Perception of Reality

Cal, Peikoff's discussion does not contradict Rand, if only because she validated it while she was still alive and long before he wrote OPAR. Once again, you have to understand what they mean by "direct perception." Recall that Rand uses the term in the passage I quoted, viz.,

When we speak of "direct perception" or "direct awareness," we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery.

It is clear from this passage that by "direct perception," Rand does not mean by it what you mean. What she is saying is that your knowledge comes to you "directly" through perception; the knowledge that perception is an integration of sensations is indirect (i.e., inferential). So "direct perception" in this context simply refers to evidence that is available non-inferentially. Such evidence is arrived at through perception not sensations.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 1/19, 8:18am)

Post 41

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 8:19am

Perception is not in any way interpretation.

Cal wrote:
Oh yes, it is. Just look it up in the dictionary

per�cep�tion
n.

1. The process, act, or faculty of perceiving.
2. The effect or product of perceiving.
3. Psychology.
a. Recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory.
b. The neurological processes by which such recognition and interpretation are effected.

Hmmm. Let's analyze that:

per�cep�tion
*noun*<~

1. The process, act, or faculty of perceiving.
2.The effect or product of perceiving.
3. Psychology.
a. Recognition and interpretation **of** sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory.
b. The neurological processes by which such recognition and interpretation are effected.

The more accurate word to use:

per�ceive
*transitive verb*<~~

1.)To become aware of directly through any of the senses, especially sight or hearing.

The meaning of a transitive verb, is incomplete without a direct object [as opposed to an indirect object, which is always a noun or pronoun]. Allow me to demonstrate:

INCOMPLETE
The table holds.

COMPLETE
The table holds three dinner plates and a bowl of spaghetti.

INCOMPLETE
The senses percieves.

COMPLETE
The senses percieves the table with three dinner plates and a bowl of spaghetti.

The direct object, is the "whom?" or "what?", which is preceded by the transitive verb.
Likewise, with our perceptions, the "whom" or "what?" is always preceded by the "that", which we percieve or sense.

Post 42

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 8:43am

Cal, perhaps you will see that Peikoff does not contradict Rand if I tell you that when he says our perception of reality is direct, he means only that it is reality we perceive, not some representation or model of "things in themselves." You have to see the statement in context--the context of the view he is arguing against.

And I believe that is exactly what you said at one point, but as a side issue. You are encountering opposition here partly because others, including me, were mindful of the context, and assumed that you were also.

Post 43

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 8:47am

I'd like to add that when I say "interpretation" is involved in perception, I do not mean in the sense of musical interpretation, where anything goes. I mean it in the sense of "the only possible meaning," as deemed by the perceiver.

Post 44

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 9:52am

Well, you people apparently think that there is no difference between Peikoff and Rand in this regard and that what I wrote in fact doesn't really contradict their ideas. On the basis of what I read in the quoted texts I tend to disagree, but never mind. If it's true, this means that there is also no essential disagreement between the Wikipedia text and Objectivism, and that is what started this whole thread.

Post 45

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 1:22pm

Two of the things often missed when talking of perception are ...

1) the organismo-environment complex
2) that perception occurs along a passage of time

Indirect perception theorists love to take the "still picture" as their perception model. A still picture ignores both of the points above. We don't interact with a picture as we do "in" reality. Also, you can stare at a picture all day long -- and the image is unchanged. This is not how perception (of reality) actually occurs.

JJ Gibson said that we don't see with the eyes, but that we see with the eyes, in the head, on a body, planted on or moving along a surface, with a fixed or relatively-moving light source. Motion is a key factor in perception. Nothing is static. Smells will be stronger or weaker, according to the motions of the winds. Objects will be larger or smaller, according to whether we approach them, or draw away. Sounds, themselves, change -- in relation to motion and head position. This is how bats navigate, through microsecond differentials of soundwaves returning to each different ear. There are even differences in touch, depending on the variable pressure, or friction, that we exert on our environment -- or it on us.

Indirect perception can't account for the temporally-variant, organismo-environment complex, direct perception can.

Ed

Post 46

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 1:54pm

Ed:

Indirect perception can't account for the temporally-variant, organismo-environment complex, direct perception can.

That's simply incorrect, it's the only explanation possible. I suggest that you read the chapter 11: "Dismantling the witness protection program" of Dennett's Consciousness explained, or better, read the whole book. It's a gold mine of information, which sometimes may surprise you.

Post 47

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 1:55pm

An interesting fact: even when you are staring at an object steadily, your eyeballs are in fact in constant, rapid motion, continually scanning and updating.

Post 48

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 3:12pm

Cal,

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Dissent/0015_9.shtml#194

Hmph!

Ed

Post 49

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 3:26pm

Rodney:

An interesting fact: even when you are staring at an object steadily, your eyeballs are in fact in constant, rapid motion, continually scanning and updating.

That reminds me of a fascinating experiment that Dennett describes:

Amazingly, a computer equipped with an automatic eye-tracker can detect and analyze the lift-off in the first few milliseconds of a saccade, calculate where ground zero will be, and before the saccade is over, erase the word on the screen at ground zero and replace it with a different word of the same length. What do you see? Just the new word, and with no sense at all of anything having been changed. As you peruse the text on the screen, it seems to you for all the world as stable as if the words were carved in marble, but to another person reading the same text over your shoulder (and saccading to a different drummer) the screen is aquiver with changes.

The effect is overpowering. When I first encountered an eye-tracker experiment, and saw how oblivious subjects were (apparently) to the changes flickering on the screen, I asked if I could be a subject. I wanted to see for myself. I was seated at the apparatus, and my head was immobilized by having me bite on a "bite bar." This makes the job easier for the eye-tracker, which bounces an unnoticeable beam of light off the lens of the subject's eye, and analyzes the return to detect any motion of the eye. While I waited for the experimenters to turn on the apparatus, I read the text on the screen. I waited and waited, eager for the trials to begin. I got impatient> "Why don't you turn it on?" I asked. "It is on," they replied.

From: Daniel Dennett Consciousness explained

Post 50

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 3:58pm

Cal (regarding Dennett ... ),

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/0490.shtml

Hmph!

Ed

Post 51

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 4:40pm

Ed: thanks for the link. The posts by Laj are excellent, he can formulate it all much better than I can do.

Post 52

Thursday, January 19, 2006 - 7:00pm

Cal, an excerpt from Dennett ...

==============
And even beavers, unlike professional human engineers, do not consciously and deliberately plan the structures they build. And finally, WE (unlike PROFESSIONAL human storytellers) do not consciously and deliberately figure out what narratives to tell and how to tell them; like spider webs, our tales are SPUN BY US; our human consciousness, and our narrative selfhood, is their PRODUCT, not their SOURCE.
==============

Now, if I -- hypothetically -- accept Dennett's hypothesis (and attempt a noncontradictory integration/validation of it), then I would have to say that Dennett himself did not ...

==============
... consciously and deliberately figure out what [hypothesis] to tell and how to tell [it]!"
==============

Cal, I trust you to confirm to me as to whether that is absurd. Dennett's hypothesis isn't even Dennett's hypothesis? And he had no part in formulating it?? Now that sounds like hocus-pocus to me. Mere child-talk.

Ed

Post 53

Friday, January 20, 2006 - 5:17am

The experiment Dennett describes sounds fascinating. (I myself, in my comment, was merely repeating something I had read decades ago in Scientific American.)

By the way, notice that I didn't say "when you think you are staring at an object steadily, your eyeballs are in fact in constant, rapid motion," I said "when you are staring at an object steadily, your eyeballs are in fact in constant, rapid motion." If one habitually speaks and thinks in the former way, confusion piles upon confusion, and you get the intellectual chaos of modern thought.

(Edited by Rodney Rawlings on 1/20, 8:16am)

Post 54

Friday, January 20, 2006 - 10:05am

Ed:

Cal, I trust you to confirm to me as to whether that is absurd. Dennett's hypothesis isn't even Dennett's hypothesis? And he had no part in formulating it?? Now that sounds like hocus-pocus to me. Mere child-talk.

It may seem absurd when you read it out of context. Dennett is arguing here against the notion of a single "I", a "soul" that is steering the brain, creating thoughts in the brain (the "narratives" and "tales"); instead that what we perceive as the "I" is the result of the brain processes (it is the thoughts that form consciousness and the "I").

Post 55

Friday, January 20, 2006 - 5:06pm

Cal wrote,

It may seem absurd when you read it out of context. Dennett is arguing here against the notion of a single "I", a "soul" that is steering the brain, creating thoughts in the brain (the "narratives" and "tales"); instead that what we perceive as the "I" is the result of the brain processes (it is the thoughts that form consciousness and the "I")

Of course, someone must have these thoughts. Thoughts don't occur independently of a thinking person. A thought is a mental action, and every action requires an entity to perform it. The entity that performs my thoughts is who? It is I. Therefore, what I observe as the "I" are not the thoughts that form my consciousness, but my consciousness itself; otherwise, there would be nothing to do or have the thoughts. Thoughts don't have themselves, any more than an action performs itself. Just as something must act, so someone must think, feel, judge, etc. It is true that one's soul or consciousness does not "steer" the brain. The consciousness--the organ that thinks and reasons--is the brain, as viewed introspectively by its owner. Consciousness does not exist apart from or independently of the brain; it is simply the subjective manifestation of (a certain part of) the brain's activity. There is no "interaction," as it were, between the mind and the brain, any more than there is between digestion and the stomach or between vision and the eyes. If this is what Dennett is saying, then is certainly correct. However, if what he is saying that our concept of the "I" is simply the thoughts that form our consciousness, then he is guilty of positing actions without an entity to perform them.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 1/20, 5:12pm)

Post 56

Friday, January 20, 2006 - 11:59pm

Bill, re your post 55:

Do you see no inconsistency between claiming on the one hand (and
using Dennett's way of expressing this) that "consciousness is what
the brain does" and on the other hand that there is an "I" which "acts"?

("The entity that performs *my* thoughts is who? It is *I*," you say,
but on the other hand: "Consciousness [...] is simply the subjective manifestation of (a certain part of) the brain's activity.")

BTW, possibly helping with the issue of what Dennett is saying:
An analogy he uses for our feeling of an "I" is a reverse analogy to a virtual parallel processor produced on a serially-processing computer;
he describes our feeling of an "I" as being like a virtual serial processor
produced by a parallel-processing computer.

Ellen

Edit: punctuation.
___

(Edited by Ellen Stuttle
on 1/21, 12:01am)

Post 57

Saturday, January 21, 2006 - 12:59am

I don't mean to speak for Bill, and I look forward to response from him, but I would like to comment on Ellen's thoughts. Or, perhaps I should say: To comment on the result of that brain process' (the brain associated with the figure referred to here as "Ellen") thoughts -- since that process is taken, by Dennettelians, to be the identity of the figure "Ellen."

===================
Do you see no inconsistency between claiming on the one hand ... that "consciousness is what
the brain does" and on the other hand that there is an "I" which "acts"?
===================

Ellen, judging by your post, you appear to defend epiphenomenalism, is that correct? Anyway, here is a response ...

The phrase "consciousness is what the brain does" is problematic. This is true because, though we could not conceptualize without our brains, we do not conceptualize "with" our brains. Higher animals have near-human brains, but they don't conceptualize. They aren't ever aware of that which is entirely unavailable to perception (ie. abstractions), as humans are. A human-specific, property dualism best explains this aspect of reality.

===================
("The entity that performs *my* thoughts is who? It is *I*," you say,
but on the other hand: "Consciousness [...] is simply the subjective manifestation of (a certain part of) the brain's activity.")
===================

The phrase "Consciousness [...] is simply the subjective manifestation of (a certain part of) the brain's activity." -- requires at least one qualification: That the subjective (1st person) view of consciousness -- is the "objective" view of it. Others, attempting to elucidate MY consciousness, would be in a "necessarily-subjective" position. Only I am privy to this universally-personal experience. Only I, via introspection, can fully, objectively experience my stream of consciousness. Others must merely make inference, they don't have the direct access that I do.

In all other cases besides consciousness, the 3rd person view is the objective view -- but this case is reversed when switching from existence to consciousness. Consciousness is, always, an individuated phenomenon.

Ed

Post 58

Saturday, January 21, 2006 - 1:13am

Back in post 19, Cal wrote ...

====================
Perception is not merely receiving signals from the outside world. It is a process wherein the brain constructs an interpretation, i.e. a model of the outside world on the basis of these signals and on what is stored in memory. This process has to be learned ...
====================

Then how do you explain the immediate perception of newborn animals (animals that successfully navigate Earth -- within seconds of birth)?

Ed

Post 59

Saturday, January 21, 2006 - 2:14am