Alternative Models of Reality

Georgina Woodward
You have missed the point of what I’m saying.

A cat might mistakenly, fleetingly, perceive a brown leaf blown by the wind to be a scuttling tiny mouse. But that just goes to show that the cat is analysing, interpreting, and acting on, the rock-solid, but low-level, information the cat acquired when light waves interacted with it’s eyes.

It seems obvious that, with more advanced living things, this analysis and interpretation of the incoming information coming from the enormous number of individual low-level interactions continually taking place in the senses, would need to be backgrounded, and not in executive-level consciousness.

The point is that necessary-for-survival knowledge/ perception can’t be built on imaginary unreal foundations. Necessary-for-survival knowledge/ perception must be built from the ground up, on rock-solid real foundations, going all the way down to, and built out of, what physicists would symbolically represent as variables and numbers, and the relationships between these variables.

Georgina Woodward
To be clear, the type of reality or category of reality in this framework is not dependent on scale. An atom that is a constituent of a cat is ObJect reality and so is the arrangement of atoms that makes the material cat.

Georgina Woodward
There is an enormous amount of information continually coming in from interactions in the senses (e.g. light interacting with the eyes). But the individual items of this information are necessarily very low-level. This low-level information needs to be analysed, collated, and identified before it can become “tiger”, “tree” or “apple”.

Even very low-level life needs to do a bit of analysis, collation, and identification, because the incoming individual items of low-level information are clearly often not much more than the very basic aspects of the world that physicists would represent with variables and numbers. Without further analysis, collation, and identification, this low-level incoming information can say nothing about whether there is currently food or a foe in the surrounding environment.

With more advanced living things, a lot of this analysis, collation and identification would need to be backgrounded (unconscious), and not allowed to clog up executive-level consciousness.

But it is mainly only human beings that go further and use symbols (with human beings, this involves writing, reading, speaking and listening) to communicate the high-level information that they have obtained (via analysis, collation and identification) to others. E.g., “tiger”, “tree” and “apple” are examples of high-level information.

This analysis, collation and identification can only be represented via the use of logical connective symbols. These logical connective symbols represent basic, logical, aspects of the world. These basic, logical, aspects are necessary if you want to have any sort of moving system or moving world.

Georgina Woodward
There is no “Image reality on the retina”. Only very low-level information can be acquired from interactions that occur in the senses of living things. There are masses of photons continually interacting with the eyes, and the individual photons that interact with the eyes are completely anonymous, they are not apple-photons or tree-photons, or tiger-photons. These photons can convey not much more than wavelength/ frequency information, i.e. a category of information with an associated number that relates to the category: very simple, basic, anonymous information. In order to perceive an apple, a tree, or a tiger, this very basic information, together with information coming from the other senses, has to be analysed, collated, and identified.

It is not just human beings: ALL living things need to be intelligent enough to analyse, collate, and identify aspects of their immediate surrounding world, and be able to act on the results of this analysis.

Georgina Woodward
i don't know if the alarmed chicken or rooster later percieves and is able to recognize and identify the source object that is the origin of the stimulus generating alarm and if it has further contextural thoughts about it , fitting with prior experiences of that individual. If it does, and it may, the perception and quasi reality be helpful to the individual, to notice possible threats, in different contexts, from that particular species in the future. Does it even have a personal language for such things. Maybe or maybe not. It is not as far as i know communicated to others. On the other hand it may not be bothered to identify the source of the stimulus. Beyond the imediate response of avoiding coming into contact with it, and alerting its kind, confering survival advantage to members of that kind, behaving in that way, further invesigation and thought about it may not be beneficial rather than carry on business as usual, that is advantagous for survival , finding food ,mates etc.

Georgina Woodward
The perceptual acuity ot chickens and roosters is questionable. I have ,for example, seen a rooster perform display behaviour to an oil bottle, left on the ground, which was of similar size with red cap, grey body and red handle. As if a member of the same species. This happened several times.

Georgina Woodward
You are going off on a tangent, and missing the point of what I am saying.

The point is that light waves, sound waves and molecules in the air are all completely anonymous: they have no labels attached. So, it is necessary that living things use a process of analysis, collation and identification.

It is only when the light waves, sound waves and molecules in the air interact with the senses of living things, and logic is applied by the living thing (e.g. analysis, collation, identification), that the living thing can be consciousness of particular sights, sounds and smells relating to the current situation in the surrounding environment.

The obvious fact is that this analysis, collation and identification can be an error-prone process: it NOT like the law of nature relationships, which are not error-prone, and which are so stable that physicists can represent them with equations.

Lorraine Ford
I don't disagee that potential stimuli are without meaning inherently. Meaning is attributed to the pattern of stimuli recieved and processed. The meaning attributed may be incorrect, not representing the Object reality faithfully i.e. we might say not true. I n foundatioal, absolute ,ma\terial, observation independent reality an oil bottle exists as it is, uninterpreted
BTW I do not know whether the rooster is mistaken ,in thinking the oil bottle is of chicken kind. Or it is aware that it isn't, but doesn'tknow how else to behave in the given circumstance.

Georgina Woodward
Reminder; 'Contrary to your blind man and elephant model, the survival of life, from the most primitive life onwards, depends on their being able to correctly perceive and analyse and respond to the current situation in their immediate surroundings.' Lorraine Ford

Georgina Woodward
Things don’t just miraculously happen for no reason, and so old parables are pretty well useless as a means of detailing or understanding what is happening in the world. It is the actual detail of what is happening that is important. And clearly, the world is built on rock-solid foundations: that is why knowledge of the world, and physics, is possible.

The individual light wavelengths that interact with the eyes provide only very-low level information. A whole lot of this low-level information needs to be logically analysed, collated/ combined and interpreted before you can have the experience of an apple. As part of this process, the non-apple background is distinguished, the apple’s position relative to you is judged, and blemishes on the apple’s skin might be noted, etc.

As opposed to the mathematically-represented law of nature relationships between information, a living organism needs to make a whole edifice of logical connections between the same sort of information. This network of logical connections between information is crucially important for survival: even the most primitive life needs to make these logical connections, which indicates that logical connections are a very basic aspect of the world. But these logical connections between information don’t just automatically, miraculously exist: logical connections are made by the individual living organisms themselves.

(We used to keep Old English Game and other fowl, but they are no match for their ancestors, the Jungle Fowl that actually have to survive in the wild. We have dumbed down, de-horned, and emasculated our domestic animals. These animals are still pretty smart, but if they had their full independence, their full mental faculties, and full physical abilities, we wouldn’t be able to live with them.)

Georgina Woodward
Re: your “potential stimuli are without meaning inherently”.

This opinion of yours is clearly so VERY wrong. Honestly, so VERY wrong. So, for example, the information that individual photons carry is the very foundation of further meaning. Where do you think your "the pattern of stimuli" originates? It originates from the information that individual photons carry! Honestly, it is a very simple concept: information does NOT miraculously appear from nowhere.

Georgina Woodward I recal,l many years ago, spending a an unusually long time looking intensely at a what I later identified as a crisp packet on the grass lawn illumuminated by street lights , seen from a first floor bedroom window . I was unable to identify it on my Initial encouter . Rather than being able to name the object or categorise it , I could only return the answer 'what is it' ? I thought it must be something very strange /unusual because I could not identify it. I eventually decided it warrated further investigation, that could wait until morning.
Vision may be consciously appreciated and the product describable, though vision without further coversion to product, of further processing and analysis, is something different from the product of perception. The meaning of perception given here as;: an understanding of what is seen as something nameable/ or categorizable in the external environment. Also different from it is subjective quasi reality ,the product of integration of the perception into one's world view. The word 'reality' is not sufficiently differentiated to be useful in explaining the differences between what exists, i.e. observation independent, and phenomena seen, percieved, understood within context of world view and experience. Basic observation product, perception and subjective quasi reality allow discussion of the differences between experiences generated subsequent to sensory input.
The partially felt elephant is rather like the unidentified crisp packet. In that the cause of the limited experience can be described. Analogy can be used to do that. But the complete, material source of the the limited, sensed phenomen experienced, can not be given. Calling the material ,existing crisp packet 'reality' and the seen phenomenal unidentified crisp packet 'reality' as it is formed because an existing object and by a physical process occuring, not imaginary for example, is just ambiguous and unhelpful. They are categorically different but share the same adjecvtive, 'reality' .wthout further clarification of meaning, in its particular use.' Reality' is not useful as a noun. It ,the word 'reality' relates currently ,innboth comon parlance and physics, to both a noumenal particle, object or ensemble or a phenomenal observer generated experience.

@"Lorraine Ford"
I was agreeing with you on the following point; There is not an apple or tree or tiger phton., as we agree. The meaning attributed to the experience had, due to the accumulated stimuli is generated by the observer. TThat is not to say photons are without FREQUENCY, or condsidered as a collection-intensity. I have not said that photons miraculously appear from nowhere.Where did you pull that idea from. I have specified their source qas existing material objects or atoms.

Lorraine Ford
My current rooster is a small old English game bantum. The rooster I wrote about was a hybrid domestic fowl. i have no experiece of wild Jungle fowl.

Georgina Woodward
I remember another, much earlier in development, failure of perception from vision. I remember as a youngcchild/ baby seeing for the first time a lightbulb element.“ The glowing element was like nothing else I had ever seen before.. I could not identiFy it as a known thing or categorize it as a yet unamed member of a knd of fthing , or like any such thing . The conscious thought I remember with the memoy of it ,is ,'what is it'? Vision of a relative light bulb semblance generated from sensory data obtained via an existing lightbulb in the external environment preceeded being consciouly aware of what it was. I would HAVE happily accepted a magical explanation If given at that time, as it was so inexplicable to my naive total experience, and subjective word view, incorporeating folk tale bedtime stories.