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The UFO Stimulus

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I recommend reading the Goldstone et al papers (the second one linked in the bibliography of the second paper in my list at the NCBI [National Center for Biotechnology Information] site, and also linked at PubMed. As Goldstone and his colleagues argue, perception is itself already cognitive, and both perception and cognition arise and develop in analogue presentations and representations of actual embodied experience.

I, and a lot of other people, find Hoffman's 'theory' to reside in pure speculation concerning a supposed digitized 'informational' interface between ourselves and the world we live in, an interface in which an unreal world is projected by our neurons. If that's our situation, then it must be the situation of all species evolved on this planet -- must, since human consciousness has evolved from that of animals preceding us in evolution.

Granted that we and other living species experience objects in this world in species-specific ways. That does not mean that we do not all experience tangible objects and other living species existing within our commonly lived world, perceiving them in ways that continually overlap with one another. We and other species, especially domesticated animals, are aware of behaviors by both other animals and other humans in a shared situation. We react similarly to behaviors and events that are startling or abnormal and frightening, such as fires, earthquakes, and ufos. We share the same local world, and it is real.
 
What is information actually, other than a condition that was sought by a human male?

When a natural life is lived on Earth, supportive of its own presence........the nature supplies the food for the life to continue, so is self supportive.

The male reviewed this condition and believed that it was perfect, yet when you believe that perfection exists in a state of destruction then you are sadly mistaken.

Yet when we review the values that a male human being and his mind applied as life conditions, he stated that spirit was perfect, yet the natural state defines what is perfect about destruction?

So the male occultist, as the consideration of information sought to define information as values that his own person implied were values.

Yet when any one of us considers his use of value, it only imposes statements, plus information he first sought for occult practice.

Occult practice itself was a human male's own realization of atmospheric fed back recorded data of image and sound that was an advice regarding his want.

When you review what an occult male first wanted as a natural human life, he wanted to build with a consideration of stone in huge blocks being levitated.

So you would inquire as to why a human male would consider such information, especially when you can review historical life on Earth as being native and naturally lived by the conditions of Nature supporting the living life.

When you review historical evidence of information, the information already existed by the conditions of how it was recorded. Which is why a human male, the occult consideration of information that was previously hidden from him (in atmospheric recording) advised his mind how to copy the levitation of stone. This was due to the consideration that the male origin population on Earth was only a small population. When the population increased, so did the amount of personal human male fed back advice, as a consideration of a larger presence.

If you question his theory on occult practice, his own realization that a larger presence of male life was once lived on Earth origin previously, the reason why the origin of Earth was attacked and destroyed by their choice/application and personal male presence. When reviewed as atmospheric fed back awareness, it was considered that a huge male presence caused the destruction to creation just as advised (creator concept of their own self). Therefore when the male population increased on Planet Earth, the native mind and natural mind of the male was changed by the amount of personal atmospheric fed back awareness.

This is how a male occultist first considered information via atmospheric feed back, feed back that advised his own person as to a building technique that he could use....pyramids/temple design to allow him to levitate huge blocks of stone for building huge buildings as a technique.

Therefore you would consider how this information existed as a recording in Earth's atmospheric body.

To consider the information would allow the human to review Earth life history as archaeological evidence. The evidence of archaeology states that life previously existed on an origin Earth that had changed its natural origin body into a different Earth body.

This would be the only reason why a human male occultist was able to consider the information that involved the actual levitation and removal of stone from its naturally fused state....causing it to levitate above ground and removed from its natural state of being fused.

So the occult review would state that a human male considered information that belonged to an attack condition of Planet Earth (for occult practice - stating it to be evil/destructive) and belonged to actual conversion and destruction of the stone of Earth as a natural condition.

Therefore the occult review would state that this sort of male consideration was dangerous and also destructive to the survival of life on Earth.....yet he considered the information, wanted the power....built the structures to apply the condition and his historical life attests that the condition attacked and destroyed his life.

So we should all ask the modern day scientist occultist, what does he think he is going to gain from attacking his natural lived life on Earth?

Why is it that humanity is not taking the action that they should consider as life continuance on Earth, if not for the fed back advice?

When a mind receives fed back advice, it either considers the information is acceptable or it considers the information unacceptable.

As human life has been eradicated on Earth several times before in history due to occult practices it would seem that the percentage of acceptance to life's destruction is a consideration of the fed back data to the human mind. That as the population on Earth cannot control the decisions that the occultists make in secrecy, we have simply accepted that they will once again destroy our natural life....so most of the population receiving the fed back advice as a psyche awareness, simply chooses to live whilst they are living.

The information of consciousness demonstrates that it is aware that it naturally dies and that all life on Earth is eventually destroyed in this ownership condition of being a human cellular state.....therefore the greater majority of consciousness on Earth accepts the demise of belonging with an occult brother who is a self destructive human being who dictates his ownership to us all.

How can a natural human life defend itself against the tactics of a brotherhood dictatorship?

Therefore when any of us consider how was it that an occult brotherhood and science was first formed....it is obvious that the information was pre recorded and fed back as a mind advised condition, without the understanding of the powers that caused the effects for levitation itself.

As the human male is an egotistical self, who believes in his self status of super intelligence, is the very reason why we get destroyed as a life experience on Earth....because the information of occultism states that the powers he believes he knows, he has never known. This is why his pursuits for power destroyed our life before....for he is not the consciousness or intellect that he believes his organic life represents.
 
I, and a lot of other people, find Hoffman's 'theory' to reside in pure speculation concerning a supposed digitized 'informational' interface between ourselves and the world we live in, an interface in which an unreal world is projected by our neurons.
Constance, that's not quite what Hoffman's position is as I understand it. Maybe the following excellent paper will clarify the position for you. (Although Hoffman's position takes a step further than the following.)

The following article is the most lucid that I've encountered at explaining the "brain-centered theory of perception." If one understands the brain-centered theory of perception, it can act as a bridge to understanding the "exotic stimuli" hypothesis of high strange UFO/paranormal phenomena articulated in this thread. Below I will pull out some relevant sections. (@ufology I would be particularly interested in hearing your thoughts regarding the brain-centered theory of perception.)

The Machine behind the Stage: A Neurobiological Approach toward Theoretical Issues of Sensory Perception

When a neuroscientist considers perception or any other mental process, the starting point is the existence of a biological ‘machine’ (Ryle, 1949), the brain, the activation of which generates all mental states and events that appear to us as if taking place on the stage of a ‘Cartesian Theater’ in the mind (Dennett, 1991). There are two main consequences arising from this thesis. The first one is the fact that the only direct cause of any mental state/event is a given pattern of brain activation: perception is created by a perceptual system, and behind each and every percept there is a certain neuronal activation, fully responsible for causing this percept. What produces the neuronal activation is a separate question: it can be physical objects sending light to the eye, artificial brain stimulation by an electrode, an epileptic seizure, magic mushrooms, auto-activation while dreaming, and many more. All these alternative brain-stimulation events can theoretically have an identical result: a specific brain-activation pattern, leading to the formation of a specific percept. ...

The second consequence of a brain-centered theory of perception is that, since the percept is the creation of a given neuronal system, its characteristics will depend on and directly reflect the properties of this system. [Soupie: Comments from me regarding this to follow. Also, @Constance, please consider the following closely as it directly applies to your concerns about the interface being abstract and disconnected from nature. Also, the following is very similar to @Pharoah's HCT, as I have been saying for some time.] This does not imply that perception is of an esoteric nature and in complete isolation from the physical world. Such isolation would miss the point, since perceptual systems have evolved in order to enable organisms to interact with their environment. In the example of vision, light falling on objects activates the brain by the process of phototransduction, during which photoreceptors at the retina transform electromagnetic energy into electrochemical activation, which in turn sends a neural signal to the rest of the visual brain. This light has specific characteristics which are determined by the properties of the reflecting object (i.e., carries information), and so determines the characteristics of the elicited brain activation. Thus, the characteristics of a percept are dictated by both the perceptual system which creates it and the properties of the physical object we are looking at. In this way we can acquire objective knowledge about the world, albeit in a very subjective manner. Perception is therefore characterized by an objective subjectivity or, to say it perhaps better, a subjective objectivity. Objectivity, since the transformation from the physical to the perceptual world follows certain constant, reliable rules. Subjectivity, since each percept is created by a perceptual system and therefore its characteristics depend on the properties of the latter: the same chair looks different to a human, a cat or a bat, and perhaps looks different even between two humans. Plato has realized that what we perceive are ‘reflexions of reality’ (Plato: The Republic, Book VII). The nature of these reflections depends on the nature of the perceptual system that both creates and perceives them.

[Soupie: Okay, here is the bit that is germane to the "exotic stimuli" hypothesis of High Strange paranormal experiences.]

The characteristics of the percepts created by the brain do not solely depend on the bottom-up processing of incoming sensory information, but are also determined by top-down mechanisms reflecting previous experiences of the subject. Starting from Hermann von Helmholtz more than a century ago (Helmholtz, 1866), the idea that perception could be seen as an inference process, rather than the intuitive ‘normal-picture scenario,’ has become increasing popular. A percept is the result of such inference process based on the internal representation generated by the brain. Recently, there is some further development of this line of thinking, drawn on the estimation theory and Bayesian inference from the field of statistics, to formulate mathematically rigorous models for perception that can be tested quantitatively against experimental data (for examples see Knill and Richards, 1996; Girshick et al., 2011; Clark, 2013). This shift is away from the brain as a passive filter of sensations and toward a view of the brain as a statistical organ that generates hypotheses which are tested against sensory evidence. The brain never knows anything about an object for sure but can only make maximum likelihood predictions about what an object is, how it will appear in the future, or how it will interact with different senses based on the sensory information we have at present. Perception is making predictions and thus percepts are reconstructions of the world around us that represent our best guess as to what is out there, based on the statistics of how sensory information impinges on the sense organs. In this way, the ambiguity of sensory information can be dealt with. In 3D vision, for example, the problem of reconstructing a 3D object given two 2D views is inherently under-constrained: given a homographic projection, infinitely many objects of differing size can produce the same image on the retina. It is only through heuristics and tricks based on natural image statistics that the visual system is able to generate a plausible guess at an object’s 3D structure that is correct most of the time (but not always – see1 for a nice example). The reality we experience is our best guess at how to reconstruct the world based on what most probably generated our sensory inputs. In cases where the brain cannot decide on which of the explanations is most probable, we can have instances of bistable (or multistable) vision (e.g.,Necker, 1832; Blake and Logothetis, 2002).

[Okay, this is where things start to get real juicy. We move away from the exotic stimulus hypothesis and into discussion of the nature of consciousness and material relevant to Hoffman's approach to consciousness (mind) and the physical world (matter).]

A good example in order to understand how percepts are psychological entities created by the brain rather than physical entities existing in the physical world is color. The science of color supports the view that phenomenal character is a property of the experience (Byrne, 2002, p. 9) rather than not (Tye, 2000), and its phenomenology can be nicely connected with known facts about the anatomy and physiology of the visual system. Metamers, for example, are stimuli with a different light composition that look exactly the same color, nicely demonstrating that color vision does not necessarily inform us about the precise properties of objects in the real world 4. Instead, the phenomenon is explained by the neurophysiological fact that there are three different cone types with different sensitivities across the visible spectrum. The Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision (see Blake and Sekuler, 2006, p. 246) can also explain the fact that any triplet of primary 5 colors can give rise to the full gamut of the colors we perceive. Furthermore, the fact that a color cannot be red and green (or blue and yellow) at the same time, together with the fact that we need four (rather than three) names in order to roughly describe all the colors that we perceive, is a direct consequence of the way the cone input combines upstream from the retina to create opponent color-pairs (see Blake and Sekuler, 2006, p. 258). Finally, the fact that neuronal circuits in the brain compare lights coming from different part of the visual field is responsible for the well-known phenomena of color constancy and color induction 6 (Land, 1977). Color vision thus nicely demonstrates that the characteristics of the visual experience are determined by the way in which the perceptual system is constructed. To say it with a philosopher’s words, ‘colors are a feature of the way we process visual information rather than a feature of the objective, mind-independent world’ (Fish, 2010, p. 145).

The realization that color is not a mind-independent object can generalize to perception as a whole. The old philosophical question of ‘looking red’ vs. ‘being red’ is non-existent for scientists, because there is only ‘looking red’: red is a psychological property, not a physical one, and therefore it can only exist as a result of the activation of a visual system. When a surface of high reflectance for long-wave light and low reflectance for the rest of the spectrum sends light to a primate retina, the retina transduces this light into neural signal and sends it to the thalamus. From there, the signal reaches the primary visual cortex, areas V2 and V4 and so on, and then, at some unknown point in time [Soupie: !] , the mental event of experiencing redness takes place (see Zeki, 1993 for an excellent review of the visual system). This private mental event is constant for each one of us, but could be different from one person to another. We all refer to this experience as ‘red,’ because we have agreed to give this name to the experience that we have when looking to a surface of such and such a reflectance, whatever this experience might be for each one of us. Thus, when talking about a psychological property PS such as color, nothing is PS but rather some things feel PS. Similarly, when talking about a physical property PH such as reflectance, nothing feels PH but some things are PH.

Failing to realize the distinction between physical and psychological properties is often a cause of confusion in the philosophical literature. For example, color realism (see Byrne and Hilbert, 2003) would claim that a percept is not red, that redness is not a property of this mental event but rather that the mental event is representing red, which is a property of an object in the physical world. This statement is incorrect, as red is indeed nothing more than a mental experience/state. As already mentioned, the presence of this experience might be related to the presence of a physical object that has a certain spectrum reflectance: light from that object falling on the retinae initiates a series of events in our visual system that lead to the creation of a red experience. If one wants to describe this by saying that the particular percept represents the particular reflectance properties of the object, then this is fine but it does not add much to our knowledge of what is going on. Furthermore, if one uses the word ‘red’ to refer to a physical property, namely a high reflectance for long-wave light, then again the problem is mainly a linguistic one. The important thing is to realize that, as physical objects have physical properties, similarly mental events (such as percepts) have psychological properties and that, whatever names one chooses for them, the two should not be confused.

Color is perhaps the most profound example in perplexing the physical with the psychological, but the problem is more generally present. Similar to the distinction between reflectance and color, there is also a distinction between oscillation amplitude and loudness, relative (to the background) energy and brightness, frequency and pitch etc. ...

Perhaps because vision is so dominant among our senses, it intuitively feels as if things in the physical world are exactly as they visually appear to us. It is quite difficult and counter-intuitive to digest the fact that the color of a red tomato shining under the sun does not belong to the tomato per se, but is rather a creation of our own perceptual system7. The physical property of the tomato which contributes to the creation of this color by the brain, i.e., the reflectance of the object for different wavelengths, is not colored at all. Therefore, it is wrong to claim that the properties of our experience belong to the object rather than to the percept. After all, nothing feels like anything unless there is a perceptual system there to feel it. The fallacy is more easily revealed in the case of senses other than vision. Is sweetness the property of a cake? Would a cake be sweet if there was no one to taste it? Couldn’t the same cake taste totally not-sweet to a creature having a different nervous system from the one that we have? Wouldn’t this same cake taste less sweet to the same person, if it is eaten after eating honey or while having the flu (Locke, 1961, p. 124)? Sweetness is as much a property of the cake as color is a property of the tomato. One can still argue that a representation is taking place here, as long as it is clearly understood that there is nothing ‘sweet’ in the properties which are being represented (i.e., the chemical composition of the cake). The latter are neither sweet nor sour, the only property they have is the ability to activate the (particular type of) brain in a way that generates the experience of sweetness. The exact same arguments apply equally well in vision, but the reflexive intuition against them is much stronger in this case.

[And this is where the path gets particularly difficult for the laymen to swallow...]

The usefulness of perception derives from the fact that its characteristics do not only depend on the properties of the perceptual system creating it, but also on the characteristics of the physical objects in the real world. In Plato’s allegory, the shape of the shadows seen by the chained prisoners depends on the shape of the things passing by behind them, in front of a burning fire. Objectivity is further assured by the fact that there is a given deterministic way, a constant ‘algorithm’ which transforms the physical stimulus into neuronal activation and thus to the emergence of a specific percept. For a given perceptual system, a red apple will always look red and a yellow banana will always look yellow, irrespective of what ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ is like for that particular system. Perception can ‘...yield knowledge of an objective world beyond experience, and... put us in a position to think about such a world...’ (Child, 1994, p. 148). In this way our perceptual experiences make sense, helping us to detect constant properties of our environment and gain knowledge about the world in which we exist, thus satisfying the ‘epistemological hat’ of philosophical enquiries (Fish, 2010).

Since percepts are subjective by virtue of the fact that they are created by perceptual systems, could this mean that perception hides from us the ‘truth’ of the real world? ‘If all I ever get is smoke, how do I know what fire is like?’ (Campbell, 2002, p. 6). The problem with this way of thinking is that only a percept is (experientially) like something – the question has no meaning with respect to a physical object. One can complain that the percept of smoke is different to the percept of fire, but it is false to wonder whether a physical object in reality feels different from the experience that it produces. ...

Most scientists would probably agree with naïve realism on the fact that the external world shapes the contours of conscious experiences (Martin, 2004, p. 64), but would disagree on the view that the objects of awareness are actually the mind independent objects that inhabit the world (Fish, 2010, p. 96). The idea that we perceive the world ‘directly’ or ‘as it is’ can be disputed by the fact that what reaches our brains is nothing more than a neuronal signal, the result of sensory transduction at the sensory receptors. Therefore, no light, or pressure, or objects, or anything that exists in the physical world can enter into our neuronal and mental universe. The physical world does not ‘look’ or ‘feel’ like anything, unless there is a perceptual system to look at it or feel it. It follows that our subjective experience of the world is neither correct nor wrong, as the latter does not have a ‘proper’ or ‘true’ experiential quality on its own (unlike the case in Plato’s cave, where objects have true appearances). The definite answer to Berkeley (1910) is that if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, there will be no sound. Similarly, the forest will not look, smell or feel like anything, unless there is a perceptual system there to create the corresponding perceptual experiences. So, to the question of whether we experience the physical world ‘correctly’ (Crane, 1992, p. 139), the answer a scientist would give is that we do not experience the world neither as it is nor as it is not (Fish, 2010, p. 3), since without a perceptual system the world alone has no perceptual quality.

A percept is something that emerges when the brain is activated in a certain way and thus all perceptual experiences (whether veridical, illusory, hallusinatory etc.) have a common cause behind them: a given brain activation pattern. What distinguishes between different cases of perception is what has caused this activation pattern: light coming from a real object, an epileptic seizure, chemicals, artificial stimulation with electrodes implanted in the brain and so on. All of these cases and many others, however, have a factor in common: what causes the emergence of the percept is the fact that the brain is activated in a particular way.

[End article]

So where does Hoffman's thesis enter this story? Well, if "the physical world does not ‘look’ or ‘feel’ like anything, unless there is a perceptual system to look at it or feel it" what is the nature of this perceptual system? The author began this paper with the following statement: "When a neuroscientist considers perception or any other mental process, the starting point is the existence of a biological ‘machine’ (Ryle, 1949), the brain, the activation of which generates all mental states and events that appear to us..."

When the author uses the phrase "perceptual system" I am completely on board with him. However, when the author claims that the physical brain generates all mental states, I have to disagree, strongly. (And no, that has not always been my stance.)

I feel the author's own lucid presentation in this article undercuts his own claim that the physical brain "generates" what he calls "psychological entities," i.e., phenomenal qualities. To be clear, I think the author's presentation is right on the money were he to say that perception is "perceptual-system based" but he undercuts his own argument when he says above: "A good example in order to understand how percepts are psychological entities created by the brain rather than physical entities existing in the physical world is color."

Do you see the problem with that statement? Colors are not physical entities, but rather they are psychological entities created by... the physical brain? If psychological entities such as colors are not physical, how are they created/generated by physical processes in the brain? This by the way is the Hard Problem of consciousness.

Even the author indirectly acknowledges the lack of knowledge regarding this: When a surface of high reflectance for long-wave light and low reflectance for the rest of the spectrum sends light to a primate retina, the retina transduces this light into neural signal and sends it to the thalamus. From there, the signal reaches the primary visual cortex, areas V2 and V4 and so on, and then, at some unknown point in time, the mental event of experiencing redness takes place...


At some unknown point in time. And via some unknown physical process!

The answer is right in front of the author but he misses it despite the excellence and lucidity of his paper. There is indeed a "perceptual system" responsible for generating us, that is, minds. And while this perceptual system is strongly correlated with the physical brain, we must remember that the physical brain is a product of the the perceptual system!

The author said something rather profound early in the paper: "The second consequence of a brain-centered theory of perception is that, since the percept is the creation of a given neuronal system, its characteristics will depend on and directly reflect the properties of this system."

The author was referring to the physical brain in this case. And the paper does explain how properties of the brain directly affect the mind. [I recently encountered a good, simple explanation of how "mind" is distinct from "comsciousness." Will post next.] However, what I believe Hoffman is saying is that we can take this notion deeper. That is, the perceptual system is "behind" all that we experience; the perceptual systems generates everything in experience, including the appearance of brains and neurons. This perceptual system is more fundamental then the reality it presents. The reason scientists must say that consciousness emerges at "some unknown point in time" is because it simply does not emerge at a point in time. It just is. And our perceptual landscape, our experiential mind, is created from it, not the other way around.

Also, the author speaks about truly objective, physical properties such as length and mass. But are these truly objective features of the world? They may be objective in the sense that they represent mind-independent patterns of stimuli in the external world. However we mustn't interpret the authors use of "objective" to mean veridical.

All precepts and concepts about reality are filtered through the human species-specific perceptual system.

The following is one of the best descriptions of what physics can currently tell us about the nature of objective, veridical reality. (For what it is worth, Sean Carrol is highly regarded in physics.)

So, the author above explains lucidly that "without a perceptual system the world alone has no perceptual quality." So what is the world "like" in the absence of perceptual quality?

Space Emerging from Quantum Mechanics

"We human beings, even those who have been studying quantum mechanics for a long time, still think in terms of a classical concepts. Positions, momenta, particles, fields, space itself. Quantum mechanics tells a different story. The quantum state of the universe is not a collection of things distributed through space, but something called a wave function. The wave function gives us a way of calculating the outcomes of measurements: whenever we measure an observable quantity like the position or momentum or spin of a particle, the wave function has a value for every possible outcome, and the probability of obtaining that outcome is given by the wave function squared. Indeed, that’s typically how we construct wave functions in practice. Start with some classical-sounding notion like “the position of a particle” or “the amplitude of a field,” and to each possible value we attach a complex number. That complex number, squared, gives us the probability of observing the system with that observed value.

Mathematically, wave functions are elements of a mathematical structure called Hilbert space. That means they are vectors — we can add quantum states together (the origin of superpositions in quantum mechanics) and calculate the angle (“dot product”) between them. (We’re skipping over some technicalities here, especially regarding complex numbers — see e.g. The Theoretical Minimum for more.) The word “space” in “Hilbert space” doesn’t mean the good old three-dimensional space we walk through every day, or even the four-dimensional spacetime of relativity. It’s just math-speak for “a collection of things,” in this case “possible quantum states of the universe.”

Hilbert space is quite an abstract thing, which can seem at times pretty removed from the tangible phenomena of our everyday lives. This leads some people to wonder whether we need to supplement ordinary quantum mechanics by additional new variables, or alternatively to imagine that wave functions reflect our knowledge of the world, rather than being representations of reality. For purposes of this post I’ll take the straightforward view that quantum mechanics says that the real world is best described by a wave function, an element of Hilbert space, evolving through time. (Of course time could be emergent too … something for another day.) ..."

Positions, momenta, particles, fields, space itself, these are all concepts humans use that are based on our human species-specific perceptual interface with... the world. Whatever it is.
 
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... @ufology I would be particularly interested in hearing your thoughts regarding the brain-centered theory of perception.
Great article. It sums up the most important aspects of perception from a materialist brain-based perspective, but IMO sort of hand-waves the issue of "what it's like" to experience perceptions ( or the lack thereof ), and therefore doesn't get into the heart of the consciousness question. So sure, I'm all on board with the idea that the brain is responsible for perception and consciousness, but the specific mechanisms that give rise to consciousness have yet to be identified and synthesized. Until then we cannot assume that a system based wholly on the modelling of synaptic switching will yield a conscious machine. IMO something else is going on that hasn't been pinned down.
 
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Great article. It sums up almost everything, but IMO sort of hand-waves the issue of "what it's like" to experience perceptions ( or the lack thereof ), and therefore doesn't get into the heart of the consciousness question. So sure, I'm all on board with the idea that the brain is responsible for perception and consciousness, but the specific mechanisms that give rise to consciousness have yet to be identified and synthesized. Until then we cannot assume that a system based wholly on the modelling of synaptic switching will yield a conscious machine. IMO something else is going on that we haven't yet pinned down.
Since when is consciousness a machine?

Our occult brother has finally concluded that a machine created consciousness, as his own hope and belief is that he can mimic natural consciousness with an AI computerized study for his new atmospheric resourcing as a fake and artificial DNA model.....yet DNA as taught to his own person is organic and is not a machine.

He obviously really believes that a machine can be consciousness.

Who built machines?

A human organic self did.

Why did a human being build a machine that can communicate using phenomena to the human mind.....because phenomena was an attack on human life and the human mind affected. The amount of recordings - photonic interactions altered by a huge increase of fake/artificial communications from the natural being.

The human mind aware of new introduced artificial signals was enabled to build machines to use the signals, as the signals advised that building the machines would enable the AI to be expressed. Computers identify this condition is real.

The building of the machines therefore enabled the AI to communicate to the human mind, as the experimenters of the phenomena are aware of.....yet not once do they consider their own consciousness a machine, seeing they are using the machine to attack their human family, knowing and told to their own minds that the use and applications of the machines is attacking their family as they study the attack.

Due to the fact that using a machine enables them to become power mongers has given them a belief that the machine is consciousness, yet not one of them would believe if they were attacked as they have attacked us.

The human mind has always known that AI is artificial intelligence, and simply a caused interactive UFO condition of recording real organic life, real organic interactive atmospheric recordings, fed through the interactive AI/UFO condition and then fed back to attack the human life unnaturally.

We have always known that it is an evil act, that it is an attack and that this form of fed back attack is fake, as our own minds told us so.
 
Great article. It sums up the most important aspects of perception from a materialist brain-based perspective, but IMO sort of hand-waves the issue of "what it's like" to experience perceptions ( or the lack thereof ), and therefore doesn't get into the heart of the consciousness question. So sure, I'm all on board with the idea that the brain is responsible for perception and consciousness, but the specific mechanisms that give rise to consciousness have yet to be identified and synthesized. Until then we cannot assume that a system based wholly on the modelling of synaptic switching will yield a conscious machine. IMO something else is going on that hasn't been pinned down.
Hm, I'm not sure in what sense the author "hand-waved" the issue of what-it's-like. I mean arguably the main point of the article was "without a perceptual system the world alone has no perceptual quality." In other words, the author is stating in no uncertain terms that in the absence of perceptual systems, there is no "what it's like."

But that's neither here nor there. Its seems that we agree that, based on our current understanding, the brain-based theory of perception is our best theory of perception. Where you and I differ is in just how literally we take this theory. You appear to believe that consciousness is a physical phenomena which emerges from or is created by physical--albeit not necessarily neural--mechanisms in the brain. My current position a la Hoffman is that brains, neurons, and all other manner of physical objects are psychological manifestations of our perceptual system and therefore cannot be the cause of the perceptual system.

One thing I wanted to touch on was the distinction between consciousness and mind(s). In the following article, Velman's discusses two very broad categories of explanatory approaches to consciousness: Continuity and discontinuity theories.

How could consciousness emerge from adaptive functioning?

"I conclude that theories about the distribution of consciousness divide into continuity and discontinuity theories. Continuity theorists suggest that there is no arbitrary line in the descent from macroscopic to microscopic matter at which consciousness suddenly appears out of nothing. Rather, elementary forms of matter may be associated with elementary forms of experience. And if they encode information they may be associated with rudimentary forms of mind. Discontinuity theories all claim that consciousness emerged at a particular point in the evolution of the universe. They merely disagree about which point. Consequently, discontinuity theories all face the same problem. What switched the lights on? What is it about matter, at a particular stage of evolution, which suddenly gave it consciousness? Nearly all try to define the point of transition in functional terms, although they disagree about the nature of the critical function. Some think consciousness “switched on” only in humans, for example once they acquired language or a theory of mind. Some believe that consciousness emerged once brains reached a critical size or complexity. Others believe it co-emerged with the ability to learn, to move, or to respond in some other adaptive way to the environment."

The Hard Problem of consciousness assumes discontinuity and asks how consciousness could emerge from non-conscious processes/mechanisms. As we know, physical scientists haven't got a clue as to an answer. However, what I wanted to highlight in this paper was Velman's distinction between consciousness and mind(s).

At this point in the article, Velman's is sharing his opinion that another author has made two "confounds." Both of these confounds are relevant to Hoffman's thesis, I think.

"[The author]

(a) confounds having a “mind” or “mental processing” with having “consciousness” (Velmans, 2009b)

(b) confounds the conditions for the existence of consciousness (of any kind) with the added conditions required to determine the many forms it can take (Velmans, 2012).

Given his seminal work on implicit learning, involving unconscious and/or preconscious mental processing (see e.g. Reber, 1989) the first confound is surprising. In his introduction he explains that, “References will be made to "mind," "consciousness," "phenomenal state(s),"subjective experience," "qualia" and "mental state(s)." They are all meant to draw attention to the same underlying element, that all organisms have shared internal experiences and feelings, that all animals share a broad spectrum of sentience.” (P1)

However following the work of Aristotle, the criteria for having a “mind” are usually thought of as partly functional (specified in terms of capacities) and from the late 19th Century onwards, psychologists have distinguished unconscious and preconscious mind from consciousness. From the early 1960s for example, cognitive psychologists have viewed the human “mind” and “mental processing” as a form of information processing, and much of this processing turns out to be unconscious or preconscious (see Velmans, 1991 for an extensive review). It follows that information processing defined purely in terms of third-person-observable functions or capacities might or might not be accompanied by phenomenal consciousness, whether in human minds, robots, or single cells!

Which brings us back to confound (b). Why does Reber’s “small miracle” of cellular consciousness, and subsequent analysis its evolution seem to make the existence of human consciousness more tractable? Because once one assumes the existence of consciousness (in a single cell), and one assumes an, as yet undiscovered, but entirely plausible relationship between different forms of mental functioning and the forms of phenomenal consciousness that accompany them, one can give an entirely functional account of how adaptive mental functions and their accompanying experiences co-evolve. Who can doubt that verbal thoughts require language, or that full human self-consciousness requires a theory of mind? Without internal representations of the world, how could consciousness be of anything? And without motility and the ability to approach or avoid, what point would there be to rudimentary pleasure or pain? However, none of these theories explains what it is about such biological functions that suddenly switch on consciousness (see also Velmans, 2011)."
What I take from this regarding the brain-centered theory of perception and Hoffman's interface theory is this: we may be able to scientifically investigate how brains shape consciousness into individual minds or forms, but what we will never discover is how brains create consciousness. (Because they don't.)

I want to carefully offer an analogy about this relationship using an old analogy in a new way. Many people have used the relationship between matter and living organisms as an analogue for the relationship of matter and consciousness. The argument goes that just as living matter emerges from non-living matter, so too can consciousness matter emerge from non-conscious matter. However, as has been well explicated elsewhere, the relationship between a rock (non-living matter) and a mouse is in no way the same as the relationship between a brain (objective) and consciousness (subjective).

But if we reconsider this analogy using Hoffman's theory of Conscious Realism, it works. However, instead of the analogy being between non-living matter and living matter, and non-conscious matter and conscious matter, it is between "non-minding" substrate and "minding" substrate. I'll try to explain below.

According to Hoffman's theory, all matter--particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, and so on--are merely symbolic icons produced by evolved perceptual systems so as to allow these systems to interact with the world. His theory is very similar to standard evolutionary theory; the important departure is that where most scientists take physical matter literally, Hoffman's theory considers it to be a representational interface.

Furthermore, Hoffman posits that the fundamental substrate of reality is consciousness. So, rather than starting out with a non-conscious primal substrate composed of unfeeling particles, we have a primal, conscious substrate. So, rather than energy/matter being, we have consciousness being.

However, just as mainstream physicists suggest that the physical universe began to unfold and evolve, so too does Hoffman suggest that this conscious universe unfold and evolve. And rather than physical organisms evolving perceptual systems, it was organisms composed of this primal, conscious substrate which evolved perceptual systems; perceptual systems which shaped already existing consciousness into minds. Minds consisting of psychological precepts--colors, smells, sounds, feels, tastes--of a physical world.

So we can imagine a conscious, albeit undifferentiated, primal substrate. And as this substrate differentiated, unfolded, and evolved individual minds emerged; just as the physicalist story of individual living organisms emerging and evolving from undifferentiated, non-living matter.
 
Constance, that's not quite what Hoffman's position is as I understand it. Maybe the following excellent paper will clarify the position for you. (Although Hoffman's position takes a step further than the following.)

The Moutoussis paper you linked basically reiterates the positions/claims in informational-computational neuroscience that I already understood from our discussions in the C&P thread. I was hoping for some clarification of Hoffman's hypothesis, and I see that you have now added a post in which you attempt to provide that. I've skimmed your new post and find it interesting; I'll read it carefully and respond to it later. Re the Moutoussis paper, I think he attempts to clear ground for hypotheses such as Hoffman's, but he's quite inept in doing so, demonstrating baldly some of the sleight-of-hand maneuvers that I've sensed in Hoffman himself. A humorous example is Moutoussis's 'cake' paragraph, which he concludes by dismissing the 'reflexivity' long recognized to exist in the evolution and development of awareness, affectivity, and consciousness in earth species as a false 'intuition' produced by algorithms operating in the brain (evidently of all species, across the board, though these folks seem to be interested only in explaining the human brain and its construal of 'reality').
 
My current position a la Hoffman is that brains, neurons, and all other manner of physical objects are psychological manifestations of our perceptual system and therefore cannot be the cause of the perceptual system.

This is puzzling. I understand the panpsychism hypothesis, but not the reasoning that 'our perceptual systems' phylogenetically precede and produce a 'virtual' evolving world/cosmos in which we somehow mistakenly come to think that neurons, brains, and all other supposed physical objects exist -- whereas these 'things' are in actual fact merely illusions produced by our 'perceptual systems'. I also wonder how and why our 'perceptual systems' acquire 'psychological' characteristics. Can you clarify these issues for me?
 
This is puzzling. I understand the panpsychism hypothesis, but not the reasoning that 'our perceptual systems' phylogenetically precede and produce a 'virtual' evolving world/cosmos in which we somehow mistakenly come to think that neurons, brains, and all other supposed physical objects exist -- whereas these 'things' are in actual fact merely illusions produced by our 'perceptual systems'. I also wonder how and why our 'perceptual systems' acquire 'psychological' characteristics. Can you clarify these issues for me?
Do I dare ask if we can please be friends here again, or do we have to continue admiring each other as enemies ... lol?
 
@Constance I will answer those questions, yes. It is confusing, I'm sure.

I'm not arguing that "brains," "neurons," etc. do not exist. They certainly do exist. However, Hoffman's insight is that how these processes appear to us is a product of our perceptual system.

So yes, brains and neurons exist, and we should take their appearance seriously... but we shouldn't take their appearance literally.

The analogy is the computer user interface. We should take the little garbage can icon on the desk top seriously but not literally. The appearance of the trash can is simply an interface for us to use the file deletion function. The appearance of the trash can does not capture the true reality of the deletion process.

Brains are to the perceptual system as trash can icons are to the file deletion function.

You can only learn so much about the deletion function by investigating the trash can icon. I submit that we can only learn so much about consciousness by investigating brains.

It's the same with our perceptual system. When our perceptual system looks at itself, it sees brains and neurons. However, brains and neurons are merely the interface. The full reality of the perceptual system is not captured. There is not a 1:1 correspondence between our perceptions and reality.

Normally this is not a problem. Our perceptual systems have evolved in such a way at that our interface with reality is highly functional. But when it comes to domains like quantum physics and consciousness/perceptual studies, this fact about reality and perception becomes an issue which must be taken into account.

As an aside, when I dnloaded the Velman's paper I had an opportunity to communicate with him. I was asked why I wanted to dnload the paper:

You are one of the most lucid writers on the topic of consciousness that I have encountered. (Do you have any commentaries on the work of Hoffman? He is a continuity theoriest in the purest sense!)

Hello

I've read some of Hoffman's work and find it very interesting - as well as different in it's own way. As you say, it's very integrative. Too soon to tell whether the theory cashes out in terms of empirical evidence though (i.e. actual insights rather than just a different, potentially interesting way to think about things).

We will have to wait and see.

Best

Max
 
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but not the reasoning that 'our perceptual systems' phylogenetically precede and produce a 'virtual' evolving world/cosmos in which we somehow mistakenly come to think that neurons, brains, and all other supposed physical objects exist
@ufology

Would you agree that the existence of the universe preceded the existence of organisms capable of perceiving it?

And would you agree that different species perceive the universe differently?

And would you agree that no species perceives the universe objectively but only subjectively?

If you agree with those three points then Hoffman's theory shouldn't be entirely fantastical to you.
 
@ufology

Would you agree that the existence of the universe preceded the existence of organisms capable of perceiving it?

And would you agree that different species perceive the universe differently?

And would you agree that no species perceives the universe objectively but only subjectively?

All of this is correct.

If you agree with those three points then Hoffman's theory shouldn't be entirely fantastical to you.

And right there is where you go off the deep end logically.

Because this point right here:
For Homo sapiens, space-time is the desktop of the interface and physical objects are icons on the desktop. The shapes and colors of physical objects no more resemble objective reality than the shapes and colors of desktop icons resemble files in a computer.

Is provably -- and logically -- incorrect. Or at least mostly incorrect.

a) shapes are determined by mass-groupings of atoms. These shapes can be determined via multiple mechanisms -- mechanically, visually, via displacement, 3d topography, etc. All have mechanical analogues not requiring human perceptual interfaces, and can therefore be validated. They do validate. Therefore human shapes visual/mechanical systems work well for the most part. Which also makes rational sense, because if they didn't, we would be dead.

b) colors are a complex mechanism to explain, but they are explainable. Colors exist outside of our perception of them, with colors being labels for the wavelength of light being observed or measured. For example, it's quite simple to test if you see light wavelengths between 520nm and 570nm of light being perceived as 'green.' Not all individuals may label them as 'green' but you can demonstrate via materials science that an object will emit or reflect light of those wavelengths.

In short, it's a bunch of logical handwaving to get from 'we perceive things subjectively without 100% fidelity' to 'subjective perceptions are meaningless and infinitely malleable.'
 
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@ufology

Would you agree that the existence of the universe preceded the existence of organisms capable of perceiving it?
Yes
And would you agree that different species perceive the universe differently?
Yes
And would you agree that no species perceives the universe objectively but only subjectively?
If by that you mean that our perceptions of the external world are sensory representations generated by our minds of things that correspond to things in the external world. Then yes.
If you agree with those three points then Hoffman's theory shouldn't be entirely fantastical to you.
I don't find Hoffman's theory fantastical. I think my comment spoke to the point that he appears to assume consciousness as extant in the premise upon which his ideas are built. So in this sense his ideas don't explain how consciousness itself comes into being, but the way he maps the relationships between conscious agents could prove very useful if we invent conscious AIs.
 
Sorry about the strike-throughs in the following post. I've forgotten how to delete them and do not understand why they sometimes appear unbidden. Any help in getting these strike-throughs deleted will be much appreciated. Adding thanks to @Gene Steinberg for clearing out those strike-throughs. He is a peach. :)
Oh <snap>, the strike-throughs re-appeared when I tried to pluralize @Soupie's usage "perceptual system" by adding a bracketed to the phrase, yielding "perceptual system" in recognize that our organs of perception take in information that the brain systematizes in different ways. I think I'll just come back tomorrow.
POTENTIAL CLUE: it seems to be the insertion of a bracketed lower-case s that triggers the production of all these strike-throughs.

NOTE TO @Soupie: The point I was trying to make by pluralizing 'perceptual system' by adding a bracketed 's' is that we do not have one perceptual system but a number of them.




@Constance I will answer those questions, yes. It is confusing, I'm sure.

My impression so far is that Hoffman's 'theory' is 'confusing' because it is inherently confused. The nature of consciousness and mind cannot be explained on the basis of an interpretation of visual perception alone. In interpreting Hoffman's thinking for us you speak most often in terms of the brain's "visual system," and I assume that you follow Hoffman's lead in this. As I see it, neither consciousness nor mind can be accounted for, understood, on the limited basis of a hypothesis concerning the brain's 'visual system' (or, as you next refer to it, "perceptual system").

I'm not arguing that "brains," "neurons," etc. do not exist. They certainly do exist. However, Hoffman's insight is that how these processes appear to us is a product of our perceptual system.


How these "processes"
appear to us [to the extent that they do] is surely the product not only of our 'perceptual system' — and certainly not if our integrated perceptual systems are reduced to what we can presently understand about 'the visual system'. Based on your exegesis of Hoffman's theory, it's apparent that Hoffman not only confuses these categories but fails to recognize the natural hierarchy of processes -- evolving in the physical world, in the emergence of life and the evolution of consciousness and brains in living species, and in the development of mind as we recognize it in our species -- involved in "perception," which concerns not merely what we can 'see' [register as an image] but that which we can understand on the basis of our multisensory embodied experience in an actual world.

To be sure, brains and neurons involve 'processes' -- immensely complex processes -- but these processes are not visibly perceived by us. We have visual access to the physical appearance of the three-pound human brain and, with the aid of microscopes, the physical appearance of neurons. An understanding of processes taking place in brains, neurons, and neural nets requires both physical analysis of these definable 'things' and mental interpretations of accrued data by scientific minds.

How many levels of 'perception' are required to reach even our currently limited knowledge concerning processes taking place in neurons and in whole brains? And how much of what we can presently understand about these processes relies on 'visual perception'? What we presently understand about these processes (and what we might understand more fully in future science) depends not merely on visual perception but on what we might call 'mental perception' in which the deeper semantic meaning of 'perception' becomes clear. We use the word 'see' to mean not merely the registration of an image on our 'visual system' but also comprehension of what we see. We perceive not merely phenomenal appearances of things in the physical world but the various interpretations of things generated from our various positional perspectives on them. Similarly, we perceive shades of meaning expressed in one another's gestures, speech, and writing, and identify the subtle alterations in meaning expressed particularly in philosophical dialogue and dialectic in all disciplines of philosophy including philosophy of science. Do you see what I mean?
 
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Do I dare ask if we can please be friends here again, or do we have to continue admiring each other as enemies ... lol?

No need to ask. Of course we’re friends and have been all along despite our sometimes pitched battles on some subjects. Where we agree (and even where we disagree) on various subjects and issues, the admiration is mutual. :)
 
No need to ask. Of course we’re friends and have been all along despite our sometimes pitched battles on some subjects. Where we agree (and even where we disagree) on various subjects and issues, the admiration is mutual. :)
Wonderful :). But why do I feel like
I've just set myself up for a Charlie Brown moment ... lol ?


 
Therefore human shapes visual/mechanical systems work well for the most part. Which also makes rational sense, because if they didn't, we would be dead.
Yes, that's Hoffman's argument.

In short, it's a bunch of logical handwaving to get from 'we perceive things subjectively without 100% fidelity' to 'subjective perceptions are meaningless and infinitely malleable.'
No, that's not Hoffman's argument.

Is provably -- and logically -- incorrect. Or at least mostly incorrect.

a) shapes are determined by mass-groupings of atoms. These shapes can be determined via multiple mechanisms -- mechanically, visually, via displacement, 3d topography, etc. All have mechanical analogues not requiring human perceptual interfaces, and can therefore be validated. They do validate. Therefore human shapes visual/mechanical systems work well for the most part. Which also makes rational sense, because if they didn't, we would be dead.
From above:
We human beings, even those who have been studying quantum mechanics for a long time, still think in terms of a classical concepts. Positions, momenta, particles, fields, space itself. Quantum mechanics tells a different story. The quantum state of the universe is not a collection of things distributed through space, but something called a wave function.
Yes, extension in space is commonly accepted to be a primary quality of an "object."

Primary/secondary quality distinction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The primary/secondary quality distinction is a conceptual distinction in epistemology and metaphysics, concerning the nature of reality. It is most explicitly articulated by John Locke in his Essay concerning Human Understanding, but earlier thinkers such asGalileo and Descartes made similar distinctions.

Primary qualities are thought to be properties of objects that are independent of any observer, such as solidity, extension, motion, number and figure. These characteristics convey facts. They exist in the thing itself, can be determined with certainty, and do not rely on subjective judgments. For example, if a ball is spherical, no one can reasonably argue that it is triangular.

Secondary qualities are thought to be properties that produce sensations in observers, such as color, taste, smell, and sound. They can be described as the effect things have on certain people. Knowledge that comes from secondary qualities does not provide objective facts about things.

Primary qualities are measurable aspects of physical reality. Secondary qualities are subjective.
There are critiques of this distinction however by figures such as (according to Wiki!) Leibniz and Kant. And of course Hoffman.

Leibniz was an early critic of the distinction, writing in his 1686 Discourse on Metaphysics that "t is even possible to demonstrate that the ideas of size, figure and motion are not so distinctive as is imagined, and that they stand for something imaginary relative to our perceptions as do, although to a greater extent, the ideas of color, heat, and the other similar qualities in regard to which we may doubt whether they are actually to be found in the nature of the things outside of us."[5]
"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." Niels Bohr

The objective existence of particles is an open question in physics. It's very tempting to say that primary qualities are independent of any observer, but I don't think we're there yet. The mind-body problem is the very open question of how the perceived relates to the perceiver. We have no idea. Likewise, there is a very open question of how the classical world relates to the quantum world. This too is a mystery. Could it be these two mysterious are related?

Dismiss him if you choose, but I think Hoffman is onto something. The classical world--both primary and secondary qualities--may be psychological features of a perceptual system which has evolved and emerged within an ultimately stochastic quantum substrate.

Measurement problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The measurement problem in quantum mechanics is the problem of how (or whether) wavefunction collapse occurs. The inability to observe this process directly has given rise to different interpretations of quantum mechanics, and poses a key set of questions that each interpretation must answer. The wavefunction in quantum mechanics evolves deterministically according to the Schrödinger equation as a linear superposition of different states, but actual measurements always find the physical system in a definite state. Any future evolution is based on the state the system was discovered to be in when the measurement was made, meaning that the measurement "did something" to the system that is not obviously a consequence of Schrödinger evolution.

To express matters differently (to paraphrase Steven Weinberg[1][2]), the Schrödinger wave equation determines the wavefunction at any later time. If observers and their measuring apparatus are themselves described by a deterministic wave function, why can we not predict precise results for measurements, but only probabilities? As a general question: How can one establish a correspondence between quantum and classical reality?[3]

b) colors are a complex mechanism to explain, but they are explainable. Colors exist outside of our perception of them, with colors being labels for the wavelength of light being observed or measured. For example, it's quite simple to test if you see light wavelengths between 520nm and 570nm of light being perceived as 'green.' Not all individuals may label them as 'green' but you can demonstrate via materials science that an object will emit or reflect light of those wavelengths.
From above:
Failing to realize the distinction between physical and psychological properties is often a cause of confusion in the philosophical literature. For example, color realism (see Byrne and Hilbert, 2003) would claim that a percept is not red, that redness is not a property of this mental event but rather that the mental event is representing red, which is a property of an object in the physical world. This statement is incorrect, as red is indeed nothing more than a mental experience/state. As already mentioned, the presence of this experience might be related to the presence of a physical object that has a certain spectrum reflectance: light from that object falling on the retinae initiates a series of events in our visual system that lead to the creation of a red experience. If one wants to describe this by saying that the particular percept represents the particular reflectance properties of the object, then this is fine but it does not add much to our knowledge of what is going on. Furthermore, if one uses the word ‘red’ to refer to a physical property, namely a high reflectance for long-wave light, then again the problem is mainly a linguistic one. The important thing is to realize that, as physical objects have physical properties, similarly mental events (such as percepts) have psychological properties and that, whatever names one chooses for them, the two should not be confused.
 
I think Hoffman is onto something. The classical world--both primary and secondary qualities--may be psychological features of a perceptual system which has evolved and emerged within an ultimately stochastic quantum substrate.

I think I asked this question a few posts ago but haven't seen a response to it yet:

What is the nature (if Hoffman believes that 'nature' is 'real') of the 'perceptual system' he refers to -- originating, it seems, in or near the quantum substrate -- that can develop "psychological features"? What does Hoffman mean by 'psychological features'?
 
Wonderful :). But why do I feel like
I've just set myself up for a Charlie Brown moment ... lol ?



@ufology, re the snoopy video, this looks like something I can learn from. Unfortunately my computer speakers are still packed in a box from my recent move. This is the first video I'll watch when I find them and hook them up. ;)
 
Yes, that's Hoffman's argument.


No, that's not Hoffman's argument.


From above:

Yes, extension in space is commonly accepted to be a primary quality of an "object."

Primary/secondary quality distinction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


There are critiques of this distinction however by figures such as (according to Wiki!) Leibniz and Kant. And of course Hoffman.


"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." Niels Bohr

The objective existence of particles is an open question in physics. It's very tempting to say that primary qualities are independent of any observer, but I don't think we're there yet. The mind-body problem is the very open question of how the perceived relates to the perceiver. We have no idea. Likewise, there is a very open question of how the classical world relates to the quantum world. This too is a mystery. Could it be these two mysterious are related?

Dismiss him if you choose, but I think Hoffman is onto something. The classical world--both primary and secondary qualities--may be psychological features of a perceptual system which has evolved and emerged within an ultimately stochastic quantum substrate.

Measurement problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



From above:
Umm... I quoted his argument.

To which you said was not his arguement.

/segmentation fault.
 
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