tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post7655202978841175162..comments2024-03-25T11:49:21.281-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: The Transparency of Warped WindowsEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-27260905383497592522009-10-13T13:58:38.543-07:002009-10-13T13:58:38.543-07:00Thanks for the kind comment, Paul.
Marshall: Tha...Thanks for the kind comment, Paul.<br /><br />Marshall: That's a nice tweak on the thought experiment. BTW, wasn't that just Paul stealing from Philip Dick?Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-39159184834244077312009-10-12T11:15:41.610-07:002009-10-12T11:15:41.610-07:00Fritz Perls said that the experience of perception...Fritz Perls said that the experience of perception is felt as the experience of the thing perceived... when you experience for example light striking your eyes, that's felt as pain. But obviously your eye and and neural activity does mediate the perception.<br /><br /><i>This perceptual knowledge of the window is in some ways mediated by my perceptual knowledge of the tree. But in other way, it's not mediated...You can attend to the green of the tree, but not to the visual experience of greenness that the light from the tree produces in you.</i><br /><br />You're assuming that you have previously stepped outside and looked at the tree en plein air. What if you are confined to the room, so that all your perceptions are mediated by the warped window? Part of the window is transparent, another part is rose-tinted, part polarized, part fluorescent. So all I can attend to is the color I recognize in my view, I can form no judgement on "the greenness" of "the tree" as it exists in itself.<br /><br />An artist friend, a painter, taught me to separate colors; so when I look at the tree outside my window as it is presently lit, I can perceive the blueness and the yellowness in my view of it, and recognize how the balance changes in changing conditions. When I go to paint the scene, these are qualities I manipulate.<br /><br />...perhaps the reference you are thinking about is 1 Corinthians 12: For we know in part, and we prophesy in part... now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.<br /><br />-Marshall<br />mpzrd@yahoo.comMarshallnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-82004215548006953532009-10-12T09:51:58.498-07:002009-10-12T09:51:58.498-07:00Great post Eric.
Here's a similar thought I g...Great post Eric.<br /><br />Here's a similar thought I got from Ran Lahav. Consider what happens to your visual experience as you approach a red building. The building doesn't seem to get any redder or bigger, but the redness of your visual experience seems to increase.<br /><br />As with your warped window, I think these examples show that we quite readily and regularly apportion changes in our experience to the objects, or to the qualia, or some combination.Paul Torekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13947970013402114431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-87870208251968418402009-10-08T13:42:19.825-07:002009-10-08T13:42:19.825-07:00Nick, I'm inclined to agree with you: The stra...Nick, I'm inclined to agree with you: The straight-up transparency view seems to imply that Husserl's phenomenological methodology is flawed in its very conception. I think there may be a way to marry them, though, with a little tweaking on one side or the other. For example, the transparency theorist may interpret the reduction as something like leaving open the question that all is illusion or hallucination (though illusion and hallucination are issues that transparency doesn't handle, it seems to me, very cleanly).<br /><br />Me, though, I'm completely willing to accept that many philosophers' concepts are just radically wrong. One has to have a very "charitable" reading of Plato, Hegel, Berkeley, Locke, Kant, Hume, Russell, Lewis, Leibniz, etc., to think that *none* of them are pretty badly mistaken in their conceptions.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-62085478173987994412009-10-08T13:32:42.956-07:002009-10-08T13:32:42.956-07:00Cool, Pete! I'll check it out. I'm embar...Cool, Pete! I'll check it out. I'm embarrassed to confess that I had missed that paper! (Just a passing note: Although I am a dualist by the criteria of most metaphysicians, which pertain to conceptual possibility, I myself reject those criteria and see myself as a skeptic-leaning-materialist.)Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-15685766084862294602009-10-08T11:47:04.866-07:002009-10-08T11:47:04.866-07:00Perhaps I'm just being naive, but doesn't ...Perhaps I'm just being naive, but doesn't Harman's position imply that phenomenology is impossible, that the "bracketing" of the natural attitude recommended by Husserl et al is simply impossible?<br /><br />I'm not a huge fan of arguments from authority, but I have a hard time swallowing the idea that Husserl (or any of the subsequent very smart and very respectable phenomenologists) were simply hallucinating when they performed the foundational observations of their discipline.Vanitashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03190524739107446297noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-77480353553977466902009-10-07T21:24:30.765-07:002009-10-07T21:24:30.765-07:00Eric,
I like this analogy. Today I'm somewher...Eric,<br /><br />I like this analogy. Today I'm somewhere in-between Pete's interpretation of Churchland and your analogy of taking this warped window, and, as I think you are saying, putting it a bit further into the visual processes of the mind. <br /><br />Pete,<br /><br />I am curious to know how you think Churchland's theory fairs in view of Bechtel's 'Constructing a Philosophy of Cognitive Science', still in press I think, but a paper you reviewed, right? In addition to my mild fright about living life with *automatic* concepts forming about neurons, I also wonder if this could be realized in our brains. It seems to me that the salient concepts would need to be grounded in vehicular properties related more directly to the structure of phenomenal experience (or at least right below the structure of experience). Perceiving the softness of a seagull or the roughness of a tree would seem to pertain to structure available at a certain level of mechanistic explanation far different from small, local neuronal networks.<br /><br />You mention perceiving the heat of coffee automatically - not the feeling of the heat, but the automatic application of the concept of heat upon seeing the steam rise. Yet, I suspect that mechanisms in the brain responsible for feeling heat are involved with such an automatic perception of heat, thereby removing (I think) the distinction between 'concepts' and perception. I really like the example given of the musician perceiving chords, but this would seem to involve a "richer" phenomenal experience, structure already phenomenally 'there', even if just 'below' the surface of common musical perception. I can see science influencing my experience of higher level mechanisms, but perceiving a brain state as a lower-level neural brain state seems more problematic - or perhaps I do not yet fully understand the position. Any thoughts welcomed.Michael Metzlerhttp://www.poohsthink.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-85473375667591148552009-10-07T15:14:16.979-07:002009-10-07T15:14:16.979-07:00Hi Eric,
The line you articulate here against tra...Hi Eric,<br /><br />The line you articulate here against transparency is similar in many key ways to one that I develop against transparency in the following article:<br /><br />Mandik, P. (2006) The Introspectability of Brain States as Such. In Brian Keeley, (ed.) <i>Paul M. Churchland: Contemporary Philosophy in Focus</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <br /><br />Link to online penultimate draft: <br /><br />http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/introspect.html<br /><br />A lot of the article is couched in neuroreductionist terms that I figure you'll be uncomfortable with, but the core points against transparency are actually consistent with the kind of dualism that I take you to favor.Pete Mandikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10952230864825600992noreply@blogger.com