Perception and reality

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Prof Bulani
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Re: Perception and reality

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Terrapin Station wrote: February 16th, 2020, 6:24 am
Prof Bulani wrote: February 16th, 2020, 4:30 am
Now if we say that all the information about the layout of an individual's environment, gathered from their perception, is stored in the mind as accessible memory, would that be different from saying that as the individual perceives their environment, they create a copy of the layout of their environment in their mind?
Ignoring that none of this happens "ideally" etc. sure.

It seems like you're thinking that I'm denying mental models wholesale. I'm not. I'm denying the claim that we're ONLY aware of mental models, particularly re perception. Direct realism versus representationalism, etc. are stances in philosophy of perception, by the way, not philosophy of memory or induction or anything like that.
Nobody ever claimed that we are ONLY aware of mental models. You are engaging in the pointless exercise of refuting points nobody has made. If you're not denying that we create mental models of our environment, what was the point of attempting to argue against it for the past few days?
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Re: Perception and reality

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Prof Bulani wrote: February 16th, 2020, 8:51 am
Terrapin Station wrote: February 16th, 2020, 6:24 am

Ignoring that none of this happens "ideally" etc. sure.

It seems like you're thinking that I'm denying mental models wholesale. I'm not. I'm denying the claim that we're ONLY aware of mental models, particularly re perception. Direct realism versus representationalism, etc. are stances in philosophy of perception, by the way, not philosophy of memory or induction or anything like that.
Nobody ever claimed that we are ONLY aware of mental models. You are engaging in the pointless exercise of refuting points nobody has made. If you're not denying that we create mental models of our environment, what was the point of attempting to argue against it for the past few days?
On the first page of this thread you wrote "To address your comment directly, we are only aware of mental model we create "

The word "only" is there. It's fine if you didn't mean that we are ONLY aware of mental model(s) we create, but then just say that--just say that you didn't mean to say only.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Terrapin Station wrote: February 16th, 2020, 9:00 am
Prof Bulani wrote: February 16th, 2020, 8:51 am
Nobody ever claimed that we are ONLY aware of mental models. You are engaging in the pointless exercise of refuting points nobody has made. If you're not denying that we create mental models of our environment, what was the point of attempting to argue against it for the past few days?
On the first page of this thread you wrote "To address your comment directly, we are only aware of mental model we create "

The word "only" is there. It's fine if you didn't mean that we are ONLY aware of mental model(s) we create, but then just say that--just say that you didn't mean to say only.
I clarified this "only" issue possibly 10 times throughout this thread.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Prof Bulani wrote: February 16th, 2020, 12:55 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: February 16th, 2020, 9:00 am

On the first page of this thread you wrote "To address your comment directly, we are only aware of mental model we create "

The word "only" is there. It's fine if you didn't mean that we are ONLY aware of mental model(s) we create, but then just say that--just say that you didn't mean to say only.
I clarified this "only" issue possibly 10 times throughout this thread.
Not by saying that you didn't mean to say "only."
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Re: Perception and reality

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It's interesting that after days of arguing that the brain does not create a model of the environment in the mind based on received sensory information, on the basis that such a construct is untenable, you conclude that such a construct is exactly what occurs in the mind...
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Re: Perception and reality

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Prof Bulani wrote: February 16th, 2020, 5:43 pm It's interesting that after days of arguing that the brain does not create a model of the environment in the mind based on received sensory information, on the basis that such a construct is untenable, you conclude that such a construct is exactly what occurs in the mind...
Again, with some added emphasis:

"It seems like you're thinking that I'm denying mental models wholesale. I'm not. I'm denying the claim that we're ONLY aware of mental models, particularly re perception. Direct realism versus representationalism, etc. are stances in philosophy of perception, by the way, not philosophy of memory or induction or anything like that."
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Re: Perception and reality

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So we should disregard the role of memory as a factor in our cognizance of reality because your school of thought material didn't mention memory?
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Re: Perception and reality

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Prof Bulani wrote: February 16th, 2020, 6:14 pm So we should disregard the role of memory as a factor in our cognizance of reality because your school of thought material didn't mention memory?
Image

It's just that it's not the same thing as philosophy of perception. We can talk about a number of different things.
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Re: Perception and reality

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You are the one that came up with the issue of representationalism vs realism, assuming, no insisting, that the thread has anything to do with that. I don't care about your prefabricated philosophical descriptions of other people's musings about the nature of reality and perception.

Just because the philosopher you've read never mentioned memory in their description of perception doesn't mean that memory has nothing to do with it. At some point you'll have to realize that as a philosopher you'll have to start thinking for yourself instead of wholesale regurgitating the works of others.

Perception requires the construction of a model of the environment that is stored in the mind. This model of the environment in the mind is what I've been referring to as the mental model. You have wasted days of this discussion arguing that we don't create a mental model, because your views on perception are limited to how it is described on some Wikipedia page.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Prof Bulani wrote: February 17th, 2020, 5:02 am You are the one that came up with the issue of representationalism vs realism, assuming, no insisting, that the thread has anything to do with that.
Yes. Because you wrote that we can only know our mental models. That's not the case on my view.

Knowing mental models is not controversial, at least on the knowledge-by-acquaintance sense, when we're talking about memory, propositional knowledge, etc.

Knowing mental models IS controversial when we're talking about perception.

Saying that we can only know mental models means that even if we're talking about perception, it's being claimed that we can only know mental models. That's controversial. (Though it is something that some people argue on the side of "we can only know mental models.")
I don't care about your prefabricated philosophical descriptions of other people's musings about the nature of reality and perception.
You're on a philosophy board, and obviously you care enough about disagreements to keep posting back and forth as you've been doing. So if you care about that, you should probably be careful about exactly what you're writing, keeping in mind the context (that it's a philosophy board), and that other users are going to assume that you know something about philosophy (otherwise, why would you be posting on a philosophy board if you're not that interested in the subject?), so they're going to assume that you're familiar with common issues in the field, including debates about philosophy of perception with respect to realism versus idealism, etc.
Just because the philosopher you've read never mentioned memory in their description of perception doesn't mean that memory has nothing to do with it. At some point you'll have to realize that as a philosopher you'll have to start thinking for yourself instead of wholesale regurgitating the works of others.
The convention in the field, and the convention in general, in the cognitive sciences, in popular usage, etc., is that perception and memory refer to two different things, not one identical thing, where those terms are synonyms. We can argue, in philosophy of perception, that memory is intricately woven with perception, but that would be different than arguing that memory is the same thing as perception.
Perception requires the construction of a model of the environment that is stored in the mind.
That's certainly one thing that people argue. Note that in arguing that, you're not saying that the model is IDENTICAL to perception. You're still talking about two different things. If we can only be aware of mental models, then you're saying that there is no perception in the traditional sense.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Terrapin Station wrote: February 17th, 2020, 9:23 am We can argue, in philosophy of perception, that memory is intricately woven with perception
I would certainly argue so. 👍 Perception is the process by which we fit data from our senses into our mental model of reality. Memory must surely play a leading role in this?
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Re: Perception and reality

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Pattern-chaser wrote: February 17th, 2020, 12:33 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: February 17th, 2020, 9:23 am We can argue, in philosophy of perception, that memory is intricately woven with perception
I would certainly argue so. 👍 Perception is the process by which we fit data from our senses into our mental model of reality. Memory must surely play a leading role in this?
I think it depends on the person. I often perceive things where it has nothing to do with a mental model. For one, I often perceive things where I'm not at all applying anything linguistic or conceptual to them. It seems, at least based on folks' comments, that some people are different in this regard, though. I can accept that, but it's difficult to imagine what it must be like, of course.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Terrapin Station wrote: February 17th, 2020, 12:37 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: February 17th, 2020, 12:33 pm

I would certainly argue so. 👍 Perception is the process by which we fit data from our senses into our mental model of reality. Memory must surely play a leading role in this?
I think it depends on the person. I often perceive things where it has nothing to do with a mental model. For one, I often perceive things where I'm not at all applying anything linguistic or conceptual to them. It seems, at least based on folks' comments, that some people are different in this regard, though. I can accept that, but it's difficult to imagine what it must be like, of course.
If you remember the things you perceive, and your memory is created in such a way that the positions and layout of the things you perceive are stored, then you are creating a 3-d replica of your surroundings in your mind. I think the word "model" is tripping you up because all you can think of when you hear "mental model" is a model of the mind, something nobody is talking about? If I said that we create a replica of our surroundings in our minds, based on what we perceive, is there any way you would misunderstand that and still talk about models of the mind?

And by the way, regardless of what the conventions you are familiar with have dictated to you, this topic is about memory, i.e., what is IN the mind. It's pretty sad that somehow this escaped you as a central pillar of what I have been talking about, but it isn't surprising. After all, you don't read what people write, you just assume that they are saying things they aren't saying because you need things to conform to familiar conventions, otherwise you risk having to actually think for yourself and understand what people say and respond without canned replies.
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Re: Perception and reality

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Prof Bulani wrote: February 18th, 2020, 7:40 am If you remember the things you perceive, and your memory is created in such a way that the positions and layout of the things you perceive are stored, then you are creating a 3-d replica of your surroundings in your mind.
I don't know how or why you got it in your head that I'm denying mental models wholesale. I'm not. I explicitly said this at least once above, too.
I think the word "model" is tripping you up because all you can think of when you hear "mental model" is a model of the mind
No, I wasn't thinking anything like that. You said that we're only aware of mental models. We're not. Part of awareness is perception, and I'm a direct realist when it comes to perception.

Of course there are other views about perception. One of those other views has it that we're only aware of mental models in "perception" (in quotation marks in that case because the view makes it "so-called perception" rather than the usual view of what's going on during perception).
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Re: Perception and reality

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Could you stop harping on the "you said ONLY" issue, please. It's dead. I killed it. Stop bringing it back up. The fact that you still keep beating a dead issue is further evidence that you don't actually read, you just pull a prepared response out of a hat.

If you have no problem with the idea that we create a replica of our surroundings in memory, then what is your objection to the idea that these replicas in memory are representations of objects in the real external world?
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