• Ludwig V
    1.8k
    And we must include eye movement and lens focusing (i.e. ciliary muscle) in this too - your eye palpates the scene in its motion and focusing which is part of your distinct familiarity with 3D space.Apustimelogist
    Yes. In terms of focusing, there is also the "squinting" that aligns the eyes so that they can focus on the same objects. (Hold up a finger at arm's length in front of you. Move it gradually towards you. You will find that you have to adjust your eyes to follow it. If you don't, you'll find you see two images of the finger. Then there's the peculiarity of how one sees one's own nose.) But none of that is 2D information. The ears work differently. They apparently note the difference when a given sound arrives at each ear and compute the direction from that. How knowledge of my own body's position works - or our balance sense - I have no idea.
    But it's also true that at greater distances, we rely on 2D information.
    (I like the idea that my eye "palpates" the scene. My hands and feet also palpate my surroundings. In the second case, it is clearly not 2D information.)

    I would say maybe there is something like intelligibility in common with non-human life.Apustimelogist
    It would seem you are a minimalist on this question. Let's not forget the differences between dogs and bacteria. There's not one answer for all non-human life. There's a spectrum. What complicates the issue even more is that, IMO, the relationship we can form with (the "higher" forms of life") actually affects, not only our judgement, but also how those creatures behave and consequently the practices that they and we can share. That shouldn't be a surprise. We learn to be human - what being human is - through our interactions with those around us.
    But then, there also people with whom we do not share everything. As in the holocaust and other examples of inhuman or bestial treatment meted out by human beings - not to mention occasions when we find the behaviour of others unintelligible - there are examples all around us.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    I'm under the impression that there was a hierarchical relationship between Quine and Davidson. That may or may not be termed "philosophical oppression". I say that it might have been such a thing, for all I know.

    Epicurus was not like that, for example. He considered slaves as equals, not only to each other, but to himself as well.

    Epicurus was therefore a better role model than Quine, as far as Ethics goes.
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    But none of that is 2D information.Ludwig V

    Well, yes it is 3D information in the sense that the objective world seems to be spatially 3D. I'm just saying that we can only navigate this visually, on a 2D space of the retina.

    Maybe proprioception and body motion you can argue actually is much more directly 3D...

    [Edit: and I am not sure 3D body information is entirely trivial since no single joint in your body has access to all possible degrees of freedom of motion in a 3D space. It is conceivable to me that information of movement in a single joint is not sufficient for a brain to infer 3D space - rather I imagine, many joints are needed and possibly even other information like vestibular and visual, at least for 3D space as we know it.]

    ... But then the inference about 3D space as you see it in vision is then a consequence of how body motion changes a 2D image. The non-trivial way in which this happens allows the inference of 3D space, but I would say that this can equally seen as just transitions in 2D patterns on the retina interacting with proprioceptive and other kinds of sensory information. All the visual information about space is inherently 2D. For me, 3D visual perception is not some direct perception of 3D information - you only ever have 2D visual information. Rather, its your ability to enact predictions about 3D space through motion, and your inherent familiarity with that.

    It would seem you are a minimalist on this question.Ludwig V

    What would non-minimalism be?
  • Ludwig V
    1.8k
    All the visual information about space is inherently 2D.Apustimelogist
    It is certainly true that all the visual information about space can be represented in 2D. It's called a picture, and you can walk around the world thinking of yourself as watching a movie. That's why I draw your attention to the other senses, since there is no equivalent in those contexts. You mention proprioception and body motion as possible 3D. But how could we have 3D bodies in a 2D world? BTW, you are forgetting that we have 3D hearing as well.

    Well, yes it is 3D information in the sense that the objective world seems to be spatially 3D. I'm just saying that we can only navigate this visually, on a 2D space of the retina.Apustimelogist
    If we only had a 2D picture and no other information, I don't think we could even conceive of a 3D space, never mind navigate it. Our intepretation of that 2D image is conditioned by what we know from all our senses. Without that, I don't think we could even make sense of the possibility of a 3D space.

    For me, 3D visual perception is not some direct perception of 3D information - you only ever have 2D visual information.Apustimelogist
    Well, as I said above, any 3D scene can be represented in 2D. We have learned to interpret 2D pictures as 3D scenes. If all we experienced were 2D, how could we even get the idea of 3D?
    There is a real difference between a 2D and 3D visual image, but it is not simply based on 2D information, but on the fact that the two images our visual system works with are slightly different. In combination, they give a diferent experience. Call that an inference if you like, but the experience really is different.

    What would non-minimalism be?Apustimelogist

    I was just picking up on what you said:-
    I would say maybe there is something like intelligibility in common with non-human life. Maybe we can say humans an animals might share some vague sense of mutual intelligibility with regard to something like space or even emotions on some minimal level depending on the animal, but then animals may be incapable of many of the kinds of abstract predictions a human can.Apustimelogist

    A non-minimalist would have said "to a greater or lesser extent" and cut out all the "maybe" qualifications. I would have said that there is often mutual comprehension between animals and humans based on whatever interactions occur in each case. However, even though that looks like an empirical question, it depends how the facts are interpreted, so I'm pessimistic about the possibility of productive argument about that. That one of the reasons why I don't think that all disagreements can be settled on empirical grounds.
  • Alonsoaceves
    22
    definitely one of a kind! Enjoy it
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    But how could we have 3D bodies in a 2D world?Ludwig V

    They are different senses about different things, one from directly inside the body, the other from outside.

    I'm talking about what you see. Its a 2D image.

    BTW, you are forgetting that we have 3D hearing as well.Ludwig V

    But this is not very different from the visual case in the sense that your learning about 3D space vicariously through cues.

    We have learned to interpret 2D pictures as 3D scenes. If all we experienced were 2D, how could we even get the idea of 3D?Ludwig V

    For me, the question here is: what does it mean to say that you interpret 2D pictures as 3D? Does the 2D image magically turn into a 3D one? I don't think so. Thats why I believe that 3D perception, and what we might think of as our experiences of 3D space, are rather about your ability to enact predictions about 3D space through body motion, and your inherent familiarity with that. From my perspective, it is then not an experience per se in the same way that directly seeing blue is, or feeling touch on the skin.

    A non-minimalist would have said "to a greater or lesser extent" and cut out all the "maybe" qualifications.Ludwig V

    I wouldn't necessarily say I am a minimalist then, I just don't know what level of mutual comprehension occurs between humans and other animals - and presumably it dependa on the animal - and I was framing it in a way I would if I didn't know what the other person's perspective on that would be either. I think even people who think very little of animal cognition would agree there is a minimal level of intelligibility between humans and certain animals, even in an emotional sense.
  • frank
    16.4k
    definitely one of a kind! Enjoy itAlonsoaceves

    Thank you!
  • Ludwig V
    1.8k
    I think there are radical differences in how we are thinking about this. I'm not saying it is all just a question of words. But our different uses of words are not helping us.

    They are different senses abput different things, one from directly inside the body, the other from outside.Apustimelogist
    The problem here is about the meaning of "direct" and "indirect". You seem to the saying that internal senses are direct and external senses are not? But we have pain and touch receptors connected to the brain and processed in the brain before we experience anything. If what we see is the image on our retina, how is that any different?
    In any case, if the internal senses are direct, they give us 3D information directly.

    I'm talking about what you see. Its a 2D image.Apustimelogist
    "What you see" is ambiguous. When I look at a normal 2D picture, I can say that I can see the picture and say that I see my car in the the picture. Presumably, the same applies to this 2D image. The iimage is more like a lens, by means of which I see my car.

    You pointed out that the image on our retina is 2D. Fair enough. But I don't see that we ever see that image, because it is extensively processed, including the amalgamation of two images. Don't forget. that retinal image is broken up into what, presumably is an encoding that is quite different from any image.
    I'm not sure whether to count the result of comparing two images or the extent to which our lens needs adjusting to produce a clear image a visual cue. It could go either way, I suppose.

    But this (sc. 3D hearing) is not very different from the visual case in the sense that your learning about 3D space vicariously through cues.Apustimelogist
    I partly agree with that. But what is learning is not me, it is, let us say, my brain. I don't ever hear two sounds, one for each ear and then realize that I can deduce where the sound is from that. I hear one sound, located in space. The learning and the processing takes place way "below" consciousness and involves an encoding process that is nothing like a sound even though it is caused by sound.

    For me, the question here is: what does it mean to say that you interpret 2D pictures as 3D? Does the 2D image magically turn into a 3D one?Apustimelogist
    I'm not sure whether you are aware of the phenomenon of trompe l'oeil painting. There are many examples in Wikipedia - Trompe l'oeil painting . I think that "Escaping Criticism" by Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874 is a particularly clear example - the pictured person is climbing out of the frame. (I would upload it if I could!)

    The 3D spectacles that are used in 3D cinemas are a different technique for achieving similar effects. I would say that, in the case of trompe l'oeil it is the case that a 2D image is experienced as 3D. There's no magic involved. I realize that you may know about this already, but it is possible that you don't and I want to make sure that we are talking about the same phenomena.

    I can be a bit relentless when I get stuck into a philosophical debate like this. Sometimes I annoy people. Please let me know if I am annoying you.

    I just don't know what level of mutual comprehension occurs between humans and other animals - and presumably it dependa on the animal - and I was framing it in a way I would if I didn't know what the other person's perspective on that would be either. I think even people who think very little of animal cognition would agree there is a minimal level of intelligibility between humans and certain animals, even in an emotional sense.Apustimelogist
    Some people (Descartes' is the classic philosophical example) deny that any animals experienced anything and saw them as purely mechanical. This resulted in some of his followers concluding that dogs don't feel pain and cruelly mistreating them in order to prove the point. But the disagreement is not a question of evidence, but of interpretation of the evidence. So Davidson's thesis that we can abandon talk of conceptual schemes and return to beliefs and experiences seems to me to be false.
    Most people are on the spectrum, but the issue is where a mechanical explanation is sufficient, (as with creatures like bacteria and fungi) and where it is appropriate to apply the kinds of explanation we use to explain (most of) the actions of human beings. Reason and purposes vs causes and evolution.
    Which is not to claim that we do not learn the conceptual schemes that we apply to the world.
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    The problem here is about the meaning of "direct" and "indirect".Ludwig V

    I wasn't intentionally implying anything at all here by the word "direct" tbh other than the fact that the sense comes from inside our bodies.

    If what we see is the image on our retina, how is that any different?Ludwig V

    Yes, you're right, I think - it isn't. But as I say earlier, I think you could argue that joint positions don't actually directly convey 3D physical space without further integration of information (e.g. A finger joint typically cannot move through all degrees of freedom of 3D space).

    The image is more like a lens, by means of which I see my car.Ludwig V

    But what do you then mean when you say that you see your car? There is nothing more, imo, to seeing a car than this 2D information, your reactions to it, and your ability to make predictions about it and engage with it. Thats the only way knowledge makes sense to me. For me, just saying "I see a car" isn't good enough. I need to make sense of what it actually means that I see that car, and this is the conclusion I have come to introspectively. There is nothing but the images - I can just react to them in sophisticated ways.

    But I don't see that we ever see that image, because it is extensively processed, including the amalgamation of two images. Don't forget. that retinal image is broken up into what, presumably is an encoding that is quite different from any image.
    I'm not sure whether to count the result of comparing two images or the extent to which our lens needs adjusting to produce a clear image a visual cue. It could go either way, I suppose.
    Ludwig V

    But I don't think whatever is inferred is anything that isn't latent in 2D patterns on the retina, and hence limited by the 2D nature. Hence, why you can manipulate pictures to create illusions of depth; because it is nothing above picking out those 2D patterns. Yes, you can say that is seeing in 3D, but .... similar to the question of "what do you then mean when you say that you see your car?":

    What do you then mean when you say that you see depth?

    We have 2D information from the retina, and our ability to engage with how that 2D information may change over time and in different contexts.

    We can say "that is far away?". But does saying something is far away have any meaning without your ability to move in 3D space. When you say "that is far away?", are you literally seeing "far away" or are you just reacting to a salient cue in a way that represents or pre-empts your ability to recognize and predict what would happen in some context. Is this cue you identify or distinguish anything above a 2D pattern latent on the retina? I guess it isn't technically 2D because color and brightness add extra dimensions, but these aren't inherently spatial. For me, we just use these distinctions to infer something about what would happen with regard to movement. And this is a continual thing too in real-time, not just because we are bodies always sitting in 3D space, but our eyes are continually sampling the environment, and their sampling will be intuned with depth; most of the time, we aren't even aware of what our eyes are doing.

    I guess my perspective also leads to the question - are you literally seeing anything?

    Not in any essentialitic way. We see complicated patterns and we react to them in real-time.

    "What you see" is ambiguous.Ludwig V

    Yes, I think you are correct. But the 2D nature of the image on the retina is not ambiguous - so that is my anchor.

    I partly agree with that. But what is learning is not me, it is, let us say, my brain. I don't ever hear two sounds, one for each ear and then realize that I can deduce where the sound is from that. I hear one sound, located in space. The learning and the processing takes place way "below" consciousness and involves an encoding process that is nothing like a sound even though it is caused by soundLudwig V

    Its going to be the same for vision and hearing.

    But are you actually hearing the location of a sound, or just hearing a certain quality to the sound across your two ears that changes are you re-orient your body? If you have no body to re-orientate, what you hear when you "hear the location" could not possibly give you any spatial information - it would simply be a difference in the quality of sound in your ears.

    trompe l'oeil painting.Ludwig V

    But I would say this is what we have been talking about all along.

    I would say I am not necessarily saying that we don't see in 3D, but that this is nothing above information on a 2D retina and an enactive component regarding movement and prediction. Space itself I think is the same - spatial perception is more like spatial enaction - familiarity with how movement changes visual information. For me the idea of perceiving any space, let alone 3D space doesn't make any sense above what is essentially a behavioral familiarity - spatial perception is nothing above our real-time manipulation of information through movement.

    Please let me know if I am annoying you.Ludwig V

    Not at all!


    But the disagreement is not a question of evidence, but of interpretation of the evidence. So Davidson's thesis that we can abandon talk of conceptual schemes and return to beliefs and experiences seems to me to be false.Ludwig V

    I would say that this question of evidence interpretation is a question of beliefs and so in that regard, Davdison would not consider it as something about conceptual schemes.
  • Ludwig V
    1.8k
    But as I say earlier, I think you could argue that joint positions don't actually directly convey 3D physical space without further integration of information (e.g. A finger joint typically cannot move through all degrees of freedom of 3D space).Apustimelogist
    Perhaps not. But a knuckle joint or a thumb or an arm or a spine can. On the other hand, I would agree that our understanding of 3D space does depend on "holistic integration of the information of the senses". The result of that integration happens to be true. So what's wrong with it?

    But what do you then mean when you say that you see your car? There is nothing more, imo, to seeing a car than this 2D information, your reactions to it, and your ability to make predictions about it and engage with it.Apustimelogist
    I mean that I see a 3D object, which I can walk round, get inside, drive around and take to pieces. None of those is true of images of the car, no matter how many you accumulate.

    For me, we just use these distinctions to infer something about what would happen with regard to movement.Apustimelogist
    I wouldn't object to that. But what validates the inference? There must be some way that you can compare the image of a 3D object with the 3D object. But you seem to deny that we can. So the image of my car is no different from an image of starship Enterprise or a dragon - and even in those cases, we know what it would mean to see the real thing, even if it never happens.

    If you have no body to re-orientate, what you hear when you "hear the location" could not possibly give you any spatial information - it would simply be a difference in the quality of sound in your ears.Apustimelogist
    Perhaps. But I do have a body to re-orient.

    I guess my perspective also leads to the question - are you literally seeing anything?Apustimelogist
    It depends what you mean by "literally". For me, when I walk through my front door, I literally see my car. If I only see the image on my retina, then I don't see "literally" my car, but an image of it.

    Yes, I think you are correct. But the 2D nature of the image on the retina is not ambiguous - so that is my anchor.Apustimelogist
    An image is always an image of something else, never the real thing. So my anchor is the real thing. That's what makes the image of a car an image as opposed to a complex array of coloured shapes.

    I would say I am not necessarily saying that we don't see in 3D, but that this is nothing above information on a 2D retina and an enactive component regarding movement and prediction.Apustimelogist
    But the image on our retinas (we have two, remember) and our enactive lives are what enable us to see the 3D world. They do not prevent us from seeing it.

    I would say that this question of evidence interpretation is a question of beliefs and so in that regard, Davdison would not consider it as something about conceptual schemes.Apustimelogist
    Suppose that someone died, and we are considering a suspect. There is good evidence that S caused the death, but also evidence that they did not intend to. I think that means that S is not guilty of murder. You think that means they are guilty of murder. Our disagreement is not about the facts, but about what counts as murder - that is, our concept of murder. Murder is part of a group of concepts under the heading of "crimes". So our disagreement is not about what happened, the facts of the case, but how we should clssify them. You can label that a disagreement about beliefs, if you like. But it is not the same as a disagreement about the facts and cannot be settled in the same way.
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    Perhaps not. But a knuckle joint or a thumb or an arm or a spine can.Ludwig V

    Well, I think its at least debatable. I don't think those joints are anywhere near mobile enough, imo.

    None of those is true of images of the car, no matter how many you accumulate.Ludwig V

    Well then the 2D image is how I am seeing a 3D car. I can't shake the awareness that my visual field is two-dimensional (except for the color dimension) even though I can distinguish distance.

    wouldn't object to that. But what validates the inference? There must be some way that you can compare the image of a 3D object with the 3D object. But you seem to deny that we can.Ludwig V

    The brain doesn't have any direct access to the outside world. It can never intelligibly compare things with some criterion that has come from the way things somehow are on the outside world. All the brain can do is construct models which make predictions about what happens next, and that can fail and get re-adjusted.

    So the image of my car is no different from an image of starship Enterprise or a dragon - and even in those cases, we know what it would mean to see the real thing, even if it never happens.Ludwig V

    Not sure what you mean here.

    It depends what you mean by "literally". For me, when I walk through my front door, I literally see my car. If I only see the image on my retina, then I don't see "literally" my car, but an image of it.Ludwig V

    I'm just saying I dispute the idea that there is some kind of phenomenal essence to things that we recognize and perceive - rather I see it in terms of just the direct patterns I see, and my reactions to those patterns in real time. Without those reactions, the idea that I am recognizing an object like a car is empty. I see the 2D patterns of the car and react to them in a way consistent with my recognition of it.

    An image is always an image of something else, never the real thing. So my anchor is the real thing. That's what makes the image of a car an image as opposed to a complex array of coloured shapes.Ludwig V

    Sure, but I don't think the "real thing" can be transcend the 2D information accessible from the retina.

    I think the difference in our perspective is that you just say you see the 3D car and stop there; while to me, my percepts can be deconstructed so I do see that my visual space is 2D (apart from the color). But you seem to just embrace the idea that you are directly acquainted with a 3D object. When I then ask what it means that I am acquainted with these 3D objects, it comes back to what I have said about 2D information and enactive processes.

    But it is not the same as a disagreement about the facts and cannot be settled in the same way.Ludwig V

    But I think the animal case is conceivably a disagreement about facts as opposed to classification.
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