1-2-3-4-5/senses running overtime ("what if")

[Kevin Haggerty]

Over in Michael's mockingbird thread he asked me:

What if the conceptual and cognitive faculty also came as part of a new kind of sense organ that is still in evolutionary development? That means that it would receive input from a part of reality that is not accessed by the traditional senses.

A new kind of sense organ...hrm. Seems to me that in order for the body to reorganize itself so conclusively as to give rise to a whole new organ, it would require some kind of survival necessity to do so. There would have to be some revolutionary new factor in human survival to account for it. Perhaps, in your science fiction story human beings could colonize another planet and something there would change our needs so drastically that the body would have to overhaul its sensory make-up.

Let's play "what if" in the other direction, though. Thinking about what might be, always puts me in mind of how things begin. Let's think about the evolution of the fab five in the first place. What's so useful about any of the five senses in their most primitive incarnation that nature would select for enhancing and refining them to their present state of sophistication? What decisive advantage does the vaguely photosensitive creature have over the totally blind? How would the mere notion that there was "something over there somewhere, maybe" greatly improve the lot of the primitive organism? I'm thinking about "light," but this question applies to other senses as well--some utterly vague odor or something that might be some kind of sound, supposing the primitive brain were somehow able to conceptualize a meaningful difference between barely perceived sound and soundlessness. I mean, there's the problem right there: how do you evolve a sense of hearing, say, without first conceptualizing "sound" as something worth sensing?

Of course this line of reasoning traditionally takes us in the direction of (god help us) intelligent design, but let's not go there--please! Here's where I'd rather take this: what if awareness had a primal sensory capacity built in? Philosophically, what if awareness stands in need of something to be aware of? What if the fact of simply being alive implied that there is a world outside of the self? What if all perception began on this conceptual level and awareness was a kind of pull, like gravity, toward the sensible world? What if this innate "knowledge" that there was "something out there" drove the evolutionary process? In short, what if awareness were a drive, like sex or hunger?

Put another way, what if this connection between raw awareness and the sensible world were a force like gravity? As gravity pulls the physical body, so the sensible world would pull awareness. Just as the body creates complex structures of bones and muscles, peristalsis and blood pressure in reaction to gravity, so the primal organism would create complex structures to bring this raw awareness into sharper and sharper focus over millennia. What if awareness preceded its organization into five senses?

Touch of course would seem like a natural development of even the most primitive organism. From this a creature gains a sense of movement, of collision, of presence. But if awareness is a drive, the motive force behind the senses, then even our most primitive awareness would have important implications. What if the evolutionary process had, therefore, a predictive faculty? What if our selfish genes, could extrapolate mutation beyond a specific slight shift? In that case, the first photosensitive cell in a creature's body could be extrapolated to something that would give the organism greater awareness of its environment and the "awareness drive" would push (pull?) the organism in that direction.

Okay. Now, here we are several billion years later with five senses. But what of the awareness drive? What of the primitive predictive capacity of awareness itself? Well, if we look, we could say that examples are all around us in nature: the instantaneous schooling behavior of fish, the ability of migratory birds to travel thousands of miles unerringly without the benefit of sight or hearing easily could be accounted for by a highly evolved awareness drive.

Animals perform amazing feats so regularly and effortlessly we don't even think to question how. How do deer run at full gallop through thick forest, often in absolute terror for their lives without running into trees or even tripping, when even one such injury would be enough to cripple an animal? And how do they move so noiselessly without spending the whole time staring at the ground ahead of them? Is sight the best way to predict the solidness of the ground ahead, anyway? Of the five senses, sight is the only way to encounter contour at a distance, but woefully inadequate as a measure of thickness and solidity. Do deer echo locate? Squirrels judge distances all day long with similar accuracy. If this were merely inhuman athletic ability, wouldn't all aging squirrels eventually fail a jump? Wouldn't all squirrels die from falls, and the woodland floor be littered over the years with dead squirrels?

So okay, if there were such a cockamamie thing as an "awareness drive," what happened to this faculty in humans? Why don't we all have this capacity? Why isn't the awareness drive as strong in humans as our sex drive or our need for food?

Well, let's say that all these drives exist to improve our survival; so, what if our survival no longer depended upon awareness? What if humans had moved beyond normal evolution and so evolved beyond awareness as a need? A more primitive creature's awareness of the world around it is the key to its survival. What if modern man's ability to manipulate his environment were to replace awareness as the guarantor of survival?

The efficacy of and need for an awareness drive presupposes many and constant unknowns that directly and grossly affect the organism's viability. For most creatures on this earth, there are thousands of transactions with their environments which they must "get right" on the first try or parish. But we humans have created so many alternatives and back-up plans through agriculture, technology, and medicine, that there is very little in our existence that we have to get right the first time or even the tenth. Our bodies have obviously retreated from direct importance in our survival (hence our clawlessness and fanglessness; our relative physical ineptitude when compared even to the common house cat). What if our raw awareness, in the form of the "awareness drive" were similarly to have atrophied? Insulation from every form of weather, an utter absence of predators and the absolute assurance of finding sustenance at the local Safeway would render the awareness drive obsolete.

We can see the consequences of our evolutionarily weakened physical bodies easily enough, but what would be the consequences of an atrophied "awareness drive?"

The most technologically dependant societies might see a marked decrease in the pursuit of knowledge, many people putting their focus instead into acquiring wealth to better manipulate their environment; the great majority of people in a society might be grossly ignorant of how anything worked. We tend to think of "self esteem" as a function of our human minds alone, but what if a primitive form of "self esteem" was nascent in a creature's awareness that its actions have effect and that the animal itself therefore, is effective? Technologically advanced societies then would experience a profound crisis of self-esteem.

But how could self-esteem be connected to primitive awareness? We all know the story of the baby elephant that is tied to a post. The baby elephant learns from trial and error that it cannot free itself from the post and stops trying. Later, even when the elephant has grown large enough to uproot whole trees, it doesn't try to escape when tied to the meager post because it has already learned that it can't. "Learned helplessness," we call that. We also know that wild animals in captivity often simply die, many displaying the outward signs of depression in the last months of life. So, by negative example at least, it would seem plausible that a sense of effectiveness, an awareness of being able to meet their needs through direct action exists and is a sign of health in animals.

But what if such an animal were able to devise technology, or were given technology that would prolong its life regardless of its personal effectiveness? What then would become of its "self-esteem?"

I think it's very interesting (and in light of my musings here, of course, very apt) that Nathaniel Branden's investigation into the nature of self-esteem would lead him to the threshold of some kind of "anomalous cognition." My apologies to Mr. Brandon, but I haven't read his works; does he at any point discuss the origins and evolution of self-esteem? Can it even be said that animals have an emotional investment in their being able to affect their environment?

Which leads me (maybe not you, but it does me) to a discussion of the subconscious. No one studies psychology for long without running across the provocative notion that much of what we do and feel happens subconsciously. Objectively speaking, animals are said not to be conscious. But are they then subconscious? Certainly they experience emotions; certainly these emotions are a reaction to some relation between themselves and the world, some awareness.

It is further interesting that something like my "awareness drive" could account for a great many "psi" phenomena. People with such abilities would simply be expressing an atavism, comparable to webbed feet. The vast majority of such "anomalous cognition" would take place entirely at the subconscious level and would, therefore, resist observation and investigation by conventional laboratory study; as a survival mechanism, the awareness drive would tend not to work under laboratory conditions, just as it would have shut down nearly completely in the environment created by modern western culture at large. It's likely that the membership of the western scientific establishment would be drawn from populations with the greatest technological advancement, and therefore the greatest remoteness from this awareness. If, as I’m suggesting, the major factor in the loss of this awareness were environmental, then very young children might be expected to experience some aspect of this awareness and lose it as they became more and more subject to their environment. Remnants of this awareness, though lost to modern man, would exist in literature and folklore from the remote past. It would stand to reason that populations having the least contact with modern technological convenience would have a much greater tendency to express atavistic awareness to the point that such cultures might take "psi" phenomena for granted.

Anyway...Michael, thanks for posing the question. I sure had fun answering it!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Kevin,

That was an amazing post. I am going to reread it twice before I answer.

As you enjoyed writing it, so I enjoyed reading it. There is a GREAT DEAL of food for thought there.

(Anyway, go out and get a book by Nathaniel Branden - you will enjoy it. The Six Pillars of Self Esteem is his most definitive statement and nit is very clear - frankly I have not finished it yet, but I like it a lot. NB defines self-esteem as a survival mechanism.

Also, have you read The Passion of Ayn Rand? If you haven't, I highly suggest it, so you will get an idea of where all the conflict in this Objectivist stuff came from, and why Objectivism has impacted the world so greatly, despite the fact that most people in society are not listening.)

Michael

[Kat]

Here is something to ponder. There are things that we perceive that cannot be attributed directly to our five senses. For example when you sense another person's presence without having heard or seen them coming into the room, look up and there they are, or when you feel someone is watching you or talking about you.

If we are limited to the human version of the five senses, unamplified, how do you explain this type of thing. Could we possibly be hearing or somehow perceiving things on a subconscious level? Is it possible to have senses that work on a deeper level within the subconscious that would explain ESP or how we can know things with no rational explanation as to how we came about knowing. Are we shooting brainwaves at each other? What is the receptor for such things? There may be more ways to transmit messages to the brain than the fab five senses, but realistically, has anyone ever figured it out?

Just chewing...but now I'm kind of in the mood to watch the Dead Zone.

Kat

[Dragonfly]

Here is something to ponder.  There are things that we perceive that cannot be attributed directly to our five senses.  For example when you sense another person's presence without having heard or seen them coming into the room, look up and there they are, or when you feel someone is watching you or talking about you.

How do you know that this can't be attributed directly to our five senses? There are many ways you can explain such a phenomenon without having to resort to mysterious extra senses. "Without having heard of seen" can here very well mean: "without consciously having heard or seen". It is very well possible that you did hear some slight noise, but that it was so insignificant that you weren't consciously aware of it until another equally slight noise may have triggered some alarm function in your subconscious. Similarly for some slight movement in the periphery of your vision, or a reflection in your glasses or in some polished surface, a slight diminishing (or other change) of the ambient light, a shifting shadow, a change of the acoustics in the room, a smell (see "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" for an account of the amazing detection possibilities of our nose), a change of temperature/draft... It is amazing how subtle the clues can be that we may pick up. That has also always been a problem in paranormal research: it seemed that an experiment could only be explained by some paranormal mechanism, until a skeptic pointed out a possibility of sensory leakage. When that possibility was controlled, the effect also disappeared like snow in summer. Other examples are the efficacy of "cold reading" and with animals the "Clever Hans effect". So Kat, if I were you I'd also buy such an Occam razor, they're very useful (Michael still hasn't found his own razor?)

It is interesting to note that this "feeling being stared at" syndrome seems to be an example of a paranormal occurence in one of Rand's books. I seem to remember that it is Dagny who has that feeling (she has a feeling that someone is looking at her and turning around she sees there is someone standing there), but I can't remember in what context. I suppose Rand would have vociferously denied the possibility of a paranormal explanation, but it's strange that she didn't realize that many people would read it like that.

[Kat]

It is very well possible that you did hear some slight noise, but that it was so insignificant that you weren't consciously aware of it until another equally slight noise may have triggered some alarm function in your subconscious. Similarly for some slight movement in the periphery of your vision, or a reflection in your glasses or in some polished surface, a slight diminishing (or other change) of the ambient light, a shifting shadow, a change of the acoustics in the room, a smell...

I think those are some wonderful explanations for the "and there they are" situation. I personally cannot consciously perceive slight atmospheric changes, but I realize others are more sensitive to slightest change in their environment. Is that conscious or subconscious? Why don't some things register? What is going on below the surface in the subconscious? It would seem that we sense a lot of stuff without consciously realizing that we are sensing it. Is it all just conscious awareness, but barely a blip on the radar so one doesn't realize it exists or where it originated? Where does the consciousness end and the subconscious begin? Some people completely deny the existence of the subconscious alltogether.

How does one explain knowing that they are being watched from afar or how do people just know something that would seem a very strange coincidence? Take for example in Michael's cheek article where his mother came directly looking for him at a place he would not usually be found.

It would be great to be able to understand and explain rationally experiences that people simply do not understand and attribute to being things supernatural, paranormal or of a religious nature. Religion has done a tremendous job of explaining things people simply don't understand. Well, it is time to understand and be able to offer rational counterarguments to the irrational doctrines. And make those arguments stick. That is a good reason to chew.

Kat

[Dragonfly]

I think those are some wonderful explanations for the "and there they are" situation.  I personally cannot consciously perceive slight atmospheric changes, but I realize others are more sensitive to slightest change in their environment.  Is that conscious or subconscious?  Why don't some things register? What is going on below the surface in the subconscious?  It would seem that we sense a lot of stuff without consciously realizing that we are sensing it.  Is it all just conscious awareness, but barely a blip on the radar so one doesn't realize it exists or where it originated?  Where does the consciousness end and the subconscious begin?  Some people completely deny the existence of the subconscious alltogether.

I think the following passage may be relevant in this regard. From Dennett's "Consciousness explained", Ch. 5 "Multiple drafts versus the Cartesian theater":

seen at various moments on the drive, you would have had at least some sketchy details to report. The "unconscious driving" phenomenon is better seen as a case of rolling consciousness with swift memory loss. Are you constantly conscious of the clock ticking? If it suddenly stops, you notice this, and you can say right away what it is that has stopped; the ticks "you weren't conscious of" up to the moment they stopped and "would never have been conscious of" if they hadn't stopped are now clearly in your consciousness. An even more striking case is the phenomenon of being able to count, retrospectively in experience memory, the chimes of the clock which you only noticed was striking after four or five chimes. But how could you so clearly remember hearing something you hadn't been conscious of in the first place? The question betrays a commitment to the Cartesian model; there are no fixed facts about the stream of consciousness independent of particular probes.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I know that talking about fully aware consciousness in hindsight, then losing the memory, is probably a good hypothesis, but how about all those times I simply blacked out under the influence of alcohol?

I drove places, talked to many people, did many things, royally ticked off a lot of folks...

I have absolutely NO memory of most of that. (In a few cases, I have a vague nebulous notion of the outline of some moment.)

Purely subjective evidence, I know. But still, that is the way my mind processed those events.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I know that talking about fully aware consciousness in hindsight, then losing the memory, is probably a good hypothesis, but how about all those times I simply blacked out under the influence of alcohol?

I drove places, talked to many people, did many things, royally ticked off a lot of folks...

I have absolutely NO memory of most of that. (In a few cases, I have a vague nebulous notion of the outline of some moment.)

Michael

But when you talked to many people and did many things, do you think you were at the time not conscious?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

df,

That is precisely the idea I expected and even think sometimes.

But here's the rub. Which me was conscious?

And if it were the one who is writing to you right now, we have to rethink what "conscious" means.

It certainly does not involve the component of memory under that condition.

So what is "consciousness" without memory?

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Dragonfly wrote:

It is interesting to note that this "feeling being stared at" syndrome seems to be an example of a paranormal occurence in one of Rand's books. I seem to remember that it is Dagny who has that feeling (she has a feeling that someone is looking at her and turning around she sees there is someone standing there), but I can't remember in what context. I suppose Rand would have vociferously denied the possibility of a paranormal explanation, but it's strange that she didn't realize that many people would read it like that.

The scene is the one where Dagny first appears in the book -- the scene that starts "She sat listening to the music." At the end of that scene -- after the train's been stopped by a defective signal and Dagny has made known who she is and has given instructions about what to do, and then she's walking off -- she senses someone watching her. The someone is the young brakeman (? was that his job?) who had been whistling Halley's Fifth Concerto.

[Kevin Haggerty]

Let's not go in circles. The conscious and the subconscious are not distinct boxes that we can look into and describe what's there. Calling something "subconscious" is a lot like saying something is simply "unnoticed." I think of conscious awareness like a flashlight. The "subconscious" is all the stuff that falls outside its beam. That's why it's so hard to talk about. That's why it's very misleading to speak of it as a certain thing. It's not. Just because you can melt an ice cube doesn't mean it was never an ice cube to begin with. Subconsciousness is a state of certain kinds of knowledge, not a characteristic.

And yet some things remain unconscious even after you talk about them. Haven't we all had conversations with a lover in bed and they've said the craziest things because they were still asleep at the time? Or say you have a close friend who repeatedly dates abusive partners. You and several other friends can spot these losers a mile away, but your friend keeps getting mixed up with them. You explain everything to your friend, describe the signs that tip you off, but it's no use. It may be another year or more before your friend is able to consciously assess what's been going on. Your friend is subconsciously drawn to these people.

Here's a thing: I count money several times a day in my job. If I don't think about it, I can pick up exactly 20 bills from a pile, several times in a row, but if I try to do it on purpose I'll likely get 18 or 23, you know, very rarely 20. Then if I just go back to doing it automatically, I'll get it right again and again. My conscious mind gets in the way.

There's a point in all atheletic endeavor where you have to let your body do the thinking. After a particularly impressive feat, someone asks you "how'd you do that???" and you have to say, "My body just knew what to do."

What's most interesting to me about the type of experience Kat describes is the way the information forms in the mind. If I notice something at the very edge of my awareness, barely perceptible, my standard reaction is likely to be, "What was that?" followed instantly with a glance in its apparent direction that I might bring my full attention to bear upon this mysterious object. But something like Kat's "feeling of being watched" comes over you fully formed. Some part of the mind has already analyzed whatever sensory data you've received and conceptualized it as someone watching you. Not someone moving behind you, or breathing behind you, but watching. How can one perceive a passive fact like that? Furthermore, this feeling of being watched is not accompanied by an immediate and instinctive glance. The glance comes a moment later, when you want to know "who." On an instinctual level the mind seems to accept the information as complete. Why does the mind jump to such a conclusion? And why is the mind so often right when it does?

[Dragonfly]

df,

That is precisely the idea I expected and even think sometimes.

But here's the rub. Which me was conscious?  

And if it were the one who is writing to you right now, we have to rethink what "conscious" means.

It certainly does not involve the component of memory under that condition.

So what is "consciousness" without memory?

Michael

That you now have no memory of what you were doing then doesn't mean that you then didn't have any memory. I suppose that if somebody had asked you then what you just had done a few minutes ago you could have answered that (unless you were completely incoherent). It's the same situation as the automatic driving situation in Dennett's example. Your short-term memory would probably still have worked, but your long-term memory didn't work, so it now seems to you that you haven't been conscious then, but people around you at the time would no doubt have disagreed (until they had to drag you away).

It can also work the other way around, namely by planting a false memory in your brain. Tests have demonstrated that this is very well possible. You would be completely convinced that you were conscious at the time of the "memory", you would recall many details, what you were thinking, while the whole memory was in fact bogus. The lesson is that your memory isn't a very reliable source of information about the question whether you were or were not conscious in the past.

Years ago I had an accident of which I remember only the beginning and the moment that I came round when the car stood still. There is a gap in my memory, probably caused by hitting my head against the window. So to me now it seems as if I'd been unconscious during that gap, but I think that during that period (of several seconds) I was in fact conscious, only the memory of it has completely disappeared, just as some files may disappear from your computer after a crash. Too much alcohol or a blow on the head may accomplish that (in humans).

[Dragonfly]

Dragonfly wrote:

The scene is the one where Dagny first appears in the book -- the scene that starts "She sat listening to the music."  At the end of that scene -- after the train's been stopped by a defective signal and Dagny has made known who she is and has given instructions about what to do, and then she's walking off -- she senses someone watching her.  The someone is the young brakeman (? was that his job?) who had been whistling Halley's Fifth Concerto.

Ah yes, thanks! Here is the passage:

She felt someone looking at her and turned

[Dragonfly]

What's most interesting to me about the type of experience Kat describes is the way the information forms in the mind.  If I notice something at the very edge of my awareness, barely perceptible, my standard reaction is likely to be, "What was that?" followed instantly with a glance in its apparent direction that I might bring my full attention to bear upon this mysterious object.  But something like Kat's "feeling of being watched" comes over you fully formed.  Some part of the mind has already analyzed whatever sensory data you've received and conceptualized it as someone watching you.  Not someone moving behind you, or breathing behind you, but watching.  How can one perceive a passive fact like that?

I wouldn't be too sure of that. In the same chapter of the book by Dennett from which I quoted earlier there is a description of an interesting experiment with two colored dots on a screen. First there appears a red dot at the left and then this disappears and a green dot appears at the right. If the timing is right, people will not see two separate dots, but one dot that moves from the left to the right, and even more interesting: they see the color change from red to green at a point between the two "real" dots. So they see something that isn't there. The question then arises: how can the brain see a color change before the green dot appears? It would take too much space and time to discuss here the various theories and Dennett's conclusion, but it shows that the fact that we feel sure about we just observed doesn't imply that it is what really happened.

 Furthermore, this feeling of being watched is not accompanied by an immediate and instinctive glance.  The glance comes a moment later, when you want to know "who."  On an instinctual level the mind seems to accept the information as complete.  Why does the mind jump to such a conclusion?

Acting on subtle clues may not mean that you're consciously aware of these clues ("consciously" meaning here that you could remember them immediately afterwards - that's the tricky point), the brain may conclude that someone is there, and as you didn't hear anything consciously, it isn't so strange that you conclude that someone is stealthily watching you. And when you turn around it is likely that someone who didn't deliberately watch you will hear the movement (or see it in the periphery of his vision) and will also look at you. This also reminds me of Feynman's book, where he describes his interview with a psychiatrist (Feynman tries to get into the army and has to be tested). When the psychiatrist ask whether he thinks that people look at him, Feynman starts to point to the other candidates who are sitting around: yes, he's looking at us, and he... with the result of course that more and more people started to look at him! (if you have something against psychiatrists, you should read that chapter, you'll die laughing).

And why is the mind so often right when it does?

But is it? Anecdotal evidence is no evidence.

[Kevin Haggerty]

Hey Dragonfly,

You're telling me that you "wouldn't be too sure of that," when I'm not sure of it at all. I think you're missing the point here. Michael's invited us to chew on some ideas, and what you say to me amounts to "don't chew on that idea." Pardon me if I misunderstand you, but your line of reasoning here comes across as obstructionist. You would seem to be of the opinion that nothing of interest is happening here. Furthermore, your arguments seem to suggest that nothing of interest can be happening here. And yet you obviously have a stake in this discussion. What is it?

Your arguments seem to hinge on a model of memory that is far more fallible than my own understanding of it. Your example of the two dots is typical of arguments I have read that seek to discredit the memory as a source of accurate information: it takes an extremely limited perceptual imprecision and uses it to justify a sweeping conclusion like, "the fact that we feel sure about what we just observed doesn't imply that it is what really happened." I think it implies exactly that, but there are exceptions and there are limits. Seeing a gradual color shift between two dots is clearly a result of visual mechanics, persistence of vision and the brain's making sense of data supplied by the retina specifically designed to confuse it. It has little or nothing to say about the conceptual faculty.

Of course your version of what's happening is consistent with the external facts of the situation, but it does not reflect what appears to go on in the mind. Being vaguely aware of something, and "having the feeling that you're being watched" are two qualitatively distinct sensations. I suspect the mind has a reason for ordering them in this way. I'm interested in exploring what that reason might be.

I intended in my original post to look at a great many seemingly isolated phenomena in a way that suggested a pattern of connection, which implied certain realities as yet unproven. Much of what exists at the edge of scientific awareness, far off galaxies and sub-atomic particles rely upon pattern recognition to begin our understanding.

And barring some revolutionary advances in neuroscience, anecdotal evidence is about all we got when it comes to the conceptual functioning of the mind.

[Kat]

Of course your version of what's happening is consistent with the external facts of the situation, but it does not reflect what appears to go on in the mind. Being vaguely aware of something, and "having the feeling that you're being watched" are two qualitatively distinct sensations. I suspect the mind has a reason for ordering them in this way. I'm interested in exploring what that reason might be.

Thanks, Kevin. I am wondering how these fully formed ideas get in our head with seemingly no external stimuli. The sensory mechanics explanation misses the mark, as what we are discussing falls outside of that range. I'm talking about those weird quinky-dink moments, the feeling someone's presence, the times you think of someone you haven't spoke to in ages and suddenly they call you on the phone. The psychic/psychological connection between people that is understood, but not expressed. There were even times it happened in Atlas Shrugged. There was some unspoken thoughts responded to. I wish I could think of the quote, it was something like, "we didn't have to take it seriously..." or something of that nature.

I know this is getting out there, I am not endorsing the supernatural explanations, I am just chewing. I know there has to be some rational explanation, but what? I am only seeking simple, sensible explanations that can be used in conversation with normal everyday people, not intellectuals.

Kat

[Ellen Stuttle]

There were even times it happened in Atlas Shrugged.  There was some unspoken thoughts responded to.  I wish I could think of the quote, it was something like, "we didn't have to take it seriously..."  or something of that nature.

I think the words are, "We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?"

They're the first thing Dagny says to Galt -- who's kneeling at her side

watching her -- when she comes to consciousness after her plane crashes in the Valley ("Galt's Gulch").

(And, no, I by no means have Atlas memorized. ;-))

Ellen

--

[Dragonfly]

You're telling me that you "wouldn't be too sure of that," when I'm not sure of it at all.  I think you're missing the point here.  Michael's invited us to chew on some ideas, and what you say to me amounts to "don't chew on that idea."  Pardon me if I misunderstand you, but your line of reasoning here comes across as obstructionist.  You would seem to be of the opinion that nothing of interest is happening here.  Furthermore, your arguments seem to suggest that nothing of interest can be happening here.

I'm not saying that nothing of interest can happen, but only that it is highly unlikely that somethins of interest does happen.

 And yet you obviously have a stake in this discussion.  What is it?

Discovering the truth. Negative results are also part of the truth. It is therefore also an error to think that experiments that yield no positive results shouldn't be published. They are as important as experiments that give positive results. Further is hypothesizing of little value if the hypotheses may not be criticized.

Your arguments seem to hinge on a model of memory that is far more fallible than my own understanding of it.  Your example of the two dots is typical of arguments I have read that seek to discredit the memory as a source of accurate information:  it takes an extremely limited perceptual imprecision and uses it to justify a sweeping conclusion like, "the fact that we feel sure about what we just observed doesn't imply that it is what really happened."  I think it implies exactly that, but there are exceptions and there are limits.  Seeing a gradual color shift between two dots is clearly a result of visual mechanics, persistence of vision and the brain's making sense of data supplied by the retina specifically designed to confuse it.  It has little or nothing to say about the conceptual faculty.

Then you've misunderstood the experiment. It has nothing to do with the persistence of vision, as there is no moving dot that changes color at all, there is only one red dot at position A at time t1 and a green dot at position B at time t2. The moving dot that changes color is a complete fabrication of the brain, made up after the fact. My argument was not meant as a "sweeping conclusion to discredit memory" (although memory in general is far less reliable than you seem to think, but that is not the point I want to discuss now), but as a warning against your rash conclusion that 'something like Kat's "feeling of being watched" comes over you fully formed'.

And barring some revolutionary advances in neuroscience, anecdotal evidence is about all we got when it comes to the conceptual functioning of the mind.

My remark had nothing to do with the conceptual functioning of the mind, but was a reaction to your "And why is the mind so often right when it does?" How do you know that it is so often right? From you own experience? That is anecdotal evidence. But you could also test that in in a systematical way, with carefully controlled experiments with many subjects.

[Dragonfly]

Thanks, Kevin.  I am wondering how these fully formed ideas get in our head with seemingly no external stimuli.  The sensory mechanics explanation misses the mark, as what we are discussing falls outside of that range.  I'm talking about those weird quinky-dink moments, the feeling someone's presence, the times you think of someone you haven't spoke to in ages and suddenly they call you on the phone.

There's nothing strange about that. It's a simple question of statistics that there must be sometimes events that strike us as special, just while there are every day zillions of events. That we think that such a particular event is special is due to our tendency to find patterns in complex data. A very useful tendency in general (we wouldn't be here if it didn't exist), but it can sometimes produce false positives. We remember the few hits but forget the countless misses. This is also the mechanism behind the creation of superstitions. Sometimes by coincidence event A occurs under condition C more than once, and we conclude falsely that condition C has something to do with event A (you see it often in sportsmen who swear with certain clothing or perform some bizarre rituals before a match, while they think this is a necessary condition for a good performance).

[Kevin Haggerty]

Okay, Dragonfly, I think I understand you're approach a little better now. I'm all for criticizing hypotheses, but so often I find criticism in these areas amounts to simple destruction. It's like criticizing a movie by saying the thing should never have been made. I grant you, a lot of what people bring to these kinds of discussions amounts to mere wishful thinking, but I think it's interesting that even some unsentimental students of Objectivism find these speculations worth their time. What is there in the mind that makes us "wish" for these particular things, if indeed that's what's going on here? Some might say it was a simple case of faulty premises, but my experiences suggest that there's more to it than that.

One thing though: it still looks like persistence of vision is what you're talking about. When we watch a movie, the images on the screen don't move any more than your dots do. The brain fills in the gaps between images and creates the illusion of movement. Isn't that exactly what happens with the red and green dots? It's similar to the mechanism that fills in the blind spot where the optic nerve connects with the retina; the mind fills in the gap with the best approximation it can.

A question about your esperiment: are you saying that on the very first shift from the red dot to the green dot, the mind imagines the dot turning green before the green dot actually appears? Or is it only after the red to green pattern is established that the mind plays the time trick? It's interesting to me that the chosen colors are red and green. Puts me in mind of the game you can play where you stare at a red dot and when the red dot is removed a ghostly green after image remains.

BTW, Rupert Sheldrake is studying "the feeling of being watched" right now, systematically with many subjects. You can go to his website and check it out. It's a pop website so on the first page or so there isn't a lot of real information, but if you look at the actual experiments, you might find something interesting.

And I have a question about your last comments to Kat. You wrote, "We remember the few hits and forget the countless misses." I've seen this presented as fact many times (oddly enough, often employing exactly the same wording), but is there non-anecdotal evidence for this? Has anyone ever counted the countless? Pattern recognition would seem to be a basic perceptual faculty. Wouldn't such a principle as this false positive generating, superstitious tendency you describe absolutely undermine the effectiveness of pattern recognition, rendering all "patterns" merely wishful thinking? On the face of it, this principle could itself be explained away as a distortion resulting from low self-esteem along the lines of murphy's law, or some such. Perhaps we could call it Eeyore's razor.

[Dragonfly]

One thing though: it still looks like persistence of vision is what you're talking about.  When we watch a movie, the images on the screen don't move any more than your dots do.  The brain fills in the gaps between images and creates the illusion of movement.  Isn't that exactly what happens with the red and green dots?  It's similar to the mechanism that fills in the blind spot where the optic nerve connects with the retina; the mind fills in the gap with the best approximation it can.

Yes, these are similar examples. But the term "persistence of vision" may be somewhat misleading here, as it suggests some physiological effect in the retina. Now something like that may perhaps actually happen, but that's not what I'm talking about. The two-dots example is about an image that the brain creates that never was projected on the retina at all.

A question about your esperiment: are you saying that on the very first shift from the red dot to the green dot, the mind imagines the dot turning green before the green dot actually appears?  Or is it only after the red to green pattern is established that the mind plays the time trick?

It happens already at the first shift, so it can't be a question of habituation.

 It's interesting to me that the chosen colors are red and green.  Puts me in mind of the game you can play where you stare at a red dot and when the red dot is removed a ghostly green after image remains.

Those were the colors mentioned in the article, but they're not essential, you could use two other different colors.

BTW, Rupert Sheldrake is studying "the feeling of being watched" right now, systematically with many subjects.  You can go to his website and check it out.  It's a pop website so on the first page or so there isn't a lot of real information, but if you look at the actual experiments, you might find something interesting.

Oh, I know Sheldrake and his experiments. Let's say that they are not very rigorous, to put it mildly. See for example: http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-09/staring.html

and

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...i_76881183/pg_2

And I have a question about your last comments to Kat.  You wrote, "We remember the few hits and forget the countless misses."  I've seen this presented as fact many times (oddly enough, often employing exactly the same wording), but is there non-anecdotal evidence for this?  Has anyone ever counted the countless?

Just do some back-on-the-envelope calculations. Suppose that the probability of some event occurring to someone once a day is 1 in a billion (I suppose you'll agree that that is an very improbable event). That's roughly 1 in 3 million per year for one person. IIRC there are some 300 million people in the US, that means that every year in the US on the average 100 people would experience that event with such astronomically small odds. This is of course a simplified example, but you'll get the idea.

 Pattern recognition would seem to be a basic perceptual faculty.  Wouldn't such a principle as this false positive generating, superstitious tendency you describe absolutely undermine the effectiveness of pattern recognition, rendering all "patterns" merely wishful thinking?  On the face of it, this principle could itself be explained away as a distortion resulting from low self-esteem along the lines of murphy's law, or some such.  Perhaps we could call it Eeyore's razor.

The false positives and superstitions form an almost infinitesimally small part of all the instances where pattern recognition is useful, so that you hardly can expect that this will undermine the effectiveness of pattern recognition.