The issue is what the word 'perception' means, and it means the organisation of sensory information by the brain, and therefore is brain function. — Kenosha Kid

I agree organization of all sensory information is the function of the brain. From both an empiricist’s and a rationalist’s point of view. Certain flavors of idealists, on the other hand, while granting the authority of science with respect to natural law, are justified in forwarding logically predicated theoretical systems, until, if ever, our empirical knowledge supports the scientific dominion over them. That being said........

Sensation is the downstream side of sensory apparatus, that which the apparatus reports.

Sensation without a cause is an unconditioned natural event, which violates the principle of cause and effect, and is logically impossible on certain initial grounds.

To sustain the principle of cause and effect, there must be that which is antecedent to sensation, as the cause of it.

Each of the plurality of modes of sensation, as singular, dedicated effects, are internal to the body, all causes of sensations as objects in general, are external to the body, the apparatus being merely the natural physiology sufficient to mediate one with the other.

There are distinct modes of sensation, but that in itself does not require correspondingly distinct modes of cause, insofar as it is possible a single cause can affect separate modes of sensation, and that even simultaneously.

“Perception” is that conception which represents the appearance of an physical object, such that the sensory apparatus is caused to evoke a sensation as effect. As simple cause and effect, there is no organization, no cognition, being a strictly passive one-to-one transition of empirical information.
“Appearance” herein not to be confused with “looks like”.

Perception as brain function alone disregards the absolute necessity for causality of sensations, and at the same time, disregards the spatial distinction between the external cause and its internal effect.

“.....For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses....”
(Master and Commander of Outdated Theories, 1787)

Qualia aside, it turns out in the end, that it isn’t philosophy that “has a problem tolerating useful words associated with outdated theories”. It is science, or at least psychology, that hijacks a perfectly reasonable, established philosophical conception, and the domain of its employment, turning it into something it was never intended to represent.
—————

In humans, reason is a major contributor to that organising ability — Wayfarer

Sad commentary indeed, that in 13 pages, that word hasn’t once made an appearance. The only saving grace must be that reason is tacitly understood as given, which even if true, still leaves the mistakes being made under its name.

“They have forgotten the faces of their fathers”.

Perception as brain function alone disregards the absolute necessity for causality of sensations, and at the same time, disregards the spatial distinction between the external cause and its internal effect. — Mww

Likewise the flower is an effect of a seed dropping at a certain place. It dropped because of its initial location in another flower. And so on and on back to the original emergence of our universe out of its mother universe.

Any time you bring cause and effect into an issue there's a pending collapse of everything into a monolith. And it's all absolutely necessary starting with certain initial grounds.

So you end up close to Schopenhauer's take on perception.

I have been looking at so much activity on this thread, and trying to read it. The whole question of qualia is so complex. On the personal level, I wonder how much comes down to perception in the arts. Each of us may draw or paint a different impression of a person or an object. Part of this may come down to skill in the rendering of likenesses. However, it may also come down to the unique aspects of perception. For example, it may be that the appeal of Seurat or Van Gogh may be in connection with the way in which such artists are able to take viewers into specific and unique ways of seeing.

If there are other sources of our experiences (and there are, not just dreams and hallucinations, but biases, errors, and features of processing), and those sources aren't separable after the fact (and they're not), then there's always an unknown about whether we're seeing an object, some feature of processing data about it, or something else entirely. — Kenosha Kid

This is a helpful summary.

All we know is the river. We have reason to believe the river itself has tributaries, smaller streams that feed into the river. There are stories, but no one can reach the place where you could to see these tributaries first flowing on their own and then mixing themselves with the river. We believe that when we scoop up a handful of water, the waters of many tributaries drip from our hands, but we cannot name the source of even one drop, so it is all, for us, only part of the river.

Well, I’m of two minds about this.

On the one hand, the sorts of things you refer to, you can refer to them because they have known effects and conditions. Mirages are interesting but they don’t cause you to underestimate the population of African countries; priming bias is interesting but does not cause the Georgia blacktop to shimmer in August. It’s not all water, but a stew we’re dealing with: some ingredients, like the seasoning, are so thoroughly mixed and have so affected others that they cannot be separated, but you can still spot a bit of carrot and identify it as stew-flavored but still recognizably carrot. If we could not point out optical illusions, biases, and the like, and distinguish them from normal perception and inference, your argument couldn’t even get off the ground.

On the other hand, I am convinced by arguments from many quarters that we begin our questioning in the river of experience; we cannot step out of the river and observe it as it flows by, study what goes into it and where it comes from. We can identify some things as they go by, and we can make a science of that, but it is not the science of what flows by that tells you you’re in a river, and it is not that science that could tell you what the nature of that river is.

I was going to say something else: the casting of everything as uncertain has a sort of methodological modesty about it — like finding a room a mess and cutting off arguments about who left that plate on the table, and who was supposed to have put the LEGOs away, and saying: it’s a mess now, however it got that way; everyone contributed (we assume, but perhaps falsely) so it’s simplest for us to ignore all that and clean it up together. That’s a pragmatic decision, and it will work — maybe! — but it’s an assignment of responsibility rather than determining responsibility, and it’s a mistake to think that because we can assign responsibility that’s all there is to it, and especially to think that when we effectively don’t assign responsibility — by assigning it to everyone — that no one was in fact responsible.

So you end up close to Schopenhauer's take on perception. — frank

Pretty close, if you’re going from this, in WWR, 1.3., 1844, in Haldane/Kemp, 1909:

“...We shall consider these abstract ideas by themselves later, but, in the first place, we shall speak exclusively of the ideas of perception. These comprehend the whole visible world, or the sum total of experience, with the conditions of its possibility....”

Gotta be careful of the world as idea, though.

I'd just add that it doesn't then follow that we perceive images or, alternatively, respond to images. Instead we respond to things that we perceive, such as red flowers. — Andrew M

But the latter doesn't follow either. I mean, I agree it doesn't necessarily follow that we respond to images (as in 'I have an image of my house on this USB stick'), simply from the fact that such a definition is plausible, but then it also doesn't necessarily follow that we respond to things we perceive from the the fact that such an definition is only plausible. Neither case has been made nor refuted.

I think a lot is made here of the status of an intermediary in the process of perception, which seems to be to be wrongly hinged on epistemological concerns when it's rightly more ontological.

That something causes us to respond when seeing (what we call) a red flower is not in dispute. That there are intermediary step between the flower an our conscious 'logging' of having seen it is also (I hope) not in dispute.

But here all we have is a causal chain, flower>conscious logging event. There's no reason why we shouldn't extend that chain - seed>flower>conscious logging event - are we now properly said to be conscious of the seed? Does that become the proper object of our perception because it is primary in the chain of events?

So if I, instead of extending the chain, further dissemble it. Flower>retinal ganglia firing>conscious logging event, why can I not say the proper object of the conscious logging event is the firing of the retinal ganglia? We previously stopped the chain of causality at flower (not seed).

The ontological commitment seems to be that the proper object is the first outside of our body. We could just as easily say it's the first outside of our conscious awareness.

I was going full-tilt Schopenhauer. There is only one perceiver that is somehow magically multiplexed.

The ontological commitment seems to be that the proper object is the first outside of our body. We could just as easily say it's the first outside of our conscious awareness. — Isaac

That's where I was headed. Trying to specify the location and boundaries of the act of perception gets ambiguous.

There is only one perceiver that is somehow magically multiplexed. — frank

As each human is a replica of any other, in a general sense, why not?

I think Arthur just wants to say all of us cognize, judge, and experience, the same way.

I think Arthur just wants to say all of us cognize, judge, and experience, the same way. — Mww

Read it. It kicks ass.

I was going to say something else: the casting of everything as uncertain has a sort of methodological modesty about it — Srap Tasmaner

But also rigour. If you go in with the view that the answer to any sum is 5, you'll make a crappy calculator. The call to commit to the objective reality of what you see is a mere leap of faith. The true commitment to reality involves actively eliminating possible causes of our observations, not just only considering one (falsificationism).

Perception as brain function alone disregards the absolute necessity for causality of sensations, and at the same time, disregards the spatial distinction between the external cause and its internal effect. — Mww

Oh, is this your point? No, I don't think it does. In fact, I'd say that it organising suggests a thing to organise. Naming a function in a process doesn't suggest there's nothing else in that process.

Do you think reason can be understood as a brain fuction? — Wayfarer

Obviously, yeah. But also obviously you would not. I actually find the brain performing imaging much harder to wrap my head around than it performing reason.

I have, and used it as reference. It has its good parts.

Naming a function in a process doesn't suggest there's nothing else in that process. — Kenosha Kid

No, it doesn’t. But it can suggest too much included in the process.

I actually find the brain performing imaging much harder to wrap my head around than it performing reason. — Kenosha Kid

That's probably because you take it for granted. Naturalism tends to do that. Then it thinks it's 'explained' it.

I have, and used it as reference. It has its good parts. — Mww

I don't think you read it very closely then. He's not saying we're all similar. He's saying there is only one will that drives all events.

I actually find the brain performing imaging much harder to wrap my head around than it performing reason. — Kenosha Kid

I used to visualize thinking as a two step process of low-level quantum combinations and selection from complex mental structures which is then followed at times by slow linear mature reasoning.

The numerous shallow processes of imaging have been more accessible for instrumental research. Yet the puzzle seems to be how the brain manages the physics and chemistry of the structures for perceptual functional presentation to arise. This seems like a transcendental problem of fitting unlike pieces together to make a whole.

No, it doesn’t. But it can suggest too much included in the process. — Mww

So, in a crowded nutshell, what you're saying is that perception, as you understand it, is the end-to-end of the nervous system from stimulation of nerves through to awareness. All good, I understand. My understanding of the word is that it's the organisation of sensory information by the brain. So this is a matter for dictionaries and whatnot.

I used to visualize thinking as a two step process of low-level quantum combinations and selection from complex mental structures which is then followed at times by slow linear mature reasoning. — magritte

Jings! That makes it harder to wrap my head around, and I know quantum theory well. I see the occasional article stressing the importance of some quantum effect in brain function, so no doubt it has it's relevance. Personally I think of it functionally, and find Kahneman's two-system description compelling. No idea which bits (or qubits ho ho) might rely on quantum behaviour. Do you have any thoughts on the mechanics?

That's probably because you take it for granted. Naturalism tends to do that. Then it thinks it's 'explained' it. — Wayfarer

:fire:

Blind spot? I don't see no blind spot!

The call to commit to the objective reality of what you see is a mere leap of faith. — Kenosha Kid

I won’t disagree, but only ask: why should this be so? But that’s too much, too fast. What does it mean to take a leap of faith? Do you know what it means? How? Again, too much. We feel this compulsion to take such a leap, or feel we have already taken it and want to understand what we have done, or we feel that we should above all avoid taking any such leap and are worried that we may already have done so, without noticing. This is all worth thinking about, and I haven’t even gotten to the word “faith” yet, and there’s surely something to be said about that.

2. All human errors stem from impatience, a premature breaking off of a methodical approach, an ostensible pinning down of an ostensible object. — Kafka, Zürau Aphorisms

The true commitment to reality involves actively eliminating possible causes of our observations, not just only considering one (falsificationism). — Kenosha Kid

So you have a method in mind that will protect you from an impatient leap of faith. How did you arrive at this method, the method of elimination? If you’re going to talk of causes — of possible causes — of our observations, haven’t you already committed to quite a lot?

I don’t think we’re in a position yet to say what method can solve this problem — that before us is the possibility of a leap of faith and we are resistant, perhaps with good reason, to taking it. I don’t know how to solve such a problem. I don’t even understand why this is the problem we face, but it absolutely is. Before announcing how it is to be solved, I would spend some time trying to understand what sort of predicament this is, why it makes us uneasy, and see if we can learn, from the situation we are in, if it is possible to get out of it, and if it is, how.

If that’s what you got out of it, far be from me to say otherwise.

what you're saying is that perception, as you understand it, is the end-to-end of the nervous system from stimulation of nerves through to awareness. — Kenosha Kid

No, actually it isn’t.

My fault. Guess I didn’t make myself clear.

No worries. It was fun anyway.

Perhaps at some point "down the system" these things actually converge, in very primitive organisms but then they develop differently. The one thing that keeps coming to mind is that sense alone, is poor when compared to the intellect alone, in as much as we can separate them in actuality. — Manuel

I just don't see how that could be. My point is that you can't have one without the other. What could you be intellectualizing about if you had no sense? What form does your intellectualizing take if not sensory data (qualia)‽

I actually don't mind labels much. As in, you can be a total idealist and say that we create the world with our minds. Or you can be a metaphysical dualist. If the arguments are interesting and persuasive, that's what matters. I only dismiss "eliminitative materalism", because it's just very poor philosophy. — Manuel

I don't mind labels either as long as they are used in such a way that makes sense when parsed.
If "we" create the world with our minds, then where is the we in relation to our minds, and if the we, the world and mind are synonymous, then I don't see much use for the word, "mind", as there would only be a world and no mind and no we. Minds and we would simply be part if this strange world.

Can't help you with that, Harry. Unlike you (seem to be), I'm neither a subjectivist nor a introspection illusionist. — 180 Proof

I think that if you were actually paying attention then you'd know I'm neither of those, too. I'm an informationalist, or relationship/process philosopher. I'm trying to argue that your mind is an objective part if the world because it is information, or process, like everything else. You seem to be a naive realist if you think the world is composed of physical objects, like brains, instead of processes like minds, like the one you have direct access to right now and of which brains and other physical objects that you experience are models of other processes.

Maps are not the territory, but they are made of the same substance as the territory. For maps and their corresponding territory, it is easy to see the similarity because we are neither map nor territory and both map and territory can only be modeled as part of our mental processes. So the similarity has to do with how they are modeled, and the difference between mind and the "phyisical" objects is that one is the modeler (processor) and the others are what is being processed (models).

I just don't see how that could be. My point is that you can't have one without the other. What could you be intellectualizing about if you had no sense? What form does your intellectualizing take if not sensory data (qualia)‽ — Harry Hindu

It's unclear is this example would hold, but perhaps mathematics. Or, consider the following thought experiment: suppose a baby is put in a complete sensory isolation chamber, it's not inconceivable to me that they would have internal self stimulation of some kind. Of course, I can't say if this would happen, but it's possible.

[if] the world and mind are synonymous, then I don't see much use for the word, "mind", as there would only be a world and no mind and no we. Minds and we would simply be part if this strange world. — Harry Hindu

If that is the case, then what you say follows.

I don't think we are the world though, because if we were, I see no reason why we cannot, in principle, introspect to the bottom of things and figure out all the hard problems in physics by thought alone, absent experiment. Likewise with psychology, we would be transparent to ourselves, it seems to me.

The fact that we do need experiments and that the world science discovers does not work as our intuitive psychology thinks it does, suggests to me that many aspects of the world are hidden from us, and hence existent (in some admittedly obscure manner that's hard to verbalize ) independent from us.

It's unclear is this example would hold, but perhaps mathematics. Or, consider the following thought experiment: suppose a baby is put in a complete sensory isolation chamber, it's not inconceivable to me that they would have internal self stimulation of some kind. Of course, I can't say if this would happen, but it's possible. — Manuel

What is mathematics composed of if not the visual of black scribbles on white paper? If you're talking about what the scribbles represent, then I would still assume that you mean something real and observable, for if you didn't mathematics wouldn't be of much use.

What is internal self stimulation and would the baby be considered "thinking" when in this state? If so, what OF? Does hallucinating and dreaming qualify as thinking? If anything this latter example is evidence that the brain needs sensory input to function properly enough for the entire organism to survive long enough to be meaningful.

What is mathematics composed of if not the visual of black scribbles on white paper? If you're talking about what the scribbles represent, then I would still assume that you mean something real and observable, for if you didn't mathematics wouldn't be of much use. — Harry Hindu

Yeah, mathematics refers somehow to the world. They're probably symbols, but obviously no paper is needed, for blind people can do math, they interpret the stimulus through another medium either sound or touch.

What is internal self stimulation and would the baby be considered "thinking" when in this state? If so, what OF? Does hallucinating and dreaming qualify as thinking? If anything this latter example is evidence that the brain needs sensory input to function properly enough for the entire organism to survive long enough to be meaningful. — Harry Hindu

Good question. We don't have a good enough definition or conception of thinking in normal states. If you push me for an answer, I'd say yes, the baby is thinking. About what, I don't know. The best I can come up with is some kind of activity, which seeks some patterns in the dark.

I think dreaming can qualify as a kind of thinking, hallucinating sometimes may count as thinking or not, depends on reflection and explicitness.

Yes, I have been wondering about where dreaming and hallucinations are placed within qualia. This shows the way in which subjective consciousness takes on the role of distorting and giving an 'alternative' take on 'reality'. I once had a thread on dreams and this raised questions about the subconscious aspects of mental processing.

However, hallucinations are particularly interesting because so many people, especially in the form of -psychosis,'. It would appear that the mind is capable of playing tricks in distorting perception in waking consciousness at times. There is also the whole realm of illusions of perception, such as those described by Oliver Sacks. It is possible to even ask what are illusions? Part of thinking about illusions and delusions may come down to validation and falsification through understanding shared experiences of others. If I am seeing an alien being in a room and I am aware that I am the only one who can see the alien, this may give rise to my perception being a hallucination.

I won’t disagree, but only ask: why should this be so? But that’s too much, too fast. What does it mean to take a leap of faith? Do you know what it means? How? Again, too much. We feel this compulsion to take such a leap, or feel we have already taken it and want to understand what we have done, or we feel that we should above all avoid taking any such leap and are worried that we may already have done so, without noticing. This is all worth thinking about, and I haven’t even gotten to the word “faith” yet, and there’s surely something to be said about that. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, it's interesting, I think about it quite a lot. Personal view, I think faith is a necessary pragmatism. It's all well and good dithering on a philosophy forum and casting the seeds of doubt... In day-to-day reality, we need to act. I think human will necessitates little leaps of faith all the time, and it's a credit to the human mind that it's actually pretty great at leaping in the direction most of the time.

I don’t think we’re in a position yet to say what method can solve this problem — that before us is the possibility of a leap of faith and we are resistant, perhaps with good reason, to taking it. I don’t know how to solve such a problem. I don’t even understand why this is the problem we face, but it absolutely is. Before announcing how it is to be solved, I would spend some time trying to understand what sort of predicament this is, why it makes us uneasy, and see if we can learn, from the situation we are in, if it is possible to get out of it, and if it is, how. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, break it down, I dig your style. I don't think I'd argue that falsification is _the_ method, just a good method that we know works, certainly better than devotion to a particular thesis, admirable as that is in other ways. At root, falsification is open-mindedness but not to the extent that your brain falls out. It's not a barrier to proceeding in good faith, so it's very pragmatic, without being dogmatic or totalitarian.

Which is

No worries. It was fun anyway. — Mww

Always!

That something causes us to respond when seeing (what we call) a red flower is not in dispute. — Isaac

Unfortunately, in philosophical circles it sometimes is.

But here all we have is a causal chain, flower>conscious logging event. There's no reason why we shouldn't extend that chain - seed>flower>conscious logging event - are we now properly said to be conscious of the seed? Does that become the proper object of our perception because it is primary in the chain of events? — Isaac

I rather like that. And

why can I not say the proper object of the conscious logging event is the firing of the retinal ganglia? — Isaac

...and now I can see the sense in your earlier comment about homunculi.

So we can on your account consider (almost?) any point in the chain of events as the object of consciousness.

But presumably it would be an error to cut this chain of events off in such a way as to claim that some part was uncaused - that the flower was not the result of a seed (or bulb), or that the excitation of the rods and cones were not the result of light.

The point being, and it bemuses me to think it necessary to make the following points, that there are flowers, bulbs, light and nervous tissue; and further that when we talk about the flower, we are talking about the flower and not some odd construct such as the-consciousness-of flower or the-perception-of -flower; we can talk about flowers.

I'm not suggesting you think otherwise, Isaac, but I suspect that there might be those who erroneously think your account provides succour to such views.

Unless the representation is the knowledge, in which case there is no unknowable.The representation becomes a presentation, in that case. — Goldyluck

Yes, and things presenting themselves is exactly what we do know in the primary sense of knowing. The secondary sensing of 'knowing that' or propositional knowledge consists in beliefs expressed as true statements about the things which present themselves.

For me it makes no sense to speak of our perception as representation, it is better understood as presentation. It might make sense to speak of propositional knowledge as representation; that is propositional representation of the facts or actualities that are presented to us.

I'm pretty sure that the sound of the cars outside is no illusion. — Goldyluck

Why would you refer to the sound of the cars as a quale, though? You hear the cars, to be sure, does it make sense to say you are hearing a quale?

So if I, instead of extending the chain, further dissemble it. Flower>retinal ganglia firing>conscious logging event, why can I not say the proper object of the conscious logging event is the firing of the retinal ganglia? We previously stopped the chain of causality at flower (not seed). — Isaac

Good point!

I can think of a deflationary answer to why we shouldn't be conscious of the seed - because while the seed and its growing environment is a distal cause of the flower's behaviour in the environment we're perceiving in, it doesn't form part of the system of proximate causes that our perception is responding to in our current environment. Seed caused flower to be there, wind's making it move, we see the movement.

Maybe if I can steel man a bit - maybe the point you're making is that it's unclear exactly how to extend what we are conscious of into the system of proximate causes of our environment when the causal network that leads to our perceptual acts is ambiguous - how do you chunk it up into nodes, and which parts are perception? Definitely agree with the presence of that ambiguity. If what the object of perception is, is equated to the antecedent step to the conscious logging event, then I think it's quite clear that the retinal ganglia firing event is the object of perception.

I think we've got some resources at hand to construe that 'the antecedent step to the conscious logging event' isn't an appropriate definition of a perceived object. An appropriate definition of an object which was logged consciously yeah, but there's a difference between what goes into our perception and what we experience. On pain of losing the 'unlogged' parts of the perceptual process which continually shape the emerging landscape of the content of our conscious awareness.

Do you think it's right to say that the conscious logging event is part of the perceptual process, or is it an external process which perception just 'writes to' once it's finished? Perception makes a package, sends it to conscious awareness, done. Or is it like 'perception is online, sending live feed to conscious awareness as part my internal function' - is conscious awareness a 'receptor' of the output of the perceptual process - a terminal node - or is it an interior node of the process of perception?

I personally make a stink about perceptual intermediaries in part because of the above ambiguity - going strongly against construing conscious awareness as a terminal node/passive receptor of data. Could be wrong there though. One reason for the stink is that if you label the parts of that causal chain:

seed->flower->retinal ganglia->conscious logging event

with whether the constituent processes are part of the body's process of perception (under the conception that conscious logging isn't a terminal node) you get: seeds aren't, flowers aren't, retinal ganglia are, conscious logging events are. In that regard it looks like:

(seed->flower) = world states
(retinal ganglia->conscious logging event) = body states

IE it looks like:

world states -> body states

and there's no 'intermediary' between the body's perception and world.

Another, perhaps deeper criticism, is that while it's possible to construe perception as a causal chain with components, as an overall process it takes environmental or bodily states and 'maps them' to inferred values ; which makes it functional or relational, so more of an bidirectional arrow (reciprocal/feedback relationship) than a node.

Like world<-perception->environment.

A final point of contention is that if perception requires environmental foraging, and exploratory acts are treated as part of the perceptual process (eg, adjusting to a load due to perception of heaviness), the exploratory acts are proximate causes of changes in environmental hidden states (where the weight is held), and thereby in direct contact with environmental objects - as proximate causes. Shift the weight, therefore proximate cause of weight movement.