Analogical or Analytical?
Steven Lehar
thread, I thought it appropriate to re-name the thread, as it seems that we
have identified the key difference between our viewpoints, and it is not a
mere question of terminology, but a profound paradigmatic issue. A way we
view the world. People have difficulty even imagining the world of the
alternative paradigm, so they talk at cross-purposes, every word being
interpreted in subtly different ways. We've seen enough of that here, but I
believe we have broken through that cycle.
Brook >
He holds as self-evident that if X represents Y, then X has to have the
same structure as Y. As he said yesterday, if X represents corners and
colours, then X has to have corners and colours.
< Brook
This here, I believe, is the center of our disagreement. But I would state
it this way: If you accept that perception is indirect (as some of us can't
help believing) then it follows that the dimensions of conscious experience
must necessarily reflect the dimensions of the information encoded in the
brain. I know you direct perceptionists don't believe this, but just
imagine for a minute *if* it were actually true, that the world around you
was a kind of holographic 3-D image created by resonances in your visual
brain. If that were your understanding of your experience, would it not
*then* (hypothetically speaking) be self-evident that the representational
principle of the brain is analogical?
Our *experience* of the world is analogical. Only a bizarre re-definition
of experience would deny to it its spatial aspect. You direct
perceptionists believe that the reason that your experience is analogical
(spatially extended, volumetric manifold)is because it is an experience
*of* an analogical world. We representationalists believe that experience
is analogical because the representational mechanism of our brain is
analogical, and the truth of that statement can be verified by inspection,
as long as one does not get confused about what one is actually "seeing".
(Note the ""quote"" marks) Of course we believe the world to be analogical
also. But that is why an analogical imaging mechanism is the best
representation for spatial interaction with a spatial world.
If the representation were not analogical, how would the "analogicality" of
the world get through to our experience of it? Wouldn't it be filtered out
by the first non-analogical sensor, just as a photodiode array filters out
the polarity and phase of detected light?
And why do direct perceptionists insist on denying the spatial aspect of
experience? Why do they have to "define it out of existence"? Because if I
talk about the spatial aspect **of your experience** (not of the world)
everyone but a direct perceptionist knows exactly what you are talking
about. It is that three-dimensional volumetric space full of colored
objects, that follows you around wherever you go, filling in a 3-D picture
of the world for you wherever you point your eyes. Why do we have to deny
its existence? Can direct percepton not survive if our experience *is*
spatial? Can't we admit "Yeah, we have a problem with spatial experience,
but it is still more credible than representationalism". Wouldn't that be
the honest response? Why does one get a sense that direct perceptions are
forever redefining words and banning concepts? Is that really necessary?
Brook >
but it would be astonishing if it is encoded in any analogue form. When I
see a tangerine, nothing in my brain is tangerine (and if it were, I could
not sense that, everything being pitch-black in my brain).
< Brook
Au contraire! It would be astonishing if this rich spatially structured
analog experience were represented in the brain any other than by a three-
dimensional volumetric imaging system with as much fidelity and resolution
as you see in the world around you now. To deny that mechanism is to leave
the rich spatial information in our experience in a peculiar kind of limbo,
where it is experienced, but does not actually exist as spatial structure
anywhere, especially in the case of dreams and hallucinations. But
information cannot exist without a physical substrate to store or register
that information, and spatial experience requires a spatial representation.
The fact that the world of visual experience appears in the form of a
spatial structure is itself conclusive evidence that information in the
visual brain is spatially structured.
This is not an esoteric philosophical question, but a very significant
concrete question that will one day be proven one way or the other
experimentally. I propose we start looking *for* an imaging mechanism in
the brain. Its probably right before our eyes, if only we knew what to be
looking for in the brain.
Steve
Andrew Brook
the structure of what it represents -- as do philosophers of all realist and
irrealist stripes, both connectionist and classical AI researchers, most
cognitivists, and at least a great many neuroscientists. Do you really believe
that the word 'red' has to *be* red to *represent* redness?
As to your claim that analogical structure is obvious, um, a bit of evidence
that we are doing more than representing structure, that our representations
have the structure they represent, would be nice. Not that there is -- or
perhaps even could be -- any.
Steven Lehar wrote:
> Our *experience* of the world is analogical. Only a bizarre re-definition
> of experience would deny to it its spatial aspect. You direct
> perceptionists believe that the reason that your experience is analogical
> (spatially extended, volumetric manifold)is because ....
Andrew
--
Andrew Brook, Professor of Philosophy
Director, Institute of Cognitive Science
Member, Canadian Psychoanalytic Society
2217 Dunton Tower, Carleton University
Ottawa ON, Canada K1S 5B6
Ph: 613 520-3597
Fax: 613 520-3985
Web: www.carleton.ca/~abrook
Jeff Dalton
> You can still say that people who have a certain kind
> of experience are acquainted with that kind of experience, while
> others, who lack it, are not. However, in order to be 'acquainted' with
> an experience, you have to have a corresponding notion of that
> experience. Merely having the experience is not enough. Or do you think
> that a dog or small child is still 'acquainted' with visual experience
> despite lacking appropriate notions?
If they have the experience, they are acquainted with it.
Of course, it's sometimes argued that animals and children
are not conscious (by Julian Jaynes, for example); but these
arguments typically confuse consciousness with consciousness
of consciousness or with self-consciousness.
Similarly, something acquainted with conscious experience
needn't be able to conceptualize, articulate, or be
self-reflectively aware of it.
> The argument from illusion/hallucination again! I was hoping we were
> through with this. (There are some earlier posts, where I think I quite
> carefully demolished this argument. See especially the messages from
> April 13th and 17th.)
The causal / implementation version of the argument from
hallucination has not been demolished.
> I don't think this is about explanation. It's about acknowledging the
> facts that need to be explained. It's an obvious fact about the
> phenomenology of perceptual experience that its contents are directed
> at the external world. Epistemologically, attempts to deny this fact
> have led to disaster, as much recent philosophy has brought out. The
> argument from illusion is an extremely bad reason to deny the
> directness of perception. Properly understood, illusion and
> hallucination presuppose the existence of intentional contents directed
> at the external world.
Perception can be *directed at* the world without being direct
perception of the world.
> Strange as it may seem, but I think there is no
> credible scenario in which scientific discoveries overthrow our common
> sense conviction we are in direct intentional contact with the external
> world (direct as opposed to being in immediate touch with some sort of
> mental objects). Try proving me wrong!
Setting the burden tennis aside, I have to wonder how there can
be a common sense conviction that something as technical as
"direct intentional contact" is true.
> It is true though, that some philosophers misuse the directness of
> perception to try to deny the reality of perceptual experience (or
> 'qualia') - some remarks of Gregg's seemed to be directed against that.
> These philosophers make the same mistake that Steve makes, namely to
> think that directness means absence of conscious representation. That
> is, of course, nonsense.
So what does it mean, then? That we just can't call the conscious
representation a "mental object"?
> Obviously our percepual experiences have
> representational content, and I for one am also prepared to agree that
> perceptual experience has spatial properties and an analog structure,
> though it seems to me that the question of direct realism does not
> depend on this either way.
So what does direct perception amount to, exactly? Is the objection
to indirect perception only that it supposedly involves contact with
*mental objects*? Is it just an objection to dualism?
Despite the many messages in these threads, I think it is still unclear
what direct perception amounts to beyond an objection to something
(and it's not entirely clear what) in indirect accounts.
I disagree with direct perception not because I have a clear idea
of what it is but because of the arguments that advocates of direct
perception use. Evidently, whatever direction perception is, it
implies that certain things are false; but some of those things
instead are true.
-- Jeff
Jeff Dalton
> I think this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of
> measurement. Measurement along some dimension involves comparison against
> some standarized unit. It makes no sense to measure the dimensions of
> subjective experience using physical units. ...
Andres Brook:
> This strikes me as a hopeless dodge. So experiences don't have the
> properties of the things they represent after all. They have some
> peculiar virtual analogue of those properties. So, while they
> represent those properties, they don't have them -- just what
> we want to say. We would only add, they don't have mysterious
> analogues whose behaviour cannot be described using space and
> time either.
Both sides can agree that experiences don't have *all* of
the properties of the things they represent. (Otherwise, the
experiences would *be* the things, rather than represent them.)
What Andrew needs is an argument that experiences have *none* of the
properties -- not examples of some properties experience lacks.
(Nor does rhetoric about exterience having "peculiar", "virtual", or
"mysterious" properties do the trick. :))
There's a lot to be said for the old distinction between primary
and secondary qualities.
Experiences have some of the primary qualities of the things.
For example, there's a phone to the left of my keyboard, both
in experience and in the world. Relative sizes are also
represented fairly well.
But in other cases, experiences must differ in primary qulities.
For example, if an experience is identical to something in a brain
that has a size, then the experience in a sense has that size;
but that size isn't evident in the experience.
Secondary qualities are not properties of the things, and they
may not even represent any particular property. For example,
surface reflectance was treated as if it were colour in a message
a short while back, but that can't be right. (If colour is
going to be any external world property, it will be that
peculiar, mysterious thing, a disjunctive property. :))
-- Jeff
Alex Green
..
If this scenario is anything like accurate, I find it difficult to conceive
any part of this organisation, even at the *executive* level in the frontal
cortex, say, constructing an analogue picture of the type proposed by Lehar,
because it would entail gathering up all the myriad details and putting them
together, then having some mental organ examine them
..
Alex Green
Good point. Steve Lehar and I have different opinions on this and, as you say,
the cortex is a poor candidate as a host for the substrate of conscious
experience.
This is why the best candidates for the substrate of conscious experience
are probably in the thalamus. The cortex is undoubtedly a set of specialised
processors that send 10 times as much output to the thalamus as they
receive in input. In systems terms the processing path from late sensory pathways
to consciousness is most likely:
Thalamic relays -> cortex -> Thalamic relays/ILN/Thalamic Reticular Nucleus etc.
(with copious feedback)
The view of cortex as a terminus for sensory processing and consciousness is
not consistent with the connection patterns or experiment. (See the thread on
General anesthesia and consciousness). The view of the cortex as the principle
processor for motor control is, on the other hand, quite correct.
Best Wishes
Alex Green
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger - want a free & easy way to contact your friends online?
Glen M. Sizemore
> I think this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of
> measurement. Measurement along some dimension involves comparison against
> some standarized unit. It makes no sense to measure the dimensions of
> subjective experience using physical units. But one could certainly
> define subjective units of measurement, by using the width of the visual
> field as a standard unit. Although one would have to make certain
> assumptions about the constancy of the metric.
Gregg: Cathy's position is more solid than she states. One needn't even assume a
metric to get spatiality. Spatial extent can be built up from relations of
topological connectedness, and the phenomenological visual field certainly
has topological connectedness. Again, exchanges like this seem to confirm
for me that those seeking to deny these properties of experience and
attribute directness to perception are really denying that we have any
relation of acquaintance with our phenomenal contents. That's just totally
unwarranted, I think.
Glen: I have expressed a “direct perception” position about which what you say here is not true. That position is that perception is behavior (or call it an activity if one is afraid of sounding like a behaviorist), and is, in part, a function of the environment (it is also a function of one’s past history of larger interactions with the world). When we are “taught to be aware of” our own perceptual behavior, we are trained to call some aspects of that behavior “seeing depth.” That is it. That is the answer to the red-herring of qualia. We say we are “seeing depth” when we observe ourselves behaving in certain ways. I know you don’t buy this, but it shows how at least one “direct perceptionist” (me) doesn’t deny “phenomenal contents.”
Gregg: We know from experimental evidence that phenomenology, and thus relations of
acquaintance with things like phenomenal contents of a visual field, can be
generated by direct stimulation of the brain that bypasses perception
altogether. We also know that it doesn't happen if such stimulation is
blocked (through brain damage or simply closing one's eyes), even in the
presence of a normal stimulus. We thus know from experimental evidence that
internal activity is both necessary and sufficient to produce experiential
acquaintance with phenomenal contents.
Glen: Who has argued otherwise? As for me, I have stated repeatedly (no, I don’t expect that you have necessarily followed my exploits here) that perception is behavior, as is observing one’s own perceptual behavior, and behavioral function is mediated by physiology. Of course we can induce, or screw up, perceptual behavior by acting directly upon physiology. This does not show that representationalism is correct – it shows merely that behavioral function is mediated by physiology.
Gregg: This experiential acquaintance is the
epistemic relation out of which subjective awareness seems to be
constituted.
Glen: The term “experiential acquaintance” seems to be, basically, a synonym for “subjective awareness.” Reason makes a similar mistake.
Gregg: Regardless of its current popularity,[…]
Glen: Current popularity? Mainstream experimental psychology IS cognitive psychology, and representations are the core of cognitive psychology. This field has, unfortunately, been enormously influential. I would say that 99.99 percent of psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, “behavioral neurobiologists,” and AI people are representationalists.
Gregg: […]I don't see what explanatory power the
direct perception thesis adds to the causal explanation of how our
acquaintance with phenomenal contents comes about, or how awareness is built
from that, so I'm not sure the point of the thesis. It seems mostly like a
reaction to the fact that phenomenology is largely if not fully
representational, but it seems to me that also can be explained fully
without an appeal to a direct perception thesis. Perhaps Andy Brook or
someone else can help here. What explanatory power do we get from the direct
perception thesis?
Glen: At least “my” version argues that the compendium of facts discovered using easily measured behavior apply also to perceptual behavior and observation of our own behavior (perceptual and otherwise). It suggests that we do not “distinguish” events that have not played the right kind of role in our histories. Non-human animals are not aware of most of their own behavior because such events do not play the right kind of role (they are not the “right” parts of contingencies). It suggests that animals may be “made aware” of their own subtle behavior, and can, thus, be trained to report on their “subjective world.” [This is, technically, sort of misleading. The “training of the report” is what “produces awareness.”] This has, in fact, been shown to be correct. So useful is it, for example, to “train animals to be aware of and report drug-induced ‘states’” that the procedure has become a standard part of pharmacology (its called “drug discrimination”). It suggests that, to a g!
reat extent, we “learn to see” (as well as learn to “see that we are seeing”), and the experiments (there are not many, and they are difficult to do) that test this have, I think generally borne this out, though some discriminations may emerge without direct discrimination training. [These are the hardest experiments to do because one has to restrict the sensory experiences of developing animals. Some of the findings – most notably with respect to color discrimination - are equivocal; Peterson showed that ducklings reared in monochromatic environments showed no discrimination of wavelength – others have failed to reproduce these findings.] So, what explanatory power do we get? We can explain the apparent plasticity of perceptual behavior, as well as its disruption by certain sorts of learning histories, investigate the ontogeny of “optical illusions,” and produce and study “subjective awareness” - and the conceptual basis is not riddled with the sort of conceptual muddle th!
at constitutes mainstream psychology and the fields that it has corrup
ted (the homunculus and infinite regress charges have not been refuted, representationalists have simply denied the implications of their concepts).
>
> From: Gregg Rosenberg <ghro...@HOTMAIL.COM>
> Date: 2005/05/17 Tue PM 05:22:59 EDT
> To: PSYC...@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
> Subject: Re: Analogical or Analytical?
Michael Schmitz
>
> Acquaintance is the kind of knowledge expressed by "knowing what..."
> clauses,
> such as "knowing what it is like to see red.", "knowing what a wet
diaper
> feels like.",
> "knowing what it is like to fear death." and so forth. It is distinct
from
> "knowing how" or "knowing that" and
I take it that knowing what it's like to X means something like "been
there, done that, haven't just heard about it." So when I say that I
know what it's like to see something red, this implies that I have
indeed sometimes seen red things, and perhaps also that I am able to
remember these experiences and to imagine red things. But now, in order
to know such a thing, don't I have to have a concept of seeing? - and
that is something that certainly dogs do not have at all and children
only acquire around the age of 2 or 3. Or what is required of somebody
who knows such a thing? If you want to say one knows what it is like to
have a visual experience or is acquainted with it just in virtue of
having it, I have to say I find it hard to understand what you mean.
> does not imply that there are truth conditions on the relata. A
conditoin of
> knowing what is not assessable for accuracy,
> to use Charles Siewart's phrasing. It simply is, and does not require
having
> an appropriate notion. So, for instance, a child
> may know perfectly well what it is like to see red without knowing,
> notionally, *that* seeing red is like so-and-so.
I think you are here making play with the fact that the notion of
acquaintance, of knowing someone or something, describes a relation to
a single object, not to a state of affairs. I know Paris, and this
relation between me and Paris cannot be true or false, though the
statement that I know her may be. So far, so good, but it certainly
does not follow that I don't have to have a notion of her in order to
be able to know her, much less that I don't even have to be able to
represent her or other entities that I know (as you suggest in your
recent reply to Andrew). Nor would it seem right to say that my
representations of her cannot be accessed for accuracy. For while the
notion of being acquainted with something or knowing it just relates an
epistemic subject and a single object, in fact one cannot represent
anything except in a larger context where one also represents that
entity as, for example, standing in a certain relation to the subject
that perceives it, as having a certain shape and color, or other
properties. It seems to me that you are being misled here, like many
have been already, by the surface grammar of sentences about
knowing/being acquainted with someone.
To me the idea of being acquainted with something, but not representing
it, and not being assesable for accuracy with regard to these
representations makes no sense at all. I think you have a lot of
explaining to do there.
>
> But indirect perception does not help with any skeptical issue. On
both
> views, perception has intentional contents, and on both views any
given
> perception
> can be false. As far as I can tell, on both views it is logically
possible
> that
> all perceptions are false and, if that is not the case, the reasons
for
> denying it
> are available on both views. So I don't think direct perception views
buy us
> anything at all on perennial epistemic issues.
On the indirect view, I immediately perceive (or apprehend, or some
such) mental entities of some kind and have to infer the existence of
the 'external world'. This inference, as the epistemological
discussions have brought out, is certainly not compelling. On the
direct view, I simply perceive objects and states of affairs in the
external world. No need for any inference, and that is a huge
difference. (Of course, as I spelled out in earlier contributions,
direct realism does not only say that intentional contents are directed
at the external world, but also that at least some of these contents are
indeed satisfied.) I'm not saying that this immediately ends all
discussion of skepticism, but it does change the perspective on the
issues. We don't need to be concerned to justify a dubious inference.
We can now be content with pointing out that there is no reason for the
skeptic's global doubt, that it does not really make any sense and
violates all conditions for meaningful doubt. As Wittgenstein pointed
out, one needs reasons for doubting the deliverances of one's sense,
not for trusting them. (See also my message from April on "The
Epistemology of Direct Realism" and the corresponding thread.)
>
> Indirect perception provides the simplest explanation of why internal
> operations are both necessary and sufficient
> for producing acquaintance with phenomenal contents: because those
contents
> are carriers of intentional content.
I am not sure what "internal operations" you are talking about, and what
you mean by saying that they are sufficient for acquaintance with
phenomenal contents; but if you mean that one can be acquainted with
phenomenal contents prior to and independently of any acquaintance with
the external world, I don't think there is any such fact to be
explained. This is not an independent fact indirect realism can explain
better than DR, but just a restatement of the 'theory'. I think one can
only know the mind when one also knows the world.
>
> Indirect perception can also explain how phenomenal contents become
> intentional in the first place,
> which I'm not sure can be done if one assumes direct perception.
I don't know what explanation you have in mind, nor what fact you want
to explain, what you mean by phenomenal contents "becoming
intentional".
>
> Bringing in intentional contents from the start requires adding
assumptions
> to the theory without adding to its explanatory power.
> Worse, these assumptions are assumptions about *intentionality*, an
very
> hoary, vague, ambiguous, and normative subject
> with several prima facie mismatches with the problems of phenomenal
> contents. For example, there's a pretty good case that
> intentional contents are indeterminate, ambiguous and ascriptive
properties
> while phenomenal properties are natural properties
> and determinate.
I don't think it makes sense to say that intentional contents are
ambiguous. The concept of ambiguity only applies where several
intentional contents are associated with the same sign. The sign can
then be said to be ambiguous, but never the intentional contents
themselves. Also I don't agree with the way you oppose intentional and
phenomenal contents. For me, at least as far as perception is
concerned, its intentionality = its phenomenality.
Why muddy the waters by bringing in intentionality at the
> ground floor when it buys us no benefits?
I don't think there is any choice. For me this is like asking "Why bring
in rocks?" Well, I have seen them, I have sat on them. And in saying
that, I'm also already ascribing intentionality to my perceptual
states.
>
> > Strange as it may seem, but I think there is no
> > credible scenario in which scientific discoveries overthrow our
common
> > sense conviction we are in direct intentional contact with the
external
> > world (direct as opposed to being in immediate touch with some sort
of
> > mental objects). Try proving me wrong!
>
> This is clearly a bad argument form. Consider: I see no credible
scenario on
> which scientific theories overthrow our common sense conviction
> that there is a God.
This wasn't meant to be an argument. It was just a challenge - which I
note wasn't taken up by anybody so far. And of course I'm not saying
that common sense convictions can never be overthrown by science.
Thanks for your comments. Thanks also to Andrew for cheering me on to
write another post. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep this up, though,
so apologies in advance for any comments that might go unanswered. It's
amazing that this discussion is still going, apparently unabated.
Best,
Michael
Andrew Brook
> Alex
> Introspection, or rather, conscious experience, contains things separated
> by angular separations.
My last shot on this issue: what reason is there to think that conscious
experience contains anything more than representations of these things, that
there actually are, e.g., angular separations in the content of those experiences?
Andre
Andrew Brook
my valiant efforts and the efforts of a few others notwithstanding. But one
point needs a comment, your neat attempt to turn both positions on their head
notwithstanding.
In my view, both introspection and 'extro'spection (vision) are direct and both
are prone to error. Not always, of course, but not never, either. And the key
point is: something appearing to be so does not by itself make it so in either
case -- even though in both cases, what appears is the thing itself, not some
intermediary.
Cathy Reason
Unfortunately, there's an exploitable ambiguity in "appears" and
in "how things seem", and this has been used by Dennett and others.
"How something appears" could be a way to refer to the way it
appears in conscious experience (which is necessarily identical
to itself); but it could also be a belief about how things are
either in experience or in the world, and of course such a belief
can be wrong.
Cathy:
Of course it's possible to have mistaken beliefs about our subjective
states. But if we have mistaken beliefs about our subjective experience of
something, then we must have exactly the same mistaken beliefs about how
that thing appears to us. And indeed I think this is sometimes the case --
an example is Steve Lehar's insistence that our subjective world is three
dimensional. It isn't -- it's two-dimensional, because only one point of
the supposed third dimension (depth) actually exists within conscious
experience, and you can't define a spatial dimension with a single point.
But if we are wrong in our belief that our subjective experience has spatial
extension, then we are also wrong in our belief that things appear to us as
having spatial extension. And conversely, if we are right that things
appear to us as having spatial dimension, then we are right to believe that
our subjective experience has spatial dimension.
I think one of the reasons difficulties arise over this sort of thing, is
that Andrew and others are consistently treating statements about subjective
experiences as though they were statements about objective perception. But
statements about subjective experience often have no meaning as statements
about objective perception -- such as Andrew's phrase "how things appear to
us". This phrase is completely meaningless in an objective context. If you
don't believe this, then just try coming up with an objective definition of
"how things appear to us" that doesn't depend on subjectivity as an
undefined postulate.
JD:
An example much used by Dennett is that some people believe their
visual experience is more sparply defined and clear throughout,
while in fact is so only near the centre.
Cathy:
I think there are problems with this example. We don't usually expect our
visual experience to be sharply defined beyond the limits of its spatial
resolution. And our visual experience is sharply defined up to the limits
of its spatial resolution, even at the periphery. We don't regard our
visual experience at the center of our visual field as ill-defined, although
in a sense it is, because we can't resolve features which are only
millionths of an arc-second across.
It's only when we explicitly compare the resolution at the periphery with
the resolution near the center, that we find they are different. And it
isn't part of normal perception to do this. During normal perception, if we
want to attend to something in the periphery of our vision, we either bring
it to the center of the visual field or we are liable to confabulate our
visual experience of the periphery with mental images of what we think is
there.
But more importantly, people don't have false beliefs about the properties
of their visual experience because of introspection. They have these false
beliefs because they don't intropsect. But it's quite possible to
determine, by means of introspection, that our visual experience is less
well-defined at the periphery than at the center. Indeed there's no other
way we could determine it.
JD:
So when Cathy Reason writes of
subjective experience itself, which does have spatially extended
structure
Andrew can regard that as a belief about experience which
may be incorrect.
Cathy:
I think Andrew is assuming that introspection works like objective
perception, and that when we introspect on to a subjective state, we are
representing that subjective state with another subjective state. But I
think that cannot be right. If it were, then not only could we have
mistaken beliefs about our subjective states, we could have mistaken beliefs
about whether we have subjective states in the first place. (This is the
basis of the paradox in the "Non-Physical Ontology" thread.) I don't think
introspection is a process which creates representations of our subjective
states. I think it's much more like a process of deconstructing subjective
states which already exist.
Lastly, here's an example of the way in which I think Andrew keeps relying
on subjective postulates even while he is trying to describe introspection
as an objective process. In an recent reply to me he wrote:
"Representations can misrepresent themselves just as much as they can
misrepresent the world"
Now I think this is quite wrong. Representations cannot misrepresent
themselves, because representations cannot represent themselves, correctly
or otherwise. A representation of a state must be something functionally
separate from the state it represents. This is true even if the same
physical substrate is used for both states -- there must still be some sort
of perceptual process which correlates that physical state with itself. But
if a representation is not functionally separate from what it represents,
then it isn't a representation.
So I think to talk about representations misrepresenting themselves is quite
meaningless. But it's an example of the conceptual muddle one gets into in
one tries to treat subjective experiences as though they were objective
processes.
Cathy
[Catherine Reason]
Dennis Lomas
Presumably this is what led David to ask whether the dispute is not merely
verbal. A healthy suspicion, but I would rather conclude it's philosophical,
with philosophy doing no more, however, than defending the plainest common sense
against some confused attempts at overthrowing it. Strange as it may seem, but
I think there is no credible scenario in which scientific discoveries
overthrow our common sense conviction we are in direct intentional contact with the
external world (direct as opposed to being in immediate touch with some sort of
mental objects). Try proving me wrong!
Dennis Lomas>
Why would philosophy want to defend the plainest common sense? And why would
philosophy want to put itself in a position that no scientific discoveries
could overthrow its view? Some philosophers might prefer this stance (common
sense philosophy), but surely not all. Lehar's internal 3D representation (and his
theory about it) may seem outlandish, but surely no more outlandish that many
entities proposed in modern science, with which many philosophers of science
seriously concern themselves.
<Dennis
with regards
Dennis Lomas
Pam & Peter Shelton
> Good point.[Thanks!] ..snip... as you say,
> the cortex is a poor candidate as a host for the substrate of conscious
> experience.
Actually I wasn't trying to say that. Clearly the thalamus is very important
as a switching and control module, but this seems to me to be more
consistent with a distributed view of C than a localised one. Alex refers to
the thread on General Anesthesia and Consciousness, wherein I note that the
view of the thalamus as the location of C is contested. E.g. Arnold Trehub
29 Mar.:
We fall into a conceptual tar pit when we try to localise activity in any
particular part of the brain as a simple *correlate* of consciousness (NCC).
The problem is that there are really too many such correlates of
consciousness. For example, I think we all would probably agree that
activity
in the following brain systems is required for a person to be conscious:
[ARAS] ----> [Thalamus] <----> [Cortex (A <---> B <---> C )]
where A, B, C represent discrete cortical subsystems, and the arrows
represent the direction of neuronal excitation.
But I don't want to fall into the tar pit of that particular discussion. I'd
like to make a couple of comments in support of the direct representation
side: First, it might be useful to make a Ned Block-type of distinction
between phenomenal and access consciousness. The former is the better
candidate for immediacy, directness, though the process isn't simple. If I
reach for a cup of coffee I'm certain that this action can be completed
quickly and easily, though it involves visual and fine motor control
elements, plus a pleasurable feeling of anticipation.
Access C is a better candidate for the indirect, analogical account.
Thinking about things, planning and organising, would seem to require mental
models or analogues to be perused. But perhaps it could be argued that
phenomenal consciousness has direct access inward to the contents of access
C.
2nd. point: Abilities vary quite considerably between people. Could it be
that people can develop different ways of conceptualising, such that some
approach the world directly, others indirectly? The brain would seem to be
plastic enough. Perhaps that would account for the intractability of the
present discussion and many others.
3rd. point: I don't recall any mention of feelings, emotions in this thread.
They are a direct response to external stimuli, often involuntary. I can't
see that feelings relate to internal states rather than directly to events
in the world.
Cheers,
Peter Shelton
Andrew Brook
Cathy Reason wrote:
1. if we are right that things
> appear to us as having spatial dimension, then we are right to believe that
> our subjective experience has spatial dimension.
2. I think one of the reasons difficulties arise over this sort of thing, is
> that Andrew and others are consistently treating statements about subjective
> experiences as though they were statements about objective perception.
Surely (1) is a perfect example of what Cathy accuses me of doing in
(2). For me, how something appears to me tells me how something appears
and nothing more. For Cathy, how something appears to me tells me about
how something, namely, subjective experience, *is*, namely, that it has
spatial dimension. I'm the one not mixing appearance and 'objective
perception'. However, she does exactly that.
Alex Green
My last shot on this issue: what reason is there to think that conscious
experience contains anything more than representations of these things, that
there actually are, e.g., angular separations in the content of those experiences?
Alex
Certain, particular, spatial relationships can be shown to exist in conscious
experience. Lets take the problem of whether two things occur as two things
ie: whether "--" or ".." etc occur as two things or as representations of two things.
If we accept the following axioms:
1. The presence of more than one of the same thing at an instant defines the
existence of a space.
2. There is no disembodied information, all information requires a substrate.
3. A representation of a thing is the encoding of a state of a thing on a state of
a substrate.
Then a general representation of six things in a line could occur as a line flag
and three bits ie: 4 things can encode 6 things. (binary 110=6)
But notice that at an instant this representation can only exist as things laid
out in space. There can be no disembodied information and certain aspects of
things, like the spatial extent of physical things will result in the representation,
of necessity, sharing some of these properties. But there are other physicalist
axioms that show that spatial relations are even more exact than this:
4. Every mental event is a physical event (physicalism).
5. Conscious experience is itself. This simple statement of identity is ignored
more often than not as people attempt to explain consciousness using theories
of information flow (where conscious experience can never be itself). There is
actually no conscious experience 'of' conscious experience. There are reports
of conscious experience, recollections of conscious experience but at any moment
conscious experience is itself. (note: continuity means instants exist).
Lets return to a version of your question that takes into account the realities
discussed above. Can a representation of two dots encoded on a carrier in
a single channel be identical to two dots at an instant in conscious experience?
By axiom (5) conscious experience is itself so the encoding that is the dots is
a state of the substrate that is conscious experience. By axiom (1) two dots at an
instant = space. Therefore the dots must be two states at different places
on the substrate. Not a succession of two things or one thing and an absence of
a thing in a channel.
It might be argued that " ." could be one dot ". " two dots and
". ." three dots but then conscious experience would not be itself. A process
would need to intervene to indicate that ". ." = ". . ." (ie: binary 11=3).
Therefore two dots separated by space in conscious experience are two
physical things separated by space in the substrate that is conscious experience.
This derivation shows that there is another axiom:
6. Two things in conscious experience at an instant are at least two physical
things in the physical substrate that is this experience.
(6) should be an intuitive truth but it is hard to prove to a third party because
communication between people is a flow of information and hence subject to
misrepresenting the source. As I look at ".." there are dots in my experience.
Sure, the counting can misrepresent, the reporting can misrepresent but I am
telling you that when I look at ".." there are dots, test it for yourself.
The dots are continuously present which means they are there at any
instant.
If it can be accepted that conscious spatial experience is spatial then we
can move on to things like the actual geometric form of the substrate
and the existence of an APPARENT observation point and hence the
existence of angular separation.
Whilst the protagonists of differing theories use disembodied information
without any reference to the substrate of this information in the world
the debate cannot progress.
Best Wishes
Alex Green
Andre
--
---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos
Alex Green
Therefore it is useful to study it as a conceptual space as
proposed by P. Gärdenfors (The Geometry of Thought, MIT Press, 2000).
Alex
The only problem with this approach as an analogy for what has been
discussed here is that it is using the most general, mathematical form of the
concept 'space'. What we have been discussing here is not abstract or
state space etc. It is a physical space characterised by relationships between
its basis vectors that correspond to ordinary space-time. This seems to be
quite different from Gärdenfors approach although it could be claimed that
conscious experience is just another space like Avogadros number is just
another number.
Best Wishes
Alex Green
Discourse spaces
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~r012/papers/Geometry,%20viewpoint,%20discourse.pdf
Conceptual spaces
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:uoYTWQoRVd4J:www.ii.fmph.uniba.sk/~benus/courses/13dec_CogNeuro.doc+G%C3%A4rdenfors+geometry&hl=en&start=45&ie=UTF-8
Alfredo Pereira Jr <a...@IBB.UNESP.BR> wrote:
Michael Schmitz wrote:
> It seems to me Alex makes a very good point here. If two things exist at
> the same time, there must be a space in which they both exist, and
> certainly conscious experience contains several things at any given
> time. It can be objected that the space in question could be some sort
> of abstract space other than physical space (like 'logical space' or
> some such), but this objection is not very credible.
For scientific or analytical philosophical methodology it is necessary to
define the properties of this space before looking for brain correlates
(i.e., to define the explanans before looking for the explanandum).
Therefore it is useful to study it as a conceptual space as
proposed by P. Gärdenfors (The Geometry of Thought, MIT Press, 2000).
For Physicalists (like myself) the conceptual space of human
consciousness is embedded in physical space.
However it is very hard to study this issue only by comparing the
conscious experiences of an individual with his/her brain activity.
And of course it is impossible to solve it by introspection alone.
The solution to this methodological problem should involve at least
five steps (1):
a) intersubjective validation of individual reports of conscious
experiences;
b) construction of an universal conceptual space of human consciousness;
c) analysis of the structure of this space; e.g., Gärdenfors detected an
important diference between this space and connectionist architectures:
in the human conceptual space the quality dimensions are correlated,
while in neural networks the operations of the nodes/neurons are
statistically
independent;
d) definition of the computational mechanisms necessary to implement
this structure;
e) identification of brain mechanisms with the computational power to
implement it.
Best Regards,
Alfredo Pereira Jr.
(1) Pereira Jr., A. (2005) Conceptual Spaces and Consciousness
Research. Communication to be presented at Towards a Science of
Consciousness 2005, Copenhagen.
Andrew Brook
Alex Green wrote:
> Andrew
> Sure, everything is itself -- but what implications do you draw from
> this? E.g., why does it rule out a rep representing itself, e.g., that a
> pain is also the representation of that pain? How could an information
> flow account possibly entail that conscious experience could never be
> itself, since nothing could entail the latter? I don't follow.
>
> Alex
> Conscious experience is continuous, at any instant it exists. You are
> proposing that at any instant it could be a representation of itself and I
> am saying that nothing but conscious experience is conscious
> experience at any instant. This seems to be a simple point of logic
> Suppose we have an object 'A' present at an instant (t) at a place (x,y,z)
> what you propose is that if it is possible to substitute an object 'B' at
> some later moment (T) then 'B' is truly what was present at (t,x,y,z).
> I cannot see how this could be true, B is present at (T,x,y,z).
Me:
No, if representations can both be (a truism) and represent (far from a
truism) themselves, this would not hold. Bar codes can both be and
represent themselves, so why not reps in us, which have vastly richer
representational capacities?
> An information flow is a succession of states. It is not a state
> at an instant. The idea that conscious experience can only be a flow,
> not an instantaneous state is inconsistent with the evidently
> spatial nature of conscious experience where many things are
> present at any instant.
Me:
Not so. Reps are unified both at and across time -- flow is no
impediment to either.
The reason that 'information flows'
> appear important is that within some paradigms it seems that
> a state can only be known by a transfer of states from one place to
> another. Clearly this is not the case with conscious experience
> where the state is simply known. Our challenge is to work out
> how the state could be 'simply known' without any classical flow.
Me:
If reps are known by representing themselves, this point would not apply.
> On the subject of the form of the Milky Way in conscious experience,
> I doubt it can ever correspond to the form of the Milky Way in the
> physical universe. My conscious experience has a problem containing
> more than 4 or five words from this physical page and has the
> surrounding things as general, rather blurred forms. Only a few degrees
> of angular separation have high precision.
Me:
This strikes me as more sensible, at least, than the view espoused by
Steve and Cathy. I still have doubts about it but the doubts are empirical.
Andrew