If you just take raw experience -- devoid of concept filters or object categories -- what presents is a continuous field of sensation. Taking just the visual field of experience, what presents is a continuous field of incongruous color. Each discernible intensity of color is spatially positioned with respect to other color-intensities (**color is also an object category, but I use it to just denote the raw sensation/raw quality of visual experience). Sharp contrast in color-intensity delineates boundaries. When a given color-contrast is arranged such that it forms an enclosure -- we perceive a shape. That perception-- i.e. that perception of a shape-- would be considered an example of a gestalt. — aporiap
The question I have is with respect to these principles. It seems like they're serving as (biologically encoded?) inference rules. — aporiap
My question is what substantiates these inference rules. And I'm using this word - 'substantiate'- in two ways. The first being 'epistemically' -- i.e. What justifies the legitimacy of these rules? Considering that raw experience consists in a continuous field of relatively-positioned, free standing incongruities, why assume that reality contains anything more than that? The second being 'semantically'. Clearly the rules ascribe meaningfulness to certain arrangements of features? But is that 'meaningfulness' intrinsic to reality itself? Or is it just something that carries meaning only in reference to minds? — aporiap
On a realist view of objects, these gestalt principles allow us to recognize objects 'out there'. In other words, undifferentiated, shapes are actually 'there', in reality. And they correspond to physical objects. — aporiap
Considering that raw experience consists in a continuous field of relatively-positioned, free standing incongruities, — aporiap
If you just take raw experience -- devoid of concept filters or object categories -- what presents is a continuous field of sensation.
Natural selection can send perfectly, or partially, true perceptions to extinction when they compete with perceptions that use niche-specific interfaces which hide the truth in order to better represent utility. Fitness and access to truth are logically distinct properties. More truthful perceptions do not entail greater fitness.
My question is what substantiates these inference rules. And I'm using this word - 'substantiate'- in two ways. The first being 'epistemically' -- i.e. What justifies the legitimacy of these rules? Considering that raw experience consists in a continuous field of relatively-positioned, free standing incongruities, why assume that reality contains anything more than that? The second being 'semantically'. Clearly the rules ascribe meaningfulness to certain arrangements of features? But is that 'meaningfulness' intrinsic to reality itself? Or is it just something that carries meaning only in reference to minds? — aporiap
Exactly. So the brute distinctions of color are themselves evidence that some rules are being followed even before the rules of categorizing them. There also seems to be the raw feeling of attending to certain colors and shapes - of amplifying certain colors and shapes over others (the colors and shapes at the edges of our peripheral vision are less distinct and less focused that the ones at the center of our visual field and bringing them into focus requires moving them into the center. Many philosophers, when talking about perception, seem to gloss over attention, as if it weren't important). There seems to be this raw feeling of certain colors and shapes being more important than other colors and shapes - but why? important for what? Our goals. Our goal-oriented behavior seems to be just as raw as the shapes and colors themselves. To explain the existence of one without explaining the existence of the other seems to leave out the necessary information to explain it all. To talk about colors and shapes in some visual field without trying to explain those brute distinctions that occur before any categorizing seems to go nowhere at all. Distinctions are made subconsciously in order for the conscious to even hope to make and categorizations and groupings of similarities.**color is also an object category, but I use it to just denote the raw sensation/raw quality of visual experience — aporiap
What justifies the legitimacy of these rules? Considering that raw experience consists in a continuous field of relatively-positioned, free standing incongruities, why assume that reality contains anything more than that? — aporiap
The second being 'semantically'. Clearly the rules ascribe meaningfulness to certain arrangements of features? But is that 'meaningfulness' intrinsic to reality itself? Or is it just something that carries meaning only in reference to minds?
Third question. It looks like there can be two different varieties of realism.. One that is with respect to objects and the other that is with respect to just raw experience. On a realist view of objects, these gestalt principles allow us to recognize objects 'out there'. In other words, undifferentiated, shapes are actually 'there', in reality. And they correspond to physical objects. On a realist view of 'raw experience', that uncharacterized, continuous field of sensation is what's 'actually there' and objects would be derivative and the product of mental process. Which do you take to be legitimate? — aporiap
Something I really find perplexing is this whole idea of object apprehension. (I'm referring to object in the most general sense of the term -- i.e. any 'thing'). — aporiap
If you just take raw experience -- devoid of concept filters or object categories -- what presents is a continuous field of sensation.
Taking just the visual field of experience, what presents is a continuous field of incongruous color. Each discernible intensity of color is spatially positioned with respect to other color-intensities (**color is also an object category, but I use it to just denote the raw sensation/raw quality of visual experience). Sharp contrast in color-intensity delineates boundaries. When a given color-contrast is arranged such that it forms an enclosure -- we perceive a shape. That perception-- i.e. that perception of a shape-- would be considered an example of a gestalt. A gestalt being a singular, discrete 'whole' or object. Enclosure/closure is one of many principles used to apprehend wholes.
If I understand correctly Dr, Hoffman's work is based on the premise that perception is utility driven and the greatest utility is not always veridical (he emphasizes that they can match up, but that they need not). According to Dr. Hoffman utility is all that matters in evolution. — Cavacava
Based on the definition, it seems like the opposite: where apperception involves the classing of an object into a learned object category-- understanding the object within the context of this old information (e.g. all men are mortal; this new object I see is a man; therefore he must be a mortal). I always thought gestalt just involved the perception of a discrete whole -- an uncategorized whole.Very good observation. But I think the technical term for that step is actually 'apperception' which is 'the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole.' I think the principle of gestalt involves rather more than that - a gestalt is not only 'seeing a whole' but also making an interpretive judgement about it; which is why a 'gestalt shift' can be a profound experience, insofar as it sometimes amounts to a kind of major cognitive shift or insight. I mean, the two are obviously related but I don't think they're synonymous.
Thanks for mentioning him -- he definitely has an interesting perspective. I like the analogy he uses --conscious experience being analogous to a user interface. I mean the relevant learned concepts and object categories come bound up in the presented landscape-- trees, roads, computers.. It's not just shapes and colors.. so processing, object recognition, all happens in the background.I think the parenthetical comment could be objected to, on the basis of it being biological reductionism. However, there's a very interesting cognitive scientist by the name of Donald Hoffman, who has studied this exact question in great detail.
Right I think the question for me is not necessarily how the rules operate but what their origin is. What comes to mind is the psychologism debate: While I'm just somewhat familiar with it and while I understand it to be with regard to the laws of logic, the whole question of whether those laws and others (e.g. principles of gestalt) are derivative from psychological features or independent of them is one that I find interesting.But, leaving that question aside, whatever those rules are, is very closely related to the nature of intelligence itself. I mean, to engage in a bit of amateur cognitive science, one can see how for simple organisms, an account can be provided for a great many of their behaviours in terms of stimulus and response, say involving predation and many other instinctual and habitual behaviours.
But the additional factor with h. sapiens is, of couse, the ability to infer, speculate, theorise, and ask 'what does that thing mean? How does it fit in with the rest of what I know?' And asking what that capability is, is very close to asking for an account of how the rules of thought operate, which is close to asking about the nature of logic, language, semiotics, and so on; it's close to asking, 'what is inteligence, really?'
One would hope 'the rules of thought' are justified in terms of logic and reason. I mean, if you have to ask why 'the law of the excluded middle' holds, then you're perilously close to asking 'why does 2 plus 2 equal 4?' The answer is, that '4' is the terminus of explanation for the question. Frege said in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic that ''the laws of truth are authoritative because of their timelessness ... they are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this, that they authority for our thought if it would attain to truth."
It is precisely because those laws are predictive that logical predictions and indeed the kinds of basic inferences made in science are possible. If we had nothing more than 'raw experience', then would we be capable of rational thought? Surely rationality is in some sense the means by which order is discovered in, and applied to, experience. And such regularities have to exist even for language to get off the ground.
Right -- I meant to say perceived shapes are identical with physical objects (as opposed to correspond with physical objects).Careful, because if you want to establish correspondence between the object and the experience, then you have to be able to differentiate them. And how could you do that? The object appears as an element of experience. One does not actually have to be a scientific realist to recognise that.
But the other point is, I think that the kind of analysis you're engaging in, is not typical of the realist attitude from the outset. As soon as you start critically reflecting on the nature of knowledge, perception and experience in this kind of way, then I think you're already moving away from a realist attitude, which tends to take the objects of experience themselves as the primary datum, and not to ask too many questions about how experience itself relates to objects and so on.
Well I think we do perceive objects, but we can intuit that objects aren't essential, invariant elements of experience. What does seem to be that way are just the raw qualities of experience.That notion doesn't seem any less theory-laden to me as the idea that we simply perceive objects.
And I don't buy ideas such as unconscious inference rules.
Based on the definition, it seems like the opposite: where apperception involves the classing of an object into a learned object category-- understanding the object within the context of this old information (e.g. all men are mortal; this new object I see is a man; therefore he must be a mortal). I always thought gestalt just involved the perception of a discrete whole -- an uncategorized whole. — aporiap
Doesn't the opposite of what you said follow logically? If the uncategorized whole is the Memory of God, then to claim that there is such a thing is to claim to be united to God through one's memory. This would imply knowing the mind of God. — Metaphysician Undercover
Even God can't see the back of his own head without using a mirror. — wuliheron
That scares me. — Metaphysician Undercover
Why would I believe that God could create a rock bigger than he could lift? That sounds contradictory. Doesn't creating imply that God has lifted it, in order that it be where it is? — Metaphysician Undercover
Right, I should have said 'undifferentiated' whole -- merely a whole or a 'thing' or object. But I think you can still apprehend something which is undifferentiated or ambiguous-- i.e. you perceive some arrangement as an object but it isn't classed it into a kind. Of course, the thing wouldn't be entirely ambiguous -- since you are perceiving it as anambiguous (that fact of the object is unambiguous). And that feature, the ambiguity of that whole is what distinguishes it from the surrounding backdrop that -presumably- isn't ambiguous or at least isn't amiguous in the same way as the object itself.I am doubtful of this idea of perceiving an uncategorized whole. It may well be the case, that to perceive something as a whole, a unit, is necessarily to perceive it as something, even if it is just to categorize it as a whole. Then to perceive something as an uncategorized whole is an impossibility. To perceive something as an object may require that it be recognized, and to recognize it is to associate it with another perception, and this is to categorize it. It need not even be the case that one puts a name to the object, just to recognize it is to categorize it, and this is to see it as having a particular identity.
The point being, that I cannot conceive of what it would mean to perceive something as "an uncategorized whole". Imagine the possibility of a perception which is completely unrecognizable. How would the unrecognizable aspect of the perception be individuated from the recognizable aspect of the perception, such that it could be assigned the status of an individuate whole, if it is completely unrecognizable?
It's kind of like asking if Jesus can microwave a burrito hotter than he can eat. What would it mean for God to lift a rock? Is the rock supposed to be immovable? — Marchesk
Well I think we do perceive objects, but we can intuit that objects aren't essential, invariant elements of experience. What does seem to be that way are just the raw qualities of experience . . . — aporiap
Okay. Let me know if this clears things up:I'm not following you at all.
First, I don't buy that any experience (or anything in general for that matter) is invariant. I also don't know why it would matter if anything is invariant or why you'd select that as a "guiding principle."
Based on the definition, it seems like the opposite: where apperception involves the classing of an object into a learned object category-- understanding the object within the context of this old information (e.g. all men are mortal; this new object I see is a man; therefore he must be a mortal). I always thought gestalt just involved the perception of a discrete whole -- an uncategorized whole. — aporiap
Clearly there must be - at the very least- a consistent relation between the principles that govern perception and whatever principles govern the unfolding of reality itself -- else we'd all be fully deluded. — aporiap
And that raw experience, devoid of the non-essential components- if taken as directly presenting reality, seems like it could serve the basis for a direct realism. — aporiap
I guess that's the statement I have an issue with. I think of raw experience as 'overlaid' or bound up with conceptual structures:Only the neonatal could possibly have "raw experience" as you have described it and I think that is also somewhat doubtful. If the world has a structure, then don't we perceive that structure regardless of whether or not we understand what it is we are perceiving. Many animals have significantly keener perceptual abilities, yet their cognitive abilities are limited when compared man and some other organisms.
So, presuming an individual has fixed their attention on a given portion of their sensational field, the raw quality that presents in that given region shouldn't vary (since the gaze is fixed on a certain region, the stream of information shouldn't change with respect to what it relays). — aporiap
Right, everything is dynamic but different things change at different rates.But everything is dynamic. So the gaze is actually (dynamically) focused on something that's changing.
Interesting, I think it's a mix. I agree that it's nearly entirely automatic and occurs subconsciously (except in cases of ambiguity -- where there isn't a clear category the object can be classed under, so then you have to reason a little).(Sorry I hadn't noticed your response until just now.) I don't think apperception involves parsing a syllogism, as you have done in this example - as I understand it, it's much more reflexive and generally subliminal, i.e. you will see a man, you identify him as 'man', 'someone I don't know', 'tall', and so on. It's much more associative, as I understand it, than logical; it's simply one stop past perception, where the image is assimilated into consciousness, in addition to just registering visually.
Interesting. So when you say 'recognize' are you implying that reason, causal relations are 'out there'?Quite! But I'm inclined towards traditionalism about logic etc. To me, what evolves is the capacity to recognize reason, causal relations, and so on. And I also think, once we have reached that plateau in terms of cognitive ability, then our abilities are no longer determined in wholly biological terms. But nowadays, of course, it is expected that all human faculties have a biological rationale, else why would they exist?
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