We simplify in order to understand complexity but in doing so can fail to realise that reality is more nuanced than that. So a representation of something is not necessarily the same as the thing itself. Now it can be of course but just not always. As it can equally be an approximation. And an approximation of something is obviously not the same as the thing itself. It merely shares some characteristics with it. And that is specifically what I mean by representation and is not misappropriation at all

surreptitious57 wrote:We simplify in order to understand complexity but in doing so can fail to realise that reality is more nuanced than that. So a representation of something is not necessarily the same as the thing itself. Now it can be of course but just not always.

A representation is never the same as the thing itself, by definition.

ep·re·sen·ta·tion (rpr-zn-tshn, -zn-)
n.
1. The act of representing or the state of being represented.
2. Something that represents, as:
a. An image or likeness of something.
b. An account or statement, as of facts, allegations, or arguments.
c. An expostulation; a protest.
d. A presentation or production, as of a play.
3. The state or condition of serving as an official delegate, agent, or spokesperson.
4. The right or privilege of being represented by delegates having a voice in a legislative body.
5. A body of legislators that serve on behalf of a constituency.
6. Law A statement of fact made by one party in order to induce another party to enter into a contract.
7. Mathematics A homomorphism from an algebraic system to a similar system of matrices.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/representation

surreptitious57 wrote: As it can equally be an approximation. And an approximation of something is obviously not the same as the thing itself. It merely shares some characteristics with it. And that is specifically what I mean by representation and is not misappropriation at all

A representation is an abstraction of some aspects of a thing to some other entity. It can be a delegate who abstracts some power or influence of the person or state he represents. It can be a pictorial likeness that abstracts aspects of the appearance of a thing. It could be no more than a symbol that makes reference to a thing but has none of the properties of the thing i.e. it abstracts the identity of the thing, not it's properties.
If it was the thing itself it would not be a representation of the thing, it would be the thing. If it possess every aspect of the thing it would be another instance of the thing, a duplicate, not a representation.

I like the idea of self-representation. But I call the apple it's own representation to make the point that there is no representation of a percept. So that is what I meant. Aside from fucking with you two.

You do not need to imagine you are eating an apple when you have an apple in hand.

In the same manner a brain does not need to imagine a perception of an apple when an apple is there to be perceived.

Representational thinking and modeling leads one off the trail.

SpeedOfSound wrote:I like the idea of self-representation. But I call the apple it's own representation to make the point that there is no representation of a percept. So that is what I meant. Aside from fucking with you two.

You do not need to imagine you are eating an apple whne you have an apple in hand.

In the same manner a brain does not need to imagine a perception of an apple when an apple is there to be perceived.

Representational thinking and modeling leads one off the trail.

What do you think is the same, and what is different, between looking at an apple and imagining an apple?

GrahamH wrote:
A representation is an abstraction of some aspects of a thing to some other entity

This is a more accurate description of what I meant by approximation as representation. If one takes the example of a photo of a tree not being the same as the tree itself one can see how the former is more an abstraction of the latter rather than an approximation of it. For that is a more nuanced and correct interpretation. A perfect example of how reality is not as binary or as simplistic as we sometimes perceive it to be for reasons of practicality

GrahamH wrote:
what is different between looking at an apple and imagining an apple

Looking at an apple is a physical experience as it has property and dimension

Imagining an apple is a phenomenal experience as it is a mental construct

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:I like the idea of self-representation. But I call the apple it's own representation to make the point that there is no representation of a percept. So that is what I meant. Aside from fucking with you two.

You do not need to imagine you are eating an apple whne you have an apple in hand.

In the same manner a brain does not need to imagine a perception of an apple when an apple is there to be perceived.

Representational thinking and modeling leads one off the trail.

What do you think is the same, and what is different, between looking at an apple and imagining an apple?

The question illustrates your problem with all of this.

surreptitious57 wrote:

GrahamH wrote:
A representation is an abstraction of some aspects of a thing to some other entity

This is a more accurate description of what I meant by approximation as representation. If one takes the example of a photo of a tree not being the same as the tree itself one can see how the former is more an abstraction of the latter rather than an approximation of it. For that is a more nuanced and correct interpretation. A perfect example of how reality is not as binary or as simplistic as we sometimes perceive it to be for reasons of practicality

Representation is a deep subject. If you and I agree that circles are the players of one team and squares that of another we have a representation model between us. We can also think about natural representation as there being the track of animal representing it. In all of these cases we have in our model a person or more, who is of agreement on a representational model.

So representation has the added layer of subjectivity and models. I assure you there is nothing like that to be found anywhere in a brain. There are no little people in our brains. Of course, right? We all know that is false yet we still think and talk about brains as if it were true.

A photo captures light in such a way as to play back the same circumstance of light as if we were looking at the original object. This makes the percept closer to true than as if we looked at a drawing and even closer than imagining an apple. So a photo is a photo. Not a representation though we could agree that it is if we choose.

So I forgot. How did all this get started?

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:I like the idea of self-representation. But I call the apple it's own representation to make the point that there is no representation of a percept. So that is what I meant. Aside from fucking with you two.

You do not need to imagine you are eating an apple whne you have an apple in hand.

In the same manner a brain does not need to imagine a perception of an apple when an apple is there to be perceived.

Representational thinking and modeling leads one off the trail.

What do you think is the same, and what is different, between looking at an apple and imagining an apple?

The question illustrates your problem with all of this.

Perhaps I should have qualified the question. What physical differences occur when you look at the apple or imagine the apple? What goes on your brain?

Seeing an apple is a visual experience which the brain then attempts to characterise based on its pre existing understanding of what an apple is. This pre existing understanding if it exists is stored in the memory. Imagining an apple is a phenomenal experience which may nonetheless derive itself from memory based on the best available approximation of whatever it is that the brain is imagining. Anything which has no basis within memory cannot in theory be imagined as all imagination by default has to have some basis on which to reference the thing in question

surreptitious57 wrote:Seeing an apple is a visual experience which the brain then attempts to characterise based on its pre existing understanding of what an apple is.

What might the form of such understanding take? How do you think it gets into a brain? How might that understanding apply to the apple stimilus hitting the visual cortex?

surreptitious57 wrote: This pre existing understanding if it exists is stored in the memory.

I think it is very problematic to suppose a visual memory where such information is stored. How is it accessed and applied?

I prefer to think of these things in terms of adaptive classifiers (detectors). The 'memory' is then integral with the function. No access processes are required, it just works in parallel. The classifier adapts to a stimulus pattern to become a detector for that pattern. All you need to generate the 'understanding' is to look at an apple and have the classifier adapt to that pattern.
Once that happens the classified will naturally identify any likeness of an apple it is subsequently exposed to.

surreptitious57 wrote:Imagining an apple is a phenomenal experience which may nonetheless derive itself from memory based on the best available approximation of whatever it is that the brain is imagining. Anything which has no basis within memory cannot in theory be imagined as all imagination by default has to have some basis on which to reference the thing in question

All you need to imagine an apple is to stimulate the apple classifier to some degree. The same network that form in response to the original apple pattern is the meaningful reference to apple likeness and activation of that network activates that likeness, to greater or lesser extent.

The classifier / detector is in some sense a representation of an apple appearance, but it is not like a photo of an apple. It is not something that can be observed.

The exploratory gap is where phenomenal states cannot be explained just in terms of the brain being simply a physical organ This would be compatible with supervenience which states that consciousness emanates from the brain but is not reducible to it. The problem here however is explaining where phenomenal experience does comes from. It cannot come from outside of the brain as consciousness is a by product of it

The experience argument states that knowledge of something is not the same as experience of it. This makes sound logical sense because experience is subjective whereas knowledge is objective. Even if one has a subjective opinion on something they have not experienced it is not the same as having one on something they have experienced. Even if both opinions are the same. For one is imaginative while the other is real

surreptitious57 wrote:The exploratory gap is where phenomenal states cannot be explained just in terms of the brain being simply a physical organ This would be compatible with supervenience which states that consciousness emanates from the brain but is not reducible to it. The problem here however is explaining where phenomenal experience does comes from. It cannot come from outside of the brain as consciousness is a by product of it

The experience argument states that knowledge of something is not the same as experience of it. This makes sound logical sense because experience is subjective whereas knowledge is objective. Even if one has a subjective opinion on something they have not experienced it is not the same as having one on something they have experienced. Even if both opinions are the same. For one is imaginative while the other is real

TBH I don't agree with much of what you wrote there, although it is a conventional sort of view.

To start I don't accept that 'two forms of knowing'. It is highly parsimonious. How such would such a dual system evolve? How does a dual system interact? How can consciousness 'emanate from a brain'?

I think we have to reconsider the 'know' in 'know what it's like'. Start by supposing that there might be just one underlying mechanism for knowledge processing in brains. What if knowing what it's like to see an apple has a lot in common with classifying a visual stimulus as like some previous pattern of an apple.

I do not think that there are two types of knowing rather that everything that is experienced falls within a single spectrum This is compatible with materialism although I try to avoid the label myself because it has dogmatic implications. Although everything that is known about the natural world is physical that does not equate to all physical states being the same. So within the spectrum there is significant variation with regard to experience and knowledge as it pertains to consciousness Single spectrum interpretation may appear more simplistic than a binary one but that does not however take into account diversification within that spectrum. So it incorporates different types of understanding such as the phenomenal and the physical. Although materialism suggests that the phenomenal is also physical too. This is further evidence of why simple interpretations should be avoided as much as possible

Haven't had much time for this lately but hopefully I can detail my current thinking on the Great Misery of consciousness soon. I may as well start with what's not so much the same between imagining an apple and seeing one. Should explain a lot.

If I am looking at an apple there is an array of actives piking neurons, with thalamo-cortical feedback in the striate cortex. There is also a bundle of network selected features in two paths over the top and under the brain. There is also activation from the superior colliculus and several retinal maps in the pulvinar of the thalamus.

The under path to the temporal lobe delivers a large bundle of features know here-forth as Graham's Object Recognizers. There are many of them for the apple and they all stay active during the viewing of an apple as well as all the other bundles mentioned.

This is a system that includes the apple and the light in the environment. It's not a representation of anything, it's a system of spiking neurons. As long as the apple is there and the light is on it will stay in the state it is in and the entire state is available in the Global Workspace. Attention can be volitionally directed at any part of it. The most stable thing in this system is the apple itself.

Over time the attended elements and GW will modulate and take on millions of states. The overall percept is not a thing like philosloppers and would-be neuroscientists like to pretend. It is an evolving system of states. Millions of them! Did I say that already?

There is no reason to pick one part of this entire system and claim it is the maker of consciousness. Consciousness is the entire process and the particular experience had is dependent upon the ENTIRE process.

The apple is not fucking conscious! But then neither is the fucking brain. As much as this saddens us and fucks the whole pooch for the idealist this is the fact of physicalism.

I mostly agree with that.


"millions of states" is a bit meaningless. Millions of spikes, millions of connections, changing by the millisecond. Of course.

A tornado is millions of parts, millions of collisions, changing by the millisecond. Consider as the parts there is no tornado, only parts. To perceive a tornado is to make a generalisation, to compress vast complexity down to a synthetic 'view' . I think we are chasing tornadoes, not motes of dust. You can be reductionist about it as identify the tornado as the motes of dust and N2 & O2 molecules, but that isn't the appearance we are trying to explain. The appearance is the big swirly thing.

I think the same applies to experiences. The massive complex swirling and pulsing across the brain is indeed the physical reality, but the subjective part is the more generalised synthetic view. Not of the swirling pulsing spiking complexity in this case, because that's locked away inside the skull, but a generalisation of that complexity none the less.

Tell us about your view of similarities and differences between looking at an imagining an apple.

GrahamH wrote:I mostly agree with that.


"millions of states" is a bit meaningless. Millions of spikes, millions of connections, changing by the millisecond. Of course.

A tornado is millions of parts, millions of collisions, changing by the millisecond. Consider as the parts there is no tornado, only parts. To perceive a tornado is to make a generalisation, to compress vast complexity down to a synthetic 'view' . I think we are chasing tornadoes, not motes of dust. You can be reductionist about it as identify the tornado as the motes of dust and N2 & O2 molecules, but that isn't the appearance we are trying to explain. The appearance is the big swirly thing.

I think the same applies to experiences. The massive complex swirling and pulsing across the brain is indeed the physical reality, but the subjective part is the more generalised synthetic view. Not of the swirling pulsing spiking complexity in this case, because that's locked away inside the skull, but a generalisation of that complexity none the less.

And just how is it that they research tornadoes in your opinion? Do they create dozens of words synonymous with tornadoes and assemble them in differing ways? That is how

If states and evolution of states in a system is meaningless to you then you need to find a different hobby. This is not for you.

GrahamH wrote:Tell us about your view of similarities and differences between looking at an imagining an apple.

If you imagine an apple for ten seconds (a difficult task, try it!), There will be some patterns in those states that we could difference out over many trials and find same in seeing an apple. About .01% of them. It's the .01 that we confuse with consciousness though so it shur-seems important.

What you will not have is a clear and stable persisting image of an apple. It takes an apple to do that.