Agnostic mysticism

[chewybrian]

Why are you talking about perception?

Because per the initial post of this thread, "The concept (or anti-concept) seems to be that we tend to encounter the world through concepts and language . . ."

We encounter the world via our perceptions. Not every human's encounters with the world via perceptions necessarily (/100% of the time) involves concepts and language.

I don't mind a little side discussion about memory or whatever. But, I think you are on point in discussing perception in a thread about "The Doors of Perception".

Huxley is saying that our perceptions are accompanied most of the time by meaning, by implications and by a call for responses, in many cases, to what we (think) we see. He is saying something I see in stoic philosophy and other places. We are apt to add our opinion to what we see without realizing it, to see the present in terms of the past and the future, and to confuse our opinions of what we see for the perceptions themselves. This tendency is hard-wired in people as a tool of survival, enabling us to quickly see dangers or food and react in the best way possible before getting hurt or going hungry. But, it still plays out in situations where no danger is present and we are not in danger of missing a meal. When we allow it to do so, we can miss out, or even act horribly without realizing it. We get locked in to the logic and forget that an unproven assumption often lies at the foundation.

Huxley is advising uncertainty. He is saying we should set aside our ego and opinions and try to see the world just as it is if we are able. He is advocating empathy, love and due care for ourselves, others and the world. He is pointing out how much we can miss if we presume we already have things figured out.

[Pattern-chaser]

We get locked in to the logic and forget that an unproven assumption often lies at the foundation.

Given that "axioms" is just another word for "assumptions", this applies to almost everything (we think) we know.

Huxley is advising uncertainty. He is saying we should set aside our ego and opinions and try to see the world just as it is if we are able.

But we aren't "able". And the culprit is our perception, and the way it works. Uncertainty is the practical truth of the world, from the perspective of any human being. We perceive what we expect to perceive. I.e. our brains/minds fill in (i.e. make up; fabricate; fictionalise) the bits our senses didn't pick up, according to what it expects those bits to be. Often, these "bits" are most of what we end up perceiving, once the unconscious processing is complete.

[chewybrian]

We get locked in to the logic and forget that an unproven assumption often lies at the foundation.

Given that "axioms" is just another word for "assumptions", this applies to almost everything (we think) we know.

Yes. I think Descartes got it right in saying all that we *know* is that we seem to be having experiences that seem to be of a certain nature. We know how they seem, but we don't *know* their true nature with certainty.

Huxley is advising uncertainty. He is saying we should set aside our ego and opinions and try to see the world just as it is if we are able.

But we aren't "able". And the culprit is our perception, and the way it works. Uncertainty is the practical truth of the world, from the perspective of any human being. We perceive what we expect to perceive. I.e. our brains/minds fill in (i.e. make up; fabricate; fictionalise) the bits our senses didn't pick up, according to what it expects those bits to be. Often, these "bits" are most of what we end up perceiving, once the unconscious processing is complete.

This is interesting and relates to the main point. Our mind is filling in the blanks for us involuntarily using incomplete or sometimes conflicting or confusing information relayed through the senses. The McGurk effect...

^^This shows that our brain has a sort of hierarchy wired in to make split second decisions about conflicting inputs. It chooses the sense of sight over sound as the two senses give us different ideas of what is happening.

Further, our mind fills in the blanks even when one sense is involved. Our sense of sight gives us the illusion of an unbroken stream of sight as we scan the horizon, but the actual inputs are a bit choppy, as if we were watching a video with crappy internet. Our ability to see and judge color is very weak on the edges of our vision, but our brain fills in the gaps and effectively paints in the colors it figures are likely to be there.

The "illusions" or imperfections are occurring before we perceive anything or at least as we perceive it, and we can't override them even if we think we have better knowledge of the world than we seem to be getting through the senses. On top of these imperfections, we stack our judgments based on past experience, and maybe some opinions or good old-fashioned prejudices.

[Terrapin Station]

We get locked in to the logic and forget that an unproven assumption often lies at the foundation.

Given that "axioms" is just another word for "assumptions", this applies to almost everything (we think) we know.

Yes. I think Descartes got it right in saying all that we *know* is that we seem to be having experiences that seem to be of a certain nature. We know how they seem, but we don't *know* their true nature with certainty.

Huxley is advising uncertainty. He is saying we should set aside our ego and opinions and try to see the world just as it is if we are able.

But we aren't "able". And the culprit is our perception, and the way it works. Uncertainty is the practical truth of the world, from the perspective of any human being. We perceive what we expect to perceive. I.e. our brains/minds fill in (i.e. make up; fabricate; fictionalise) the bits our senses didn't pick up, according to what it expects those bits to be. Often, these "bits" are most of what we end up perceiving, once the unconscious processing is complete.

This is interesting and relates to the main point. Our mind is filling in the blanks for us involuntarily using incomplete or sometimes conflicting or confusing information relayed through the senses. The McGurk effect...

^^This shows that our brain has a sort of hierarchy wired in to make split second decisions about conflicting inputs. It chooses the sense of sight over sound as the two senses give us different ideas of what is happening.

Further, our mind fills in the blanks even when one sense is involved. Our sense of sight gives us the illusion of an unbroken stream of sight as we scan the horizon, but the actual inputs are a bit choppy, as if we were watching a video with crappy internet. Our ability to see and judge color is very weak on the edges of our vision, but our brain fills in the gaps and effectively paints in the colors it figures are likely to be there.

The "illusions" or imperfections are occurring before we perceive anything or at least as we perceive it, and we can't override them even if we think we have better knowledge of the world than we seem to be getting through the senses. On top of these imperfections, we stack our judgments based on past experience, and maybe some opinions or good old-fashioned prejudices.

Re the sorts of claims usually made about this stuff on philosophy boards, though, something like the McGurk effect doesn't show either
(a) that we always associate concepts or language with perceptions,
or
(b) that we can't accurately perceive the real/external/objective world (because if that were the case, we'd have no grounds for saying "What's really going on is such and such, contra the illusion that this and such")

[Tegularius]

The only thing that can happen is its transformation which usually means the distortion of an experience into something which is no-longer real by changing the chemistry of the brain through drugs.

A minor observation: having a thought changes the "chemistry of the brain". Almost every 'action' the brain takes changes its chemistry. That's how brains work. This being the case, is it possible to distinguish one cause of a change in brain chemistry from another? I.e. is it possible to distinguish 'reality' from a drug-induced fantasy ... or from a simple misperception of 'reality'?

Yes it is a trite observation long known even in pre-Freudian times. It goes back to the ancients. But the part you quoted is only part of what I wrote.

Yes, I was commenting on the part I quoted; I had nothing to offer on the rest of your post, sorry. I did say that mine was a "minor" observation.

Anyways, I think its much easier and more likely for someone experiencing a drug-induced fantasy to know it's not real compared to a schizophrenic who suffers under a chronic brain malfunction, i.e., a chemical imbalance which requires drugs - more correctly called medication - to block the delusions bringing reality back to its near normal appearance.

I admire your confidence. Some psychologists I've read are convinced that 'reality' is an hallucination. Who knows, perhaps they're right?

I didn't notice the colon referring to your own observation. Maybe I should increase the font size on my screen!

As for psychologists convinced that reality is a hallucination, I haven't read of any. It's more of a philosophical view than a psychological one. It seems to me it's something they would more often encounter in a patient who needs their service. Based on what they charge per hour, whatever hallucination one has will quickly bring you back to reality.

[chewybrian]

Re the sorts of claims usually made about this stuff on philosophy boards, though, something like the McGurk effect doesn't show either
(a) that we always associate concepts or language with perceptions,

It doesn't say that. However, most people will admit and understand that they do often associate concepts and/or language with direct perception. They can see that they usually subconsciously categorize things and make conclusions about what they are perceiving without giving much active consideration or strong attention to it. You seem to be quite the exception in thinking you don't do this. I suggest you ask a few folks if they think they do this or not, and I'm sure most of them will see that they do.

(b) that we can't accurately perceive the real/external/objective world (because if that were the case, we'd have no grounds for saying "What's really going on is such and such, contra the illusion that this and such")

It does say this. It's not that we can't draw conclusions about what we perceive. We can make good and useful working theories about what is happening, and act in accordance with our beliefs. But, by whatever means we try to perceive the world, such means are necessarily imperfect. We have cause to say that one set of circumstances is more likely to be the case than the other, but we can never take these conclusions to be facts. Our minds have no direct connection to facts in the outside world. We have only indirect and obviously imperfect connections.

[Steve3007]

The McGurk effect is interesting, but it seems to me to be a special case of the wider way in which we try to create a model of what's really going on in the world by looking for patterns/regularities/consistencies between different sensations. So essentially the same point as the point made by citing Macbeth's dagger test as an example.

If all of our life experience so far has indicated that a particular mouth shape goes with a particular sound (along with the fact that "bar" sounds similar enough to "far" that we're morel likely to have misheard it than to have mis-seen the guy's mouth), we don't abandon that pattern lightly. Likewise, if all of our life experience so far has indicated that correlation between touch and sight indicates the presence of a real object, we stick with that.

It's simply making use of the patterns in the world in order to try to make sense of it.

[Steve3007]

On the subject of whether we think verbally, perhaps a more relevant test would be what I gather is called the Stroop Test, in which the words for various colours are displayed but there is a mismatch between the word and the colour in which it is displayed.

[Terrapin Station]

Re the sorts of claims usually made about this stuff on philosophy boards, though, something like the McGurk effect doesn't show either
(a) that we always associate concepts or language with perceptions,

It doesn't say that. However, most people will admit and understand that they do often associate concepts and/or language with direct perception. They can see that they usually subconsciously categorize things and make conclusions about what they are perceiving without giving much active consideration or strong attention to it. You seem to be quite the exception in thinking you don't do this. I suggest you ask a few folks if they think they do this or not, and I'm sure most of them will see that they do.

(b) that we can't accurately perceive the real/external/objective world (because if that were the case, we'd have no grounds for saying "What's really going on is such and such, contra the illusion that this and such")

It does say this. It's not that we can't draw conclusions about what we perceive. We can make good and useful working theories about what is happening, and act in accordance with our beliefs. But, by whatever means we try to perceive the world, such means are necessarily imperfect. We have cause to say that one set of circumstances is more likely to be the case than the other, but we can never take these conclusions to be facts. Our minds have no direct connection to facts in the outside world. We have only indirect and obviously imperfect connections.

Re the latter, you can't do likelihood if there's no empirical basis for it.

Re the former, again, I didn't say that I never associate concepts with perception.

[chewybrian]

Re the latter, you can't do likelihood if there's no empirical basis for it.

What, then, does 'empirical basis' mean? Doesn't it just say that we have made observations and tried not to allow our belief system to intervene? I'm not saying this is not what we try to do, or that we never succeed. I am pointing out that as our mechanics of perception are impresice, incomplete, and imperfect, our conclusions based on empirical observations only amount to best guesses under ideal conditions. But, the most natural human condition is to allow your heuristics and Hedonic adaptation to help you to paint a quick picture and draw a somewhat poorly informed conclusion which may, ("coincidentally") fall in line with your belief system or preferred outcome.

Re the former, again, I didn't say that I never associate concepts with perception.

I don't think anyone is saying there is no empirical basis for drawing conclusions about what is more likely to be true than what is less likely. At least, I am only pointing out that our conclusions are just working models or best guesses. They seem to be pretty good guesses in most cases, and they are often useful to us (which is really the goal of the hard-wired aspect of this problem), but they are still just very well-educated guesses, and not direct perceptions of hard facts.

[chewybrian]

On the subject of whether we think verbally, perhaps a more relevant test would be what I gather is called the Stroop Test, in which the words for various colours are displayed but there is a mismatch between the word and the colour in which it is displayed.

That is interesting and relevant. It seems people are better at interpreting symbols that represent things than the actual things or their attributes, which seems to reinforce what Huxley is saying. It is easier for people to read the word 'green' than to see if the word is painted green, or some other color. Of course, you can argue about whether this is hard-wired in or taught to us.

[Terrapin Station]

What, then, does 'empirical basis' mean?

There needs to be some empirical evidence of the external world. If one can't actually observe the external world, then there can't be any empirical evidence of the external world, and we can't talk about the likelihood of anything (about the external world).

[Sculptor1]

What, then, does 'empirical basis' mean?

There needs to be some empirical evidence of the external world. If one can't actually observe the external world, then there can't be any empirical evidence of the external world, and we can't talk about the likelihood of anything (about the external world).

People were experiencing and talking about the external world, observing and enjoying it long before there was any such thing as empricism. Since you use the phrase "empirical evidence" must imply that there is already evidence that is not empirical, unless you are guilt of a tautology.

[Terrapin Station]

What, then, does 'empirical basis' mean?

There needs to be some empirical evidence of the external world. If one can't actually observe the external world, then there can't be any empirical evidence of the external world, and we can't talk about the likelihood of anything (about the external world).

People were experiencing and talking about the external world, observing and enjoying it long before there was any such thing as empricism. Since you use the phrase "empirical evidence" must imply that there is already evidence that is not empirical, unless you are guilt of a tautology.

There is logical evidence, for example.

Aside from that, I wasn't referring to empiricism as an ideology. Just using the term to refer to experiential phenomena.

[Pattern-chaser]

As for psychologists convinced that reality is a hallucination, I haven't read of any.

Here's one example. There are more if you look for them.

A guide to why your world is a hallucination