Conciousness and cutting a brain in half, what would happen?

[Ken G]

People almost always explain cognitive failure in the form of "my brain told me the wrong thing." The reason I may not be able to distinguish two tones in some circumstances is said to because my mind generated the same representation for each, with the implication being that if my mind simply deposited a different representation for each tone, my consciousness would be ready and able to distinguish them.

This doesn't sound like an inherent part of a "representational" approach, because you are talking about separating consciousness from the rest of what the brain is doing in regard to perception. Before we were talking about a representation as something that separated the brain's response from behavioral interactions with the environment.

Basically, a simplistic approach to the whole thing would be to say we have three separate pieces to perception, we have what is being perceived (the environment and behavior), what is assembling the perception (the brain function), and what is recording the perception in our consciousness (perhaps emergent from brain function, or perhaps connected to by brain function). Of course these are not independent aspects, it is just a picture, which only leads to concrete results when specific approaches are selected to examine it. A cognitive science approach only allows us to look at the middle part, so that's where the focus is-- representational. The behavioral approach only sees the first part, so that's where the focus is-- nonrepresentational. So invoking where the third part gets into the picture doesn't seem to have anything to do with either representational or non-representational thinking-- we could tack that onto the results of behavioral analyses as easily as we could onto the results of brain scans.

Non-representational approaches are a reaction to this implied duality. They are attempts to make the person cognitively whole again.

I don't see any elements to the way a non-representational analysis would be undertaken that is inconsistent with a Faculty of Awareness at the end, because the non-representational approach is interested in what creates the behavior we observe, and has little or nothing to say about how the person generates an awareness, it merely defines the question away by saying "that which acts aware is aware". That's the classic example of what I mean by taking a projection-- we define what we are interested in, like a silhouette, and project the rest into oblivion. We must not then conclude that since our methods are blind to a particular aspect of the reality, that the reality does not contain that aspect-- yet this fallacy appears almost everywhere we see methods applied.

We look at a composer and for some reason refuse to believe that what we see before us can compose the wonderful work we just heard. We want to think, "Oh, the actual composition had to occur in some special place or Faculty inside him. The body we see simply transcribed the notes as they were produced." We need to remind ourselves once in a while that the person composes and it takes all of him, as well as his circumstances, to make that happen.

In principle it requires everything that has happened since the Big Bang to make that happen. Shall we make cosmology mandatory for potential music critics?

The value of taking projections is that we achieve a finer focus, the disadvantage is we have ignored something. This is always the case, and is just as true for behavioral approaches compared to physiological approaches compared to introspective approaches. To think that any of these projections is the whole story is as wrong as ruling out the contribution of any. I claim that the introspective view, leading to an image of a Faculty of Awareness, is what we used to define the basic terms we use, including "consciousness" itself. The cognitive science view is what we use to understand and treat pathologies in the process, and the behavioral approach is how we learn about the ramifications of consciousness on the larger context of society and life. They each afford benefits at the personal, medical, and societal levels, and no doubt a more complete view of cognition and consciousness comes from exposure to all three, and others too, including nonscientific avenues.

Representations are typically superfluous and don't add anything we don't already know.

I'm not sure that isn't simply because the way you use the word "representation" doesn't have any meaning. Otherwise, it sounds like you are claiming that our ability to create environmentally-inspired mental images of things we have encountered is a "superfluous" ability, and of course you could not be saying something so obviously incorrect. The real question here, as I'm saying in as many ways as I can think of, is when does it behoove us to ask the question "what mental representation of reality is this person forming in this situation", versus asking "what parts of his/her brain is participating in this process and how", versus asking "how is this person interacting with that reality at this time". To everything, there is a season.

The term "representation" can lead to confusion because the term is used in two senses in these types of discussions. The first is at the personal level where "representation" means "what is seen, heard, or felt" as if what we see is a mental image, sound, or feeling of some sort, as if the brain must first make a copy of something in the world for its own perusal. The second sense of "representation" applies at the subpersonal or "wires and pulleys" level, where the scientist notes a correlation between, say, a light flashing in the lab and a neuron firing in the brain. Here the term "representation" properly applies because there are two identified endpoints for the relationship. When I recommend against the representational approach, I mean it in the first sense at the personal level.

What if there are close connections between the two? What if the act of a brain generating measurable "endpoints" is related to the concept of "creating a copy" of reality? I think this is no happenstance connection between the words, to a very real extent they are talking about the same thing, the former is merely an informal picture we can use to stand in for the more specific correlates of the latter. The core issue is, how do we gain by separating the mind of the subject from its interactions with the environment including the whole social, societal, and cosmological context of what is happening.

[grant hutchison]

Not necessarily. I don't work in the field of cognitive science, so I am in no position to throw the blanket claim of folk psychology over their industry. (Dennett grumbles about some of them, however, but blames the philosophers for misleading them. See his Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness.)

Well, Dennett has great fun at everyone's expense. There's more than a hint of the straw-man in some of his funnier lampoons.
But you did seem to be attempting to tar the whole of cog-sci with some sort of Cartesian brush, so it's useful to know that isn't your intention.

Just look at how often people bring up "filling in the blind spot" in these types of discussions. The suggested model is that there is some sort of Faculty of Awareness downstream of a filler-inner process that peruses the front end's patchwork. Look at how FriedPhoton (and most everyone else) tries to explain the Muller-Lyer illusion as the brain somehow altering things so that one arrow looks longer than another. Look at what Doodler just wrote: "Losing chunks of brain function would be like listening to an orchestra with whole sections of instrument missing. You'd recognize the tune, and maybe even the melody, but it would clearly be a very different sound that is produced with only echoes of the original." The implied model is that there is a Faculty of Awareness downstream of everything else unaffected by the lobotomy that hears a "different sound" handed to it by the lobotomized the brain.

And yet both Doodler and FriedPhoton have also talked about consciousness as an emergent property of brain function, so they have a more complicated picture in mind than you're trying to make out.
With reference to Müller-Lyer, there's no doubt at all that something in the brain codes the lines as being of different lengths: lines of the same length are projected on the retina, and the words "These lines are different lengths" come out of the mouth. Between those two events lies nothing but brain activity (if you'll allow me to include retinal processing under the umbrella of the brain). So saying that somewhere in the brain the lengths of the lines are perceptually altered is a truism, unless you believe that there really is a "liar" in Müller-Lyer.

People almost always explain cognitive failure in the form of "my brain told me the wrong thing."

It's a style of expressing the failure, certainly. But in my experience, people just as often blame themselves, incorporating the cognitive failure into their own person; or they blame their sense organs, or (in performance related tasks) blame their effector organs.

So from where I stand you seem to be tilting at non-existent windmills.

Grant Hutchison

[grant hutchison]

I'm kinda sounding off late in this, but given some things I've read about dreaming would put me in the corner of thinking that a person who has large chunks of brain removed later in life would probably change their personality significantly, depending on what was removed...

Functionality seems to be distributed in well-defined regions of the cortex, so you can lose fairly large chunks of brain and remain "the same person" (as assessed by yourself and others). If you lose your occipital cortex, for instance, you generally seem to remain the same person but acquire a disability (cortical blindness).
The anterior part of the frontal lobes does appear to be involved in "personality", in the sense of controlling the range of emotions individuals characteristically exhibit: a pattern that becomes recognizable to others and which is one feature of "personality". Hence the unfortunate vogue for Walter Freeman's prefrontal lobotomies, applied to people with various behavioural problems in the 40s and 50s.

The most famous prefrontal lobotomy patient in the world is probably Phineas Gage, who underwent the procedure under uncontrolled circumstances. While he was working as a railway construction foreman, an explosion sent a tamping iron straight through his head: there's a diagram of the extent and nature of of his injury here. He recovered consciousness almost immediately, and lived for another 12 years, but his personality had changed completely. Although this is often quoted as an example of the prefrontal cortex's role in the generation of personality, I've always felt there was a significant confounding factor involved: the guy had had a metal rod blown through his face and out the top of his head, for crying out loud! That might just change your outlook on life, all on its own.

Grant Hutchison

[Doodler]

The most famous prefrontal lobotomy patient in the world is probably Phineas Gage, who underwent the procedure under uncontrolled circumstances. While he was working as a railway construction foreman, an explosion sent a tamping iron straight through his head: there's a diagram of the extent and nature of of his injury here. He recovered consciousness almost immediately, and lived for another 12 years, but his personality had changed completely. Although this is often quoted as an example of the prefrontal cortex's role in the generation of personality, I've always felt there was a significant confounding factor involved: the guy had had a metal rod blown through his face and out the top of his head, for crying out loud! That might just change your outlook on life, all on its own.

Wow...just wow...

I don't know if this applies as a pre-frontal cortex sitution or not, but my father's personality dramatically shifted in his thirties, along with some physical symptoms, like blackouts, that were later attributed to a benign cyst on the exterior right hand side of his head just aft of the cheek. The doctors postulated that it was pressure from this on a part of his brain in that region that drove him to hair trigger temper and near psychotic violence. After it was removed, his personality 180'd. Completely controlled and cool. It was definitely not very deep inside the brain, in fact, based on the descriptions I've heard, I believe it was on the surface.

Now, it could have been a chemical issue, but that would indicate the potential to alter personality through pressure somewhere other than the interior of the brain.

[Disinfo Agent]

António Damásio talks about Phineas' case and other intriguing ones in Descartes' Error.

[Ken G]

Now, it could have been a chemical issue, but that would indicate the potential to alter personality through pressure somewhere other than the interior of the brain.

One also wonders about the role of pain. I realize most people are not psychotic in the presence of pain, but the temper sure shortens. (I am glad your father's problems were so easily put right, that would be a hard way to grow up.)

[Joe Durnavich]

Basically, a simplistic approach to the whole thing would be to say we have three separate pieces to perception, we have what is being perceived (the environment and behavior), what is assembling the perception (the brain function), and what is recording the perception in our consciousness (perhaps emergent from brain function, or perhaps connected to by brain function). Of course these are not independent aspects, it is just a picture, which only leads to concrete results when specific approaches are selected to examine it. A cognitive science approach only allows us to look at the middle part, so that's where the focus is-- representational. The behavioral approach only sees the first part, so that's where the focus is-- nonrepresentational. So invoking where the third part gets into the picture doesn't seem to have anything to do with either representational or non-representational thinking-- we could tack that onto the results of behavioral analyses as easily as we could onto the results of brain scans.

The non-representational approaches deny this very model of perception. In these views, there is no "assembled perception" and hence no need to record it.

The common, traditional (representational) view of vision may go something like this: Although I think I see objects around me, all I really know for sure is that I am having a conscious experience of there being objects. Science tells us that the world is really a colorless cloud of atoms, but I see the world in vivid color. Consciousness, then, must be a creation of my brain. It creates these phenomena, qualia, appearances, or representations as philosophers call them. Because I perceive only representations, any reality or noumemon that may ultimately be behind them must necessarily remain unknown.

Experiences we take as visual failure like misreading a word, optical illusions, and so on are explained by the brain creating the wrong representation or creating a representation that fools us.

Non-representational approaches don't consider perception as a thing, and certainly not a thing created or assembled by the brain. Remember one of the earlier quotes: Perception is an achievement of the individual and not an experience the theater of consciousness.

Take a look at the abstract on the first page:

A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness (PDF)

In the 1960's, psychologist JJ Gibson proposed studying perception from an ecological viewpoint. He suggested studying visual perception in terms of the ambient optic array, that is, the patterned radiation that converges on your position as well as how it changes as you move about (optical texture flow). He thought that most if not all of what we think is created in the head actually exists in the environment as higher-order information that animals can detect and take advantage of.

Here is an excerpt from his book. You can glance at the pictures and the captions to get a sense of his interests:

The Causes of Deficient Perception

I don't see any elements to the way a non-representational analysis would be undertaken that is inconsistent with a Faculty of Awareness at the end, because the non-representational approach is interested in what creates the behavior we observe, and has little or nothing to say about how the person generates an awareness, it merely defines the question away by saying "that which acts aware is aware".

The abstract I referenced earlier points out that positing representations still leaves visual consciousness unexplained. Non-representational approaches are attempts to step up and supply an explanation.

In principle it requires everything that has happened since the Big Bang to make that happen. Shall we make cosmology mandatory for potential music critics?

The idea is that we attribute the composition to the person. However, when people think about it in a "how was it done?" way they don't want to believe that a person--a body--can do such things. Indeed, the accomplishment is remarkable and perhaps beyond our ability to explain. So over the course of history people have attributed the actual act of composition to something hidden from view, be it an inner spirit, a gift of the Muses, the mind, or in the modern incarnation of the same epistemology: the brain or neurons in the brain. It's the dualism that is in question.

I think there is a justified fear of attributing the act of composition to a mere machine (which the body may seem to us at times). Gilbert Ryle showed the premise to be misguided. He wrote in The Concept of Mind: "Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man."

The value of taking projections is that we achieve a finer focus, the disadvantage is we have ignored something.

True, but representations don't add any information. They are sometimes charged with being virtus dormitiva explanations after a play by Moliere in which a character explains why opium puts people to sleep: because it has a sleep-causing power.

What if the act of a brain generating measurable "endpoints" is related to the concept of "creating a copy" of reality?

Non-representational approaches examine the possibility that the brain does not need to create a copy of the world, that the world can stay where it is and serve as its own copy that you explore with greater or lesser degrees of success.

The core issue is, how do we gain by separating the mind of the subject from its interactions with the environment including the whole social, societal, and cosmological context of what is happening.

Oh, I dunno, Freudian psychology?

[grant hutchison]

The abstract I referenced earlier points out that positing representations still leaves visual consciousness unexplained. Non-representational approaches are attempts to step up and supply an explanation.

Do you really believe there's an explanation somewhere in what you've been saying? Because it looks like nothing more than dodging the issue.
The phrase "perception is an achievement of the individual" is neatly analogous to the guilty child's explanation of the broken mirror: "It just broke."

Grant Hutchison

[Doodler]

One also wonders about the role of pain. I realize most people are not psychotic in the presence of pain, but the temper sure shortens. (I am glad your father's problems were so easily put right, that would be a hard way to grow up.)

Welp, it wasn't discovered till years after the divorce, which meant even though it was fixed, it still sucked (I was seven when that happened, early teens when the surgery occurred).

As for pain, there wasn't that, just pressure on the brain itself. He had absolutely no localized awareness anything was going on upstairs. The brain itself is insensate, so I've read.

[Joe Durnavich]

Do you really believe there's an explanation somewhere in what you've been saying? Because it looks like nothing more than dodging the issue.
The phrase "perception is an achievement of the individual" is neatly analogous to the guilty child's explanation of the broken mirror: "It just broke."

I am trying to illustrate the differences between representational and non-representational philosophy and to list some examples of why proponents of the latter find the former unsatisfactory. If neither side produces anything resembling a useful explanation, then, well, that wouldn't be the first time that happened in philosophy.

Edited to add: By the way, Ken, Grant's response, which is a fair one from the representational side, is what I had in mind with the "Hey, where are the vortexes?" Newton-era analogy. The representational side will always think that there is a hard problem of consciousness that non-representationalists are skirting.

[grant hutchison]

I am trying to illustrate the differences between representational and non-representational philosophy and to list some examples of why proponents of the latter find the former unsatisfactory. If neither side produces anything resembling a useful explanation, then, well, that wouldn't be the first time that happened in philosophy.

It's just difficult to see how non-representational models could produce a useful explanation. They're stuck with "It just broke."

Edited to add: By the way, Ken, Grant's response, which is a fair one from the representational side, is what I had in mind with the "Hey, where are the vortexes?" Newton-era analogy. The representational side will always think that there is a hard problem of consciousness that non-representationalists are skirting.

Well, I'm not coming "from the representational side", and I don't really know anyone who does. But what I was pointing out is that your "non-representationalists" are not just skirting Chalmers' hard problem, but that they're skirting a lot of the easy problems, too.

Grant Hutchison

[Ken G]

The non-representational approaches deny this very model of perception. In these views, there is no "assembled perception" and hence no need to record it.

I realize that. The point is, "denying" something is often interpreted as saying it doesn't exist, but in fact it merely does not appear in that particular projection. If my shadow on the ground "denies" that my shirt has color, what should I conclude from that? The idea that I do not "assemble" a perception is no less naive than that I do.

The common, traditional (representational) view of vision may go something like this: Although I think I see objects around me, all I really know for sure is that I am having a conscious experience of there being objects. Science tells us that the world is really a colorless cloud of atoms, but I see the world in vivid color.

I'm with you so far, a very useful model.

Consciousness, then, must be a creation of my brain.

I do not see how this logically follows from your syllogism, but I also don't see why it's relevant-- we are talking about perception, not consciousness.

It creates these phenomena, qualia, appearances, or representations as philosophers call them. Because I perceive only representations, any reality or noumemon that may ultimately be behind them must necessarily remain unknown.

Sounds like a fine model whose value is unquestionable. Are you going to point out weaknesses in it, as any model should have, or are you going to say it is "wrong"?

Experiences we take as visual failure like misreading a word, optical illusions, and so on are explained by the brain creating the wrong representation or creating a representation that fools us.

Again, an effective model used in many places, including psychology.

Non-representational approaches don't consider perception as a thing, and certainly not a thing created or assembled by the brain. Remember one of the earlier quotes: Perception is an achievement of the individual and not an experience the theater of consciousness.

I think you've been clear on the choices made by the non-representational approach. What is missing is the demonstration that this model trumps the other one in all situations, as you appear to claim.

Take a look at the abstract on the first page:

A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness (PDF)

The defining sentence of the approach is "The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing
laws of sensorimotor contingency." In other words, seeing is as seeing does. A classic example of what I have called "a projection". It is perfectly obvious to me that this projection may reveal interesting things about vision, just as it is equally obvious that it will leave out important pieces of the puzzle. It's the perfect example of the kind of logic I've been objecting to-- arguing that since a shadow is a good way to understand a person's outline, the color of their shirt must be a delusion of some kind.

In the 1960's, psychologist JJ Gibson proposed studying perception from an ecological viewpoint. He suggested studying visual perception in terms of the ambient optic array, that is, the patterned radiation that converges on your position as well as how it changes as you move about (optical texture flow). He thought that most if not all of what we think is created in the head actually exists in the environment as higher-order information that animals can detect and take advantage of.

That "theory" is pretty absurd in the 1960's-- it might have had something to say in the Renaissance! Does this guy know Maxwell's equations? There's not a whole lot of mystery in the "patterned radiation" that surrounds us.

The abstract I referenced earlier points out that positing representations still leaves visual consciousness unexplained. Non-representational approaches are attempts to step up and supply an explanation.

What you are calling an "explanation", I am calling "defining the question away". In the shadow analogy, it is just like attacking the difficult question "what gives a shirt its color" by saying "when we recognize that the shadow on the ground is the right way to look at a shirt, we see that the issue of what gives it its color is simply projected out of importance". Nice explanation, that.

The idea is that we attribute the composition to the person. However, when people think about it in a "how was it done?" way they don't want to believe that a person--a body--can do such things.

No one is disputing that the body is involved in forming the representation. I do not see how that distinguishes representational an non-representational approaches, again the only difference I see is whether or not one chooses to treat the subject and the object of the perception separately.

It's the dualism that is in question.

If the argument is "dualism is wrong", it is a strawman. If the argument is "dualism was not crucial in the forming of the words we use in this context", or "dualism is not convenient in how we model what is happening", or "all of the accomplishments of a dualistic approach can be achieved non-representationally", then I say you have made none of those cases.

I think there is a justified fear of attributing the act of composition to a mere machine (which the body may seem to us at times). Gilbert Ryle showed the premise to be misguided. He wrote in The Concept of Mind: "Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man."

Now I'm confused. A moment ago you seemed to be arguing against the idea of a perceptive consciousness as a kind of "ghost in the machine" (did Ryle coin that phrase? If so, he has my respect for it, but if he just borrowed it, I don't see that the above quote says much at all). If everything emerges from interactions with the environment, I'd call that pretty much the definition of a machine with no ghosts in it.

True, but representations don't add any information. They are sometimes charged with being virtus dormitiva explanations after a play by Moliere in which a character explains why opium puts people to sleep: because it has a sleep-causing power.

It is not the job of a representation to "add information", observations do that. The word merely refers to the information in an organized way-- it implies a useful projection. I argue that all our common words relating to perception and consciousness stem from a representational picture, and you have used that to demonstrate the widespread problem of this insidious misconception. But if it inspired the very words we use, it's hard to see how it has not been of value, though it certainly wouldn't want to "add information". When words add information, we call it "make believe".

Oh, I dunno, Freudian psychology?

Are you asking me if Freudian psychology is the only one that works by separating what is going on in a person's mind from what is happening around them at the time? If so, the answer is no, it isn't.

[Ken G]

Well, I'm not coming "from the representational side", and I don't really know anyone who does.

It surprises me to hear you say that, because as I understand the term, you would be "coming from the representational side" any time you ask someone "does this hurt", instead of waiting for them to moan or kick or interact with the environment in some way. I'm not saying that you need to adopt a philosophical stance on consciousness each time you ask that question, merely you pop on a hat because of its immediate advantages. Indeed, the whole idea of adopting a general philosophical stance is what I'm criticizing, and perhaps that's what you mean when you say you are not "coming from" any particular philosophical stance, be it representational or otherwise. Also, psychotherapy almost always treats the patient's mind as if it were a separate entity from whatever is going on around it-- the techniques of psychotherapy are intended to work in a wide array of environmental situations, without the therapist actually encountering that environment at all, and seems pretty "representational" to me.

[grant hutchison]

Well, I'm not coming "from the representational side", and I don't really know anyone who does.

It surprises me to hear you say that, because as I understand the term, you would be "coming from the representational side" any time you ask someone "does this hurt", instead of waiting for them to moan or kick or interact with the environment in some way.

As you divined later in your post, I'm saying that the "representational/nonrepresentational" dichotomy is a false one, with no-one willing to declare themselves a strict representationalist; so there is no "representational side". It's just an invention of the people who call themselves "non-representationalists". Everyone else sees the value in both kinds of approach.
It also seems to me that Joe Durnavich has been using "representational" as being in some way synonymous with the Cartesian theatre and/or substance dualism. So there are aspects of cognitive science that might be characterized as "representational" according to your understanding of the term, but not according to the usage I think I see from Joe Durnavich.

Grant Hutchison

[Joe Durnavich]

It's the perfect example of the kind of logic I've been objecting to-- arguing that since a shadow is a good way to understand a person's outline, the color of their shirt must be a delusion of some kind.

Both sides agree that color needs to be explained, or at the very least why we think of color the way we do. The representational side asks, in effect, “Why does red look, well, red?” My personal view is that question is ill-formed and can never be satisfactorily answered. Will any amount of neural details discovered by Grant and his colleagues ever satisfy you as why red looks red? Qualia are supposed to be inscrutable.

My personal view is that to treat a color as a thing would be to say that a cup is made up of one unit of cylinder-shape, one unit of hardness, and one unit of redness. That treats properties we attribute to objects as objects in their own right. The cup, of course, is made of fired ceramic slip and paint.

To attribute properties to objects, be they colors, shapes, feels, temperature, and so, is more a matter of grouping objects and substances in various ways. We learn our colors by being shown objects. For “red” we may be shown cherries, apples, and firetrucks. Those objects become the references for red. The reason we classify other objects as being red, and why we consider them all the same color may be found in the objects' reflectance properties, the lighting, the spectral responses of the retinal photopigments, and so on. Perception is an ability to tell things apart. What we cannot tell apart, we judge the same.

So, in that sort of view, colors are not delusional. We don't see colors; we see objects. We group objects in various ways depending on the nature of the objects, our discriminative abilities, and the tasks at hand. In this view, we don't find qualia in our heads colorful; we find the world colorful. Color is real; it just doesn't exist as a singular entity either in the head our out in the world. It is a more sophisticated matter than it may seem to us at first.

No doubt you still think my view totally misses the key issue of what makes red so, well, red. The challenge in that case, I think, is to show that notion makes any sort of sense that can be addressed at all.

[Joe Durnavich]

It surprises me to hear you say that, because as I understand the term, you would be "coming from the representational side" any time you ask someone "does this hurt", instead of waiting for them to moan or kick or interact with the environment in some way.

Notice the dualism that imposes here. Just like people having trouble attributing the composition to the composer, for some reason we don't want to think that the person himself is in pain, but that pain is some sort of thing carried around inside him that he has to report to us.

To moan is part of being in pain. To answer the question "Does this hurt?" with, "Yes!" is part of being in pain.

[grant hutchison]

Notice the dualism that imposes here. Just like people having trouble attributing the composition to the composer, for some reason we don't want to think that the person himself is in pain, but that pain is some sort of thing carried around inside him that he has to report to us.

There is no dualism, except according to the "representational" fable. The person is in pain; he reports his state.

Grant Hutchison

[grant hutchison]

So, in that sort of view, colors are not delusional. We don't see colors; we see objects. We group objects in various ways depending on the nature of the objects, our discriminative abilities, and the tasks at hand. In this view, we don't find qualia in our heads colorful; we find the world colorful. Color is real; it just doesn't exist as a singular entity either in the head our out in the world. It is a more sophisticated matter than it may seem to us at first.

And yet there are neurones that fire when we see "green". They fire whether we are seeing a green wavelength, or are experiencing a metamerism compounded of blue and yellow wavelengths. So "green" starts inside our heads.

Grant Hutchison

[Joe Durnavich]

There is no dualism, except according to the "representational" fable. The person is in pain; he reports his state.

Well, that's the dualism. It functions well for us in everyday conversation, but when we have our philosophy hats on, we may think that when we eliminate the report, what must be left over is the pain. (It is like trying to find your "self" by "working inward," eliminating body parts from consideration until what must be left over is the "self" or the "I".)

[Joe Durnavich]

And yet there are neurones that fire when we see "green". They fire whether we are seeing a green wavelength, or are experiencing a metamerism compounded of blue and yellow wavelengths. So "green" starts inside our heads.

This particular example consists of things outside the head, namely various combinations of wavelengths and the fact that people see them as the same. On the face of it, it suggest that an account of color will depend on both the nature of person and the nature of objects and light in the environment.

[grant hutchison]

Well, that's the dualism. It functions well for us in everyday conversation, but when we have our philosophy hats on, we may think that when we eliminate the report, what must be left over is the pain.

Or we may think that when we eliminate the report, what's left is a person in pain who is not reporting it.

This particular example consists of things outside the head, namely various combinations of wavelengths and the fact that people see them as the same. On the face of it, it suggest that an account of color will depend on both the nature of person and the nature of objects and light in the environment.

There you go. That's what Ken and I have been saying. That's why there is no "representational side" (because people understand that events both inside and outside the head are important), and that's why we're so unimpressed by the "non-representational side" (because by taking a "side" it attempts to deny the usefulness of processes occurring inside the head).

Grant Hutchison

[Ken G]

As you divined later in your post, I'm saying that the "representational/nonrepresentational" dichotomy is a false one, with no-one willing to declare themselves a strict representationalist; so there is no "representational side". It's just an invention of the people who call themselves "non-representationalists". Everyone else sees the value in both kinds of approach.

I was just checking that this is indeed what you were saying.

It also seems to me that Joe Durnavich has been using "representational" as being in some way synonymous with the Cartesian theatre and/or substance dualism. So there are aspects of cognitive science that might be characterized as "representational" according to your understanding of the term, but not according to the usage I think I see from Joe Durnavich.

Since "non-representational" sounds to me like "not separating what is doing the perceiving from the external circumstances that gave rise to the perception", it seemed logical that "representational" would mean making that separation. If he instead means buying completely into a Cartesian model of existence, then it would seems he is committing the "fallacy of the excluded middle".

[grant hutchison]

Since "non-representational" sounds to me like "not separating what is doing the perceiving from the external circumstances that gave rise to the perception", it seemed logical that "representational" would mean making that separation. If he instead means buying completely into a Cartesian model of existence, then it would seems he is committing the "fallacy of the excluded middle".

I may be misunderstanding him, so I'd be keen to hear his response.

Grant Hutchison

[Joe Durnavich]

Also, psychotherapy almost always treats the patient's mind as if it were a separate entity from whatever is going on around it-- the techniques of psychotherapy are intended to work in a wide array of environmental situations, without the therapist actually encountering that environment at all, and seems pretty "representational" to me.

Treating the mind as a separate entity is quite useful. That's a matter of taking a stance towards the patient and his problems. That's all part of leveraging metaphor and analogy to make sense of complex situations. Representations in, say, vision, however, are sometimes considered as actual existing entities. That is, what I directly see are said to be representations formed by my brain. Just look at the battles over the existence and nature of qualia. Theories that don't include qualia or “conscious experience” are sometimes disqualified on grounds of avoiding the hard problem of consciousness. That might be considered like disqualifying Newton's work because it didn't factor in vortexes.

It also seems to me that Joe Durnavich has been using "representational" as being in some way synonymous with the Cartesian theatre and/or substance dualism. So there are aspects of cognitive science that might be characterized as "representational" according to your understanding of the term, but not according to the usage I think I see from Joe Durnavich.

Yes, I chose the traditional Cartesian theater as the example for the representational. I thought that would make the sense of “representation” clear and also make clear what was being denied or declared as mere useful fictions by alternate models. I figured refinements would be made in further discussion.

[Joe Durnavich]

Since "non-representational" sounds to me like "not separating what is doing the perceiving from the external circumstances that gave rise to the perception", it seemed logical that "representational" would mean making that separation. If he instead means buying completely into a Cartesian model of existence, then it would seems he is committing the "fallacy of the excluded middle".

Ken, you would have to clarify what "gave rise to the perception" means, specifically, what you mean by "perception" in that context.

The separation you seek does exist, as we discussed earlier. It is in our actions. You and I could each see a house differently. But we each don't possess a "perceived house" that is distinct from the actual house. We simply noted different features of the house for any of a number of reasons. So, yes, we say our perceptions are different, but there is no representation anywhere like a photo or a painting in the head. You don't need to posit such an entity to draw the distinction you need between reality and what people think they see in reality.

[Ken G]

Representations in, say, vision, however, are sometimes considered as actual existing entities.

Well I don't think anyone on this thread is talking about existing entities outside of what is being looked at.

That is, what I directly see are said to be representations formed by my brain.

That's not saying the same thing, because the brain doesn't form "entities", it forms, among other things, representations of entities.

Just look at the battles over the existence and nature of qualia. Theories that don't include qualia or “conscious experience” are sometimes disqualified on grounds of avoiding the hard problem of consciousness.

It doesn't make much sense to disqualify a theory, but it does make perfect sense to ask if the theory sheds any light on the hard problem of consciousness.

That might be considered like disqualifying Newton's work because it didn't factor in vortexes.

Or it would be like taking the theory at face value and just looking at what it does give you.

I thought that would make the sense of “representation” clear and also make clear what was being denied or declared as mere useful fictions by alternate models.

"Useful fiction" is classic doubletalk.

[Ken G]

Ken, you would have to clarify what "gave rise to the perception" means, specifically, what you mean by "perception" in that context.

Anything not present in a sensory deprivation tank.

The separation you seek does exist, as we discussed earlier. It is in our actions.

If you feel free to interpret "action" as "anything our body does", then what is this saying? Or if you separate the actions we take from things like how we describe what we feel, then no, the separation I seek is not in our actions. So either you are not accurately representing the separation I am talking about, or you are using generalizations that don't say anything specific or useful. I'm not sure which you mean by actions, but neither is responsive to the issue of representations as a separation of the body that is in the sensory deprivation tank from what is stimulating that body when it isn't.

You and I could each see a house differently. But we each don't possess a "perceived house" that is distinct from the actual house. We simply noted different features of the house for any of a number of reasons.

If I try to sketch the house from memory, and you do the same, we will end up with different house images. Both will be efforts at copying the house. Both will have errors that will be easily found by comparing to the original, and there will likely be reasons for those errors. If we want to explore those reasons, we do fine by starting from the representations we sketched. There is no "problem" to solve there, the representational approach to how we perceived that house is a perfectly successful way to get at the differences in our perceptions. It's not the only way-- our behavioral relationship with the house might be explored as well. But if we're neither buying it nor visiting it, my guess is the behavioral relationship will not be terribly interesting, while the representational approach may tell us a lot about how we perceive houses.

You don't need to posit such an entity to draw the distinction you need between reality and what people think they see in reality.

I have not seen any examples of how my perception of a house with which I have no relationship is not almost purely representational.

[Joe Durnavich]

Anything not present in a sensory deprivation tank.

Notice that is an indirect argument. Representations tend to be demonstrated indirectly and rarely, if ever, directly. Anything not present in the tank is the rest of the world, but I think you would have just said that if that is what you meant.

If you feel free to interpret "action" as "anything our body does", then what is this saying? Or if you separate the actions we take from things like how we describe what we feel, then no, the separation I seek is not in our actions. So either you are not accurately representing the separation I am talking about, or you are using generalizations that don't say anything specific or useful.

The example has the same house described differently by each of us. We could say that the descriptions themselves are representations of the house (in the poetic sense of "painting a picture with words"). The descriptions are different because we each scanned the house differently, meaning we sampled the available optical information differently, and also because we are different physiologically.

I'm not sure which you mean by actions, but neither is responsive to the issue of representations as a separation of the body that is in the sensory deprivation tank from what is stimulating that body when it isn't.

You explore two different environments in this case. I think you may be trying to change something external to demonstrate the existence and change of something internal. As it stands, the change in environments explains the change in what you see.

If I try to sketch the house from memory, and you do the same, we will end up with different house images. Both will be efforts at copying the house. Both will have errors that will be easily found by comparing to the original, and there will likely be reasons for those errors. If we want to explore those reasons, we do fine by starting from the representations we sketched. There is no "problem" to solve there, the representational approach to how we perceived that house is a perfectly successful way to get at the differences in our perceptions.

Very nice example. It shows that sketches and what we say can constitute the differences in our perceptions. There is a temptation to want to switch from the personal to the subpersonal or "wires and pulleys" level where we feel further explanation is needed. That is where inner representations get presented, perhaps to explain why the sketches were different. But in practice the inner representation doesn't explain anything; it just echoes what was already seen in the sketches and the discussion.

It's not the only way-- our behavioral relationship with the house might be explored as well. But if we're neither buying it nor visiting it, my guess is the behavioral relationship will not be terribly interesting, while the representational approach may tell us a lot about how we perceive houses.

Hmmm. I have sparred with JFK conspiracy theorists now and then and they inevitably bring up the differing and conflicting witness testimony as evidence of suspicious anomalies. Some of that difference can be accounted for by noting where the witness stood at the time and the view from that position. Some of it simply reflects the training of a doctor versus, say, a photographer. On BAUT, when a new photo of, say, the Martian landscape is posted, I always take keen interest in how geologists describe the photo versus how laymen describe the photo. (A general observation: laymen seem to search for the unusual formations first. Geologists seem to start with the understandable.) Seeing and remembering are skills. Differences will be partially due to how well the task was tended to and executed.

I have not seen any examples of how my perception of a house with which I have no relationship is not almost purely representational.

OK. As you have presented the example, "my perception of a house" consists of your sketches and perhaps your discussion of the house. I think that is where the term "representation" properly applies. Philosophers sometimes want to shrink that down and stick it in the head to explain how you were able to draw the sketch or describe the house without being in the presence of the house. (Notice, again, that would be an indirect argument for the inner representation--premised on the belief that there had to be a house somewhere to sketch.)

[Ken G]

Notice that is an indirect argument. Representations tend to be demonstrated indirectly and rarely, if ever, directly. Anything not present in the tank is the rest of the world, but I think you would have just said that if that is what you meant.

I was asked a question, and I answered it. I fail to see how it matters a whit if I answered it "directly" or "indirectly", it was asked and answered.

The example has the same house described differently by each of us. We could say that the descriptions themselves are representations of the house (in the poetic sense of "painting a picture with words").

We might well say that, yes.

You explore two different environments in this case.

Yes, one that stimulates the senses and causes the brain to interpret those stimulations in terms of representations, and one that does not. That's the point.

I think you may be trying to change something external to demonstrate the existence and change of something internal. As it stands, the change in environments explains the change in what you see.

Yes, the environment affects the representation dramatically, that is certainly the purpose of a representation.

But in practice the inner representation doesn't explain anything; it just echoes what was already seen in the sketches and the discussion.

Yet it "echoes" that in a very concise and informative way, that is its purpose.

Hmmm. I have sparred with JFK conspiracy theorists now and then and they inevitably bring up the differing and conflicting witness testimony as evidence of suspicious anomalies. Some of that difference can be accounted for by noting where the witness stood at the time and the view from that position.

Some of the "difference" in the representation you mean?

Differences will be partially due to how well the task was tended to and executed.

Differences in representations will be due to that? Yes, I imagine they will.

I think that is where the term "representation" properly applies. Philosophers sometimes want to shrink that down and stick it in the head to explain how you were able to draw the sketch or describe the house without being in the presence of the house.

Indeed that would seem to belong in the mind, yes. I wouldn't, for example, attribute it to the ankle or stomach.

[Vanamonde]

It's probably a mistake to think that there's a single, persistent and coherent "you" inside your brain in the first place, even though it feels that way.
From cognitive science, the picture is really more like a loose and varying affiliation of various "consciousness applets", hosted in both hemispheres.

I would highly recommend on The Social Brain: Discovering the Networks of the Mind by Michael S. Gazzaniga, a great book for lay people on this subject.