Do you think “our perceptions, and most especially our mental self-perceptions” are completely valueless?
Perceptions in general aren’t completely useless. Mental perceptions—yes, totally worthless. Introspection tells us nothing of value, because our minds never had a need to accurately represent themselves to any degree and so are not designed to be able to do so. Result: garbage data. Even sensory perception is questionable. Despite its concerning the external, objective world, which clearly produces strong selection pressure for effective interaction and therefore at requires least a limited degree of accurate representation, we know that our senses contain peculiar weaknesses and possess processing limitations that result in ‘illusions’.
It may be the case that these illusions arise from shortcuts taken in the pathways that lead to memory representation, but not taken in the pathways responsible for action. See the reference to the recessed/expressed “Hollow Face” illusion above. The consciousness-preceding systems that attempt to compensate for sensory limitations—like the ones responsible for “filling-in” our retinal blind spot by trying to interpolate what’s in the blank space—may also provide awareness at some level of those flaws, but not at the level of our self-identity.
Perceptions can be trusted to the degree that multiple forms/instances of perception, each with different flaws and limits, can be engaged in. Only with multiply redundant checks can be made, and the results compared, can we even provisionally trust what we sense. For all we know, there are cognitive illusions that we’ve never even recognized because we possess no means of explicitly comparing the perception to others with complimentary flaws.
Our feelings, most especially about the content of our thoughts and the validity of arguments, can be trusted not at all. The ancient Greeks mistook the feeling of completeness or closure as demonstration that a line of argumentation was valid, and look what that got them.
It may be the case that these illusions arise from shortcuts taken in the pathways that lead to memory representation, but not taken in the pathways responsible for action. See the reference to the recessed/expressed “Hollow Face” illusion above. The consciousness-preceding systems that attempt to compensate for sensory limitations—like the ones responsible for “filling-in” our retinal blind spot by trying to interpolate what’s in the blank space—may also provide awareness at some level of those flaws, but not at the level of our self-identity.
Perceptions can be trusted to the degree that multiple forms/instances of perception, each with different flaws and limits, can be engaged in. Only with multiply redundant checks can be made, and the results compared, can we even provisionally trust what we sense. For all we know, there are cognitive illusions that we’ve never even recognized because we possess no means of explicitly comparing the perception to others with complimentary flaws.
Our feelings, most especially about the content of our thoughts and the validity of arguments, can be trusted not at all. The ancient Greeks mistook the feeling of completeness or closure as demonstration that a line of argumentation was valid, and look what that got them.