[From Rupert Young (2018.03.17 14.50)]
Craic agus ceol!
(Rick Marken 2018-03-12_12:54:38]
Well, this is a bit of a philosophical discussion, but the nice
thing about philosophy, and ideas therein, is that they are like
hats. You can put them on, wear them, walk around in them, try them
out and see how they feel without having to accept them.
Some perceptions seem to clearly be illusions, such as RDS's, the
Ames room, the face on Mars. Perhaps we should not consider these as
special cases or aberrations, but that all perceptions are of this
nature.
Consider more everyday perceptual experiences like watching TV or
movies, viewing photographs, using a computer screen. These all work
because perceptions can be induced without the thing which they
supposedly represent actually existing. I.e. there is no analog “out
there.”
Or consider much of our general experiences, for control of
perceptions like fear, honesty, love, socialism, believing that more
guns make us safer, believing that there is an invisible sky fairy
looking over us or thinking that Brexit is a good idea. None of
these represent things that actually exist in independently of the
perceiver. For some of them, even, there is no possible
analog that could exist. If there were no humans (or other animals)
in existence then these concepts (perceptions) wouldn’t exist
either.
The thing about perceptions, I think, is that they introduce another
dimension to experience that provides perspectives and
concepts (which we control) that having nothing to do with the hard
reality of the physical world. As humans we live in this
experiential “realm” of abstractions rather than the actual physical
world. Also*,* there are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamt of in our philosophy. We only experience a minute fragment of
physical reality; only “visible” light, for example. If we were
suddenly able to directly perceive all the signals that are out
there we would be bombarded by an universe completely alien to our
experience. Of course, some perceptions, at the lower levels anyway, form
due to our interactions with the actual physical world. However,
perhaps, rather than considering
perceptions as analogs of states of affair "out there" with some
being illusions we should consider all perceptions as illusions with
some being analogs of states of affair “out there”. So, I’d say (to csgnet), try out this “all perceptions are
illusions” hat for a while and see how it feels. You never know, you
might decide you don’t want to take it off!
Regards,
Rupert
···
[From Rupert Young (2018.03.12 18.05)]
(Rick Marken (2018.03.12.1045)]
RY: That's ok as far as it goes, for some cases,
but I don’t think it reflects the whole picture. As
RDS’s show you can have a perception for something that
doesn’t exist; there is no external analog. There is no
shape in the environment that corresponds to the
perception, though there are the basic constituents
which form the perception, via the perceptual function
(which is internal). All perceptions are illusions!
RM: They are not illusions; they are analogs of
aspects of the reality that exists “out there”; the
reality that described by the models of physics and
chemistry. Even the perceptions that we consider to be
illusions are not, themselves, illusions. They are
illusions to the extent that they differ from what we we
“know”, on different grounds, to be out there. For
example, in the Ames room illusion, we perceive a person
to be growing or shrinking as they walk from one corner to
another. This is what we perceive; we consider it to be an
illusion because we know, on other grounds, that the
person is not actually shrinking or growing.
RM: But on second thought, given this definition of
illusion, perhaps it is correct to say that all
perceptions are illusions, at least to the extent that
perceptions differ from what we know from physics and
chemistry to be what is actually going on “out there”. So
the taste of lemonade could be called an illusion since,
per chemistry, there is no unitary entity out there that
corresponds to this perception; what is actually out there
is concentrations of different types of molecules. Same is
true for this table top here, which looks like a solid
entity but which I kn ow from physics and chemistry to
also by a tightly bound collection of atoms that are
mainly empty space.
RM: But on third thought, I think I would prefer to
reserve the term “perceptual illusion” for perceptions
that conflict with what we know based on other perceptions
rather than physical models. The reason is that
perceptions defined as illusions in the latter way are
adaptive; perceptions defined as illusions in the former
way are not. The Ames room, size change perception is
defined as an illusion in the formerway; because it
conflicts with what we know based on other perceptions. We
can see that people only change size when they are in the
Ames room. If the outside world were organized as it is
in the Ames room – with linear perspective consistently
conflicting with actual distance – we would be having
this illusion all the time. This would be maladaptive
since we would never be sure whether an approaching object
was large or small. However, perceiving collections of
atoms as a solid entity, like the table top, seems
perfectly adaptive; you know what will happen if you set
something on it (it won’t drop through), for example.
RM: So I'm in favor of sticking with the definition of
perception as an analog of a states of affair “out there”
and referring to perceptions as “illusions” when we can
perceive them only under special circumstance, where the
perception differs from what we see in all other
circumstances.
RM: Why not just define perception the
way it’s defined in B:CP: A signal inside a
system that is a continuous analog of a sate
of affairs outside the system.