🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Bill Powers (950303.1720 MST)]

Martin Taylor (950303 16:50) --

>Anyway, have you also considered this subject as it applies to
>"information about ..."?

     Yes, indeed.  I've tried to make it explicit, quite a few times.

Better try again -- I don't recall any discussion of information in this
particular context, which is knowing what information is "about" when
you have only perceptual signals to work with.
--------------------------------
     By talking of a PIF that reports a "rotten apple smell" rather than
     one that reports a "rotten apple" perceptual signal, you are
     changing the terms of the debate.  If there exists a "rotten apple"
     PIF, it probably takes as input (a transformation of) the "rotten
     apple smell" perceptual signal, in addition to (transformations of)
     a host of visually based and perhaps tactually based perceptual
     signals.

If you have organized your perceptual systems so you perceive the
category "rotten apple" on the basis of smell-signals, then you can
experience "rotten apple" rather than inferring it. The debate, as far
as my side is concerned, is not about the reality or veridicality of the
referent* of any particular perceptual signal. It is about noticing
whether there is any perceptual signal at all, or if you are creating it
yourself independently of lower-level perceptions.

*[ The referent of a perceptual signal is not the reference signal with
which it is compared; it is the purported aspect of reality to which the
perceptual signal refers.]

Having had only very occasional experience with rotten apples, I don't
have much of a PIF set up for perceiving them. Mostly, I would infer
them from evidence of perceptions I do have. Being me, of course, I
would still have to cut the apple open to check the inference, my style
inclining to not taking anyone's word for anything, even my own.

     It isn't just the smell.  The point is that the perception is "of"
     a rotten apple (outside observer's view). The perception is a
     signal in a control system that acts so as to change the magnitude
     of the perception of rotten apple,

Be careful not to use the so-called "outside observer's view" as a way
of cheating in the epistemological debate. There is no outside observer
who knows what is really there when you perceive the apple smell or the
category of appleness (ripe, green or rotten). The real outside observer
is organized just like the observer in question, and has no better idea
of what a "rotten apple" is in reality than any other person does.
Neither does the outside observer know even what the perceptual signal
in the other person looks like to the other person.

While people can become organized so that anything imagineable can
become a direct perception, to do so is not often a good idea. In
effect, you settle on a particular inference and construct a PIF which
freezes that inference into being a perception. From then on, the lower-
order perceptions which are evidence for the inference become inputs to
a mindless and automatic perception that takes its place in subjective
reality. Inferences are easy to modify, correct, or abandon. Perceptions
are not.
---------------------------------
     ... consider the flip-flop connection of perceptual functions, in
     which the output of one PIF is connected with negative sign to the
     input of another, and vice-versa.

We have considered this type of connection several times. I agree that
it probably exists, but it is only a special case. Not all categories
require it, and in many cases a flip-flop connection would be a positive
disadvantage. It is also likely that the flip-flop function would be
part of a logic-level system rather than a lower-level one, particularly
where the variables are sometimes treated independently and
continuously, and at other times are treated as on-off logical variables
with hysteresis. I have brought up all these objections before, without
hearing any comment on them.

     This mechanism works for analogue perceptions at all levels of the
     hierarchy, including, in particular, the relational level at which
     we perceive things as being above, below, to the left of, inside...
     other things.

Unless you mean that this type of connection would perhaps sometimes be
present at analog levels, I have to dispute your claim. The flip-flop or
mutual positive feedback connection would be incompatible with analog
control, because while in either stable state, the system would be
totally insensitive to small disturbances, and would be unable to
produce graded opposition to disturbances of arbitrary sizes.

I think you're letting a simple piece of technology run away with you. I
can't see "It's all flip-flops!!!" as a catchy slogan.
----------------------------------
     I can perceive the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony quite
     well, merely by being exposed to those words (it happened just now)
     with no orchestra or recording present.

I hope you don't confuse this experience of the opening of the 5th with
what you experience in a concert hall. What you're describing is
imagination, not real-time perception.

     It's not an inference, but a very pleasant sequence of sounds.
     That's what I perceive, but not when the radio is playing other
     music (as it is now but wasn't when I wrote the start of this
     paragraph).

An interesting point; we tend to say "inference" when we want to assert
some degree of rightness or reality to what we imagine. The primary
classification, I think, is the PCT meaning of "imagination." Within
that category we have such things as generalization, abstraction,
derivation, inference, hypothesis, and so forth, which are
differentiated by other factors -- although some of these words from the
old lexicon have other meanings that would also apply to present-time
perceptions. The situation is similar with the PCT term "reference
signal," the primary category, and all the terms we have for reference
signals being considered in specific circumstances, like goal, desire,
intention, purpose, want, need, aim, target, objective, wish, hope, or
value. "Inference", I suppose applies mostly in situations with a strong
cognitive component. But it's still basically imagination.

     There is a specific part of the hierarchy in which flip-flop
     connections and associative connections occur.  The output of this
     part is the category level of perception.  The "specific part" is
     an interface between the analogue part of the hierarchy and a
     discrete, logical, part of the hierarchy.  It is not a "level" as
     such, in that the interface meets all levels of the analogue
     hierarchy.

That word "meets" is sufficiently vague to cover just about anything we
find, isn't it? Your proposal is similar to Bruce Nevin's. It also
agrees with my own general, but not very well-developed, idea that the
input signals for any level can come from any lower-level system. That
is, for example, we can experience a relationship between intensities
(light A is brighter than light B) without the relationship being a
sensation. So in your rather general term, we can say that the input to
any level "meets" all the levels below.

Or maybe it doesn't work that way. Some day I suppose we'll find out,
and then nine-tenths of all this guessing, if not more, will have been
in vain.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Williams (direct post) --

Any time, Greg. You've built up a lot of credit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Best to all,

Bill P.