Unperceived Existence
Hello
My daughter is studying Neuroscience at University and is doing a philosophy module. She has a 1000 word paper to write on this question and is flummoxed as am I.
Do we infer the unperceived existence of what we perceive from the nature of our experience? If so, how? If not, why not?
She has been learning about alva noe's enactivist approach as well as Hume and intellectualism but isn't sure on how to incorporate this into an essay
Can anyone point me in the right direction as I have no idea how to help her?
My daughter is studying Neuroscience at University and is doing a philosophy module. She has a 1000 word paper to write on this question and is flummoxed as am I.
Do we infer the unperceived existence of what we perceive from the nature of our experience? If so, how? If not, why not?
She has been learning about alva noe's enactivist approach as well as Hume and intellectualism but isn't sure on how to incorporate this into an essay
Can anyone point me in the right direction as I have no idea how to help her?
Comments (54)
Epistemological Problems of Perception
A horribly worded question....
An embarrassment to the university.
You need to parse each word or phrase in a nested set if that is any help.
Looks like four elements.
You probably need to start with your best theory of mind to make any progress.
@OwenB You will probably get many answers that are useless or worse, like the one Ive quoted here. I hope someone will come along and suggest a good approach. Its a difficult question though. Michaels suggested SEP article is good, but maybe its not entry level.
Take my advice... NOT Jamal's
Try nesting it as a start.
Okay, that is relevant.
That sounds like something whose answer would be in the class' slides. Has she researched those?
In any case and I will get some hate for this I would also ask AIs.
This is as far as I have gotten on parsing the question in sentence form:
The nature of our existence leads to what we perceive that leads to what we infer.
The (status of) unperceived existence is in fact a non-existent entity. As we do not perceive it... It does not exist from our personal frame of reference.
This is more for the forum than the homework problem as it may contradict the curriculum.
And it could be parsed in different ways by different people.
Not with
See: https://academic.oup.com/book/33680/chapter-abstract/288253803
Still works. For unperceived you could think continued, when were not perceiving it. The question as asked is just very condensed and terse.
@OwenB
I have no idea if this is a good way to go for your daughter in her particular situation, but the way Id look at it is to tackle David Humes argument against the inference of continued (unperceived) existence in the Treatise of Human Nature. He says that we infer continued existencethe existence of the cup in the cupboard when you cant see itfrom the constancy of our perceptions, but that this is unjustified.
That quotation is from the Abstract, which is a summary of the Treatise. The argument itself is around 1.4.2 (thats Book.Part.Section).
But there must be secondary sources that could make it more manageable.
Comment on cup in the cupboard:
The cup exists physically as a physical cup.
The cup exists as brain state,
Brain; (mental representation of cup in cupboard)
Hume fails on this.
Hence my suggested rewording.
How far along is your daughter in her study of neuroscience?
Quoting Jamal
Bringing up the Hume quote is good, but can your daughter then make a case for it not being nothing but sentiment, but rather a matter of pattern recognition occurring in neural networks?
Reminds me of "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, does it make a sound?" which is Berkeley. But without the context that could take you way off on a tangent.
Terrible question without some context and definitions of some heavy words like "existence", "perceive" and terms like "unperceived existence" and "the nature of our experience" or even "we infer". And after 3,000 plus years of writing thoughts down about (what I believe to be) this question, the answer of all the greatest thinkers is - I have no idea how. So "if so, how?" is just plain mean to do to a student.
I would restate what you have to assume the question is driving at, and then answer your new restated question. I'd reframe it as a recognition of how we are enslaved to our senses (Plato) or cut off from the thing-in-itself by the structure and condition of experience (Kant), and then re-ask it as "Do we infer that the things we experience exist in themselves in the same way we perceive them to be?" Or something.
In other words - I see a red ball. I, at first, assume there is a red ball over there in the world, whether I am looking at it or not. So I am perceiving something as it is in the world, inferring my experience in my head on the ball and in the world. But then I realize it is red because the light that is hitting that object is a red light and I'm looking at some false appearance so I don't really know what color it is, and further, I see that my eyeball builds for me an impression I call "red", so I've self-generated or constructed this experience (Plato's cave, Kant), and I know even less about the object I was calling a red ball over there in the world apart from me. So if I want to refer to "objects in the world", I have to infer my constructed perception in my head back onto them. With this context, it will be easier to answer the question, and with this context, it will be easier to answer the question if you say that it is the nature of our experience that we are cut-off from the world, constructing appearances and fabricating forms of perception and so what we infer is not necessarily correct or even has anything at all to do with the world in-itself. That's my easier answer to think about.
But there is the odd part of the question, "unperceived existence of what we perceive" - really, what the hell is that supposed to mean? I think they are trying to capture Kant's idea of the thing-in-itself as discussed above. My interpretation of the question is that it is about whether what we think we know (or perceive) about the world is a true reflection (inference) of the world as it is in itself. Are our inferences good if we seek to know something about the world. If it is a true reflection, how, and if not, how not so? But "unperceived...[words]...we perceive" - thanks for that clarification.
Instead of a red ball, you could treat the question itself as the object of perception and ask whether the question in your mind has anything to do with the question the teacher had in mind. Use the question itself to demonstrate how our perceptions have nothing to do with the real world, because the "nature of our experience" is to be confused when presented with just about any perception, but certainly with this question, and only once our minds re-organize things does the object of perception really take shape in the first place. The object before you is this amorphous, opaque, masked unknown, hiding in the words "Do we infer the unperceived existence of what we perceive from the nature of our experience?" Not until you redefine the terms here can you have in mind an actual question, an actual object, that you are now perceiving. So you would be answering the teacher's question, by saying it is not possible for you to have any true inference of what the teacher's question really is, since all we can do is reconstruct our own experience that is cut-off from the world. Basically, say "see Kant".
Considering its neuroscience, I would simply look at consciousness. We can perceive the brain's function, and even manipulate what the person is experiencing by stimulating certain areas of the brain. But do we know what its like to BE that consciousness? That is the unperceived. Good luck to her!
I'm not overly keen on the question. I'd need to know what the course material was to ensure I understood what kind of answer they want.
'Do we infer...' is different from the usual philosophical question of 'Can we validly infer...' Answering 'do we' isn't really philosophy is it? That's some kind of social science. Although maybe in the context of Hume, maybe 'do we' is appropriate, as he is interested in that as well.
@OwenB what is the context? What material has led up to this question?
The nature of our existence,
[ Brain state]
Expanded,
[ Brain; (mental content)]
Expanded again with specifics,
[Brain; (perception)]
Also,
[Brain; (inference)]
And combined in sequence and relation,
[Brain; (perception, inference)]... I based on P.
And a category in question,
Unperceived existence.....ask about this.... clear as mud??
Edit: Unperceived existence is defined as not perceived so it exists only outside of brain state.
Looks like the person who formulated the question has that background in mind. Whether Owens daughter is expected to know that or has any such reading materials, I dont know.
It's a philosophy course. Why think it is "in the context of neuroscience"?
I suggest you take a break from this particular thread, Mark. Maybe its just not for you, you know?
More off-topic responses will be deleted.
Okay, I get it.
I tried an email to you for guidance.
Maybe it didn't send.
If you need to contact me privately, use private messages here on the website, not email. Go to my profile and click send a message.
Okay, not sure what I did.
First time I used it so was following the menu best i could.
No problems though now.
Okay I see send a message so both were listed.
Problem solved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_inference?wprov=sfla1
If not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_psychology?wprov=sfla1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets
On second thoughts, I dont think it is worded very well. At least, its not precise enough. It might be asking a general question about perception: does it work by inference? (Russell, following Hume, seemed to think so) Or, more precisely, is inference the way that we know things via perception?
If the answer to that is yes, then the questioner may also want to know if we thereby (by inference) know of the existence of things when were not perceiving thembut this isnt explicit in the question, as @bert1 pointed out (its do we infer, not do we correctly infer). Personally Id assume the question does have this meaning even though its ambiguous.
If the answer to the first question is no, then either we know of the continued existence of things unperceived by some other means than inference, or, agreeing with Hume, we dont have any such knowledge at all.
Also, there is a major interpretative choice to be made in dealing with the question. Does the unperceived existence of what we perceive refer to the continued existence of things while were not perceiving them, or does it refer to the thing as it is in itself, roughly speaking the aspect of a thing that is not subject to the structures of human perception and cognition. I think its the former (how do you know the cup is still there when you close the cupboard door), because the wording used is similar to that found in Hume. (EDIT: it should also be noted that these are close to being merely two descriptions of the same thing, i.e., the thing as it is in itself is, from a certain point of view, synonymous with the thing as it is when youre not perceiving it)
Quoting OwenB
Check out Husserls analysis of the constitution of spatial objects in Cartesian Investigations and other works . In particular , see his distinction between perception and apperception , where he explains how we draw from memory aspects of an object which are not actually perceived ( the backside of a chair), and use that memory to anticipate further details of the object which we also dont directly perceive ( how the object will change when we walk around it).
I think you are supposed to argue from two different points of view, perhaps one rationalist and the other empiricist, or one from naïve realism and the other from indirect realism, or more likely one from an inductionist perspective and the other from a skeptic perspective (the question is about the problem of induction after all). But until OP comes back to clarify, we can't really know.
As an observation, like other users I noticed the question is ambiguous in its syntax; there are two possible readings:
The first question is asking whether we infer X of Y out of Z, the second about whether what we do infer comes from Z.
Of course the supposed reading is the second one, but quaint still.
You can access a reality beyond a direct and immediate perception by looking at theories of a spectators or readers relation to a film, text, or artwork. Thus, Deleuzes cinematic philosophy attempts to uncover the unperceived in the perceived, to think that which is unthinkable. The cinema does not have natural subjective perception as its model because the mobility of its centers and variability of its framings always lead to restoring vast a-centred and de-framed zones. One passes imperceptibly from perception to affective and re-active tendencies of actions (Deleuze, Cinema 1, pg. 64). On the first level, we perceive isolated, separated things and objects. On the second, determinative one, there is an unfolding of a relational event. It takes up the pasts of different orders that include our habitual and acquired perceptions, inclinations, and desires and enacts the tendencies and potentials of the immediate future.
Differently from phenomenological reduction, Deleuze does not refer to the subject-centered approach.
For him, no pre-existing spectator watches a film, there are only matrices of the interactive fusion that formed during the act of watching.
:up:
Yes, I was going to say the same, but I feel like I'm always rocking the boat. The nuances and ambiguities only give scope for discussion. That's exactly what a good philosophical question should do.
I just started reading, so maybe this is addressed. But it seems odd to say it's unperceived, but we perceive it.
Perceived sometimes, other times unperceived. The cup in the cupboard and all that. Hume discusses continued existence and concludes we cant justifiably infer it from having perceived it previously.
Me too. I just had a look in the cupboard and the cup was right there!
Hume somehow managed to rip everything apart, tearing everything to shreds, while leaving everything untouched. We can't know the cup is there, so there can never be a sound truth derived a priori from the cup, yet I'm sure he would call anyone looking under the couch for the cup an idiot too.
Indeed. So Humes scepticism can be viewed in two ways: (a) we dont know anything about the world around us, or (b) proof and absolute certainty are chimeras in epistemology; philosophers are looking in the wrong place or doing it wrong. Im sympathetic to (b), although I think there is more to it than habit and sentiment.
I agree. We can't do philosophy without grappling with Hume. But at the same time, if we listen to Hume, we just can't do philosophy.
Or maybe we cant do (non-dogmatic) philosophy without Hume.
One thing I'd add: You say we might agree with the skeptic that Quoting Jamal but aren't they only chimeras in reference to the external/empirical world? I think you can be a Humean skeptic while reserving a place for genuine analytic knowledge. For Hume, relations of ideas, which would include math and its proofs, are not problematic, because they can be known by reason alone, requiring no reliance on experience.
Agreed. My usage was imprecise. I was thinking of knowledge as knowledge about facts and what exists only. Synthetic knowledge.