Georgina Woodward
It is not a matter of defining words like “reality” or detailing the physics or detailing the mechanisms. It is a matter of looking at the actual world:

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.

But in order for the most primitive life to have correct perception, this correct perception can only develop and be built out of low-level matter like particles, atoms and molecules also “correctly perceiving” aspects of the other low-level matter they interact with.

This necessary-for survival knowledge must be built from the ground up, on rock-solid real foundations. Necessary-for survival knowledge can’t be built on imaginary unreal foundations.

      Lorraine Ford
      What do you mean by 'correctly percive? Are you talking about fidelity of sensory perception? A creature without eyes sees nohing. A creature with only simple eyes sees darkness ansd light. Which of those organisms correctly percieves and analyses the enviroment in comparison to a sighted organism with complex eyes?

          Georgina Woodward
          Knowledge/ perception involves all the senses, not just sight, and not just the 5 (or whatever number) senses that human beings have.

          But 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.

          The point is that necessary-for-survival knowledge/ perception can’t be built on imaginary unreal foundations.

              Lorraine Ford
              imgine a simple lifeform with simple eyes, that hides when a moving shadow passes.But only half the time the shadow is associated with a materially real, potetially hostile presence. Reacting as if in danger has a survival advantage over a creature without simple eyes , even though the assumption of danger is fase half the time

                  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. (Such interactions can maybe be seen as a type of information exchange.)

                  The point is that necessary-for-survival knowledge/ perception can’t be built on imaginary unreal foundations.

                      Georgina Woodward
                      All of the senses work by processinglimited sensory input, not absolute objects, no matter which stimulus is used. Because environment than hearing and smell. Travel time of (pre)light exceeds travel time of sound and smells, and touch and taste are limited by only being able to sence what is in contact with the material body of the experiecing one, or very close to it . ii does not work for remote objects.

                        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.

                            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.

                                    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.

                                                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.

                                                          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.