2023-12-07, 06:38 PM
(2023-12-07, 04:21 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe you have not had this experience yourself? Most people report they have. The phenomena is real, real as an experience. The question is it naturally caused!
I am all about sorting pragmatic stuff, from aesthetics. Pragmatically, biologically signal transfer lays as a root cause of "vision". Of course, clear detection lays at the quality of the reproduction of images - but vision and understandings that come with it are not the result of signals. They are entirely information processing coming from the stimulus in the optic nerve (not the eye directly).
In fact, the phenomena of sensing "eyes on me" as I have experienced it, is totally unconscious, with an impact on the emotions. I see it exactly like when two people call each other, at the same time. Is this a belief in the mystical, or just acknowledging common facts of experience.
My take is that a "sixth sense" for danger would be an evolutionary trait that would improve survival? It is a key affordance in the environment, whether the surroundings are physical or social. Why wouldn't a detection of danger be deep in the subconscious? Do microbes sense detect danger (an abstraction)? It sure seems like they do?
ps.. My simple model of the world has the activity of "understanding meaning" as a key fact of biological life. And its causal chain is defined in a general manner.
Good post. I was too hasty with my initial reaction to this article (I'm an expert in being too hasty). I did follow Max's suggestion and read it fully. There's definitely some interesting food for thought like this bit:
Quote:William James likewise rejected the idea of images or representations inside the brain. He took as an example the reader sitting in a room, reading a book: “[T]he whole philosophy of perception from Democritus’ time downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer space and in a person’s mind. ‘Representative’ theories of perception avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the reader’s sense of life which knows no intervening mental image but seems to see the room and the book immediately as they physically exist” (James, 1904; quoted in Velmans, 2000, p. 112). As Whitehead expressed it, “sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in external nature” (1925, p. 54). Throughout the twentieth century, a wide range of philosophers, including Bertrand Russell (1948), made similar THE NATURE OF VISUAL PERCEPTION 7 points. Rather than perceiving objects in the external world as re-presented in our heads, we are instead present in the world, actively and directly apprehending such images not as copies but as originals.