Seeing red

[The Grand Nudger]

There is no difference, computationally, between numbers and colors.  You prefer color, you make disparaging remarks about 1's and 0's, but understand that this is only your bias speaking.  The terminator would scoff at our ridiculous "colors", instead preferring it's beautiful, rich, and incredibly specific binary data set. In any case, when a bitmap is fed to a moniter it produces an image identical to our experience of them. We're not -so- different in effect, even if we are different in method. What is on the moniter is what your "humunculous" would see. Seems to me that the bitmap is a wonderful rough analogue for our form of visual perception.

There is no reason to think that patterns which can be -and are- handled with binary everytime you take a picture would be lost if they were not encoded "in color" as we experience them.  Most cameras, already operating on a binary format at their most fundamental level, are already capable of both detecting and retaining patterns better than the human eye, better than the human mind.  Your contention -must be- false because there already -are- forms of perception different from our own. You don't need eyes to see color, and frankly, our eyes aren't the best way to determine color in the first place. Try a spectrometer? Our eyes exist as they do not because that is the only way to represent the data field, or even the best way, simply that it was -a- manner in which it could be achieved, given the material available to the system. That there are so many different types of eyes, and sensory structures in general are found represented in life (and so many analogs n digital) should tell you that there are myriad ways to skin a cat.

Good enough, not best, not only.

[emjay]

There is no difference, computationally, between numbers and colors.  You prefer color, you make disparaging remarks about 1's and 0's, but understand that this is only your bias speaking.  The terminator would scoff at our ridiculous "colors", instead preferring it's beautiful, rich, and incredibly specific binary data set.  In any case, when a bitmap is fed to a moniter it produces an image identical to our experience of them.  We're not -so- different in effect, even if we are different in method.  What is on the moniter is what your "humunculous" would see.  Seems to me that the bitmap is a wonderful rough analogue for our form of visual perception.

There is no reason to think that patterns which can be -and are- handled with binary everytime you take a picture would be lost if they were not encoded "in color" as we experience them.  Most cameras, already operating on a binary format at their most fundamental level, are already capable of both detecting and retaining patterns better than the human eye, better than the human mind.  Your contention -must be- false because there already -are- forms of perception different from our own.  You don't need eyes to see color, and frankly, our eyes aren't the best way to determine color in the first place.  Try a spectrometer?  Our eyes exist as they do not because that is the only way to represent the data field, or even the best way, simply that it was -a- manner in which it could be achieved, given the material available to the system.  That there are so many different types of eyes, and sensory structures in general are found represented in life (and so many analogs n digital) should tell you that there are myriad ways to skin a cat.

Good enough, not best, not only.

Thanks Rhythm I always appreciate your input on these sorts of questions - you're the only person I've met who seems to be absolutely certain about all this stuff, so you really help ground me when I go off on one

You're very right - the monitor output is what the homunculous would see and it's not required - processing would continue even with the monitor turned off and it's not as if the pattern recognition occurs on the monitor and is fed back to the system (that would be some form of dualism)... the monitor is not required at all except for benefit of a homunculous. I think that got a little bit lost in translation, including in my own head The patterns are not lost at the computational level - in this case the bitmap/monitor turned off level - indeed I never thought that at all because it's the neurons themselves that detect patterns... that's what they're for. So I didn't mean to imply that the pattern recognition happens at the monitor level.

What I was trying to suggest was that at the monitor level in order to represent the different states of variables, they have to be exactly that - different. So if colour 123 appeared on the monitor the same as colour 456 then the patterns found at the computational level would be lost at the perceptional level, which I supposed to be a mirror of it except in a different form (perception). And if there is a similarity at the computational level it has to be preserved at the perceptional level to maintain the mirror... so on the monitor colour 123 would be different from colour 124 but similar in appearance.

So that's what I meant really, that in order to represent perceptually all the different variable states required in consciousness - not just colour but everything that comes together in consciousness; the whole of vision, sound, pain, memory, imagination - they are constrained in such a way that they all have to be different but similar when necessary. After all, the different modes of consciousness do indeed feel like different 'channels'... you can experience all these aspects at the same time - pain at the same time as sound and vision for instance - because their channels do not overlap... they're sufficiently different from each other so as not to interfere with each other.

So what I was suggesting was that perhaps the way we experience consciousness is the only way it could be to accommodate the different variable states that need to represented but at the same time maintain the similarities and relationships between variables. That consciousness as an emergent property of the system/brain (rather than designed) is in the business of representing the differences between variable states whilst maintaining their relationships and similarities, in the only way it can. That a system with different variable states to integrate would find a different perceptional state that met the constraints.

So for instance, Chadwooters said earlier that different people experience the colour yellow differently as a result of different distributions of cones in their retinas. That would fit with this idea because the addition or subtraction of cones directly affects the data fed into the system, and therefore the constraints of the system. And somewhere I read about an experiment with rabbits. Rabbits can only see certain colours usually but they experimentally, somehow, added cones to them and suddenly they were able to see colours as we do... in other words it seems as if you can just plug in a cone and suddenly you've got a whole new form of perception. And it might even fit in with things like I think it's called 'colour synesthesia' or something like that... sounds experienced as colours etc in people with brain damage or different wiring - and thus different constraints and relationships between variable states.

[The Grand Nudger]

So what I was suggesting was that perhaps the way we experience consciousness is the only way it could be to accommodate the different variable states that need to represented but at the same time maintain the similarities and relationships between variables. That consciousness as an emergent property of the system/brain (rather than designed) is in the business of representing the differences between variable states whilst maintaining their relationships and similarities, in the only way it can. That a system with different variable states to integrate would find a different perceptional state that met the constraints.

Provisional certainty, lol, Emjay.  Provisional.  "If" - 'then".  

The only way it could be, with reference to our perceptive apparatus and the nature of that which we percieve..or the only way it could be in toto..as in all perception of consciousness everywhere must be like our own?  Just looking for clarity so I don't fly off on a tangent.

RE: the bunnies..I don't know how I would defend the statement that enhancing the range of their color vision amounts to a whole new form of perception, personally.  It doesn;t seem to have added a whole new form of perception...I was under the impression that rabbits could already see...and indeed could already see in color.

[emjay]

So what I was suggesting was that perhaps the way we experience consciousness is the only way it could be to accommodate the different variable states that need to represented but at the same time maintain the similarities and relationships between variables. That consciousness as an emergent property of the system/brain (rather than designed) is in the business of representing the differences between variable states whilst maintaining their relationships and similarities, in the only way it can. That a system with different variable states to integrate would find a different perceptional state that met the constraints.

Provisional certainty, lol, Emjay.  Provisional.  "If" - 'then".  

The only way it could be, with reference to our perceptive apparatus and the nature of that which we percieve..or the only way it could be in toto..as in all perception of consciousness everywhere must be like our own?  Just looking for clarity so I don't fly off on a tangent.

RE: the bunnies..I don't know how I would defend the statement that enhancing the range of their color vision amounts to a whole new form of perception, personally.  It doesn;t seem to have added a whole new form of perception...I was under the impression that rabbits could already see...and indeed could already see in color.

It still comes across as certainty tho And that's cool - it gives me confidence the way you talk about this stuff; it's nice to know that there are some people out there with clear, solid ideas about the nature of consciousness. So I wanted to say thank you for that - since I came here, you've strengthened my atheism enormously... as have many others, in different ways. Before coming here I was a wishy-washy atheist with a lot of things left unresolved and unaddressed... a lot of doubts still in place ...after leaving Christianity some 15 years ago or more but in the space of less than a year on this site, all that has changed. So in the awards if there was a category for Best Atheist Influence you'd be a front-runner for me, along with robvalue for his unwavering confidence, and ironically some of the Christians for their transparent and crappy arguments for Christianity

I'm sorry, I still don't know what you're trying to ask that I haven't already answered (or tried to) Not that 'all perception of consciousness everywhere must be like our own' but rather that all systems the same as ours - and therefore with the same constraints - would produce the same sort of experience of consciousness, but as per the bunnies or different kinds of animals entirely, any difference in the system means a whole different set of constraints, and therefore a different expression of the variable states and relationships in their perception.

I guess I didn't phrase that very well re the bunnies. Not a whole new form of perception per se - not as in acquiring a whole new mode/channel of perception - but just a substantial change to their experience of colour... so a change to their perception of their perception is kind of what I meant Kind of like, as a rough and inaccurate analogy, if all we could see in was black and white it would be a dramatic change, for us, if we could suddenly see in full colour. Basically in us, cones come in three varieties, tuned to detect red, green, or blue light. But in these rabbits only two of the varieties are present, I don't remember which.. so red and green, red and blue, or green and blue. And this experiment essentially added the missing type, and thus massively expanded the range of colours they could discriminate.

[The Grand Nudger]

Their meta perception..hehehe.  Meta-bunnies!

I'm just making sure I understand, completely, what you're expressing.  We get some live shit round these parts.  

I think that observations of other things we consider to be perceiving would support your statements.  Using the language of systems, systems arranged similarly to ours, in other animals for example...do seem to produce perceptions recognizable or analogous to our own.  

Systems wildly divergent, appear to produce perceptions which are wildly divergent.   We do not smell weight, as a dog does...or see sound, as a bat can...those structures which allow the bat to see sound or the dog to smell weight are significantly divergent from our own......but all three of us share a much more similar structure when it comes to our skin and extremities, and thus our tactile perception.

I don't know that this means that our perceptions are the only way they could be, given those systems..in all cases...but I certainly think that many examples of perception can be explained thusly. First person POV's, for example. How else could I percieve the world? I'm not connected to your eyes, or anyone elses...I have only my own sensory apparatus with which to build a representational model. My model will be necessarrily first person due to the structure and isolation of my sensory apparatus.

If I began to literally see through the eyes of another man I'd start to question a great many things about reality as I see it, lol.

[emjay]

The reason I suggest it's the only way is because that deals with one of the problems: if there is system X and an identical copy of system X, then if they don't produce the same experience of consciousness then how could the change be accounted for? So a given system has a given expression otherwise it would be very hard to suggest that the system had anything to do with the expression and you'd be in extreme dualism territory.

A neural network is in the business of representing and transforming information at different levels of abstraction... once you get to a neuron that represents a shape for instance, it is essentially the apex of a large hierarchy of transformations and just becomes the only thing that is required to represent that shape. In other words, direct stimulation of that neuron in surgery would do the same thing in the system as triggering it through the normal channels of layers and layers of hierarchically connected neurons. But basically, each neuron represents something at a certain level of abstraction, and I believe, can be used in the system as such. But in the human brain, the abstractions are not simple hierarchies like a Christmas tree but instead complicated interconnected networks where connections can be and are made in so many different ways... lateral, feedforward, feedback, inhibiting etc and a given neuron can provide input to as many neurons as a prepared to synapse with it; a given neuron plays a part in representing many different things by virtue of the input it provides to different neurons in different places. And the human brain is dynamic and plastic as well... connections change both at the synaptic level (i.e. the 'weights' used in memory) and at the organisational level (both in the process of development and after brain damage). So the system is highly dynamic and highly interconnected.

So my theory was that consciousness was in the business of representing that highly dynamic and interconnected network of information in the only way it could to satisfy all the relational constraints of the system. And that the richer the interconnections, as in the the case of the human brain, the richer the resulting conscious experience because there are more different states to represent and more relationships to preserve.

As an aside, writing this post brought to mind one of my earlier theories about how imagination was accomplished in the brain, and thinking about it I think it would fit in quite well with this theory. Imagination takes what you already know and combines it in novel ways to produce novel ideas. But in functional terms, an imagination is a dynamic relationship between representations that are not normally connected. As for how it's achieved neurally that comes down to speculation, and to do with focus and memory retrieval etc, but is not relevant to what I'm trying to say. The main thing is, the experience of an imagination becomes more mentally vivid the more interconnected it is... that's one thing I noticed from observation. So that would fit in with this theory and show that even temporary changes to the relationships in the system could have effects on consciousness.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's not actually a problem unless you can provide an example where two identical systems produce a different experience of consciousness.........do you have examples?  Otherwise, you're searching for the answer to a problem that does not exist. Misery often follows, lol.

[emjay]

That's not actually a problem unless you can provide an example where two identical systems produce a different experience of consciousness.........do you have examples?  Otherwise, you're searching for the answer to a problem that does not exist.  Misery often follows, lol.

No, I don't have any examples because I don't think there are any examples. If there were, then there'd be no point in even assuming that the brain had anything to do with consciousness, and then it would be into theist, dualism territory.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't know why you'd jump from an unexplained disparity in perception to dualism or theism...........or that the brain had nothing to do with consciousness.....even if you -did- have examples.

[JuliaL]

Okay first thing's first, I'm not angry about anything   This is gonna be a post all about the mind and perception, particularly colour perception.

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Animals, including humans, have brains and it is highly probable but not proven that those brains produce the perceptions (i.e. qualia) that we experience. If it were not the case that brains produced perceptions it would be an extraordinary coincidence and heading into the realms of 'idealism' and suchlike. Although I'm open to that possibility for the sake of what I'm saying here I'll assume that the brain does indeed produce (or computes, or emerges from or whatever) perceptions in one way or another.

Different animals have difference sense organs and thus presumably very different perceptions of the world. It's probably beyond our imagination to conceive of what it's like for an animal very different from ourselves to perceive some aspects of the world, such as a bat or dolphin with echo location - a feature we're unfamiliar with. But it *might* be reasonable to assume that a dog, say, visually perceives the world very similar to us because it has eyes like we do. Eyes collect data about the light 'out there' and that information is processed by the brain and perception is computed that is not exactly the same as the original input. I.e. in the case of our two eyes a 3D perception is created out of two 2D input devices (eyes). So in other words the perception that is created is the result of some sort of computation.

These perceptions have no location in physical space and they are not 'made' of physical matter, yet they exist in some form because in our experience we can detect the difference between one thing and another. If I feel pain, I can feel how that changes or disappears entirely. Or I can see a blue pencil on top of a white piece of paper and can see that they are different. There are different states in these perceptions and if one thing is not the same as another then they can't both be nothing.

Perceptions are functionally useful. Colour perception makes perfect sense from a computational point of view as a means of labelling 'pixels' in parallel so that the right sorts of patterns can be detected in the world, and at the right level of abstraction. Compare trying to read words in a text document versus by looking at the binary representation of that same document. Or compare looking for patterns in a 1D array of numbers vs a 2D array.

Whether the perception of colour is equivalent to the underlying brain activity - has a one-to-one correspondence with it and thus is it - or whether it is created by it, in addition as it were, in such a way that perception itself could feed back into the system (i.e. kind of like dualism), doesn't really matter to what I'm talking about here. Personally I think it's the former but I can't rule out the latter. Or even the third possibility that it is not connected to physical brain activity at all and we're living in some sort of 'idealistic' world and/or God. But assuming it's the former, the evolutionary 'design' of a perception reflects what the brain is already doing behind the scenes... the brain is already discriminating the patterns we experience in consciousness and somehow they find representation in conscious perceptions. In other words, colour is equivalent to what the brain is doing when it processes colour neurally and computationally.

So with the background to my thinking out of the way, that leads me onto my questions. I hope you and I can agree that a banana is yellow. We both know what a banana looks like and we both know what the colour yellow looks like. But how can we both be sure that our experience of the colour yellow is the same? I don't think we can. If every yellow 'pixel' in my visual field actually showed the colour I perceive as blue and vice versa then from common social experience of the world and the objects in it, I'd label blue yellow and yellow blue. Then you and I, looking at the same banana, would both call it yellow but experience something different. But then someone could come along and ask me to compare colours. They might say 'yellow is lighter than blue'. At which point I would have to disagree, I think. It would only work if the whole colour spectrum was inverted - black became white and everything in between... then I would label the process of colours looking darker, lighter. So for instance when you said white is lighter than grey and me in my inverted world with black as white and white as black would label the visual difference between grey>black as 'lighter' when it was in fact darker.

Who knows how many other constraints there are on how we can talk to each other about colour, and catch each other out as it were about our experience of it. And each difference we can talk about is something we must first be able to detect in our own visual fields. There's already colour blindness etc which identifies when two people's experience of colour is not the same, but these constraints, and the number of them, do suggest to me that it is likely that we all experience colour roughly the same - that if we did not, the various constraints would have singled out people with a fundamentally different experience of colour. So assuming that to be the case - that we all experience roughly the same experience of colour - it becomes apparent that there are billions of brains out there all producing the same qualia in their perceptions. As an emergent property of a replicable brain that's all well and good and to be expected but as for the 'palette' how does it come to be... how is it 'designed' as it were? I wonder if it is the case that the colour qualia we 'see' is the only way to represent the data in a way that meets all the constraints of the system... that the palette we see emerges because it is the only way to differentiate, in the right ways, between the different states that are represented in the underlying neural hardware. That somehow an inverted colour world fails somewhere to meet the constraints of the actual brain-in-state and therefore does not, and cannot appear. That therefore all perception, whatever type it is, 'presents' the data in the only way it can to fulfil it's objectives.

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Any thoughts are welcome on any aspect of this

Not at all TL;DR, possibly because it touches on some speculations that I hold dear.

I'd point you to the Theory of Mind in which, per Wikipedia:

Theory of mind (often abbreviated ToM) is the ability to attribute mental states — beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc. — to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one's own

As far as I know, this attribution comes about only via inference from observations of the behavior of others.  We conclude that they have consciousness including qualia because they observed to act as if they did.  However, there is no first hand experience to confirm this.  I could be the only conscious entity in the universe, all other claimants being simulations.
My personal belief is that others experience a shared reality with me and do possess their own personal, similar internal realities.  I believe this because I believe the experience of consciousness emerges from the sum total of brain and body neural activity in concert with the inputs received from the surrounding environment.

Even given, rather than proved, that others have a self emerging from brain activity, any two can only be similar.  Identical experiences could only happen if two individuals were of identical construction including inhabiting an identical environment. In this case, there would be not two, but one.  Clearly some qualia, being as they are acquired tastes, must be different in different individuals.  For example, I live with persons who appear to intensely enjoy eating asparagus.  I find that vegetable to taste of used motor oil and have a hard time choking it down without gagging.  This marked difference in observed behavior leads me to believe in a similar magnitude difference in internal states.

It is consistent with my beliefs that the emergence of consciousness of self is a brain function which would be strongly preserved through natural selection.  Self preservation is much easier to achieve if one recognizes there is a self to preserve.  One so endowed should, through its own motivated efforts, persist and replicate better.  I would also expect, though as stated above, cannot prove, similarly constructed brains to exhibit similar behaviors up to and including consciousness.  

But how different does a brain/body have to be that I can no longer imagine myself in its place?
Not very.  Asparagus is a case in point.
When brain construction is so different that processing can be shown through anatomy and physiology to be chiefly associated with sensors not evolved in us arboreal, fruit eating primates I'd expect internal experiences to be near totally incomparable:
Electroreception in catfish and sharks.
Echo imaging in bats and cetaceans.
Thinking with their noses as in canids (with the exceptions of pekes and pugs which aren't really dogs and don't think anyway.)
I don't think we can have anything but a vague notion that their internal realities are qualitatively different.

I would say your speculation that system constraints uniquely drive an individual's consciousness experience is true, but only trivially so.  If consciousness is a result of brain state, and at any time, brain state is only one, fully constrained, thing, then the resultant experience can be only one thing.  But I also contend that this is the best of all possible worlds because at this moment, and as far as we know, this is the best, worst and only possible world.  I've irritated people with this but I don't know if they've really followed the argument or just think I'm being a jerk.

I've only skimmed the rest of the thread.  I did like your speculation that richness of imagination was proportional to the degree of interconnectedness of the underlying data store.  I'd say it also depends on the quantity of the available data, though this could be implied in your model.  Musings about the possible relations of real objects must build from valid observations of the objects in question.  Clearly, successful religions actively discourage knowledge outside of certain limits or their mmediate control.