Mww

I didn't get that at all from what you said, thanks for clarifying. Can you cite the established meaning? I'm checking all the usual sources...

Wikipedia: Philosophy of Perception

External or sensory perception (exteroception), tells us about the world outside our bodies. Using our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, we perceive colors, sounds, textures, etc. of the world at large. There is a growing body of knowledge of the mechanics of sensory processes in cognitive psychology.

Perception here "uses", and therefore is distinct from, senses, and the study of it is within cognitive psychology.

From Stanford: The Contents of Perception

In contemporary philosophy, the phrase ‘the contents of perception’ means, roughly, what is conveyed to the subject by her perceptual experience.

(I'm spotting a lot of humunculi now!)

From a randomly selected neuroscience article:

During the perception process, our brain is able to integrate a few typical features to a complex pattern.

I'm not finding anything suggestive of, say, nerves in skin firing, but not am I confident this is what you mean.

EDIT: And less randomly from Wiki again, citing Schacter's Psychology:

Perception (from the Latin perceptio, meaning gathering or receiving) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.

which is what I had in mind.

EDIT-WITHIN-EDIT: Oh there you go. The correct term for sensory information is just 'sensory information'.

Are you seriously claiming that I can see a flower more clearly than I could when I was five years old, because that would be the implication of your 'ever-improving' model claim? — Janus

I think I said 'baby', but otherwise: yes.

Can't speak for KK but in a way my ability to see and appreciate (for want of a better word) a flower has definitely improved since I was 5. Given that flowers are not just objects to see but also objects to contextualize (flowers as symbols, flowers as a functioning part of nature, etc) the fullness of my understanding of a flower has evolved. And, if I studied botany, I would see a given flower in an even more enhanced way and see things others might not. Objects can be seen and not seen - if you understand my meaning. — Tom Storm

:up:

That all you got? — Janus

Well no, but there wasn't really anything to go on. It was just a flat contradiction. However...

How can it be right to say the external world is an hypothesis, when we all experience a world external to our bodies — Janus

I'm intrigued to hear how you think we do that. Because from where I'm sitting, nothing of the external world is, for instance, in my brain. Cut me open (please don't) and there's no aforementioned flower in there being experienced.

If you're thinking some kind of perfect divine insight, okay that's your belief system and I'm not going to try and talk you out of it, likewise for some exotic everything-is-one-consciousness-type belief.

But otherwise there's nothing in my actual experience that contains anything of the external world. We seem (from experience of other phenomena) to receive partial data, which isn't experienced, from our senses, that data is processed in complex ways, put together with other data (from other senses, memories, thoughts, etc.) to create the experience of the red flower, in whatever context. It doesn't come with a verifiable NFT relating it to an object in the outside world: indeed, experience can easily be demonstrated to be misleading or flat out erroneous. Some experiences have little or nothing to do with the outside world, such as dreams and hallucinations. There is no absolute certainty that any object we seem to perceive is as we perceive it, or even there at all. And the contexts in which those objects exist are even more abstract.

None of this is to say I am dubious about the existence of any object that purportedly causes my perception of it. An objective reality is by far the best, in fact imo the only sensible explanation for our experiences, though others have alternatives (such as simulation theory, which still has an external world, just not the one we experience). Nonetheless, I am proceeding only in extremely high confidence in the hypothesis that my experience of the red flower is caused by an external object with certain properties that cause that experience. I might be proven wrong, either about the flower or the external world as a whole.

There's rather a lot of ambiguity which can be pivoted upon in that mixture. It's also quite difficult to tell if you're a direct or indirect representational realist (is seeing an object being in a representation relationship with that object - direct - or is it being in a relationship with a representation of that object - indirect) from how you argue. — fdrake

I get you. I'd explain it as: I don't adopt a position for the sake of adopting a position. That is, I don't subscribe wholesale to philosophical positions. I try to learn about how things work and build up an understanding that way. If that ends up being in accordance with a preexisting philosophical stance, great. If not, also great. I'm not pushing a hidden agenda or anything. Here I'm just making a case, quite openly, that qualia are a useful concept, nothing else.

In that regard, it's quite difficult (for me) to distinguish what your views are from the 'stroky beard dipshit views' about sense data. — fdrake

Ah okay, indelicate phrasing hit a wrong nerve, my apologies. I wasn't dumping on any particular theory, quite the opposite: I was characterising how people react to useful notions like qualia and sense-data. My point was that, whether or not you agree with a theory about a thing should be distinct from whether the concept of that thing is a useful one. Anyone can come up with a 'stroky beard dipshit theory' about, say, eggs. It doesn't follow that eggs are not to be talked about.

It is so odd, that the precursor to the human cognitive system, the mere transformation of one kind of energy into another, in a measly five modes of operation, in a near one-to-one correspondence, fully observable and reproducible......finds itself relegated to a non-entity. — Mww

I don't get this. Are you saying that if I personally don't know the collective noun for something, I'm saying that something is a non-entity? That's a logical leap too far for me and, more to the point, completely untrue.

I gather your main concern is really:

Perception is a brain function.
— Kenosha Kid — Mww

whereas you hold that perception is more the entirety of an individual's sense activation? I can find plenty of definitions and usages consistent with the former and none with the latter, but I'm open to whatever you've got.

Different senses have different kinds of receptors, so what name covers them all, if not perception? — Mww

Sensation? That doesn't seem right either. I don't think I know the word for it, but I'm pretty certain perception isn't it.

The problem is that proponents of "qualia" end up saying that we don't experience the flower at at, but that we experience only "quales" that represent it instead. — Janus

I covered this here:

It also seems to me that philosophy has a problem tolerating useful words associated with outdated theories. "Sense data" being another example. Becoming apoplectic at its employment just means having to invent more crap terminology for data we receive via our senses, all because some stroky beard dipshit said incorrect things about it. — Kenosha Kid

So, you think we are better able to see (and I don't mean understand, but simply see) the world today than the ancients were, on account of our "better models"? I have a better model of a flower today than the ancients did, so I can see it more clearly? — Janus

No, you have a better model of a flower than you did when you were born, and so can see it more clearly. That's the correct analogy.

The external world is not an "hypothesis" — Janus

:rofl:

where I still take issue is that the 'standard' can be no more than a set of justifications — Isaac

Yeah, I agree with this. I guess one could posit an ideal set of justifications, wrt which other justifications are inferior. The whole thing is pretty ill-defined.

Just for clarity, that quote from me was not in response to that quote from Isaac.

It escapes me completely, how sensory receptor stimuli perception in my skin, can be construed as a brain function in my head. — Mww

Ah, I understand. I wouldn't call actual excitement of nerves in the skin perception, though. I think we're just using the terms differently. Perception is the brain organising data from our senses as I'm familiar with the word.

I have not read any official scientific journal on the subject — Alkis Piskas

Oh well now I've totally lost faith in your proclamations.

See, they confuse sensory perception effects on the brain with ... consciousness! — Alkis Piskas

How would you know if you haven't read any of them?

Wouldn't it proving to be true but for the wrong reason just be better justifications? — Isaac

Definitely. But in the meantime...

Let's say you know that the answer to some question is X not Y, i.e. you have whatever standard of truth is necessary, but I don't. I have to figure out the answer from clues, and come to the belief that the answer is X but I could be wrong, that is I might have made a mistake as I have only clues (a WYSIATI error or some such). I tell you what I believe the answer is and why. You agree that my reasoning is sound and that I hold a JTB.

If perception organizes, what does the brain do? — Mww

It's the brain that's doing it. Perception is a brain function.

Taking it one step further, even without any previous experience to go on (of this actual laptop) I can infer the presence of a fan which I can 'place' in my model of what's behind these keys, just like I infer neuronal activity from my knowledge of how the brain works. — Isaac

^ A pertinent sample, but replying to whole.

Yeah I thought we'd get onto this. Then I say, but there's a difference between me passively seeing something I cannot help but see on the one hand, and me either actively conjecturing or remembering by association some facts about what I see. And then I think you say that that's all we're doing anyway when constructing these representations. When we see a red flower, we're remembering and conjecturing based on past experience of other flowers, other red things, and everything else for that matter. Brains are scientists!.

We end up unable to avoid early learning, which is also hard. But still, that's a lot of stuff going on that we don't seem aware of. Pattern-recognition, memory retrieval, that sort of thing, such that whatever I'm seeing _seems_ to come to me fully formed. It doesn't seem like it would benefit from deliberation.

There's absolutely no physiological reason why you shouldn't log the output of the forward acting region of your V3 area. "remember that left-right motion we saw the other day...". We just don't. — Isaac

Again, efficiency I would imagine. It's much better for me to make decisions based on integrated, annotated, coloured-in if you will information. Same reason we do feature extraction and dimensionality reduction as part of preprocessing for training and using neural nets. Having to consciously parse raw data would render consciousness too slow to be useful.

I think we can justifiably use therm 'image' to describe what exits the visual cortex. We're already not a million miles away from being able to directly decode the neural signal leaving that area into an actual computer image. — Isaac

Thanks, that's what I was meaning.

OK, so stop me if this gets too 'new age', but how do you judge whether you have awareness of something? I don't mean that as a philosophical question, I mean it as an actual exercise to do now. Look at the red flower - you're aware of it. Think about the neurons firing from your retina, to your visual cortex, to your visual-spatial sketchpad... What's missing that means you don't feel 'aware' of the latter, what kind of signal were you expecting but found lacking? — Isaac

Stop, hippy! Well can I turn that around and ask how you think we're conscious of the building of these models? As it's not something I recognise and so can describe. In terms of what I _am_ aware of, right now my phone, my hands, the colours coming from the phone, the feel of tapping the glass, the lingering taste of manchego, quince, and temperanillo, and my gf glaring at me with 'Get off your f***ing phone' vibes. I'm not aware of signals building up this picture.

Such accusations don't bother me. If people want to model it as an homunculus, then I don't mind. I long ago came to terms with infinite regress, I couldn't progress in my field without it - it's models all the way down! — Isaac

Yeah, I should probably have just shrugged it off. But there are processes we're not aware of (photons on retina, phonons on eardrums and nerves), and the stuff we are aware of seems pretty mature in that process. We're not logging raw sensory input, it's processed in some way. I don't have a strong idea of when logging starts,I guess.

I think that the developments of neuroscience (and cognitive psychology) mean that we have models of the process and that makes us conscious of it. — Isaac

Oh that's interesting. So we have models of the processes of model-building. Perhaps this is pathological, but I am not aware of these processes. I know on an intellectual level that they occur, but have no conscious experience of, say, conjuring a colour from a current, or a shape, or depth in the way that I am conscious of a red flower close to me. Those processes being _why_ I am conscious of them, sure. Having the model may well be the same as being aware of the model, as I said to Banno earlier.

My personal preference demotes consciousness to a fairy trivial logging process, we are 'conscious' of that which we log to memory, experience being merely the process of doing so, always post hoc, always retrospective, we're never conscious of anything in real time, it's the reviewing of what's just happened to make sense of it that forms our experience. — Isaac

Yeah that sounds reasonable, but that logging process is just as apt to be called a humunculus or Cartesian theatre. I'm not sure how you avoid such accusations if anything precedes that logging that isn't also logging.

Actually, what was questioned was this:

When I refer to the red flower, I am doing so as a shorthand for my experience of the red flower.
— Kenosha Kid — Banno

Again, no, this started with:

Qualia add nothing helpful to the conversation:

What is gained by talk of the-qual-of-the-flower that is not found in talk of the red flower? — Banno

My contention was that there are good reasons to talk of properties of experience as opposed to objects because they're not the same.

But you have corrected yourself, somewhat backhandedly. — Banno

Nope, still at it. I think there's a problem here throughout with your representing either of us.

Indeed, but 'true' is the ultimate post hoc justification (at least, that's the case I'm arguing). — Isaac

Oh definitely, but the usual demonstrations are about someone who has a justified belief that then proves true but for the wrong reason. I find it's this notion of untrue justification that's problematic.

What would that be that we don’t have? I’m seriously asking: what do you have in mind when you say there is a type of perception, direct perception, that human beings happen not to — well, “have” seems an odd way to put — so let’s make it: what would it be to perceive “directly” rather than “indirectly”? — Srap Tasmaner

You'd have to ask someone who believes we have it, not someone who thinks it's a nonsense. Divinely granted insight? Creeping tendrils of perfect consciousness?

It's the assumption of an image between the perceiver and the object that suggests the dualism. — Andrew M

For you maybe. To me it suggests retina.

Me, too. It's just that the model used in explanations of perceptions is very different from the model used in our scientific theories. — Banno

Not really, the brain is quite like a scientist.

What Kenosha Kid is referring to is our responses. Speech, action, emotional responses, strategies, and more complex mental reactions. These all result from the perception of the flower, not the flower. — Isaac

It's even simpler. I'm just saying that perception of the flower is not the flower. Or, rather, experience of the flower is not the flower. (To my mind, and correct me where I'm wrong, perception and experience are not the same thing. Perception is the wibbly wobbly organisation of data into an always fleeting, always updating model of our environment. Experience is consciousness of that model. These might be two sides of the same coin, but still distinct.)

I was hoping you'd show up and harpoon my bubbles of misunderstanding. We discussed qualia before and you were also of the view that the term is not helpful, but you had reasons, not allergies.

Quick catch-up:
- Banno reckons by way of Dennett that there's no need to talk about experience of a thing, we can just talk about the thing, therefore qualia are not helpful.
- My objection was that experience of a thing is not the thing itself, so there are reasons (scientific, philosophical) to discuss the former, and it's useful to have an unambiguous language to talk about it. "The red flower" is ambiguous, because while I probably am talking about my experiences, I could be talking about the causes of those experiences.
- Banno cries 'Cartesian theatre' and 'humunculi'.

So I can see you're happy with the distinction between the perception of a flower and the flower itself (which ought to be trivial). At some point you and I will diverge but can you weigh in on the following please?
1. Do you think we are conscious of the processes of forming those perceptions? (Harder question: at what point are we conscious of the causes of our perceptions? Are we conscious directly of photons incident upon retina? Of currents in optic nerves? Etc.)
2. If we see a red flower next to a yellow flower, would you agree it at least _seems_ to us like there are two flowers with different properties, irrespective of how that seeming arises?

Cheers Isaac, nice to see you back.

Thee's the cartesian theatre. — Banno

Do you seriously observe no difference between recognising that we don't have direct perception of objects and a full-on subscription to dualism? I get the comparison you're making, but unfortunately it's regarding uncontroversial statements about the brain. There's plenty of examples of the brain doing processing that we're not conscious of that feeds into stuff we are conscious of. I'm certainly not conscious of how photons get converted into an image of 'red flower', and anyone who pretends they are is full of it. Calling it a Cartesian theatre or humunculus is just misleading.

We'd have much more fun discussing Rorty's mirror. — Banno

Funnily enough, your responses reminded me of the threads on postmodernism I started a while back. Coming from a scientific background, I'm comfortable with the fact that our models of reality will likely always be deficient and only ever be that: ever-improvong but never perfect models. So yeah I have sympathy with the descriptive parts of Rorty (and pomo generally, and a lot of the prescriptive stuff). Probably no surprise there. :rofl:

Not only that, but you seem to have me confused with Mww, quoting your reply to him instead of to me. — Banno

Rubbish, I've quoted it at you three times in response to your "you can't refer to objects" comments.

But I take it that you now renege on your claim that "all references to objects are really just references to mental models". So there's that. — Banno

Not at all. If the external world is a hypothesis, however compelling, however confident in it we are, then statements about it are statements about our beliefs in it. You seem to imagine a contradiction between this and

I'm also apt to refer to the object itself as "the red flower" as a shorthand for "the (hypothesed) object that causes my experience of the red flower". — Kenosha Kid

but they're the same.

I know I said

I'm not going to repeat myself as your argument hasn't moved on. — Kenosha Kid

but I guess there's a twisted pleasure in saying it four times:

Just as I might refer to "the red flower" as a shorthand for "my experience of a red flower", I'm also apt to refer to the object itself as "the red flower" as a shorthand for "the (hypothesed) object that causes my experience of the red flower". — Kenosha Kid

If you're gathering:

Indeed, you do not seem to have grasped the simple point that we can talk about both our experiences and the things experienced. — Banno

irrespective of what I write, I wonder what you're basing that on. Oh yeah. Straw man building.

Supposing that the world is only likely is, shall we say, somewhat fraught. It takes a philosophy to make such mistakes. And better philosophy to point out the error. — Banno

I'll look forward to that when it arrives, but in the meantime you're mistaking knowledge about experience of a red flower with experience of a red flower itself. Learning that we have no direct perception of the external world doesn't retrospectively change the nature of the experiences we've had. If we do have direct perception of the world, we do so whether we know it or not. And if our experience is instead of a model unconsciously constructed from brain activity triggered by photons, phonons, etc. mediating partial data about objects in the external world, it is whether we know it or not. Knowing is great, but it's not as transformative as you're making it out. I still see a flower in the same way.

all references to objects are really just references to mental models", it is you who is not able to refer to flowers. — Banno

Absolute nonsense. I can refer to wormholes in the same way as I can refer to flowers. I'm much more confident about the existence of the latter. I don't need proof of the external world to have confidence in my models about it.

Well, it might well grind to a halt. In fact, I think it _is_ grinding to a halt. But not because of a heroic uprising against measures to keep staff and patients safe.

And I'll leave you unable to distinguish between a thing and a representation of a thing, screaming with terror at a photo of a great white :smirk:

Eventually work will insist on something that I will draw the line at, then I will walk away and do something else. — Book273

All's well that ends well.

See the bolding? Isn't what you are saying here that when we attempt to refer to the flower directly we only succeed in again referring to our awareness of the flower?

Which is only to repeat the same error. Repeating yourself is not presenting an argument. — Banno

The emboldened bit is a straw man. Substituting in your own "clarifications" to critique is unnecessary. And "attempting" has nothing to do with it. Subjectivity isn't a failure to be sufficiently objective. It's the framework within which everything we experience occurs.

Again, when you pick the flower, you break the stem on the flower, not on anything else.

Again, you are assuming a cartesian theatre. Again, you are talking as if you were a homunculus. Again, you deny that we can talk about the things in the world, while pretending to do just that. — Banno

And again these objections have been addressed. I'm not going to repeat myself as your argument hasn't moved on. This is, like I said, just a lot of distraction and straw-man construction, especially the leap to a Cartesian theatre.