…But interestingly, if I then immediately ask you what you were experiencing just now, you won’t describe it as above. Instead you’ll say that you were hearing “sm-” at t=0 and “-mi” at t=0.2 and “-ile” at t=0.4. In other words, you’ll recall it in terms of the time-course of the generative model that ultimately turned out to be the best explanation.
In my review of Dennett’s book, I argued that this doesn’t disprove the “there’s a well-defined stream of consciousness” hypothesis since it could be the case that memory is overwritten (i.e., you first hear “sm” not realizing what you’re hearing, but then when you hear “smile”, your brain deletes that part from memory).
Since then I’ve gotten more cynical and would now argue that there’s nothing to explain because there are no proper examples of revisionist memory.[1] Because here’s the thing—I agree that if you ask someone what they experience, they’re probably going to respond as you say in the quote. Because they’re not going to think much about it, and this is just the most natural thing to reply. But do you actually remember understanding “sm” at the point when you first heard it? Because I don’t. If I think about what happened after the fact, I have a subtle sensation of understand the word, and I can vaguely recall that I’ve heard a sound at the beginning of the word, but I don’t remember being able to place what it is at the time.
I’ve just tried to introspect on this listening to an audio conversation, and yeah, I don’t have any such memories. I also tried it with slowed audio. I guess reply here if anyone thinks they genuinely misremember this if they pay attention.
The color phi phenomenon doesn’t work for or anyone I’ve asked so at this point my assumption is that it’s just not a real result (kudos for not relying on it here). I think Dennett’s book is full of terrible epistemology so I’m surprised that he’s included it anyway.
The color phi phenomenon doesn’t work for or anyone I’ve asked
Were you using this demo? If so, I set the times to 1000,30,60, demagnified as much as possible, and then stood 20 feet away from my computer to “demagnify” even more. I might have also moved the dots a bit closer. I think I got some motion illusion?
I’m skeptical of the hypothesis that the color phi phenomenon is just BS. It doesn’t seem like that kind of psych result. I think it’s more likely that this applet is terribly designed.
I’m skeptical of the hypothesis that the color phi phenomenon is just BS. It doesn’t seem like that kind of psych result. I think it’s more likely that this applet is terribly designed.
Yes—and yeah, fair enough. Although-
I think I got some motion illusion?
-remember that the question isn’t “did I get the vibe that something moves”. We already know that a series of frames gives the vibe that something moves. The question is whether you remember having seen the red circle halfway across before seeing the blue circle.
Take any intuitive notion X, where people’s intuitions are generally a bit incoherent or poorly-thought-through—stream of consciousness, free will, divine grace, the voice in my head, etc.
(A) One thing you can say is: “X, when properly understood, is coherent, and here’s how to properly understand it …”
(B) Another you can say is: “X, as commonly understood by the average person, is incoherent, but hey let me tell you about these closely related concepts which are coherent and which rescue some or all of those intuitions about X that you find compelling …”
Fundamentally, neither of these strategies is right or wrong. You say tomato, I say to-mah-to. :)
This is one of many causes of those annoying debates that go around in circles, that I’m trying to declare out-of-scope for this series, cf. §1.6.2. :)
For science terminology like “acceleration”, we take approach (A). People often have incoherent intuitions about acceleration, and when they do, we prompt them to discard their “wrong” intuitions, leaving the “real” acceleration concept.
For more everyday terminology, (A) versus (B) is more of a judgment call—for example, some physicalists say “‘God’ doesn’t exist”, others say “‘God’ is just the term for order and beauty in the universe” or whatever. As another example, I read Elbow Room recently, and Dennett’s revised preface says that he’s taken approach (A) to “free will” for his whole career, but now he’s thinking that maybe all along he should have taken the (B) path and said “free will (as commonly understood) doesn’t exist”.
Anyway, I feel like my post section is pointing out that people’s everyday poorly-thought-through intuitions about “stream of consciousness” are a bit incoherent, but I didn’t go further than that by advocating for either (A) or (B). Whereas your comment is advocating for the (A) path, where we prod people to update their intuitions about what happens when they try to remember what happened one second ago.
I don’t think I agree with this framing. I wasn’t trying to say “people need to rethink their concept of awareness”; I was saying “you haven’t actually demonstrated that there is anything wrong with the naive concept of awareness because the counterexample isn’t a proper counterexample”.
I mean I’ve conceded that people will give this intuitive answer, but only because they’ll respond before they’ve actually run the experiment you suggest. I’m saying that as soon as you (generic you) actually do the thing the post suggested (i.e., look at what you remember at the point in time where you heard the first syllable of a word that you don’t yet recognize), you’ll notice that you do not, in fact, remember hearing & understanding the first part of the word. This doesn’t entail a shift in the understanding of awareness. People can view awareness exactly like they did before, I just want them to actually run the experiment before answering!
(And also this seems like a pretty conceptually straight-forward case—the overarching question is basically, “is there a specific data structure in the brain whose state corresponds to people’s experience at every point in time”—which I think captures the naive view of awareness—and I’m saying “the example doesn’t show that the answer is no”.)
In my review of Dennett’s book, I argued that this doesn’t disprove the “there’s a well-defined stream of consciousness” hypothesis since it could be the case that memory is overwritten (i.e., you first hear “sm” not realizing what you’re hearing, but then when you hear “smile”, your brain deletes that part from memory).
Since then I’ve gotten more cynical and would now argue that there’s nothing to explain because there are no proper examples of revisionist memory.[1] Because here’s the thing—I agree that if you ask someone what they experience, they’re probably going to respond as you say in the quote. Because they’re not going to think much about it, and this is just the most natural thing to reply. But do you actually remember understanding “sm” at the point when you first heard it? Because I don’t. If I think about what happened after the fact, I have a subtle sensation of understand the word, and I can vaguely recall that I’ve heard a sound at the beginning of the word, but I don’t remember being able to place what it is at the time.
I’ve just tried to introspect on this listening to an audio conversation, and yeah, I don’t have any such memories. I also tried it with slowed audio. I guess reply here if anyone thinks they genuinely misremember this if they pay attention.
The color phi phenomenon doesn’t work for or anyone I’ve asked so at this point my assumption is that it’s just not a real result (kudos for not relying on it here). I think Dennett’s book is full of terrible epistemology so I’m surprised that he’s included it anyway.
Were you using this demo? If so, I set the times to 1000,30,60, demagnified as much as possible, and then stood 20 feet away from my computer to “demagnify” even more. I might have also moved the dots a bit closer. I think I got some motion illusion?
I’m skeptical of the hypothesis that the color phi phenomenon is just BS. It doesn’t seem like that kind of psych result. I think it’s more likely that this applet is terribly designed.
Yes—and yeah, fair enough. Although-
-remember that the question isn’t “did I get the vibe that something moves”. We already know that a series of frames gives the vibe that something moves. The question is whether you remember having seen the red circle halfway across before seeing the blue circle.
Take any intuitive notion X, where people’s intuitions are generally a bit incoherent or poorly-thought-through—stream of consciousness, free will, divine grace, the voice in my head, etc.
(A) One thing you can say is: “X, when properly understood, is coherent, and here’s how to properly understand it …”
(B) Another you can say is: “X, as commonly understood by the average person, is incoherent, but hey let me tell you about these closely related concepts which are coherent and which rescue some or all of those intuitions about X that you find compelling …”
Fundamentally, neither of these strategies is right or wrong. You say tomato, I say to-mah-to. :)
This is one of many causes of those annoying debates that go around in circles, that I’m trying to declare out-of-scope for this series, cf. §1.6.2. :)
For science terminology like “acceleration”, we take approach (A). People often have incoherent intuitions about acceleration, and when they do, we prompt them to discard their “wrong” intuitions, leaving the “real” acceleration concept.
For more everyday terminology, (A) versus (B) is more of a judgment call—for example, some physicalists say “‘God’ doesn’t exist”, others say “‘God’ is just the term for order and beauty in the universe” or whatever. As another example, I read Elbow Room recently, and Dennett’s revised preface says that he’s taken approach (A) to “free will” for his whole career, but now he’s thinking that maybe all along he should have taken the (B) path and said “free will (as commonly understood) doesn’t exist”.
Anyway, I feel like my post section is pointing out that people’s everyday poorly-thought-through intuitions about “stream of consciousness” are a bit incoherent, but I didn’t go further than that by advocating for either (A) or (B). Whereas your comment is advocating for the (A) path, where we prod people to update their intuitions about what happens when they try to remember what happened one second ago.
I don’t think I agree with this framing. I wasn’t trying to say “people need to rethink their concept of awareness”; I was saying “you haven’t actually demonstrated that there is anything wrong with the naive concept of awareness because the counterexample isn’t a proper counterexample”.
I mean I’ve conceded that people will give this intuitive answer, but only because they’ll respond before they’ve actually run the experiment you suggest. I’m saying that as soon as you (generic you) actually do the thing the post suggested (i.e., look at what you remember at the point in time where you heard the first syllable of a word that you don’t yet recognize), you’ll notice that you do not, in fact, remember hearing & understanding the first part of the word. This doesn’t entail a shift in the understanding of awareness. People can view awareness exactly like they did before, I just want them to actually run the experiment before answering!
(And also this seems like a pretty conceptually straight-forward case—the overarching question is basically, “is there a specific data structure in the brain whose state corresponds to people’s experience at every point in time”—which I think captures the naive view of awareness—and I’m saying “the example doesn’t show that the answer is no”.)