“Revolution in Thought: A new look at determinism and free will"

[bilby]

It is incumbent upon me to distinguish between the word "image" (the light that is reflected off the object)

The light that is recflected off the object is not an image.

and photons (packets of electromagnetic energy) that travel through space/time,

That - That right there - is the light that is reflected off the object.

or you will never understand this concept.

You are the one failing to understand. An image is not just light; it is the pattern of light that exists in the focal plane of a lens. The light at that plane is in the exact same pattern as the light as it reflected off the object, due to the simple fact that light travels at constant speed in a given medium, and in a straight line.

That is true, but what is happening is more easily seen when we look at celestial objects. It is assumed that light strikes an object where the pattern (the reflection of that object) goes on forever, but this is not what occurs.

Sure it is.

Light from the object fades

Nope. Light "fades" with distance for two reasons: The inverse square law, which simply means that photons are equally numerous at any given distance, but the area over which they are spread increases proportionally to the square of that distance; And scattering by intervening particles, which is only relevant when such particles are present, and so does not apply to the vacuum of interstellar space.

An individual photon must continue to travel forever, because there's no mechanism for its energy to go anywhere else - the First Law of Thermodynamics means a photon cannot lose energy as it travels through a vacuum.

or is not seen at all if it doesn't meet the requirements (size, proximity, and brightness).

The requirements for sight is that a sufficient number of photons must arrive at the retina to stimulate the optic nerve, and must be focussed at the plane of the retina such that the pattern of arriving photons matches the pattern they formed when they departed.

Size, proximity* and brightness are all contributors to those requirements, but are not sufficient, as we can trivially demonstrate by having a large and luminous object close by, but placing an opaque object between it and our eyes.

We can see the object as long as the pattern makes contact with the retina or a telescope.

Yes. And in order to do so, the photons that form that pattern must travel from object to retina.

We cannot see anything just because the photons make contact with a telescope, unless and until they go on to stimulate our retinae.

IOW, we see the object because it is there to be seen.

We see the object because light travels from it to our retinae.

We do not see what is there to be seen unless we look; And looking is the act of orienting and focussing our eyes such that the light arriving from the object is focussed at our retinae.

The light does not bring the pattern of the object over space/time without the object being in our field of view.

Dur.

That you felt this was worthy of comment suggests to me that "field of view" may be another technical term whose meaning you do not know, and/or which you are using incorrectly here.

Photons travel through space/time without a pattern.

No, they don't. They must necessarily maintain the pattern they had when emitted or last reflected, because they all travel at the same speed.

They are electromagnetic packets of energy, and when they strike an object, we see the object due to its unique absorptive and reflective properties.

No. You missed several steps. When they strike an object, they are over there, striking that object; At that moment, our retinae are over here. How does the fact that the photons are striking the object get across the gap from there to here?

When they strike an object, they bounce off (or do not) due to its unique absorptive and reflective properties. The pattern of those properties is then carried as a pattern of photons across the gap to our eyes, where it is focussed onto our retinae. Only then do we see the object.

If this doesn't happen, then the photons over there striking the object cannot do anything that influences us, over here, in any way.

Light becomes a necessary condition of sight

It always was.

but it doesn't bring the external world to our eyes in delayed time.

Of course it does. If it doesn't, WHAT DOES?

The object is THERE; Our eyes are HERE. How does the information that the object even exists, much less any information about what it looks like, cross that gap?

It reveals the world to us in real time.

No, it doesn't.






* You were denying that one earlier; You said that distance and time were irrelevant. Have you changed your mind?

 

[steve_bank]

Pg

After all the posts how can you still say Lessans and you do not conflict with science.

Your approach is to argue that science has alleged inconsistencies and falsehoods so we should ignore Lessans’ faulty claims. You try to put Lessans on a par with science.

Maybe Pood can fit that into a logical error. False equivalence?

At the beginning of the book Lessans tries to put himself on par with ancient philosophers.

 

[bilby]

Hey, peacegirl, remember this? It was first presented to you at least 15 years ago!

There is nothing here that conflicts with real-time vision because the speed of light has nothing to do with his claim. Back to the drawing board.

Sure there is. If he saw Io in real time, the discreapancy he noted could not have existed; Io would be seen at the same predicted point in its orbit regardless of how far from Earth it was.

Jupiter's Io experiment is considered to be the only interpretation possible. But if Lessans is right (and I say "if" for your benefit), then there may be another reason for the delay that has nothing to do with the speed of light.

If there is another reason for the delay, then that "other reason" exists regardless of how wrong Lessans might be.

And equally, IF that reason exists, it should be easily measurable; We are talking about a discrepancy of some seventeen minutes over six months here. And it would not be expected to just coincidentally match up with every other way we have of measuring lightspeed (including such things as observations of Saturn's moons or Mars's, which display the exact same phenomenon).

Tidal effects are truly irrelevant here. Io is tidally locked, so the effect on orbital period is small, despite the eccentricity and seismological impacts which are notable and in the latter case, very impressive.

Worse still for your case, the orbital eccentricity of Io is now very precisely known, and when the variations in orbital period this causes are accounted for, the estimate of lightspeed we derive is even more accurate - allowing for these effects does not undermine the result, but rather gives it more support.

It also brings into question whether the speed of light, based on his computations, was accurate.
.

No, it really doesn't. It is known to have been fairly inaccurate, though it was in the right ballpark; And the reasons for that are not only well known, but are given in the article @pood provided, and that is linked in the very first post in the quote-chain (above).

Of course, Roemer was the FIRST to use this technique, but was far from the last, and further observations using far better equipment than was available in the C17th have been made, confirming that his methodology was sound.

You are falling into your well worn rut of taking something you know nothing about, asking Bing a loaded question about it, and then misinterpreting the answer (which you don't seem to have read, or at least don't seem to have understood) as support for your beliefs.

That this is a spectacularly poor way to find out anything about anything, should be obvious to anyone with a primary school level grasp of science; So I am not surprised that you are utterly and pathetically unaware of just how dumb you are being when you do it.

I'm not trying to ask Bing a loaded question and then misinterpret the answer.

Then what you are trying to do does not reflect what you are actually doing.

I am trying to work through the claim of afferent vision in light of Lessans' claim. He made this claim from a different angle entirely.

From the angle of not having a clue?

If he was right about his observations (which you have not disproved),

I so have. His "observations" are logically impossible, and fail to predict any of a range of observations available to all, while implying to be false many observations that are demonstrably true.

I shouldn't have to prove that certain astronomical calculations are false.

You don't have to. You could simply drop your belief in Lessans' idiotic claims; Or you could choose to be wrong. Both are alternative options for you.

That wasn't his job either. I have said over and over that he was not an astronomer, but, again, that doesn't automatically make his observations inaccurate.

What fucking observations? He has CLAIMS. He has CONJECTURES. He has NO OBSERVATIONS.

You don't even know what the word means, and nor did he.

That is why I said it's a category error because he is discussing how the brain and eyes work, and everyone else is discussing how light works.

The eyes work by detecting light.

Discussion of the eyes necessarily entails discussion of light.

Even you, with your nutty "light has to be at the eye" incomplete conjecture, agree that light is directly necessary for sight.

His claim does not violate physics or the speed of light.

Yes, it absolutely does.

No one seems interested in understanding his observations or his reasoning therefrom.

That's because they cannot be understood. They fly in the face of logic and reason, and understanding is not an option. Belief is always an option, people believe incoherent nonsense all the time. But belief not only does not require understanding, it actively rejects it.

They just want to claim that he is wrong so they claim that they are right.

No, I claim he is wrong because he is demonstrably wrong. Even if I too were wildly wrong, he wouldn't be, and couldn't be, right.

They both can't be right. The verdict is still out whether you think so or not.

That's obvious. He is wrong, so either they are both wrong, or just Lessans is.

Either way, he remains wrong.

 

[peacegirl]

Pg

After all the posts how can you still say Lessans and you do not conflict with science.

Your approach is to argue that science has alleged inconsistencies and falsehoods so we should ignore Lessans’ faulty claims. You try to put Lessans on a par with science.

Maybe Pood can fit that into a logical error. False equivalence?

At the beginning of the book Lessans tries to put himself on par with ancient philosophers.

He wasn’t just on par; he was better!

 

[DBT]

Hey, peacegirl, remember this? It was first presented to you at least 15 years ago!

There is nothing here that conflicts with real-time vision because the speed of light has nothing to do with his claim. Back to the drawing board.

The drawing board doesn't permit instant vision. The drawing board support physics, where light has a finite speed and takes time to travel between its source and the eyes.

 

[DBT]

The only flaw is with the idea that the object's wavelength/frequency (IMAGE) travels to the brain rather than the brain looking through the eye to see the object itself. That's it.

Nope, that's not it. That's not anything, because literally nobody is saying that "the object's wavelength/frequency (IMAGE) travels to the brain", and the parenthetical "(IMAGE)" is a bizarre non-sequitur.

It is not a non-sequitur. It is central to this discussion. When I say the object's wavelength/frequency, I mean the light that has the potential to bring to the eye the image of the object. It might not be the words you use, but you should know what I mean by now.

Light reflects off objects, and travels to the brain.

Okay.

Light consists of a number of photons; Each has a frequency that, for visible light, we call colour (in the US, "color").

Got it.

As photons are constrained to travel at c, the frequency and wavelength of light become interchangeable; A photon of known frequency has a known wavelength and vice-versa.

So far so good.

Unless the object in question has a pure colour, or is illuminated by a pure colour source (such as a laser), the photons that reflect from it will have a wide range of individual frequencies, the average of which we call the colour(s) of the object's surface.

Right.

The pattern formed by these photons can be resolved into an image of the object. An image is a pattern on a plane through the straight-line path that light takes from object to that plane; By focussing the light through a lens, the pattern can be made to match the suface pattern of the object, and such a matching pattern is called an image of the object.

This is where we part ways. By focusing the light through the lens, we see the object through the pattern, which is called seeing in real time.

When a retina lies exactly on the focal plane of the lens, the pattern of light on the retinal cells matches the pattern of light on the surface of the object. If the retina is offset from the focal plane, then the image formed will be blurry, and will not match the pattern of the surface of the object - this can be corrected by interposing additional lenses to bring the focal plane more accurately onto the retina.

Correct.

This is what you are denying. (It is also how spectacles and contact lenses work).

Not at all. Corrective lenses work when the retina is offset from the focal plane, which can be corrected by bringing the focal plane more accurately on the retina. I'm not sure where you think this disproves efferent vision.

Now, please provide your similarly detailed description of what you are claiming.

How does "the brain [look] through the eye to see the object itself"? What role does light play in this, exactly?

I can only give you what he wrote because I can't say it any better, especially when I'm under a microscope. I am sure this won't satisfy you, but I'll keep trying.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

At a very early age, our brain not only records sound, taste, touch, and smell but also photographs the objects involved, which develops a negative of the relation, whereas a dog is incapable of this. When he sees the features of his master without any accompanying sound or smell, he cannot identify them because no photograph was taken. A dog identifies through his sense of sound and smell and what he sees in relation to these sense experiences, just as we identify most of the differences that exist through words and names. If the negative plate on which the relation is formed is temporarily disconnected — in man’s case the words and names and in a dog’s case the sounds and smells — both would have a case of amnesia. This gives conclusive evidence as to why an animal cannot identify too well with his eyes. As we have seen, if a vicious dog accustomed to attacking any person who should open the fence at night were to have two senses, hearing and smell, temporarily disconnected, and assuming that no relation was developed as to the way in which an individual walked, he would actually have amnesia, and even though he saw with his eyes his master come through the gate, he would have no way of recognizing him and would attack. But a baby, having already developed negatives of relations that act as a slide in a movie projector, can recognize at a very early age. The brain is a very complex piece of machinery that not only acts as a tape recorder through our ears and the other three senses and a camera through our eyes, but also, and this was never understood, as a movie projector. As sense experiences become related or recorded, they are projected, through the eyes, upon the screen of the objects held in relation and photographed by the brain. Consequently, since the eyes are the binoculars of the brain, all words that are placed in front of this telescope, words containing every conceivable kind of relation, are projected as slides onto the screen of the outside world, and if these words do not accurately symbolize, as with five senses, man will actually think he sees what has absolutely no existence; and if words correctly describe, then he will be made conscious of actual differences and relations that exist externally but have no meaning for those who do not know the words.

How do spectacles or contact lenses enable the brain to look through the eye to see the object clearly, when it could not be seen clearly without them, and without light taking time to travel the (short but non-zero) distance from retina to lens?

Light travels to the lens, but this doesn't explain how the brain and eyes see. They are two different things.

In order for the mechanism you claim to supplant the mechanism you are denying, it must explain all of the things that we observe, including such phenomena as correcting vision with spectacles; And it must explain them as well as, or better than, our existing explanation, while also explaining something else that the existing explanation does not.

If it can't, it would be unreasonable to adopt a new explanation or to give credence to a new mechanism.

Seeing in real time does not disrupt the way lenses work to correct vision. It has nothing to do with it. It has other important implications, but does not dispute any of the applications that use light in their technologies that are proven to work.

Memory function doesn't store information in the form of photographs. Light does not transmit information in the form of photographs.

How do you know what the brain is doing that proves that a photograph is not taken that forms a memory? Light is not what transmits information in the form of photographs. Light is a condition of sight, not a cause that transmits information (which claim you're entirely ignoring).

The brain does not take photographs. Memory is not stored in the form of photographs.

It's the connection between the word and the object. It's not an actual photograph DBT. You're not following him.

When we see something, we are not looking at photographs.

No, we're not. He never said we are.

Our experience is being generated by the brain using information detected/acquired by the eyes, with the information integrated with memory, which enables recognition .

Saying "information detected/acquired by the eyes" could be used in the afferent version of vision as well. In both accounts, whether we interpret an image or see the thing in real time doesn't change how our memories work or what the brain does with the information. Our experience is generated by the brain using what it sees, through the eyes, which is then integrated with memory, enabling recognition.

That is shown when memory function breaks down and the patient can no longer recognize what they see. There eyes are functioning, the information is transmitted to the visual cortex, but memory function fails to integrate the information in order to enable recognition.

This is true. It's called aphasia, I believe. Memory is essential. I don't know where you got the idea that vision is all that is needed without other parts of the brain to make sense of what is seen. Obviously, the memory portion of our brain that recognizes, categorizes, and integrates what is seen (whether in delayed or real time) is essential for a functioning human being to respond to his environment.

Nothing you say here, being full of errors and made up stuff that has no relationship to how the world works, supports real time/instant vision.

Why that is so has been repeated countless times, only to be casually brushed aside without consideration.

 

[peacegirl]

It is incumbent upon me to distinguish between the word "image" (the light that is reflected off the object)

The light that is recflected off the object is not an image.

You know what I mean. The "image" is the light that is the precursor that allows the brain to see in delayed time, according to science.

and photons (packets of electromagnetic energy) that travel through space/time,

That - That right there - is the light that is reflected off the object.

or you will never understand this concept.

You are the one failing to understand. An image is not just light; it is the pattern of light that exists in the focal plane of a lens. The light at that plane is in the exact same pattern as the light as it reflected off the object, due to the simple fact that light travels at constant speed in a given medium, and in a straight line.

That is true, but what is happening is more easily seen when we look at celestial objects. It is assumed that light strikes an object where the pattern (the reflection of that object) goes on forever, but this is not what occurs.

Sure it is.

No it isn't.

Light from the object fades

Nope. Light "fades" with distance for two reasons: The inverse square law, which simply means that photons are equally numerous at any given distance, but the area over which they are spread increases proportionally to the square of that distance; And scattering by intervening particles, which is only relevant when such particles are present, and so does not apply to the vacuum of interstellar space.

An individual photon must continue to travel forever, because there's no mechanism for its energy to go anywhere else - the First Law of Thermodynamics means a photon cannot lose energy as it travels through a vacuum.

Okay, an individual photon must continue to travel forever in a vacuum, which does nothing to negate the claim. Seeing the object in real time doesn't mean light loses energy. We see the object due to the inverse square law, which, as you said, causes photons to spread proportionally to the square of that distance. This supports what I'm saying.

or is not seen at all if it doesn't meet the requirements (size, proximity, and brightness).

The requirements for sight is that a sufficient number of photons must arrive at the retina to stimulate the optic nerve, and must be focussed at the plane of the retina such that the pattern of arriving photons matches the pattern they formed when they departed.

Light travels from A to B with a pattern, but when we are talking about real-time vision, the pattern doesn't travel. The pattern is there when the object is seen. You are conflating two different observations.

Size, proximity* and brightness are all contributors to those requirements, but are not sufficient, as we can trivially demonstrate by having a large and luminous object close by, but placing an opaque object between it and our eyes.

You brought this up before. If there is something opaque between the object and our eyes, there is no brightness, so the requirements are not met.

We can see the object as long as the pattern makes contact with the retina or a telescope.

Yes. And in order to do so, the photons that form that pattern must travel from object to retina.

No, that is what he is disputing, and repeating the present version doesn't prove it.

We cannot see anything just because the photons make contact with a telescope, unless and until they go on to stimulate our retinae.

True, the point being made is that the telescope is magnifying the light and enlarging the object in real time.

IOW, we see the object because it is there to be seen.

We see the object because light travels from it to our retinae.

Say it 100 more times and maybe somehow this will be proof enough.

We do not see what is there to be seen unless we look; And looking is the act of orienting and focussing our eyes such that the light arriving from the object is focussed at our retinae.

The focusing is true. If we can't focus, we won't see the world clearly. Where you are incorrect is that the light landing on our retina has to arrive through time and space.

The light does not bring the pattern of the object over space/time without the object being in our field of view.

Dur.

That you felt this was worthy of comment suggests to me that "field of view" may be another technical term whose meaning you do not know, and/or which you are using incorrectly here.

Then correct me and we'll see if this does anything to negate his claim.

Photons travel through space/time without a pattern.

No, they don't. They must necessarily maintain the pattern they had when emitted or last reflected, because they all travel at the same speed.

But this account has nothing to do with speed, so it's a moot point you're making. The confusion, once again, has to do with light traveling and producing a pattern on a wall or the retina that would help an optician create the right lenses. But I am talking about something entirely different.

They are electromagnetic packets of energy, and when they strike an object, we see the object due to its unique absorptive and reflective properties.

No. You missed several steps. When they strike an object, they are over there, striking that object; At that moment, our retinae are over here. How does the fact that the photons are striking the object get across the gap from there to here?

Again, light is traveling. It never stops, so there is no gap. The only difference is how WE see (if Lessans is right), not how light travels.

When they strike an object, they bounce off (or do not) due to its unique absorptive and reflective properties. The pattern of those properties is then carried as a pattern of photons across the gap to our eyes, where it is focussed onto our retinae. Only then do we see the object.

There is so much confusion here, I don't know if I can bridge the gap (figuratively )

If this doesn't happen, then the photons over there striking the object cannot do anything that influences us, over here, in any way.

You'll just have to keep trying to square efferent vision with the fact that light travels. They are not mutually exclusive situations.

Light becomes a necessary condition of sight

It always was.

But it doesn't bring the world to us; it reveals the world for us.

but it doesn't bring the external world to our eyes in delayed time.

Of course it does. If it doesn't, WHAT DOES?

Nothing. We see the world in real time, which doesn't require light to bring anything.

The object is THERE; Our eyes are HERE. How does the information that the object even exists, much less any information about what it looks like, cross that gap?

There IS no gap. That is what you're not understanding. Hopefully in time (no pun intended) you will.

It reveals the world to us in real time.

No, it doesn't.

It does bilby, but you're not seeing it yet. I have patience because I want you to get it.

* You were denying that one earlier; You said that distance and time were irrelevant. Have you changed your mind?

 

[peacegirl]

Pg
That is a pretty good map of light traveling and the present belief as to how sight works, but nothing in that diagram explains how the eyes work. There is no proof that nerve signals reach the brain and become images, which is the main argument.

Rods and cones on retina connected to nerves, nerves running to a region of the brain. Signals on the optic nerves run one way, eye to brain.Rods ad cones cones convert photons to electrons. You might just as well argue against photosynthesis in plants

We know damage in the area of the brain where optic nerves go causes vision problems.

I am not debating any of this. Every part of the eye is necessary for sight. The only difference is the mechanism of how these structures are used in light of real-time vision. It doesn't remove them. Every part of the eye and brain is essential, including memory.

I had a temporary speech aphasia from a subdural hematoma. Fluid acculturation put pressure on the speech enter of my brain.

You can search for specific studies. Fairly old news.

I can understand that. Anything that interferes with a particular part of the brain, due to a lack of blood supply, would cause a serious problem. Thank goodness yours was resolved.

Imaging the brain's response to visual stimuli involves techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to map activation in the visual cortex and higher-order areas. Visual stimuli typically trigger responses in the primary visual cortex (V1), moving through areas V2-V4 for feature detection (color, orientation) and into the ventral stream for object recognition.

MRI can show which areas of the brain are invoked for different kinds of stimulus.

I watched a neuroscientist talk about an experiment. He ran MRIs on theists while contemplating god and paraying to see which areas of the brain increased activity.

It's really fascinating what neuroscience is learning about the brain, but so far, nothing has pinpointed a location in the brain where images are formed in delayed time.

You are arguing from an apriori assumption Lessans is right without evidence.

Visual images are foamed tin the visual cortex. Your chronic argument that science does not explain vision is patently false. It does not add credence to your claims.

It is like a Creationist argument.

Steve, you are so off the mark, I don't know how to convince you. THERE IS EVIDENCE, but maybe not to your satisfaction. More tests can be done. I'm not here to fool you. I am challenging beliefs that you have carried for decades.

 

[pood]

THERE IS EVIDENCE

What is it?

In fact, there can be no evidence, because it cannot logically be the case that light is at the eye instantly while taking time to get there.

Why did you post total irrelevancies about the Jovian moon Io when the example I linked clearly shows that we were able to measure the speed of light only because there is a delay in light getting to the eye?

If light is at the eye instantly (even though ti takes time to get there by your own admission) how are we able to measure the speed of light in the first place?

 

[peacegirl]

THERE IS EVIDENCE

What is it?

In fact, there can be no evidence, because it cannot logically be the case that light is at the eye instantly while taking time to get there.

Why did you post total irrelevancies about the Jovian moon Io when the example I linked clearly shows that we were able to measure the speed of light only because there is a delay in light getting to the eye?

If light is at the eye instantly (even though ti takes time to get there by your own admission) how are we able to measure the speed of light in the first place?

No one is saying what you think it is saying, so back off, Pood. We can measure the speed of light, but this has nothing to do with the brain and how it works.