Sorry I've been absent so long Speakpigeon.
Sure. And congratulation to whoever is now presenting you. Good job!
Sorry, it's a bit long, my reply, but you can skip to the last line if you're not that interested.
In the ordinary sense of the word "impression" I'm using here (see dictionary definitions in the OP), there's a clear distinction between impressions and perceptions. Personally, I don't seem to have any difficulty in making this distinction, for each and every impression or perception I have, and I have a lot of them day in, day out. Same as for impressions and emotions. Obviously, all these mental events must have things in common, but I'm interested here in what's accessible to us as subjects, through our subjective experience. I would have thought that should be the starting point for any good science of the mind, but maybe I'm just too ignorant or confused as to what's really going on around here.
EB
Well, don't bother quoting what I say if you're not going to address my points.
Lets look at what drives us to sense and be aware. Arousal is the process of the brain organizing itself to respond which is added by attending and sensing. All of these have paths and causes and all of them are linked to some level of emoting which has very well defined pathways and sources and causes.
I agree here. I did assume myself we are always subjected to "
some level of emoting". May be zero or more. So, we agree here. And
I'm pleased here if "
very well defined pathways" have been identified by scientists. Not absolutely relevant to what I am considering here but broadly in the same ballpark.
Perhaps they could start working on the pathways specific to impressions. I expect they should be well identifiable and distinct from other types of pathways.
Right now, I would assume no one is looking for those. And quite rightly not seeing them.
One can't just take impression and categorize it separately from perceiving or sensing or even attending or arousing.
One can, obviously. I just did it. And it's really easy to do. And I'm not the only one to do it. Many people speak of this or that impression. There's a long history of that. Don't tell me scientists have missed the boat?! That's so sad! It certainly makes a bad
impression!
And I hope that most people can recognise memories from emotions, sensations from perceptions, pain from a sugary taste, a sense of loneliness from exultation etc. I would have guessed that recognising all this menagerie of mental events has to be taken as the very basic aptitude one needs to have if one is to live up to one's status as a human being.
So, how do scientists see this, by the way? Should be interesting. What do scientists say about our impressions? That's what I'd be really interested in.
If the eyes are closed one can only get visual impressions from within the brain or through interaction with other senses like olfaction and audition.
What's a "
visual impression"?
I know of "lingering visual impression", but that's obviously very different from the kind of impressions I've been talking about here.
A proper impression that might be called "visual" would be an impression about a visual perception. I look at somebody's face and I may have an impression related to that. But, the impression itself isn't visual, so using this expression could be misleading.
Apart from this, I don't know what a
visual impression would be except in the context of some mental disorder whereby the subject would experience non-voluntary visual events unrelated to actual perception. Is that it?
Of coure, going further, I would expect you could also get some visual event if your skull suddenly takes a hit for example. Things like that.
In any case, I'm only talking of fully functional impressions. The kind of things it is normal for everybody to have all day long. Things that are useful and operational, and that on the whole you'd better pay attention to because they're meant to be helpful.
Yet, even the closed awake eye can form some differences between light sensation caused and internally caused sensation of light outside of oneself.
I can't parse that but you're clearly not talking about anything remotely to do with the kind of impressions I'm talking about here so I will just ignore that.
Close your eyes. You'll see what I mean almost instantly depending on how hard you keep your eyelids closed.
Sure, I see it, but there's something I don't see and this is your point here.
So going back to some external reference seems to me the only unbiased way one can move from uncaused sense to caused sense. And so the ideal observer we get what is physically possible for one to sense and how effective one is able to achieve that state.
Well, the thing is, I don't really understand what your fuss is regarding "
caused sense" and "
uncaused sense". I have no idea what you're talking about. You would need to learn how to explain yourself clearly to start with. I'm sure you must have a point but you can't ask me to read the runes.
That being said, if you can provide any scientific reference about the kind of impressions I'm talking about, I'd be real interested and very surprised.
Yes this moves quite a ways from philosophy since it hangs it's meaning on physics and information processing capacities.
I can already tell they're not going to discuss my impressions.
I'm please you've managed to insert the word "
philosophy" here totally irrelevantly but still disparagingly enough. One mark for that! You're one of the best here!
The job is being done. Your impression impression is quaint though and probably somewhat more insightful than was Wundt's
Introspection
Thanks but more importantly I get the impression (Oops! Sorry!) that I'm also being more insightful than all the brain scientists in the world put together. Could you do something to dispel that no doubt erroneous impression?
What you are trying to get at is what people like Haynes are using to study foresighting one's mental processes using fMRI.
I'm right now very sceptical about this claim. I get a clear impression that these people are not even aware of the pervasiveness of impressions in our mental life. But, again, maybe you could dispel.
Hard work, that, I know.
Still, I'm pleased to see you're back!
EB