Cognitive differences between "seeming", "believing", and "perceiving"

[psygnisfive]

I've had this question on my mind for a while now.

What I wonder is, is there a qualitative difference between something "seeming" to be something, "believing" that something looks like something, and "perceiving" something to be something.

For example, is there any real difference between a piece of paper seeming to be colored red (as in with some optical illusions that aren't dependent on overwhelming the photoreceptors), believing (i.e. having the delusion) that the paper is colored red, and actually experiencing the "qualia" of red when looking at the paper?

Or in other words:

Is it possible to look at something, say a chair, and be convinced that it's something else, say a hat, without actually experiencing a hat, but merely but experiencing a different set of recognition states within the brain? If someone were to ask you to describe what it looked like, could you describe the shape of a chair but be convinced it was a hat, indistinguishably from how you'd be convinced if it actually were a hat?

Or is might the qualia, the actual visual experience, be nothing more than the sum total of your belief about the thing, such that you could say that qualia or perceptual experience is nothing more than what you believe to be true about something?

Does anyone have any insight into this? Anyone ever have an experience of seeing something and being convinced it's one thing, but in retrospect realizing that it was something else (if such a thing is possible)? Or have a sitter tell you that you've just described something other than what you said you were describing?

[Steeldiehard]

Dude...with all due respect, your questions are a mind-fuck! :) I love reading and responding to your posts and I'm grateful for you sharing here. I don't have a relevant reply for this one tho. :)

Best,

Steel

[psygnisfive]

:p

I get my ideas as a result of reading Vilayanur Ramachandran and Daniel Dennett. Dennett's ideas about consciousness are lovely and illucidating, and Ramachandran's examples of defects in human cognition force you to question the typical notion of how your mind works.

Ramachandran, in particular, has some interesting examples that make you ask "Why have consciousness at all?". For example, blindsight: Some people cannot experience any conscious vision that has to do with the what of sight, i.e. they don't know they're seeing, they don't know what an object is if you put it front of them, they don't respond to it at all as far as recognition is concerned. But if you ask them to reach out and grab it, after persuading them that yes, you know they're blind, but try anyway, they will reach out and almost always be able to grab it. Not only will they be able to reach in the right direction, they can orient and shape their hands appropriately as well! It turns out that there are two portions of the brain responsible for two portions of visual processing, and if you damage the so called "New Pathway", you get blindsight like this. There's a converse form of damage that leaves a person incapable of grasping or telling where an object is but completely cognizant of what it is.

Ramachandran says that this begs the question, why evolve consciousness at all, since the mechanisms required to react address nature in order to react to it seem to be completely independent of the so called New Pathway and the things we get from it. What i'd love to see, tho, is whether or not a person with blindsight has some psychosomatic response to, say, swinging foam bat. Will they flinch away, will the show a galvanic skin response, or will they not be aware of it at all? Do these people have the same qualitative experience of the world as you and I, and are simply incapable of being aware of that, or do they lack even the qualitative experience? What does it actually mean to have such an experience? Maybe the difference between perception and not is just the ability for sense data to force itself to be dealt with, sort of like how you can "not see" something you're looking for even if you're staring right at it, simply because your brain, while processing the data, is not attending to the data fully.

[max_freakout]

The insight that psychedelics gave me into this, is they made me realise the 'representational' aspect of perception, the world that you 'see' isnt the real world, it is a mental representation of something which is hypothesized to be real, but which is never directly perceived. Consciousness is not 'directly' aware of reality, it is 'intermediately' aware, through the intermediate mental constructs

one fundamental, pre-psychedelic conceptual mistake that people commonly make, is to conflate the representation with the thing that it represents, it seems as if im seeing a real computer screen in front of me, but upon reflection (informed by the psychedelic state) i realise that my mind is constructing an image of a computer screen in front of me in response to visual information (photons) hitting my eyes. in this way, the whole universe is seen to be a giant perceptual hallucination, it isnt the 'real' thing, but a mental construct of the (hypothesized) real thing.

And crucially, this same logic applies to myself, i have a sense of being a living 'self', and i am aware of this sense, but it is a mistake to conflate this perceived self with what i actually am, because this 'sense' is a mental construct, it represents what i am, it isnt actually what i am. What i really am is mysterious, transcendent, and completely hidden to me in the same way that the 'real' computer screen is hidden from me by the intermediatry mental constructs

the reason psychedelics lead to this realisation (now im quoting egodeath theory :cool:) is because the effect of psychedelics is to loosen the cognitive association between mental constructs and reality

[Ostritt]

In a way our cosmologies almost crossed there Max! I would agree with the idea that the "me" I distinguish as seperate is illusory. Ultimately I believe that I am part of the Oneness of everything and the distinction of myself into egoic form is simply another tool used to explore consciousness and reality. I'd agree that what we see is not something that is fixed in any kind of concrete reality. Actually, there is no way to prove that even if we were both looking at the same screen we were really seeing the same thing. Sometimes I wonder if what I perceive as 'red', for example, may be completely different to what other people see. As long as it remains consistent ie I see the same colour and differences in shade when I look at a rose and this symbol :mad: Intuitively I feel that we are all seeing what I am seeing, but I cannot prove this objectively.

Psygnisfive I liked your post, though it made me curl into foetal position for a few minutes. After I recovered it reminded me of the idea of forms in philosophy. I can't remember exactly where the debate stands now, but when I studied it I remember coming across the notion of primary and secondary qualities. A primary quality is something like size, weight, motion. A secondary quality is something like colour. So the roundness is a primary colour of an apple and greeness is a secondary quality. Descartes and Locke believed that primary forms exist independently of our perception of them. Berkeley believed that both primary and secondary qualities exist only as mental constructs. Also related is the idea that you cannot perceive a secondary quality without attaching it to a primary quality. For example, try and perceive redness. Even if you have a mental image of just a sheet of red, that is in itself attached to some kind of form. The essence of redness, it has been argued, is impossible to imagine and therefor does not exist independent of the perceiver.

Another philosophical idea that may help you is something Descartes noticed. If you stick an oar into water and look down at it, it appears to be curved and much smaller (because of the way the light refracts). Does this mean the oar is actually curved? I can't really remember where the argument goes from there. I tend not to worry too much about these questions and concentrate on the experience of being instead. That isn't to say I don't think about them, but it means I try and usually succeed in not allowing them to jar me. I think it's because my cosmology is based so firmly in an innate certainty that is translinguistic and cannot be analysed using the methods we have come up with so far. What I'm really interested in is the mechanics of this faith rather than the structure of our environment. I also enjoy long walks on the beach and looking at pictures of cats. Peace!

[max_freakout]

In a way our cosmologies almost crossed there Max! I would agree with the idea that the "me" I distinguish as seperate is illusory. Ultimately I believe that I am part of the Oneness of everything and the distinction of myself into egoic form is simply another tool used to explore consciousness and reality. I'd agree that what we see is not something that is fixed in any kind of concrete reality. Actually, there is no way to prove that even if we were both looking at the same screen we were really seeing the same thing. Sometimes I wonder if what I perceive as 'red', for example, may be completely different to what other people see. As long as it remains consistent ie I see the same colour and differences in shade when I look at a rose and this symbol :mad: Intuitively I feel that we are all seeing what I am seeing, but I cannot prove this objectively.

Totally, the world is 'all-inclusve', it is ONE thing, and separarteness is no more than a 'sense', or a mentally-constructed representation, im with you on that one ;)

Terence Mckenna said in 'psychedelic society', that since light is comprised of photons, and photons are 'like' particles, then each person's reality is particular to them, it is comprised of the particular set of photons that is landing on their eyes


Descartes and Locke believed that primary forms exist independently of our perception of them.

*Max in pedant mode*

do you mean primary qualities?


Berkeley believed that both primary and secondary qualities exist only as mental constructs. Also related is the idea that you cannot perceive a secondary quality without attaching it to a primary quality. For example, try and perceive redness. Even if you have a mental image of just a sheet of red, that is in itself attached to some kind of form. The essence of redness, it has been argued, is impossible to imagine and therefor does not exist independent of the perceiver.

so redness transcends all red particulars :cool:



Another philosophical idea that may help you is something Descartes noticed. If you stick an oar into water and look down at it, it appears to be curved and much smaller (because of the way the light refracts). Does this mean the oar is actually curved? I can't really remember where the argument goes from there. I tend not to worry too much about these questions and concentrate on the experience of being instead. That isn't to say I don't think about them, but it means I try and usually succeed in not allowing them to jar me. I think it's because my cosmology is based so firmly in an innate certainty that is translinguistic and cannot be analysed using the methods we have come up with so far. What I'm really interested in is the mechanics of this faith rather than the structure of our environment. I also enjoy long walks on the beach and looking at pictures of cats. Peace!

Descartes wanted to build his philosophy on an axiomatic certainty, so anything that could be doubted could not be certain, and if something has lied to me even once, there is no reason ever to take it as being certain, the point about the oar was this is an instance os 'seeming' reality being in actuality a lie, the oar is in actuality not kinked


what is this innate certainty upon which you base your cosmology?

[Ostritt]

I have been smacked with the pedant stick :o, yea I did indeed mean qualities. The innate certainty I was talking about is linked to that cosmic unity and the unlimitedness this provides. I am everything there is, so nothing is impossible. Also it's just the warm, loving feeling that surrounds me when I take entheogens or meditate, that feeling of not being alone. It's hard to explain but that feeling in itself is enough to dispell any worries.

Yea I had a feeling that's what Descartes was saying with the oar, but I started thinking that maybe the oar is curved if we perceive it to be so, even though we could attach a camera to it and prove objectively that it isn't, if I based my actions around a certainty that the oar is curved and reject any idea of straightness in my reality, does that still make it "not curved"? You could say with certainty that the oar is curved in my reality, but I'm interested the question of why the concensus reality is regarded as far more valid than subjective reality, even though that's what we live in all the time as individuals. Given the illusory nature of what we perceive, how is what we agree on the fact that what we decide to call "real" as a group is more valid than what we see as individuals? Obviously it makes it a lot easier to function if we agree on the concensus reality as a base reality, but it seems our society has taken this idea to the absolute extreme. Probably because most people haven't had a psychedelic experience. :rolleyes:

I like that photon idea, I remember reading something in Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness about the interaction between the eye and light. Shit it was really interesting too, but I've just looked around and realised that I let someone borrow it. Never ever lend anyone a book unless you've decided that you never want to read it again or you're willing to buy another copy. That's the wisest thing I've written on the grow report so far! :D