Deconstructing Popper's Falsification and Vienna Circle Verification

Sam: "We have been talking about verifying experiences. This has nothing whatsoever to do with linguistics."

We have been talking about verifying experiences.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with linguistics.

1. Do you have a non-verbal way to do this?

0. I showed that even the perception of "yellow" can come from four different processes or phenomena, direct radiation of a wavelength, addition or subtraction of colors, addition or subtraction of pignments. They all look the same. You need to do some things - transduce the raw information - to differentiate them. That transduction itself depends on assumptions. They have to be shared assumptions to convey meaning.

How, then, do you establish that common understanding before you establish it? To me, it is built up incrementally by inductive exchanges. I say and point; you say and point. Eventually, it becomes scientists publishing papers, but it is still the same process.

You have to explain what you mean because there is no way for the other guy to get into your head.

One way to explain what you mean is to show what you do not mean. Thus, Popper's call for falsifiability is appropriate and useful.

Post 21

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 8:23am

You're essentially denying that anything is subjective.

I won't experience a pinprick today in exactly the same way I will experience it tomorrow. My neurons will have degraded from today or I may just be more sensitive tomorrow. If that is so, then how can two people experience a stimulus in exactly the same way?

As I said before, it's all a matter of precision.

Sam

Post 22

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 7:14pm

Sam,

My neurons will have degraded from today or I may just be more sensitive tomorrow. If that is so, then how can two people experience a stimulus in exactly the same way?

You're stating my argument too strongly. I am not arguing that it's possible to get the exact same sense experience as someone else. I showed that if one person has cataracts, then it is actually physically impossible to get the same sense experience! And, as you just showed, even getting the exact same sense experience over time -- using the very same perceiver! -- can be problematic.

The point is about ultimate verification of something, not equal sensation of something. In the case of the cataracts, the issue is easily settled. It is really, really easy to verify whether one person's internal sensory experience -- of something seen -- is the same as another person's sensation of it, when one of them has cataracts. They don't have the same sensation but that's okay because it isn't the point.

The point is that they can ultimately verify whether they do (or not) -- by appealing to non-subjective things. Let's make it really, really different. Let's say that there is a wacky spider from Mars, and this spider hears colors (rather than seeing them). Now, can we get into a position of finding out whether our own internal sensory experience of the color is the same as the spider's (or not)?

My answer is: yes.

For instance, with experiments, we could block this spider's ability to hear colors -- say, by putting noise in the background, or something. Once we find that noise "blinds" the spider from colors, and we know from our own personal experiences with sounds and colors that we, ourselves, are not "blinded" to colors by background sound -- then we have reached the point of verifying whether our own internal sensory experience of color is the same as the spiders (or not).

Notice how we do not have to experience colors like the spider does, in order to verify this -- we can appeal to objective things like science in order to do the verification.

Ed

Post 23

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 9:38am

Ed:

The color issue has no consequences, and is not verifiable.

Two people can only agree that the sky is 'blue' and can only describe 'blue' by comparison to external objects. Two people can only confirm that their perception of color is consistent. The sky is blue and the ocean is blue.

Yes, we agree. But verifies only that we both consistently see colors, sufficient to objectively interact.

Two people can even dream in color. Or b/w.

When we are dreaming, we are not seeing. We are perceiving playback of past or imagined stimuli from our sensory receptors with our cognitive networks.

It is the 'perceiving' that can't ultimately be compared directly -- only indirectly. "The sky is blue."

Yes, the sky is blue. But that doesn't tell anyone else what is perceived when stimulated with 'blue.'

Imagine an eye transplant, including the optic nerve. Does that tell the recipient of the eye transplant anything?

No. It says only that when stimulated with the same nerve impulses, the cognitive network in his brain sees the same colors that it did with the old eyes/sensors.

And, whether we see the same colors or not ... has absolutely no impact on our ability to objectively interact. The sky is still blue. When you ask for the red hammer, I give you the red hammer. When I am cooled by blue water, I will always associate the color blue with that comparative cool feeling. When I am burned by red glowing embers, I will almost always associate hot with red. Even if my red is your blue. And so, this issue is objectively moot, precisely because we are individuals, and not members of The Borg.

Even if your red is my red.

Makes no objective difference at all. There is no circumstance where I or anyone else ultimately directly perceives the world with your cognitive networks. At most, we perceive the world via an indirect retelling of your perception of the world, and when it comes to 'color', we are only able to retell by way of comparison with external objects-- with which we largely agree(color blindness and similar functional issues being the exception.)

Color blindness is an interesting illustration of this concept; color blindness is often not diagnosed until very late in life. Children have no idea they are color blind, and function well with that perceptive defect. The traffic light is red. Yes, the top light is on. The light is red. An intersection with flashing yellow in one direction, and flashing red in the other... not so much.

But it is flashing.

You want the red pill or the blue pill? Uh-oh.

So, color blindness is ultimately detectable -- unlike, color-crossing. And even so...hard to detect.

regards,
Fred

Post 24

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 9:51am

Ed:

I think that you're invention of the spider that can hear colors is quite imaginative but it doesn't lead to anything that can help us in mapping the sound frequency spectrum into the light frequency spectrum. The mapping could be inverted or even shuffled.

If you can show me how this could be done I'll agree with your less stringent premise, but I will still maintain that there is no way to confirm that the blue I see is the same as the blue you see.

Sam

Post 25

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 4:34pm

Sam,

What do you think of my argument in Post 13, to wit:

You might be able to argue that since subjective experience depends on the objective properties of one's sensory faculties, if the objective properties are the same, the subjective experiences must be the same, since the same causes must produce the same effects. And now that I think about it, that's a pretty good argument. The argument depends on recognizing that perceptual awareness is a direct function of the objective properties of the brain and central nervous system -- that consciousness has no intrinsic properties apart from these physical organs. So if the organs, conditions and stimuli are the same, the perceptual experiences must be the same.

Post 26

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 6:06pm

Bill I think that's a good argument. Biologically, from individual to individual, sensory organs are essentially the same.

Post 27

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 7:07pm

Fred,

It is the 'perceiving' that can't ultimately be compared directly ...

But I didn't ever say we could ever directly compare internal experiences. Like Sam, you are stating my argument too strongly. Peikoff said, in OPAR, that sense perception isn't amenable to normative concepts, such as "objective" or "subjective." Yet you and others are arguing that sense experience is (and always will be) subjective. And when I say "subjective" here, I mean it in the strong sense, where it is not amenable to verification by another.

Now, I am not here to prove you wrong. My point is different than that. I have included a few examples showing how sense perception is not very inter-personal or objective. My point is not to show that sense perception can be objective (or subjective), only that, even though it is performed subjectively, it is ultimately (rather than proximately) verifiable.

The simplest example is someone who sees a square when you show him a triangle. You will never get inside of his head in order to see the triangle like he does -- but that has no consequence to my point. What you will do, eventually, is find out that his internal sensory experience of triangles is different from yours.

Do you disagree with this very-easy example?

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/19, 7:11pm)

Post 28

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 7:32pm

Ed:

I think we agree that it has no consequences. The color-swap(it doesn't even have to be a color swap -- for all I know or can verify, we each perceive totally unique colors not at all similar)has no impact on our ability to consistently interact and communicate to each other.

For the exact same reason that it can't be verified, it also has absolutely no consequence if it is true. None whatsoever. The sky is still 'blue.' Right up until the moment that one of us evolves to sense IR or UV before the other.(It's not a race, and might never happen...)(Edit: This belonged at the end of this line, not the earlier line! A boneheaded mistake, when I rushed a last minute edit...)

Not so sure about the triangle/square example though, because it has objective geometric consequences(such as, interaction with a third objective shape.) How many vertices/corners does the square have? How many does the triangle have? Our concepts of 'four' and 'three' would need to be different, and that would have objective consequences elsewhere. Our logic would quickly diverge and lead to contradictions.

But not so color perception. It is purely comparative, and so, we can only verify that both of out perceptions are each mutually consistent, not that they were the same as each other.

regards,
Fred
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 5/20, 9:59am)

Post 29

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 7:36pm

Bill:

What do you think of my argument in Post 13, to wit:

You might be able to argue that since subjective experience depends on the objective properties of one's sensory faculties, if the objective properties are the same, the subjective experiences must be the same, since the same causes must produce the same effects. And now that I think about it, that's a pretty good argument. The argument depends on recognizing that perceptual awareness is a direct function of the objective properties of the brain and central nervous system -- that consciousness has no intrinsic properties apart from these physical organs. So if the organs, conditions and stimuli are the same, the perceptual experiences must be the same.

You could argue that you could manufacture two identical robots that could perceive, for instance, sound. When you blow a whistle you could be reasonably sure that what would be recorded in each case would be, for all practical purposes, identical. But when we are talking about conscious, sentient beings instead of robots there is a subjective component operating that has evolved through past experiences. These past experiences necessarily modify the interpretation of the stimuli and the past experiences of the non-robots cannot have been exactly the same.

I'll cite my previous example of quick glimpses. One observer of a phenomenon may interpret it as frightening, and another observer of the identical phenomenon, as friendly, depending on his experiences.

That is the heart of my argument and it's an example of subjectivism at work.

Sam

(Edited by Sam Erica on 5/19, 7:42pm)

Post 30

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 8:19pm

Hi Sam,

But isn't that irrelevant to the original point about color inversion? You're not going to have two different people with essentially the same sense organs experiencing the same wave length of color in radically different ways. The answer to the question: How do we know that my subjective experience of red is not the same as your subjective experience of green? is that if we have sense organs of the same kind and quality, then we must necessarily be having the same subjective experience of color, when we perceive the same wave-length of color. The reason is that like causes must produce like effects.

Post 31

Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 9:08pm

We're arguing about two different things. You are arguing about raw, mechanistic perception; I'm arguing about interpretation by a conscious being.

Sam

(Edited by Sam Erica on 5/19, 9:30pm)

Post 32

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 10:15am

William:

You're not going to have two different people with essentially the same sense organs experiencing the same wave length of color in radically different ways.

That can be objectively shown not to be true (with grayscale as an example of color), and has been, here, several times, with the shaded checkerboard image.

When I first came across this image, I perceived the squares labeled 'A" and 'B' as being different shades of gray.

After seeing the image so often, I can only see the squares as being the same shade of grey. I must consciously focus differently to see them again as different shades of gray.

That is not about sensory input, that is about perception.

I have shown this image to people who insist that the two squares are different shades of gray, because they can 'see' it with their own two eyes. They are objectively wrong. They can be shown objectively to be identically the same value pixels, because they are the same value pixels.

It is totally an issue of perception/cognition of the same visual sensory stimulus.

But, this is grayscale, and the high level processing that is going on in our perception networks is 'same or different.' I don't think it directly applies to the issue of color perception, but I think it indirectly applies. It is an example of, even in the same human being, a difference in perception of the 'same' shade of color.

I am offering this not as an example of 'we can't believe our own lying eyes' but just the opposite: our higher level cognition networks understand this apparent illusion. It is not magic. It is not an example of what we fail to understand, it is an example of what we succeed at understanding.

We understand our sensory apparatus and 'wetbits.'

regards,
Fred

Post 33

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 11:33am

Fred, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Post 34

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 12:40pm

William:

I was responding to your assertion:

You're not going to have two different people with essentially the same sense organs experiencing the same wave length of color in radically different ways.

with an objective example.

In the image above, do you see the two checkerboard squares labeled 'A' and 'B'?

Do you perceive the squares as 'the same wave length of color' (greyscale in this case), or do you perceive them as 'different wave length of color?'

I assure you, objectively, they are the same. This is easily provable. And, that is what I mean.

I suspect(but could be wrong)that you have no idea what I am talking about because you are looking at the image and the squares are 'obviously' different.

They are objectively not. They are the same shade of gray.

And, there are several independent ways to objectively prove that.

This is about cognition/perception, not sensory input. We all receive the same sensory input when looking at that image. Not only that, but I, when I see them as different shades of gray, am receiving the same sensory input as I, when I see them as the same shade of gray.

This is not 'an illusion.' It is an illustration of our cognitive processing network at work.

regards,
Fred

Post 35

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 12:52pm

William:

It is an example of our cognitive network self programming itself for what we value most.

When we first regard the image, we value difference most, to make the image fit a pattern that we recognize.

We value 'measure accurate grayscale' less.

Our cognitive network converts that image( a flat 2D thing on your conmputer screen) into a 'real' 3D object-- a checkerboard. We 'know' that the squares on a real checkerboard alternate light and dark squares.

Look at the square above and adjacent to B. It is darker than square B. And, we 'know' that square is 'the same' as square A. Therefore, by logic, we 'know' that Square A and square B must be different shades of gray.

But they are not. They are objectively(ie, if you tear apart the image and examine the actual pixel values used to create the image)the exact same shade of gray.

The shadow in the image is why. The 'light' square in shadow is the same shade of gray as the dark square in full light.

But our cognitive networks, when they first encounter this image, normally insist on perceiving the squares as different than each other. 'B' appears lighter than 'A'.

But... it is not. In fact, the squares 'A', 'B', and the dark square 2nd from the lower right are all the same shade of gray. And after you 'know' this, it becomes hard to see them as anything but the same shade of gray.

regards,
Fred

Post 36

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 1:45pm

Fred,

Thanks for explaining this to me. You are correct. I couldn't see that they were the same simply by staring at them long enough, as you apparently were able to do. So I printed out the image and cut out Squares A and B, and placed them side by side on my desk, and low and behold, they are the same. In fact, Square B, which appears lighter in the picture, is actually a bit darker, probably due to my printer, but for all practical purposes they're the same shade of grey. Amazing!

But you see, don't you, that this doesn't refute what I was saying, because this sort of optical-illusion effect is not what I was referring to. To be precise, I would need to amend my original statement by adding, "under the same conditions of observation." i.e., "You're not going to have two different people, under the same conditions of observation with essentially the same sense organs experiencing the same wave length of color in radically different ways."

Post 37

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 2:21pm

Bill, I believe you and Fred are both right. The same sense data arrives at the eyes, is processed (as sense data) in the same way, but then after, or as part of the process where the sense data is automatically converted into a percept, the illusion effect takes place. It is actually a diversion into conceptual thought where properties of a checkerboard are mistakenly overlaid onto that particular percept.)

I wonder if those who argue in favor of different people "experiencing" sense data differently aren't drawing too many examples from extremes (like this illusion) and thus falling into a kind of 'life-boat' fallacy. Isn't the tiniest measurements of how many photons of light hit my eye versus how many hit someone else's eye of no import as long as we both reach a common understanding of what we are perceiving?

I have always thought that it was the very fact that we automatically convert sense data to percepts that rectifies the minor discrepancies between my sensory data and anyone else's sensory data. Too me, it averages out the unimportant differences in sensory input. The sensory data is our connection to some particular piece of existence, and the the conversion to the percept is our identification - our initial application of the law of identity to that piece of existence. It doesn't mean we don't, at times, need to do some conceptual reasoning after that to correct errors that crop up at the perceptual level.

Post 38

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 4:08pm

William/Steve:

In this case, it is not even necessarily two people seeing the same sensory input, but the same person seeing the same sensory input and seeing two different things.

I once was able to describe to Ed how to teach himself to see the same grayscale, and he reported he was able to do this.

Look at the center of the image, and kind of de-focus. This tends to reveal the squares as being the same grayscale.

And, once you do this, and 'know' that the squares are the same grayscale, it is going to get increasingly hard to perceive them as not being the same grayscale.

To me, this is an effective and accessible experiment that demonstrates the actions of our cognitive circuitry/networks, and how they can be reprogrammed to 'value' the sensory inputs they are receiving, to interpret the world.

To me, it is evidence of the machine inside of Man.

Our higher level cognitive neural nets can be reprogrammed via our will, via what we learn about the world. We start out with a perfectly reasonable and useful bias ("value difference over grayscale") but can adapt that -- even as an exception applied to a 'known' image.

Even in terms of correctly interpreting this image, it is more useful to us to perceive those squares as being different, because there are two concepts existing at the same time:

1] What the image 'really' is as a 2D flat image...which it is.

2] What the image represents as a real 3D image...which it is not.

regards,
Fred

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 5/21, 7:38am)

Post 39

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 4:21pm