Lorraine Ford
Your latest post reminds me of the large number of videos online, showing cats startled by cucumbers. Utilizing.for amusemwent their instinctive reflex behaviour that has helped avoid snake bites and is thus a survival advantage. Better to have some false positiove fruit avoidance than be snake food. Truth is irrelevant to the cat, all that matters is avoiding a potential threat.
Alternative Models of Reality
- Edited
Georgina Woodward
Speed of response is paramount to survival advatage of an individual cat. For that reason I would not be suprised if the response is subconscious, That is to say the cat responds before it is fully aware of what it is seeing.The body acting in response to basic Image reality indicating a possible threat in this scenario .Prior to alerting the conscious faculty for further urgent processing and decision making is required. Before perception of what is being seen. Also before it has had time to make a decision of what action to take based on prior experiences i.e. using it's self generated subjective quasi 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.
- Edited
Lorraine Ford
A cat rapidly responding to a movement, that is possible prey, is not showing the cat has analysed and processed the information, decicded on it's action and therefore been mistaken. The cat probably acted automatically without unneccesary slow expenditure of energy on thought, Cats attacking possible pey as soon as possiblle are more likely to be successful and have a survival advantage. It will not be mistaken if no identification of the object as mouse has yet happened.
I am not denying that the atoms making the leaf-'mouse' exist and the photons released into the environment,from it , in obsevation inderendent reality, That exists and happens ,as well.as the cat and leaf emergent, relative, generated reality.
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.
- Edited
Lorraine Ford
i would only argue that there is a time component to higher a organisms sensory processing .First production of an Image reality on the retina and then in the visual cortex does not necessarily Iinvolve detailed percption and identification, which can come later without reducing survival. Sudden movement is easier to detect than specic cause.
i take your point about it is mainly human being communicating with symbolic language. I'd like to mention chickens and roosters.They have two distinct cries, for danger on the ground , any potential threat, what is not differentiated;in the communiction to others of their kind -ever ,as far as i know about from personal experience ;and danger from th sky . Used when birds of prey are spotted.
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.
- Edited
Lorraine Ford
i have not claimed there are ''apple-photons or tree-photons, or tiger-photons. ' There is an image formed on the retina which is a relative view of the source of the recieved photons . i called that ,perhaps prematurely, Image reality, because the input photons are converted by the photoreceptors into electical impulses. The retina is therefore part of the reality interface converting the material input into information from which a different ,not material Object reality can be formed. Perhaps proto-Image reality would be more precise,
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
The display behaviour I mentioed is when a rooster walks around in close proximity to a member of its species and shakes ite body, wings and tail in a vibrating manner. Plastic oil bottles have not
had significamt influence on evolution of chicken kind. The waste of energy displsaying to an oil bottle is not a significan't factor that will have been selected against. An object thsat looks sufficiently like a chicken is treated as a chicken
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.
- Edited
Georgina Woodward
Your elephant analogy etc. is nothing like the actual mechanisms that are happening in reality: it is highly misleading to think of the world in that way. And you have introduced your special terms for things that don’t even exist e.g. “Basic observation product” and “subjective quasi reality”. It is highly unproductive and misleading to think about the world in that disorganised, unreal way.
And there is no need to get hung up about the word “reality”: you and I and everything else: we are it.
The supposed exceptions that you keep on digging up, about crisp packets and roosters and light bulbs, only go to confirm what I have been saying:
The identification of certain things in their surrounding environment is necessary in order for living creatures to be able to appropriately respond to current circumstances, and thereby hopefully survive. But the assignment of symbolic names to things that have been identified (or the animal equivalent of doing this) is almost always done only by human beings, and naming is often the sort of thing that is taught by parents, or taught in schools. There is no need to become excessively preoccupied about the naming of things, because symbolic names are things that are taught/ learned.
And there is no such thing as an interaction (e.g. in the eyes) where on one side of the interaction there are things that you have called “stimuli” (photons) coming from the surrounding environment, and somewhere on the other side of the interaction or interactions, meaning miraculously emerges. There is necessarily always the same sort of meaning on both sides of the equation, in all interactions, though the amount of meaning on each side of the equation might be debated. Not so much meaning for a photon, but a lot of meaning for a high-level being like a rooster.
Lorraine Ford
photos are the sensory stimuli used in vision. They are input to the eyes. Specialized organs of vision. According to the sensitivities of individual photireceptors in the individual eye, to frequencey and intensity, .adequate input is conversted to electric impulse semt to the brain ( or used to silence SPECIFIC neurons that by default send signals) I learned.
For the adjective ,,not noun, 'reality' to apply something must either have been ( former reality) or be existing, or be the emergent product of a physical process, such as vision or the artificial equivalent that has a material source in the external environment.
Georgina Woodward
The new vocabulary enables easy discussion of the emergent sensory process outcome, The examples I have given show that vision can occur without perception and further analysis,.
Georgina Woodward
I can add to that, as well as frequency ,individual photons reaching the retina also have a position relative to other photons. That still falls short of meaning .Asingle photon alone j,ust is what it is, without further mesaning. Meanning is given to the image formed by the enemble of photons recieved together or in close proximity. By finding lines and edges in the pattern ,for example. There is association of shape with leaning of names forsimilar or same things.
Georgina Woodward
The whole world necessarily speaks the same low-level natural language, because on both sides of low-level interactions, the meaning is understood, i.e. the available actually-currently-existing low-level information is perceived by the world: otherwise, these interactions couldn’t take place.
However, a greater amount of meaning, a greater amount of information, depends on building a network of logical connections which analyse and organise the natural-language low-level information. This is as opposed to the lawful, “mathematical” connections between the natural-language low-level information, which can’t increase the amount of information.
This higher-level information/ greater amount of information is necessary for the survival of living things, because a vast quantity of unanalysed low-level information coming from photons is no use to organisms.
It is necessary that living organisms can identify things, e.g. an apple, against a background of other things. But this requires that the incoming low-level information, coming from interactions in the eyes, be analysed and organised by the organism. As I said, there are no labels on photons, no apple-photons and non-apple-photons: without analysis and organisation of the information, objects can’t be identified.
The vision of living things is nothing like a camera, or a photo.
Lorraine Ford
A camera can act as an observerjust as asimple organismcan. The observation product is a photo wheras the observation peroduct of the organism is present visual experience, not necessarilconscious perception and surther thoughabout the object aacording to prior experiences and learned or developeed subjective world view. Both camera and organismonly saample a fraction of the totall potential sensory data released tothe environmwent.Which photons willdepend on where the observer is located giving their unique point of view. Both camera and eye has photosenstie components photoereceptor sor photo-cells that respond preferentially to some frequency or frequency bands and a range but not all intensities. So a product we recognise with the higher level functionsof human vision is produced tlowerlevel vision and working off camera. We are able tosay the input in bothcassesis partially processed. Many photons are not processed into the final image product. Psychological factors,such as tiredness , drunkenness can effect the organism,effecting image quality. Maldfuction of components can effect the working of the camera,effectingi mage quality.
- Edited
Lorraine Ford
The viual system and camera are both what I have been calling reality interfaces,. Both function at the boundary between reality types The type of reality is converted from foundational and material, to emergent, information derived. Photon's are released to the environment by materials and objects . This happens whether seen or not , it is observartion independent , Both the photons and Source object are Object reality, they are existing things. The input photons stimulate the photopreceptors or photocells in a digirtal camera ,producing electriic current in response. Processing of the generated currents by the brain or camera processors .A film camera uses chemical change on expoure to the photons and further chemical processing to produce the product. The camera and organic visual systems pmaterial source of the photons. The semblance is not equal to or the same as the source , though thr likeness may be called by the saamwe name. It is categorically different.
- Edited
Georgina Woodward
Unlike your model of how reality works, containing bizarre special terms that you have invented, the vision of living organisms is nothing like a camera or a photo. A camera does not identify objects, but the essential aspect of the vision/ consciousness of living organisms is that it is made up of categories and objects.
For their own survival, living organisms need to identify special objects in their current, moving, surrounding environment, so that the organism can take any appropriate action in response to this information.
E.g. a food item, or a predator, or a safe hiding place, needs to be identified against a background of other things. This requires that the incoming low-level information, coming from interactions involving photons in the eyes, as well as interactions in the other senses, must be analysed and organised by the organism.
Even very low-level organisms couldn’t survive if they were not able to, in their own small way, analyse and organise and identify the low-level information continually arriving from the surrounding environment. This analysis, organisation and identification requires the use of logic.
Vast quantities of unanalysed, unorganised, unidentified, low-level information coming from interactions with the current surrounding environment, is no use to organisms.
This necessary analysis, organisation and identification of objects can’t be represented by the equations that physicists use to represent laws of nature. The necessary analysis, organisation and identification of objects can only be represented via the use of logical connective symbols.
Lorraine Ford
I did not say that a camera is like an organism's visual system because it self identifies objects. Though nowadays AI and camera working together could performsuch a feat. I specified the ways in which a camera is similar but not the same as an organism's visual system. most importsantly the transformation from objective ,material realityt to emrergent, relative, partial semblance of it's surface.
- Edited
Georgina Woodward
I do not think it is helpful to calll - what we think -due o analysis of our sensory perception,'realiiy, and also call observation independent,existing things 'reality'. They are categoricallty different and need to be descibed as such. In order to avoid ambiguity and confusion
- Edited
It is not posdsible to discuss iand deconstruct deas, without the language to do so. if all barriers are called walls how do we differentiate a fence from a brick or stone structure
Correcting the spelling errors, I tried to correct earlier but ended up worse, as I can no longer edit the post;:
I do not think it is helpful to call - what we think -due to analysis of our sensory perception,'realiity, and also call observation independent, existing things 'reality'. They are categoricallty different and need to be descibed as such. In order to avoid ambiguity and confusion
Georgina Woodward
It is not possible to discuss and deconstruct ideas, without the language to do so. if all barriers are called walls how do we differentiate a fence from a brick or stone structure
- Edited
Georgina Woodward
Re your “nowadays AI and camera working together could performsuch a feat”:
Do you or don’t you understand the difference between real-world real-life mass (or any other category of information) and the symbolic representation of real-world real-life mass (or any other category of information)?
Do you or don’t you understand the difference between real-world real-life mass, and the symbols used to represent real-world real-life mass? E.g. the following line:
(m = 0.511 MeV) IS TRUE
consists of symbols, on paper or screen, that represent a particular real-world real-life mass. This same real-world real-life mass could also be symbolically represented using voltages, transistors and circuits in a computer. But the symbols are NOT, I repeat NOT, the actual real-world real-life mass.
You continually fail to understand that what is happening in a computer merely uses voltages, transistors and circuits to symbolically represent something else: the symbols (the voltages, transistors and circuits) are NOT, I repeat NOT, the thing they are representing.
Your “AI and camera working together” is NOT performing feats that actual real-life eyes are doing, though computer code can potentially be used to REPRESENT (in a general way) what actual real-life eyes are doing.
Are you able to understand the distinction?
Lorraine Ford
I was just saying that AI is able to give the identity of 'learned' images. That means of identification could be combined with a camera producing a photographic product. i did not say the combination works exactly like eyes and vision.
Georgina Woodward
You went on and on and on and on about a rooster.
But I’m guessing that you never noticed the similarity between
the rooster who mistook an oil bottle for a living thing,
and
the masses of people who mistake a box of wires and circuits for something that is conscious? 
- Edited
(m = 0.511 MeV) IS TRUE Lorraine Ford
i understabd this a stymbolic representation and not an actual mass. One might say,like an autobiography is not a person There is however some element of truth in it.The weiting does not show the whole truth, that makes the person.i think we lost some important distinction by getting rid of the standard kilogram. Mass is related to existence as fermion matter, and hence atomic mass. The effect it has on the environment is observation independent. The other side of the equation is a measurement product. A result obtained because of the unnatural relationship betreen measured and measuring apparatus/ To say that the REPRESENTATION OF emergent vaue and the REPRESENTATION OF intrinsic can be equated and further qualified by IS TRUE is not entirely truthful.