Relationship between our perception of things and reality (and what is reality anyway?)
Hi everyone. I'm new here and don't really know whether this is the right section to post this. I apologize if I messed it up.
I haven't really ever studied philosophy. I'm only 20 and studying computer science so I haven't had a chance yet, but I like to describe myself as a really heavy thinker. Here are some thoughts I have had for a while and I would love to even get close to finding an answer or to have them clearer in my mind.
Relationship between what is perceived and what exists
I can't help but have that thought in the back of my mind, about how what can't be perceived cannot exist. By perceiving, here, I am referring to both the perception that takes place with our senses, and also whatever piece of machinery allows a phenomenon to be (maybe electronically) measured (and hence, indirectly be known of).
If something can't be perceived and there are no ways to measure it with tools, can it exist? Sure, there likely is a plethora of phenomena that aren't currently measurable and cannot be studied or stated, but they'll eventually be. Think about quantum computers. There are some algorithms that have been shown by means of logical proofs to work, but can't currently be made work yet.
However, can something really exist outside of any organism's field of perception?
Senses, and why I think this is a hard question
If we now restrict the meaning of "perceiving" to our senses (which, by the way, are by now known to be more than the usually stated five), it becomes apparent that there are lots of things that exist and cannot be perceived.
Take electromagnetic fields. There are some animals (some species of birds) that have a sense that allows them to *feel* electromagnetic fields.
In the past, I read about an experiment in which scientists gave a subject a belt to wear that would vibrate according to electromagnetic field presence. Eventually, that man seemed to have developed a way to sense those fields even without the belt.
If we somehow expanded our set of senses to sense everything, would the number of things that we could perceive still be finite? Would that set coincide with the set of everything that exists?
Limits of the senses we do have
The above question is something that I haven't been able to try and find an answer to. Can we even imagine a sense we don't have? How would you describe to someone who's been blind since birth what seeing "feels" like? What about a deaf person? And why is it easier to imagine being deaf than blind?
I can imagine what absence of sound feels like. But not seeing anything? That must not be equal to darkness. I once read that blindness looks like what you see past the corners of your vision.
What do you see behind your head? Nothingness. It's not darkness.
Also, the senses we do possess come with restrictions. We can't see everything. There is a range of visible light wavelengths and similar restrictions are in place for our other senses (even touch has a "minimal resolution" and we can't really tell smaller things than that apart with touch).
Limitation or gift?
Is the above just a limitation? Or did mother nature make us that way because, only perceiving a relatively small set of things, we can zoom in on the important stuff for our survival? If we could see all the wavelengths of light, and hear all frequencies, wouldn't everything just end up becoming noisy and chaotic? Would we not be able to tell the stuff that counts apart?
Given a brain with infinite computational power, would such a being "benefit" from being able to perceive everything?
Reality ? perception?
It feels like reality is just all that we can perceive. It sometimes feels to me like it's not independent of our perception. Would anything even exist if there were no observers out there to *feel* it in some way? What does the universe really "look" like free of limitations in perception by imperfect beings like us?
Synesthesia and how our brains break things up that I believe to be a continuum
Among other things, I am debating whether what we perceive on a sensory level is actually a reliable representation of reality or if it’s just completely made up by our minds.
It’s mind blowing. We think in terms of colors, sounds, taste, and the like, but those are just ways our brains “break up” the everything, the continuum of reality, into smaller pieces that can separately be interpreted and represented by our senses.
Yesterday I thought of a particular condition I had known to exist but never bothered to think about in these terms: synesthesia. People with this condition will “mix up” their sensory stimuli, being able to “taste colors”, “smell numbers,” and in general associate concepts that we are used to perceiving via one sense to other senses. That is literally the definition of mind blowing. It means that when senses misfunction, everything gets melted together into a something that’s more, that saturates our perception and can’t just be described with familiar adjectives that refer to a property that can be told apart with one sense.
If we talk about a sense like sight, it’s harder to see where I’m trying to go. We see an object because it’s there. But take another sense, like nociception (i.e. the perception of pain). Is “pain” there when we feel it? I know what pain serves us to. It’s useful to be alert of something that’s damaging out organism. But the experience of pain… Isn’t it completely made up by our mind? Pain is not an object. There is no such thing as pain in the universe. Yet it’s very real for us. What if it was the same for all other senses? What if reality was something more, infinitely more complex than we make it out to be, but our brains just had to find a way to let us know, “hey there’s an obstacle your way, steer clear,” and that way was to give us a dimension where we interpret light waves as “seeing.”
Experience, consciousness, and reality
Also, what does it mean to experience? What’s consciousness? If you take a machine, let’s say a combinatorial system, it’ll have an input device, a CPU, and an output device.
It gets the input, processes with the arithmetic and logical unit of the CPU based on how it’s been programmed, and spits out the output.
Now take a living being with an evolved nervous system. Evolved enough to have proprioception and be aware of being alive. The input is what we get from our sensory organs, and the output can be said to be our actions.
But what is perception? Is it really just a very, very abstract and complex way of processing the data? Because somehow I think that emotions, feelings, and thoughts are probably just a way for our brain to condition itself to take the more advantageous route, but can this be proven beyond doubt to be the case?
Most comments here seem to be more focused on a “higher level” connotation of the word perception. That is, how one interprets reality philosophically and how one forms an “opinion” with which describes the phenomena around them.
My original question was actually more on a “lower level,” as in less abstract. I am debating whether what we perceive on a sensory level is actually a reliable representation of reality or if it’s just completely made up by our minds.
And if it's not, what does reality actually look like? Does it even look like anything?
Thank you to whoever got through this wall of text. I always get enthusiastic when discussing this sort of things.
I haven't really ever studied philosophy. I'm only 20 and studying computer science so I haven't had a chance yet, but I like to describe myself as a really heavy thinker. Here are some thoughts I have had for a while and I would love to even get close to finding an answer or to have them clearer in my mind.
Relationship between what is perceived and what exists
I can't help but have that thought in the back of my mind, about how what can't be perceived cannot exist. By perceiving, here, I am referring to both the perception that takes place with our senses, and also whatever piece of machinery allows a phenomenon to be (maybe electronically) measured (and hence, indirectly be known of).
If something can't be perceived and there are no ways to measure it with tools, can it exist? Sure, there likely is a plethora of phenomena that aren't currently measurable and cannot be studied or stated, but they'll eventually be. Think about quantum computers. There are some algorithms that have been shown by means of logical proofs to work, but can't currently be made work yet.
However, can something really exist outside of any organism's field of perception?
Senses, and why I think this is a hard question
If we now restrict the meaning of "perceiving" to our senses (which, by the way, are by now known to be more than the usually stated five), it becomes apparent that there are lots of things that exist and cannot be perceived.
Take electromagnetic fields. There are some animals (some species of birds) that have a sense that allows them to *feel* electromagnetic fields.
In the past, I read about an experiment in which scientists gave a subject a belt to wear that would vibrate according to electromagnetic field presence. Eventually, that man seemed to have developed a way to sense those fields even without the belt.
If we somehow expanded our set of senses to sense everything, would the number of things that we could perceive still be finite? Would that set coincide with the set of everything that exists?
Limits of the senses we do have
The above question is something that I haven't been able to try and find an answer to. Can we even imagine a sense we don't have? How would you describe to someone who's been blind since birth what seeing "feels" like? What about a deaf person? And why is it easier to imagine being deaf than blind?
I can imagine what absence of sound feels like. But not seeing anything? That must not be equal to darkness. I once read that blindness looks like what you see past the corners of your vision.
What do you see behind your head? Nothingness. It's not darkness.
Also, the senses we do possess come with restrictions. We can't see everything. There is a range of visible light wavelengths and similar restrictions are in place for our other senses (even touch has a "minimal resolution" and we can't really tell smaller things than that apart with touch).
Limitation or gift?
Is the above just a limitation? Or did mother nature make us that way because, only perceiving a relatively small set of things, we can zoom in on the important stuff for our survival? If we could see all the wavelengths of light, and hear all frequencies, wouldn't everything just end up becoming noisy and chaotic? Would we not be able to tell the stuff that counts apart?
Given a brain with infinite computational power, would such a being "benefit" from being able to perceive everything?
Reality ? perception?
It feels like reality is just all that we can perceive. It sometimes feels to me like it's not independent of our perception. Would anything even exist if there were no observers out there to *feel* it in some way? What does the universe really "look" like free of limitations in perception by imperfect beings like us?
Synesthesia and how our brains break things up that I believe to be a continuum
Among other things, I am debating whether what we perceive on a sensory level is actually a reliable representation of reality or if it’s just completely made up by our minds.
It’s mind blowing. We think in terms of colors, sounds, taste, and the like, but those are just ways our brains “break up” the everything, the continuum of reality, into smaller pieces that can separately be interpreted and represented by our senses.
Yesterday I thought of a particular condition I had known to exist but never bothered to think about in these terms: synesthesia. People with this condition will “mix up” their sensory stimuli, being able to “taste colors”, “smell numbers,” and in general associate concepts that we are used to perceiving via one sense to other senses. That is literally the definition of mind blowing. It means that when senses misfunction, everything gets melted together into a something that’s more, that saturates our perception and can’t just be described with familiar adjectives that refer to a property that can be told apart with one sense.
If we talk about a sense like sight, it’s harder to see where I’m trying to go. We see an object because it’s there. But take another sense, like nociception (i.e. the perception of pain). Is “pain” there when we feel it? I know what pain serves us to. It’s useful to be alert of something that’s damaging out organism. But the experience of pain… Isn’t it completely made up by our mind? Pain is not an object. There is no such thing as pain in the universe. Yet it’s very real for us. What if it was the same for all other senses? What if reality was something more, infinitely more complex than we make it out to be, but our brains just had to find a way to let us know, “hey there’s an obstacle your way, steer clear,” and that way was to give us a dimension where we interpret light waves as “seeing.”
Experience, consciousness, and reality
Also, what does it mean to experience? What’s consciousness? If you take a machine, let’s say a combinatorial system, it’ll have an input device, a CPU, and an output device.
It gets the input, processes with the arithmetic and logical unit of the CPU based on how it’s been programmed, and spits out the output.
Now take a living being with an evolved nervous system. Evolved enough to have proprioception and be aware of being alive. The input is what we get from our sensory organs, and the output can be said to be our actions.
But what is perception? Is it really just a very, very abstract and complex way of processing the data? Because somehow I think that emotions, feelings, and thoughts are probably just a way for our brain to condition itself to take the more advantageous route, but can this be proven beyond doubt to be the case?
Most comments here seem to be more focused on a “higher level” connotation of the word perception. That is, how one interprets reality philosophically and how one forms an “opinion” with which describes the phenomena around them.
My original question was actually more on a “lower level,” as in less abstract. I am debating whether what we perceive on a sensory level is actually a reliable representation of reality or if it’s just completely made up by our minds.
And if it's not, what does reality actually look like? Does it even look like anything?
Thank you to whoever got through this wall of text. I always get enthusiastic when discussing this sort of things.
Comments (64)
Was this a test of perception? :cool:
Quoting Samuele
Quoting Samuele
Quoting Samuele
What do you think of the topic I raised in my post by the way?
Well, in one sense, reality isn't obligated to make itself known to us. In another sense, the (possible) existence of unobservable things is empty. If they have no properties, what does it mean to say they exist?
Quoting Samuele
Aren't we already doing that, by using technology?
Anyways, the number of things we can perceive has to be finite, since perceiving an infinite number of things would take infinitely long.
Quoting Samuele
Benefits are relative. It would depend on the situation.
Quoting Samuele
You can read entire libraries on that topic. The opinions range from radical constructivism to naive realism and probably a bunch of other things I don't even know about.
But aren't we perceiving multiple stimulae simultaneously already? When you hear and see something at the same time, it doesn't take longer to process those two just because it's two different senses. You can feel someone touching your hand even while you're tasting something.
Wouldn't a brain with infinitely much processing power be able to perceive infinitely many things (or stimulae coming from infinitely many "senses") simultaneously?
I'd say that perception is more than simply receiving stimulus. It also has to be processed, and that requires operation by the brain, which requires some amount of time.
Of course one might get around this by stipulating a brain that can do infinite operations in parallel, but using one Infinity to get around another doesn't help much. The impossibility stays the same.
I don't understand your thought process here. You want to restrict "perceiving" to what is perceived by the senses, but then allow that all sorts of "perception", which we would not normally call sense perception is sensation. What's the point in restricting perception in this way, just to allow phantom "senses" which haven't been identified? So when birds supposedly "sense" electromagnetic fields, can you name the sense, and describe how sensation through the means of this sense works, such that the bird might identify the electromagnetic field through this sense? If not, why call it a "sense" at all?
Do we sense gravity? Isn't it more appropriate to say that gravity affects us, and we use logic to infer its existence. In the case of the birds, the electromagnetic field affects them, but they haven't the capacity to use logic to determine its existence. So they do not at all apprehend the existence of these fields. Therefore they do not sense the fields. It has an affect on them but they do not perceive it. Gravity affects us, we do not sense it, but we apprehend it, and therefore "perceive" it, through the intellect. So we need another category of these things which affect us, we do not sense them, yet we may perceive them, apprehending them with the mind.
Why aren't we able to tell which way is north by just "feeling it"? I'll answer the rest of your post more in detail when I get home, and explain my reasoning.
Let's start by exploring our already extant (as opposed to speculative) subjective experience of perception; I'll presume your senses are nominal here. Sit still in your chair as you read this and just attend to your experiences. You'll notice you "see" things in front of you, and there's an edge to your visual field. But that space you experience doesn't "stop" there... you have a general sense of that space all around you, extending backwards. I'll draw your attention to this "perceptual space"; the stuff you see is fixed into this space (you can glance around and see things at a distance). The stuff you hear is affixed to it; tactile feelings are affixed to it, and so on. Some internal senses are fixed here as well; you sense "yourself" as being in this space somewhere (for me, I feel that "I" am behind my eyes inside my head). We can, and often do, even cross reference these different perceptual modes according to this perceived space; you might see a bird and hear it, and perceive that the bird you see is making that song... both percepts subjectively feel like they are "in the same place". I'm not sure how far this goes, but this subjective perceived space seems like a type of "glue" of our senses.
With this grounding, you can begin to get a sense from the "inside out" that this space is produced by your mind, if you pay attention to the right phenomena. For example, the McGurk effect suggests that our percepts of phonemes is affected by what we see. Another common experienced cross-sensory illusion is something I'll just call the "rollback illusion" (not sure it has another name)... think of when you're in a vehicle (driving/passenger doesn't matter), and there may be a few larger ones left and right in your field, and you're stopped. Suddenly some of the big vehicles in your peripheral move, but in this particular case you experience not the sight of them moving forward, but the feeling that your own vehicle dropped backwards.
Outside of such subjective surveys, if you look deeply into human vision you'll notice that a lot of the mechanics behind vision can't possibly be "universal" in a "physics" sense; color, for example, is a percept whose "physical" basis is really based on the physics of photopic vision (meaning, vision under the mode where conditions bright enough where we see colors; e.g., vision mediated by cones instead of rods). At a cellular level this is a function of how the three cone types in our eyes respond to light; at a physics barrier level, that in turn is a function of how particular photons have particular probabilities of folding photon-sensitive proteins in our eyes (viz photopsins). From there, the "opponent color process" kicks in (via ganglial cell mediation just beyond "bipolar" cells connected to the cones), forming a color space basis with red/green, blue/yellow, and brightness channels. Even in terms of frequencies of photons we see, for example, there are "metamers"... specific colors produced by distinct spectra... precisely because they wind up having the same effects at this barrier level. Furthermore there are plenty of photons in our environment outside of the visual range; and the division between visible light and non-visible light is a matter of this barrier. So again, we come to the same place... the things we experience are produced.
We could go onto many other topics here, such as the fact that as you move, or when you change your glance, our experiences "edit out" what we see during the move/during jarring/etc; and so on and so on. The evidence is quite clear that our perceptual experiences are constructs in themselves.
That's enough for now... you're asking for quite a bit, but I'll just post this one aspect rather than try to address the whole thing, for the moment.
The thing is that there is a logical process by which we determine north. Look at the sun, the stars, compass, whatever is required, and deduce the direction. This is clearly distinct from sensing north. Why wouldn't you think that the process within the birds is similar to this, but the logic is working at a subconscious level? We have in philosophy, developed a distinction between what we "know", through some sort of logic, and what we "feel" through sensation, for a reason. It helps us to understand these features of reality.
Quoting InPitzotl
This is the type of thing I am speaking of. Suppose you hear a sound. You say "I hear a bird". However, there is a sort of logic required to produce the conclusion that the sound you hear is a bird. This logic is not itself a form of sensation.
So Samuele might say you sense a bird. But in reality your are hearing noises, and using some sort of logic to conclude that the noises are coming from a bird. Now we could extend this principle to all the senses, including seeing. We're not really seeing individual objects around us, we are sensing differences in electromagnetic radiation, and using some sort of logic to conclude boundaries between things, and we claim to "see" or "sense" distinct objects. In reality the distinct objects are created by some sort of logical process and are not actually "sensed".
I think it's both a reliable representation of reality and mostly made up by our minds.
The directly imputed sensory data at any given time is clearly not all we 'perceive', we fill in a lot of blanks with our brain, memories etc... But I don't think that is a reason to suspect that reality is fundamentally different than what we perceive. What our senses give us is likely incomplete yes, but not necessarily totally different then reality. Blind people have one sense less, but they don't experience a totally different world. Assuming we would have a sixth or seventh sense, I seems more reasonable to assume that our picture of the reality would become more detailed rather then that it would be totally different.
This seems to be a definitions issue to me, and it seems a bit simplistic.
There is sensation, and there is perception, and there is logic. To me, it appears you're attributing perception to logic, but it's very distinct from logic. Logic is something you could sit down and write up in natural language, which can then be scrutinized... the process by which "bird" is presented to you digested as "bird" is not this kind of thing.
The way I use the terms, and there's a reason for it, "perception" is part of "sensation"; so I have no problems saying that you "sense" the bird.
You remind me of myself some years back!
What is true, what is real, what’s the difference between reality and imagination ... fundamental questions.
You have various experiences, which you label perception, feeling, thought, imagination, ... , more or less arbitrarily. If you don’t attempt to make a fundamental distinction between them, but instead see them all as experiences, then you don’t have to wonder what things are really like beyond experiences, because that question becomes meaningless. However you can certainly wonder what experiences you haven’t had yet, and this act of wondering is an experience too.
Electromagnetic fields exist as a thought (an experience). Based on experiences you’ve had, you construct the experience that there are a lot of things traveling all around you and through you even though you don’t see them, and you can make use of that experience to construct other experiences (through what we call technology).
Maybe there is a way to evolve and experience these things (electromagnetic fields of all wavelengths) as clearly as so-called visible light. Blind people can use tools (within their experiences) to gain information about what non-blind people see, and we use tools to gain information about electromagnetic fields we don’t see, so it might be possible to evolve and see the other frequencies more directly.
We can sense other frequencies in a rudimentary way when they are strong enough, we sense them as the experience of heat, there isn’t much information in that experience but it’s there, it might be seen as the first stage of development of our sense of electromagnetic frequencies beyond the visible spectrum, they aren’t totally invisible to us because we can feel them in some way.
You made a fundamental distinction between the experience of an object and the experience of pain. You say the object is “there” while the pain isn’t, but reflect on why you said that exactly. If you didn’t have the sense of touch, would you still make that distinction? Don’t you say that the object is “there” because you can correlate one experience you have (the sight of the object) with another experience you have (touching the object)?
You interestingly mentioned synesthesia. It might be possible to touch pain, to throw it away so as not to experience it anymore, in a way that would seem like magic to other people. Then you would see pain as something “there” just like the object. We already have the ability to control pain to some extent through thoughts. Through empathy we can feel the pain of others to some extent. Pain is as real as an object, it’s just a different kind of thing.
We emit electromagnetic frequencies, depending on what we think we emit different patterns, and we have created technology that can control objects through these signals that our thoughts emit. So in principle it could be possible to evolve to see the thoughts of other people without the use of technology. I believe we already have that ability, but it’s still in an early stage, though it is more developed in some people than some others.
There are plenty of phenomena and miracles that haven’t been explained, or rather we explain them away assuming that there must be some mundane explanation beneath, and we don’t look into them with an open mind. But it may be that reality is much more incredible and mysterious than we want to think. Considering there is a lot of stuff around us we don’t see, some living entities invisible to us for now might be there too...
I don't understand how you arrive at this conclusion. What you are sensing is some sounds. The only way to conclude that the sounds are coming from a bird is to employ some form of logic. Not all logic is formal logic. If it helps, instead of "logic" we could call it some form of reasoning.
You seem to be claiming that the reasoning required to determine that the sounds are coming from a bird, is inherent within sensation, the act of sensation requires a reasoning process for its performance. I am fine with this assumption, but it means that all creatures which "sense", must also carry out a reasoning process within this act of sensation.
This is why I think it's more prudent to separate the reasoning process from the act of sensation. The act of sensation merely picks up the information from the environment, but a reasoning process is required to determine "what" the information represents. if we do not separate these two, we cannot account for the fact that we make mistakes in determining "what" we are sensing. If the act of "sensing the sound" is one and the same as the act of "hearing the bird", then there would be no way to account for the mistake involved if the act of "sensing the sound" was really "hearing a recording" or some other sound, and mistaken for "hearing a bird".
Not exactly. What I'm sensing is cochlea hairs bending. An organ is mapping sounds (say, vibrations of my eardrum) to physical locations in the cochlea (via the hammer/anvil/stirrup/cochlea shape+fluid systems). That may sound like a nit pick, but I think it's perfectly fine to distinguish sensation at this level if you choose... but if you do so, you can't really say we're sensing sound, because we just plain aren't. We're sensing specific frequencies formed by sound (as produced by this sensory organ, which in my mind amounts to a bio-physical computer calculating the frequency components of sounds)... that's it.
I think you're confused on a few levels. I referred to natural language; formal logic uses formal language. So this isn't about formal logic versus informal.
But if it helps, sure, let's agree it's a form of reasoning. But now, there's still two qualitatively different, massively distinct forms of reasoning. One form I call "perception"; the other, let's call "natural reasoning"; natural reasoning is of the type that you can "reason through", that is, that you can think through using a natural language, hence the name I just made up for it. That includes not just "here is the proof for this math theorem", but also, "here is why Jack Johnson is a better candidate than John Jackson". Perception is not "natural reasoning"; it's entirely distinct. One might could actually write down the logical progression of perception, but not in the same manner as we do natural reasoning... where we just self reflect and just spew out some diatribe. Nay, filling out how the perception works requires an analysis akin to figuring out how other external phenomena works, even if its our own perception we're talking about. We're not "privy to it"; we cannot "backtrack the reasons" behind it. In other words, we cannot (in this sense) "naturally reason" about it.
That leads to the second point... perception "nominally" may lead to conclusions, but doesn't have to, and quite often does not. When I watch a movie I "see" objects moving on my screen, but I don't believe they are actually there, nor do I believe they are moving. And if I watch a magic show, I may perceive all kinds of oddities going on, but not conclude they actually are; likewise if I flip through books of optical illusions. What we're talking about isn't what's being concluded, it's what is behind a percept.
I think that's the level that you're missing... you go straight from "sensation" to "conclusion" via "reasoning"; in a sense, so do I. But when you do so going from "photons" to "there's a bird there", you're missing a huge chunk... you're missing all of that juicy "perception" stuff. I've got the line where "mistakes" can happen, sure; that's how we can even define objects we call "optical illusions"... they are the ones where the perception suggests a reality that our natural reason concludes isn't there. But the ability to define and talk about such objects I think is what you're missing, so that's my advantage.
That in mind, back to the cochlea... given our sense of specific "nerves firing", which we could loosely say is a sense of sound frequencies, "we" can indeed employ "some form of reasoning" to "perceive" that particular kinds of sounds are being made. But that's really what we're doing, not "sensing sound" in the sense you're using the term sense. But this inference would nominally be valid; if a particular "kind of sound" hits our eardrums, then we would have that particular set of nerves firing. But if it works here it works elsewhere; if a particular bird really were there singing, it would result in some particular kinds of stimulus on our retinas and particular kinds of stimulus along our cochlea. A description of just what kinds of effects such a real bird really being there singing would make on these modes of sensory apparatus is very complex, but the "perceptual form of reasoning" can be taken as part of our sensory apparatus just as easily as that hammer, anvil, stirrup, cochlea fluid, and hairs along that spiral can.
Dark matter can't be perceived. It's existence is inferred from indirect gravitational effects. Can you accept that it exists?
Scientific theory often predicts the existence of things that have not been perceived, but eventually are detected. Should we assume they don't exist until actually seen, or should we at least accept the likelihood of their existence?
Right, that's the problem I described, as soon as we try to say "what" we're sensing, we're not talking strictly about the sensation any more, but we're referring to some logical conclusion, some reasoning as to "what" the sensation is.
Quoting InPitzotl
Here's the problem as it appears to me. "Perception" requires some form of recognition, and "recognition" requires some form of natural reason. Suppose a creature sees something as an object of food, that is a case of perception. But to see it as such, something to eat, requires recognition and therefore some form of natural reason.
Samuele wanted to restrict "perceiving" to sensing, but that's not how we commonly use these words. We generally allow that "sensing" might be used in a way which doesn't require natural reason or a judgement of "what" it is which is being sensed. We generally use "sense" to refer simply to being conscious of the information being received, not to refer to the judgements we make or interpretations of the information.
Quoting InPitzotl
How can you say this? Clearly you are referring to conclusions. You are making conclusions that the objects are on the movie screen and not actually there.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think it's you who is missing something. A person cannot describe, or in any way talk about what one is sensing, without forming some sort of conclusions.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think that if you believe that you can talk about what you're sensing, without using some sort of reasoning to make conclusions about what you're sensing, then you are absolutely mistaken. And being mistaken is not to your advantage.
Quoting Samuele
If this were all that emotions, feelings, and thoughts were for, then how do you explain philosophy? What survival advantage does philosophy have?
I think you're severely confused about the very subject of the conversation.
What I'm telling you is something like this. There are signals coming to my brain across my optic nerves; roughly 1 million channels. When I look outside, I'm not sitting there with a spreadsheet, analyzing each of those million channels using natural reasoning, and reaching a conclusion that there's a bird there. What's happening, instead, is exactly what I told you is happening... there's a huge juicy chunk of calculations being performed pre-rationally on those million channels of data.
Now I'm definitely saying words, like, "there's a huge juicy chunk of calculations being performed"; and that is most certainly an analysis... it's not only reasoning, it's employing extant science. But that changes nothing here; I am definitely not analyzing each of those optic nerve signals rationally.
And? Just because I describe something using reasoning doesn't mean the thing I describe uses reasoning. If I see a rock rolling down a hill towards a car, I might reason that it would hit it; but that doesn't mean the rock is employing reasoning to hit the car.
When I look at a peripheral drift illusion, I see motion. The thing that leads me to see motion is a pre-rational judgment; and that thing is multiple levels above the cones being stimulated by photons reflected from the image. Digital cameras alone don't in any meaningful sense sense "objects" or "motion"; neither does the eye. To get from those "eye pixel" analogs to this pre-rational judgment that something's moving requires tons of analysis, but that analysis is nevertheless pre-rational, not a result of "natural reasoning".
I recognize this argument as valid. But I reject the premise: "'recognition' requires some form of natural reason." So I don't recognize that it's a sound argument.
The calculations that take the stimulation of individual cones when I look at that peripheral drift illusion to a recognition of motion definitely do occur; but they are pre-rational. The same thing happens when I see "objects"; there's a pre-rational judgement. The distinction is quite dramatic... it is why for example, despite knowing that nothing is moving in a peripheral drift illusion, I nevertheless still see it as moving. It's also why I cannot explain to you why I see it as moving (by introspection anyway). There's a distinction between such pre-rational judgments that inform percepts, and the employment of reasoning to reach conclusions. Furthermore, when we reason about the world, we don't start with details like individual signals on optic nerve fibers... we start far later in the game, like, seeing an object here moving there.
This is exactly what I am objecting to. How can you say that these calculations are "pre-rational". This would mean that there is a way of calculating which is not rational. How could that be?
Quoting InPitzotl
The problem is that you have already passed judgement, i.e. made a conclusion, when you say that what you see is a rock rolling down a hill toward a car. So the complete scenario "there is a rock rolling down a hill towards a car", is itself a judgement, a conclusion you've made. Plainly and simply, without that judgement, there is no such scenario. So it is complete nonsense to suggest that this scenario might exist without such a reasoned judgement. Therefore that scenario "there is a rock rolling down a hill toward a car" is itself dependent on reasoning.
Quoting InPitzotl
That you see motion is itself a reasoned judgement. not a judgement made by the cones of your eyes. It's nonsense to say that this judgement is "pre-rational", or somehow not a matter of "natural reasoning", because the faculty which gives us judgement is the same faculty which gives us reason. Unless you are arguing that one can make a choice with absolutely no reason for that choice, then reasoning and judging are the same thing. So to make a judgement that you see motion, or some such thing, is to use natural reason.
Quoting InPitzotl
OK, so this is our point of disagreement right here. How do you suppose that one can recognize something without making a comparison of some sort, and producing a conclusion regarding that comparison? But if you agree that recognition requires such a comparison, how do you think this act of comparison is not an act of "natural reason"?
Quoting InPitzotl
To repeat, I don't see what you could possibly mean by a non-rational calculation. If it's a calculation it's rational. if it's not rational it's not a calculation.
I think what InPitzotl is referring to is the rational calculations that take place 'below' the level of language.
:yikes:
What makes you think that they are different?
:brow:
Trees exist. I see(perceive) the tree.
Trees exist. Blind people perceive them without sight.
In order for there to be an illusion of something, that something must already exist.
Thank you man, I appreciate it.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
I think sometimes the mechanisms that keep us alive and moving forward (evolving) aren't immediately understandable by us. Nature does some things that sound weird and counterintuitive, but when you study into them, they make sense.
Take love for example. It's just a powerful and complex feeling, yet at the core of it, I think it's an abstraction our mind uses to drag us together with another individual and, ultimately, procreate. This might be controversial but the theory of evolution seems to agree with me, as far as what science says currently.
What if philosophy is another construct our brains used to "push" evolution into a specific route? Being introspective, something that characterizes our species, has shaped some of our traits and directly affects our actions and decisions. There are still some things this "theory" can't explain, but I thought maybe it's a good starting point?
So if we put reality and perception into a two-way relationship where one implies the other, whose perception are we using as the model? Does it make sense to do so?
You're equivocating...
In the OP, you say "what is perceived" and "what exists".
Our perception is not "what is perceived".
:brow:
Everyone's perception...
Spell this out. Clearly it's not "what is perceived". So...
You're equivocating the term "perception". Clear that up, and it will help.
To put it another way, What is perceived is not what is actually perceived but only what is perceived to be perceived. but not even that, it is only what is perceived to be perceived to be perceived. But not even that...
This must be nonsense.
Perception does not separate you from the world, it joins you to it. Like your skin.
Yep.
Dr. Nim (the board game/canonically famous, genius, and simple mechanical computer) performs calculations, but does not employ rational thought.
Rational thoughts are about things; that's what Dr. Nim isn't doing. Dr. Nim has no idea what those marbles are about, or even that it is processing marbles. But Dr. Nim is performing calculations.
This is a confused and ambiguous statement. We have an intension (judgment) A; with an extant extension (scenario) B. If you're saying that A's extension (B) would not exist without the formation of the intension A, then it's an absurdity. If you're saying that we cannot have an A referring to an extension B without the formation of the intension A, then it's a vacuous irrelevancy.
This same intension/extension confusion is really the missed point of the thing you replied to... just because I use natural reason to describe a thing does not mean that the thing I described is employing natural reason.
Why do you think it entails natural reasoning? All a comparison requires is a calculation. We can compare variable states on a computer using a comparison operator... computers are (at least generally) incapable of natural language; they calculate, but do not reason.
ETA: Let me backtrack, because you keep trying to push some point you're making (but only by conflating things) and keep missing the same one. Let's go back here:
...so here I say, back up. Why are we talking about this creature seeing things like "objects of food", when mechanically speaking, such a creature would be seeing "a bunch of stimulated cones on a retina"? Once you're talking about objects of food it is impossible for you to have not gone through calculations requisite to identify what parts of those stimulated cones correlate to edges of objects, what parts are part of the same object and what parts are part of different objects, what shapes the objects are, what colors (if applicable), and so on.
There's some reason why you're starting at objects, and not stimulated cones. What is that reason?
I have a pain in my foot. My foot is in the world. Pain is in the world.
Where have I gone wrong?
Perhaps the problems you're attempting to discuss are the result of the language you're using to discuss things...
That's what I'm seeing overall.
I don't think pain is "in your foot," to begin with.
I might be wrong, but it feels to me like you're really trying to find something wrong in my questions at all costs. That's fine, don't get me wrong. Criticism is important.
I'll try and explain my reasoning in the simplest terms, as it's easier to spot fallacies when everything is laid out in a simple way.
Every organism's perception is different. Not all the living beings have the same set of senses, not every being interprets stimuli the same way, and even among species that share some senses, they aren't "set up" the same way. They vary in the range of perceivable "values," and how strong the perception is. Our sight is "stronger" than our "smell." I hope it's clear what I mean here.
So, since the way every being perceives reality differently, it appears to me that reality can't be traced down to being exactly equal to one's perception. It has to be something different, independent of any one's perception. Add to that the fact that anything we'll ever experience is a byproduct of our perception, because we think and feel through processing external data captured by our sensory organs.
So (1) reality is independent of our perception, (2) we all perceive things differently, (3) therefore any one's individual perception can't be flawless because it's clear from (1)-(2) that if a given individual's perception was perfect, then what's perceived by that individual is equal to reality. But even assuming that one individual perceives reality 100% flawlessly, then everyone else's still is flawed because it's different.
As a consequence to (3), perception doesn't seem to be reliable model of representation of reality. All we know is perception is flawed (it necessarily lacks something, or we would perceive infinite things at a given time), so what guarantee do we have that reality isn't entirely different than the small piece of it we can grasp?
We can only see x% of the photon wavelengths (colors) and only hear y% of the sound frequencies. Do you agree that the world would feel a lot different if we cold see and hear everything? Yet it actually IS like that, even if we're constantly missing a big chunk of it.
Perception is a data from eye and Let's say, world, and experience from consciousness and another experience from energy in that consciousness. We don't stop.
I'm left wondering what on earth you think counts as "flawless" perception... or "flawed" for that matter.
:worry:
That's odd.
When you accidentally kick something with your little toe... are you saying that the pain is not in your toe?
I think that you and I can drop it here. Let's agree to disagree.
Sigh.
Stick out your foot. I'll hit it with a hammer, and bet you whatever amount you like that you will not grab your brain as a means for soothing the pain in your foot.
It's absurd. Why on earth would you agree that it makes sense to talk like that? All I'm getting at here is that many of the problems you're talking about result from the way you're talking... the terminological choices; the framework; the conceptual scheme; etc.
It's not about you... personally. Don't take it that way.
I guess everyone is making things up on the net, and pain exists locally as some weird ghost that inhabits a single body part. That's just a source but feel free to open and read every other result of the search "how pain works."
I bet you any amount that you can get your foot hammered 22 times, and you won't feel much pain without a brain, as well.
You aren't making much sense here and you're fixating on a small detail out of a 500+ word thread.
I'm not taking anything personally by the way. I'm actually amused by the fact that you are straight up making up facts just for the sake of arguing with me about the minutia rather than actually tackling the big picture.
What do you think that I'm making up?
That when you kick something hard with your foot that the pain is in your foot?
I think that you're arguing with your own imagination in some respects. For instance, I've never denied the need for a central nervous system, or a brain, in order to feel pain in your foot... or, if you prefer... at the damage site.
Yes?
I've already addressed problems with the language you've used to discuss it. You've yet to have given those replies their just due.
I have stated that the signaling of pain takes place at the damage site, and the pain is later processed and thus experienced in the brain. I stand by my statement. The fact that we perceive pain in the foot doesn't contradict what I say. Until you disprove what I said with a checked source that claims pain physically resides in the local site rather than inside the brain, I will stand by my statement.
You're correct as the fact that I've missed a lot of posts. I am not home and browsing on my phone is difficult, so it's easy to miss answers. As soon as I get home I will read everything that I left behind and answer in detail.
What hurts when you kick something hard with your foot?
Not your brain. Your foot. I do not understand how anyone could believe otherwise.
And please, don't employ such logical fallacies as appealing to common sense to make me sound like a fool. I am waiting for you to disprove what I claimed by providing me with evidence that pain "exists" somewhere but in our brain, regardless of where we feel it.
When your tongue is twisted, touching the left side of it feels like the other side is being touched, and vice versa.
I will link a better source later, but for an explanation of the phenomenon:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cpgqb/eli5_if_i_flip_my_tongue_upsidedown_and_touch_it/
If touch was processed locally and existed within the affected body part, things like this wouldn't be possible.
Instead, stuff like this happens because the brain isn't perfect and doesn't always map things accurately. In this case, due to the way nerves are arranged in the tongue, the brain mistakes their location when the tongue is twisted and incorrectly maps the feeling.
There is also such a thing as the minimal distance for which two objects can be told apart when they're touching the skin. Like a minimal touch resolution. That happens because of density of nerve endings inside the skin, and if our feeling of being touched originated in and of itself, inside the part that's being touched rather than the brain, this likely wouldn't happen either.
Sure, but the point is that such calculations are still "rational", so it is wrong to portray them as "pre-rational".
Quoting InPitzotl
The computer proceeds according to the algorithms by which it is programed, it does not calculate.
Quoting InPitzotl
No, Dr. Nim is a computer acting in the way it is programed to. It is not performing "calculations" unless you change the meaning of "calculation" to include things in that category which are not reasoning. But that only defeats the purpose.
Quoting InPitzotlThe reason is
I'm sorry, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot understand this statement. Can you explain? You are calling a judgement an intension, and then you say that this intension has an extension. How could an intension have an extension? That's nonsense, because the intension and the extension are distinct aspects of a thing, so the intension cannot have extension.
Quoting InPitzotl
Right, this was exactly my point. Maybe we actually agree.
Quoting InPitzotl
The reason is that I was replying to Samuele's op in which it was proposed that the meaning of "perceiving" be restricted to sensing. So I was starting with what we perceive, while you want to start with what we sense. The fact that we are so far apart demonstrates the fault in restricting "perceiving" to "sensing".
Quoting creativesoul
How can you accidentally kick something when kicking is an intentional action?
Dr. Nim performs calculations in this sense; it employs a deliberate process that transforms inputs into outputs. But it's not programmed; a program is a set of instructions for a computer to follow, but Dr. Nim has no instruction set.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Consider "the letter A on your keyboard"; for now, that literal phrase. That is a sign. When you read this sign on the screen, you formulate an intension... the idea of what this phrase means. There is a thing to which that idea refers... and that thing is an extension; that is the actual key. What's nice about this example is that there are spatial metaphors that help you keep these things straight... the sign is on your screen. The intension is in your head. The extension is under your left pinky.
So let's go back to that confused thing you said earlier. The example was, I saw a rock rolling down the hill. That is indeed a judgment; which I'm explaining by the phrase (sign), "a rock rolling down the hill", which you read on your screen. The judgment is an intension; it is something I do in my head. But the intension is about an extension... which is the thing rolling down the hill.
Now let's rewind even earlier. You talked about sensing sound. Then I said, it's not really sound we're sensing in that sense of the word "sense"... and gave an analysis of the ear organs. Then your confused criticism was:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
...and that's the confusion. You're confusing what's under your left pinky with what's being done in the head; what's rolling down the hill with what's happening in the head. The phrase "try to say" means to attempt to formulate a sign; a thing on your screen. "'what' we're sensing" refers to an intension. The conclusion you're reaching, that this implies we're "not talking strictly about sensation any more, but we're referring to some logical conclusion" conflates intension with extension. Intensions are about extensions; that's how this works. Using reasoning is something you do with intensions. The only way that talking about something makes the extension a logical conclusion is if the thing you are talking about is the making of logical conclusions. Merely using logic to reach a conclusion doesn't magically change what you're talking about into the making of logical conclusions, but that's precisely what I'm reading that you said here.
Possibly; my best assessment of your criticisms against me is that you're just failing to grasp what I'm saying... up to now it feels more like a definitions fight. But I think my point is really important for someone trying to take a subjective point of view, because from that point of view, there's a huge difference between the things you can access introspectively, and the things you cannot. And there's a lot of stuff going on in your mind before we even get to that arena where your introspective view actually tells you something. The stuff that happens with your signals on your optic nerves that leads up to your percept (aka, "perception")... that's outside of the introspective field. The kinds of things you can reflect on and talk about (aka, natural reasoning)... that's inside.
I've never claimed that it could.
Again. Not my claim.
To reiterate, you have just redefined "calculation" such that it may not necessarily be an act of reason. But the act of "calculating" which a computer does, is nowhere near to being similar to the act of "calculating" that occurs in a living being's act of perception, so the redefining is pointless.
Quoting InPitzotl
You try to portray me as "confused", but this passage clearly indicates that it is you who is confused. There is a sign, with an associated idea, and that is what you call "intension", the idea. The idea relates directly to the sign, and the sign only. if a person applies the idea toward possible "things" which may fulfill the criteria of the idea, this is the extension of the idea, the application. But you misrepresent this application with "a thing to which the idea refers". There is no such thing, only possible things.
Quoting InPitzotl
See your confusion? The attempt to formulate a sign, is an application of the idea, an attempt to find "possible things" (signs) which fufill the criteria of the idea. Therefore it is an extension, not an intension as you say.
Quoting InPitzotl
This is false. Reasoning is carried out with the symbols (extensions), it is not carried out with the ideas (intensions) themselves. That is where you are getting confused. You think that because it is going on in the mind, it must be intensional, but in reality both intension and extension are mental acts. So you are not separating them properly. Forming an idea is intensional, while applying the idea is extensional. So reasoning is extensional.
Quoting InPitzotl
All I am saying is that this "stuff going on in your mind" is better represented as a type of "reasoning" (though it may not be conscious reasoning), than it is represented as "sensing". So we are working from opposite approaches. You start from sensing, and want to include this "stuff going on" as part of the act of sensing. I start from thinking and reasoning, and want to include this "stuff going on" as part of the reasoning. Perhaps we'd be best off to compromise, and conclude that it is neither sensing nor reasoning.
You do realize that before "computer" was a type of machine, it was a job description, don't you? Calculation is just a more abstract term than you're making it out to be; both Dr. Nim and myself can calculate. Computation, equally so... both the thing your keyboard is connected to, and an employee, can compute. But, yes, mechanical computers calculate in a drastically different way than we do.
...quick side note; it's quite a bit messier than this. Signs quite often, in practice, underspecify intensions (and often, only indirectly convey them); real language use tends to invoke a lot of context.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This critique is incoherent to me. Are you saying, there's no key under your pinky, only a possible key under your pinky?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Huh? What are you talking about? When I convey ideas to you in the forum, I formulate signs by typing. That generates signs on my screen, and eventually generates the same signs on your screen. The signs I type are an attempt to get you to form the same idea. I'm at a total loss what you're talking about when you say I am "finding" the signs, or that they are "fulfilling the criteria of the idea".
If you're trying to convince me that you're not confused, but I am, then you're off to a bad start.
That doesn't work:
...when describing world objects, the extensions are those world objects. When you reason about world objects, those world objects are not symbols, and you don't reason "with" them (I suppose you could; if we want to call that reason... if, say, I'm making use of a calculator, I'm reasoning "with" a calculator, but I suspect this isn't what you mean). You reason with your ideas about those world objects. (Now that can be comprehensions, but it's never going to be an extension, so long as you're talking about world objects).
I've no problems with this.
Well... except that makes the term "sensing" a not so tidy concept.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How is that different than what's already on the table... just calling it some other thing, like, "perception"?
There will be come a point in time where there will be a very long expanse where a specific attribute of Physics or the laws of physics won't be able to be measured or understood. Then after that lengthy period of time new findings will be available. During that long period of time people and some scientists will make assumptions about reality that aren't coherent. Many "scientists" (people of knowledge) during medieval papal europe did this. This is a common theme all through out history.
Are you familiiar with Pascal's Wager?
So something can exist even if it is not perceived or measured.
No that's not what I'm saying. You said that the symbol relates to an idea, and the idea relates to a thing. But the idea doesn't necessarily relate to any one thing, the idea may be related to many things, Therefore it relates possibly to many different things, depending on the application.
Quoting InPitzotl
You formulate the signs within you mind, what you will type, before you type it, just like you formulate what you will speak before you speak it. Then the typing is just a representation of what you have already formulated in your mind. The act of formulating the signs occurs within your mind, not on the keyboard.
So formulating the sign is not something you do with your fingers on the key board, it is something you do in your mind, thinking about ideas, trying to determine the best words (symbols) to express your ideas. That is why this is an act of extension. The ideas you mull over in your mind may be expressed in numerous different ways, with numerous different words (there are numerous possible symbols (things) which can be related to the ideas).
Quoting InPitzotl
Symbols are themselves objects, and we use them in the process of reasoning. For example, 2+2=4. The reasoning is carried out with the symbols, but what the symbols refer to, the meaning, or ideas, is something distinct. We reason with the symbols, not with the ideas, though we are sometimes aware of what the symbols mean when we reason with them.
Quoting InPitzotl
"Sensing" is not a tidy concept. That's the problem. If you want to make it into a tidy concept then you are not representing what sensing really is.
Quoting InPitzotl
What was on the table, is that Samuele wanted to make "perception" into nothing other than sensing. The compromise I suggested places "perception" as something intermediate between sensing and reasoning.
FTFY.
Yes, "an" idea may refer to multiple things; for example, by referring to multiple tokens; or, by referring to a type with multiple members.
I'll grant that you're talking about something that happens, but you're still off on the definitions. Telling me that it happens is beside the point... it is not a sign until it is fixed in a medium. The things you do in your head leading up to the sign comprise intentional actions; that certainly requires goal setting and initiating actions directed towards attaining those goals. The thing you're "thinking of" that you want to type should indeed predate the typing of it. But you're not producing a sign until you actually wind up typing it.
Signs don't even have to be specific results of intentions per se. My DHCP server for example pops up signs like: "Assigning IP Address 192.168.1.201 to ...". I can read and interpret that, even though no person typed it (certainly, no single person as a whole, even if you trace history). Also, signs don't have to be in traditional language; stop lights are signs (in this sense even).
That's not true, because we use signs in our minds. A person can make up one's own system of association within one's mind, that's why there can be illnesses like schizophrenia And that's how recognition works, things have significance, one thing is associated with another in the mind. There is no warrant to your claim that signs can only exist in the public medium, and it is not representative of how we actually employ signs in the act of remembering. This is well demonstrated in semiotics.