i.kurtzer (981102.1150EST)
[From Bill Powers (981102.-0725 MST)]
i.kurtzer (981101.2100EST)--
>We, the way that we have arranaged the hierarchy, yes.
>We have intensities below sensations. One the side, I have some
>reservations about Intensities at the
>lowest level..because A)all sensory tranducers are already
>functionally tuned to preferred stimuli so there is no reason to "build
>this up" from intensities B) i cannot think of any intensity I have
>noticed without it being already in the context of a sensation. So I
have
>seen "brighter" blues than other blues, but ALWAYS with blue..or green
>or whatnot, but never "bright" in absence of any sensation.
"Bright" is the name of a sensation. The name of the corresponding
intensity signal might be "lots of stimulation" without identifying the
modality.
Hmmm..That does seem strange to me. Lets say bright yellow and dim
yellow. So there are TWO sensations here as the above would imply? Its
seems far more reasonable that there is one sensation with two different
intensities.
Read Kofka, the old Gestalt psychologist. It
is possible to adopt a
viewpoint in which one is unable to say whether a stimulus was a flash or
light or a click of sound. He called the intensity level the "sensorium
commune."
There are cross-modal confusions and matchings..such as this tastes
very yellow..or that slowly bouncing blue ball should have a tuba chiming
to its bounces. But this does seem a very different situation..That is,
we can do "double-takes" at almost any level.
>This is in
>contrast to how we can determine the independence of sensation from
>configuration as there I can have blue's and green's without any
>configuration.Remember that I'm an engineer, not a philosopher. The lowest level of
perception, in my model, consists of those neural signals that come
directly out of sensory receptors. According to our physical models of the
world, the cause of a neural signal is a physical variable acting on the
sensory receptor to make it fire. The rate at which impulses are generated
depends on the intensity of the stimulus -- that is, the rate of energy
transfer. This is true of all sensory endings, although there are
differences in linearity and temporal effects. Once inside the nervous
system all we have are trains of impulses, which are direct functions of
the intensity of stimulation (regardless of the type of stimulation).
I agree that philosophy and engineering are different. And what follows
is in the main correct--though the rate hypothesis is probably going to
get chunked out the window. The question is whether we need a
new level of perception..and this question can be partially answered by
recourse to the logic of the levels we already have accepted. That is nor
more symbolic than 2+2, and should be followed with the same caveats. My
question is only this:When you say that there is one example of a
repetition/cycle, How is that different from a sequence E, E, ...
We don't confuse rocks for liberties so I suppose this difference
between cycles and sequences should be obvious as well.
i.