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Relationship between Object and Percept in perceptions

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By one, I meant one set. One set of inputs corresponds to one set of outputs. Your question seems to be "How do we know that what we perceive is of a real object, rather than a hallucination or a fabrication? After all, a percept isn't literally an external object." I think it's a better formulation.

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This discussion is growing more and more inessential.

Discovery said:
 

Again, how can this be claimed, since we don't even know anything about that thing to which something is added or not added in the first place? We cannot compare our percept to anything


And how is that any different than a neumenal-phenomenal distinction? "Because perception is an effect, one knows nothing about the neumenal object "in itself""..... Paraphrasing you

Does the part of the lecture you listened to discuss Dr. Peikoff's refutation of this very criticism, about all forms of perception being valid and why? I want to be efficient and not wast time saying things you could be responding to directly already from having heard the Oist position on.

Edited by Plasmatic
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I said:

 

Does the part of the lecture you listened to discuss Dr. Peikoff's refutation of this very criticism, about all forms of perception being valid and why?

 

and Discovery previously said:

Sure, the senses are necessarily valid. Meaning: The percepts that the senses give us are fully real. They (the percepts) are not constructed, imagined or subjective. They are the observed content, the things of which we become aware of in the most direct sense possible, and they are irrefutable. But how does that make any statement on how those percepts were produced during the preceding process of perception? How do we know how many external objects were necessary to produce one percept?

 

 

I realize that you already said you aren't rejecting that the "result" of the "sense-object" "interaction" is "real" or valid. The section of the lecture I am referring to mentions more that just validity and addresses the possibility of epistemological differences due to different forms of perception.

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By one, I meant one set. One set of inputs corresponds to one set of outputs. Your question seems to be "How do we know that what we perceive is of a real object, rather than a hallucination or a fabrication? After all, a percept isn't literally an external object." I think it's a better formulation.

 

You got my question only half-way right.

 

Yes, my question is, how do we know what we perceive - the percept that we are confronted with - is really of a bounded object in the external world (if that's what you mean by "real object").

But definitely no, by no means am I asking "rather than a hallucination or a fabrication". To the contrary, I'm asking "rather than just a real perceptual object (nothing more but certainly nothing less either)".

That's actually an important distinction I've been struggling to make clear throughout the entire threat. I do not believe in the primacy of consciousness, but of existence.

Hallucination, fabrication or subjective construction etc. requires consciousness, they are one way or the other the product of conscious interpretation of some data.

Perceptual objects do not require consciousness and are not any product of conscious interpretation, they are taken in passively and unaltered and therefore have no choice to be anything other than objective facts. They are just the product of some physical interaction, and therefore fully real. They could also just be spurting around for themselves, if not for some reason they happen to reach our consciousness as they do.

 

I just don't get why you guys never seem to distinguish between independent of the senses and independent of consciousness. Those two are two completely different things. Something can be a fact of reality independent of consciousness but not independent of the senses. And that is exactly what percepts are. They are part of objective reality external to our consciousness. To what extend they give us a right to make claims about the objective reality external to our senses is an entirely different question of its own.

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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And how is that any different than a neumenal-phenomenal distinction? "Because perception is an effect, one knows nothing about the neumenal object "in itself""..... Paraphrasing you

 

 

It is different, because I don't think that the perceptual level requires the conceptual level. Therefore I don't like to call it "the phenomenal" world, because that term somehow implies exactly that (i.e. the perceptual level requiring the conceptual level).

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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Does the part of the lecture you listened to discuss Dr. Peikoff's refutation of this very criticism, about all forms of perception being valid and why? I want to be efficient and not wast time saying things you could be responding to directly already from having heard the Oist position on.


 

Yes, I have listened to the "All forms of perception are forms of perception"-part, if that's the one you mean. I also got that he somehow wants to demonstrate that everything is connected to everything. And that he concludes that "we do perceive reality directly". Don't really see the benefit of knowing that, since to me, perception is still one thing, getting perceptual objects into consciousness is another, and in the end of the day, we are still in contact with a product of interaction only.
Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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Discovery said:

 

I just don't get why you guys never seem to distinguish between independent of the senses and independent of consciousness. Those two are two completely different things. Something can be a fact of reality independent of consciousness but not independent of the senses. And that is exactly what percepts are. They are part of objective reality external to our consciousness. To what extend they give us a right to make claims about the objective reality external to our senses is an entirely different question of its own.

 

This what I understand you to be asking in general while "struggling to make clear throughout the entire thread" that you do not "believe in the primacy of consciousness, but of existence." You are accepting the ontological objectivity of the object-sense-interaction but want to know why that makes our knowledge of the object epistemically objective.

 

That is, "things are what they are apart from consciousness, including the senses, but how does that guarantee that our knowledge of "what is" corresponds to "things in them selves" "apart from" our objective sensation of them".

 

But, first....

 

We need to address the notion that the initial question and context is synonymous with subsequent formulations, because it is a dangerous one for ones integration. My initial statement that Discovery continues to import from the initial context is not isomorphic to subsequent formulations.

 

In the OP Discovery asked:

,

[....]Entities are a product of object-sense-interaction. They exist only while we are perceiving them. They cease to exist when we fall asleep. Objects do not.[...]

How do we know that "The form or perception does not contribute anything that the entity-object does not possess in regard to the metaphysically singular status of bounded particulars."?
 

 

 

and since then, following Louie, reformulated to:

 



 

"There is an Object in reality that exists independent of my perceiving it. When it acts on my senses, I perceive it in the form of a particular percept."

This rules out the possibility of "object" and "percept" being synonyms. Percepts are a product of object-sense-interaction. They exist only while we are perceiving them. They cease to exist when we fall asleep. Objects do not. [...]

 

So the question remains:

 

How do we know whether "The form or perception (i.e. the percept) does not contribute anything that the entity-object does not possess in regard to the metaphysically singular status of bounded particulars."?

Why does there always have to be a one-to-one relationship between object and percept?
Why not many-to-one? Or one-to-many?

and

 

Sure, the senses are necessarily valid. Meaning: The percepts that the senses give us are fully real. They (the percepts) are not constructed, imagined or subjective. They are the observed content, the things of which we become aware of in the most direct sense possible, and they are irrefutable. But how does that make any statement on how those percepts were produced during the preceding process of perception? How do we know how many external objects were necessary to produce one percept?

 

On one hand Discovery has said that they "meant to" ask a different question and switched to a generic "one to one" vs "one to many" correspondence of "percept" to object, and yet the initial differentiation of form dependent quantities vs form dependent qualities is being reasserted in the general reformulation.

 

 

Ms Rand said:

 

 

Now you can properly distinguish that which is in the object from the form in which you perceive that quality. But that isn't the same thing as saying color is a secondary quality but extension is a primary quality. That isn't the same issue at all. Color is a form of perception—something caused by one existing phenomenon, namely wavelength, acting on another phenomenon, namely, the retina of our <ioe2_281> eye. That does not make color a "secondary quality," as if one could say color isn't in the object but extension is.

 

You see, it's the classification of the attributes of reality according to how and by what means we perceive them that is wrong in that whole classification. The same argument can be made against any sensation, anything that you perceive by means of your senses.

 

 

ITOE

 

and Dr. Peikoff said :

 

 

Now let us consider a further issue relating to sensory form and to the validity of the senses: the metaphysical status of sensory qualities themselves.

 

Since the objects we perceive have a nature independent of us, it must be possible to distinguish between form and object; between the aspects of the perceived world that derive from our form of perception (such as colors, sounds, smells) and the aspects that belong to metaphysical reality itself, apart from us. What then is the status of the formal aspects? If they are not "in the object," it is often asked, does it follow that they are merely "in the mind" and therefore are subjective and unreal? If so, many philosophers have concluded, the senses must be condemned as deceivers—because the world of colored, sounding, odoriferous objects they reveal is utterly unlike actual reality.[...]Ayn Rand's answer is: we can distinguish form from object, but this does not imply the subjectivity of form or the invalidity of the senses.

 

I understand Discovery to be asking about the necessity of  a "subjectivity of form" corresponding to the metaphysical object apart from the ontologically objective-metaphysically given, sense-object interaction.

 

In the hypothetical about "puffs" that Discovery mentioned earlier, it was said:

 

If everything is made of meta-energy puffs, then so are human beings and their parts, including their sense organs, nervous system, and brain. The process of sense perception, by this account, would involve a certain relationship among the puffs: it would consist of an interaction between those that comprise external entities and those that comprise the perceptual apparatus and brain of human beings. The result of this interaction would be the material world as we perceive it, with all of its objects and their qualities, from men to mosquitoes to stars to feathers.

 

Even under the present hypothesis, such objects and qualities would not be products of consciousness. Their existence would be a metaphysically given fact; it would be a consequence of certain puff-interactions that is outside of man's power to create or destroy. The things we perceive, in this theory, would not be primaries, but they would nevertheless be unimpeachably real.

 

OPAR

 

 

Discovery agrees with the above but wonders how this answers the question of epistemically objective knowledge as against ontological objective causes.

 

We need to address the question of quantity as perceived, vs, quality as perceived as having any important difference as regards knowledge of facts that are "in the object" apart from "object-sense interaction". I will try to do so tonight.

 

My initial quoted statement was "regarding" the quantitative status of entities as one.

Edited by Plasmatic
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Perceptual objects do not require consciousness and are not any product of conscious interpretation, they are taken in passively and unaltered and therefore have no choice to be anything other than objective facts. They are just the product of some physical interaction, and therefore fully real. They could also just be spurting around for themselves, if not for some reason they happen to reach our consciousness as they do.

This doesn't make sense to me. It sounds like you're saying you can have a percept without any awareness. If you mean only that a percept isn't produced by consciousness, that's fine, but it's not like there's good reason to say there are "unconscious" percepts.

 

The question about hallucination does apply to your question here, since what is a better example of a percept that *fails* to correspond directly to real, external objects than a hallucination? (And I don't mean, say, hallucinating a human as a dog, I mean hallucinating an external object that in no way exists perhaps due to brain injury). You said "rather than just a perceptual object", which I'm saying it still boils down to a similar question: "how do I know a percept completely corresponds to an external object?" Hallucinations are "just perceptual objects", and at the very least you seem to wonder where correspondence comes from. Part of my answer would be that the nature of your senses is to only present reality as it is, so anything your senses do can only be done by using what's in front of them (by virtue of not using any intervention like imagination or conceptualization), or else if they "used" more it wouldn't be fair to call it perception anymore.

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This doesn't make sense to me. It sounds like you're saying you can have a percept without any awareness. If you mean only that a percept isn't produced by consciousness, that's fine, but it's not like there's good reason to say there are "unconscious" percepts.

 

Well, why not? Yes, a percept isn't produced by consciousness, that's part of what I'm saying. And why shouldn't unconscious percepts be a potentiality, after all, they are just things. Unless, of course, if it is part of the definition of "percept" that they are perceived by someone. But in that case, it is still possible to define a new word for that which our consciousness is in direct contact with and assert that it can be unconscious, i.e. with no consciousness perceiving it. Where's the problem? I think that the cognitive achievement of understanding this possibility would also be a good test of whether one has understood the primacy of existence.

 

The question about hallucination does apply to your question here, since what is a better example of a percept that *fails* to correspond directly to real, external objects than a hallucination? (And I don't mean, say, hallucinating a human as a dog, I mean hallucinating an external object that in no way exists perhaps due to brain injury). You said "rather than just a perceptual object", which I'm saying it still boils down to a similar question: "how do I know a percept completely corresponds to an external object?" Hallucinations are "just perceptual objects", and at the very least you seem to wonder where correspondence comes from. Part of my answer would be that the nature of your senses is to only present reality as it is, so anything your senses do can only be done by using what's in front of them (by virtue of not using any intervention like imagination or conceptualization), or else if they "used" more it wouldn't be fair to call it perception anymore.

 

Well, maybe I don't know too much about hallucinations to tell whether they can be classified as percepts or not. So there are two possibilities:

 

1. Either it is necessary to put some interpretation into it for the believe in its reality to work. Just like you do in a dream or in everyday situations. In that case, there are some elements of interventions in it, so it is not a percept. For example, I am perceiving something from my window that I have no doubt is a tree, but I'm of course also too lazy to go out there and touch it to really confirm that. So I'm also putting some interpretation into it. But I could at any moment go out there and perceive it fully. If I can walk through it, though, I would have to call it a hallucination.

 

2. Or it really is a percept. That wouldn't change anything about it being real. A real perceptual object. And in a different camp than "fabrication", for which interpretation would be necessary.

But how would you even then tell whether its a hallucination? If you say, you can't, well, why would you then even call it "hallucination"? And by "can't" I really mean can't, as in "you can really go through both the experiences equal to sight and touch and still can't tell the difference". Not just "seeing a ghost but you can still throw a stone through it".

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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You said "rather than just a perceptual object", which I'm saying it still boils down to a similar question: "how do I know a percept completely corresponds to an external object?" Hallucinations are "just perceptual objects", and at the very least you seem to wonder where correspondence comes from. Part of my answer would be that the nature of your senses is to only present reality as it is, so anything your senses do can only be done by using what's in front of them (by virtue of not using any intervention like imagination or conceptualization), or else if they "used" more it wouldn't be fair to call it perception anymore.

 

Well, it is hard to define for me what "completely corresponds to" should mean. We perceive in forms. With colors, textures, shape, you name it. Certainly I don't expect those things to be found in the external objects, though that would be great, of course. My focus was therefore on quantity. On whether for each perceptual object, there exists exactly one bounded particular out there that created that percept. Exactly one. Not more. And vice versa. That would suffice to defend individual rights.

 

Also remember what I think about senses. I derive their existence from abstract theory starting from the fact of my own consciousness, not from witnessing the particular senses we know. So if you say "the nature of your senses", you have to keep in mind whether you are just talking about empirical properties of the senses we know, or about properties of the abstract senses as I defined them.

 

So when I say "external object", I'm not just talking about the perceptual objects like some "rocks" that we can observe act on other percepts that we call our "eyes" etc. I'm talking about primary causes. Things really not in direct contact with our consciousness.

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
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I read the first 10 or so posts and stopped. What is all this distinction between "object" and "entity" - and then some discussion of how one is true in the absence of consciousness and the other is more closely linked to consciousness? Is this the Bertrand Russel forum? Are we gonna have a debate about the primacy of existence over consciousness?

Hey, define your concepts correctly because the truth of the "entity/object" exists independent of this thread. Your job is not to debate the interpretation of reality - your job is to help each other recognize the reality that exists beyond your debate.

Don't fall into the quagmire of language and logic as metaphysics, created in modern universities, as a substitute for real inquiry into metaphysics and epistemology.

Wow, my first negative post.

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Well, why not? Yes, a percept isn't produced by consciousness, that's part of what I'm saying. And why shouldn't unconscious percepts be a potentiality, after all, they are just things. Unless, of course, if it is part of the definition of "percept" that they are perceived by someone.

You see, that's the thing. I don't see how a percept can refer to anything except what one is perceiving. It's not like I say thermostats have percepts, but they do respond to the world. A percept usually refers to how something perceives the world and is aware of perceiving. If you want to say there are unconscious percepts, then you're talking about a form of awareness that nothing is aware of so (a contradiction), or claiming that consciousness is inessential to perception (which means thermostats perceive, too). That's the problem, in which case of course would lead to being skeptical of how its possible to know what percepts correspond with.

I'm not saying I'm aware of how perception happens (or even that I'm aware of everything my brain does), I'm saying that the whole point of perception is that it's not just stimulus-response. Percepts are entirely accessible, so it is possible to answer if percepts correspond to singular objects. If they're not all accessible, then awareness is never enough.

Your 1 is an example of interpreting what one sees. Believing something is a hallucination doesn't say anything about perception. But it's interesting you say going out to touch the tree allows you to see a tree "fully", as though what you see already (not what you mistakenly label it) could be a hallucination already. In other words, you seem to say you want a level of confirmation that a percept corresponds to one, many, or even no objects. So, that "confirmation" bit is part of your disagreement.

2 is what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to say there are "unreal" percepts, nor did anyone say that. The questions you're asking are about how perception corresponds to the external world. The point here is to answer what makes you able to point out when a percept is OF a real object. You should be able to tell something is a hallucination because it'd be totally different, and felt to be different than if an external object were there. The qualitative feel alone can say just how many objects there are. Or a more general answer: all of what one perceives corresponds to objects, by virtue of being conscious OF something.

As for "how do we know a percept corresponds to one object", I think it's a poor question. I can look at a book and say "that's one book", then you could come by and say "no, that's not one book, that's 300 pages of paper", then a guy with crazy microscope eyes thanks to an experiment could come by  and say "no, that's a billion molecules". It could go forever. That's partly why I use the term "entity" slightly differently than "object", to point out how perception focuses on the bounds of a particular, even if the particular can be broken down into pieces. But it's still fine to say object. Makes me think you're overworried that you want to find the "sensory primitives" I mentioned of Locke earlier. The point is that perceiving is about objects, and percepts are just what is presented to consciousness (not built up from some sensory primitives that are only associations with external objects).

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In the absence of evidence to support hallucination as an alternative interpretation of the normal working biology of your senses in studying an external reality, why do you bring it up? What motivates one to ignore the evidence of sense data and propose, without evidence, the possibility of hallucination? Maybe your entire existence exists in a gas bubble inside the stomach of a whale - does that seem silly? Yes, it's an absurd metaphor for the wondering of any conclusion, founded in whim, that questions the validity of sense data.

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In the absence of evidence to support hallucination as an alternative interpretation of the normal working biology of your senses in studying an external reality, why do you bring it up? What motivates one to ignore the evidence of sense data and propose, without evidence, the possibility of hallucination?

I think the way Discovery posed questions makes it so every percept might be a hallucination, but not so skeptical that reality might be itself unreal. So my thinking is to point out there are ways to know that percepts correspond to the world, that there is no good reason to be skeptical. If someone asks "how do I know which objects percepts correspond with?" they're also asking "how do I know my percepts correspond to any objects?" Whether you think it's worth the time to answer a skeptic is another topic entirely.

Edited by Eiuol
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Ok Eiuol, I understand your desire to find an answer to the skeptics.  Study the arguments of the first skeptics, Pyrrho and his ancient Greek students.  Throughout history, thinkers tying to answer skeptics, jumped outside of philosophy to speculation in the sciences.  Could you be looking for an answer in science, rather than philosophy?

 

The science answer might be something in the area of understanding the relationship between object and sense organ in biological evolution because the alternative in hallucination brings in a mystical quality to the search for truth.  I know personally, this desire to teach the truth to others - and philosophers must bring in ideas from science.  The trick is to bring the science idea into the realm of philosophy, only after it has become a paradigm, not while it's a theory.  Galileo's orbits, Bohr's mechanics - I'll wait for Keplar and whomever figures out that electrons (if they are objects in reality) cannot exist in multiple locations or move without transiting intervening space.

 

Sticking strictly to philosophy, I ask again, what could be the cause of the skeptic to imagine, out of nothing, the view to hallucination? Until science learns more, the philosopher cannot provide a better answer.

 

Great thread, thanks to the posters.

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Ok Eiuol, I understand your desire to find an answer to the skeptics.  Study the arguments of the first skeptics, Pyrrho and his ancient Greek students.  Throughout history, thinkers tying to answer skeptics, jumped outside of philosophy to speculation in the sciences.  Could you be looking for an answer in science, rather than philosophy?

Hallucinations can and do happen, so it's not arbitrary. I don't wanna focus on it a lot, but I think as soon as anyone can say that a percept corresponds to an object, they already answer how a normal percept doesn't correspond to no objects (yet still recognize something is wrong if their brain has been damaged) or potentially many objects. Mostly, the answer revolves how all percepts are part of awareness. No special knowledge of how the brain operates is required.

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"a percept corresponds (what do you mean by corresponds) to an object,"  and "a normal (what is a normal percept) percept does not correspond (relate in what way) to a non-object", and, "all percepts are part of awareness."

 

What do you mean by these statements?  It's not clear and you have many unsupported, ghost concepts in your premises.

 

"Hallucinations can and do happen, so they're not arbitrary."  OK, but what is there nature and importance in human identity?  To what extent should we include this fact in our analysis of human ethics?

Edited by jacassidy2
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No Eiuol, we don't need an academic reference.  I just want to understand what point you are making.  You ask what is unclear and where I take issue.  The answer is, I don't know. Refer back to my questions in #45 and define your premises.  I may agree or not, but only after I understand the point you are trying to make - I do not.

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Abstract ideas can be very confusing and an image often tells more than a thousand words. For this reason, I have created a graphical illustration about my epistemic psychology which I will soon publish here with some words. After that, many things hopefully get clearer so we can deal with your recent posts, while being on the same page.

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I was lazy and unclear in post #47 answering EIUOL.  Here's a better try, I hope it's more on point for answering skeptics.

 

I tend to want to answer a skeptic with the things I know in my study of philosophy that don't support the CONCLUSIONS of a skeptic.  I want to use the challenge as an opportunity to flex my philosophy muscles.

 

I've learned, over time, to stop myself, and instead use an Objectivist inspired method that ignores the CONCLUSIONS of the skeptic because they are based in a METHOD skeptics use that is outside the truth of Aristotelian metaphysics and Objectivist epistemology.  The skeptic is asking you to validate your senses and reason without the use of your senses and reason.

 

The skeptic is also asking you to prove a negative, to show the truth of a proposition (not hallucinating, etc.) without the benefit of any sense data or reason.  You can't do it and the question, as stated, is invalid.  No matter what you say in answer to the skeptic, his answer can be the same original question. 

 

The proposer of a premise (how do you know your not hallucinating) is the one who has the burden of using his senses and reason to show the proposition has merit.  The appropriate answer is, "what facts do you have to support asking the question?"  How would you answer, "how do you know there are no pink elephants living under the sea?"

 

Any other course with a skeptic, requires you to accept his Platonic metaphysics as a basis for the debate.

Edited by jacassidy2
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