We don’t?
I thought there was a lot of study in cog sci and psychology into the question of how the faculty of “attention” works. I thought it was considered to be a fairly complex task.
But, I’m here to be educated.
-FrL-
And neurobiology and cet.
-FrL-
The outcome would not be to perceive certain intervals as being the same. It would be to perceive them as “tasty”. This is how evolution of senses works in predators.
No, because again, perceiving dissimilar sets as the same is completely dysfunctional for every form of sensation and cognition. Such an animal would be entirely unable to do anything except register a dissimilar set as similar. It is quite frankly impossible that any organism that evolved a behavior as complex as predation could have such a fatal neural defect. It’s like imagining Stevie Wonder safely driving a car down a crowded street with neither coaching nor perceptive aids. You are of course free to create whatever fantasy world you like, but you need to realize that only engineering would create such a beast, not anything that could be called evolution. And such a beast would be entirely useless except to prop up what’s left of your increasingly silly position.
How would you explain annimals that don’t differentiate colors?
How would you explain the fact that humans differentiate colors to a lesser degree than birds?
Frylock, I’m impressed with your patience.
If there was a significant evolutionary advantage to perceiving fifths as the “same” (as in significantly similar), then there is a high likelihood that we would evolve structures in the brain to categorize those sounds as the “same”.
Okay, this game with the birds and the shrews and what not is going no where. You haven’t convinced me that I am expressing some misunderstanding, and I will not be able to convince you that it was entirely physically possible for creatures to evolve such that they percieve dissimilar things as similar.
I can not understand why you guys don’t think this is physically possible, as I think it is physically actual. We percieve dissimilar lightwaves as similar.
I also don’t understand why you guys don’t think it physically possible, given that we all know you can take any data, slap any function on them you want, and get any other set of data out of the function. Why can not each function be thought to correspond to an organism which, in some physically possible setup somewhere, might have evolved?
Anyway, as I say, I can see I’m not going to convince you.
I also think this line of conversation is beside the point. It is not a consequence of, nor does it have implications for, the material in post number 68, which I take to by my categorical summary of my intentions in this thread and what I have taken away from the thread.
Feel free to continue discussing the things I’ve mentioned about birds and shrews etc. I’ll keep talking about it, too, if you want to discuss the matter. But understand that I do not place much significance on it. By this I mean, even if you convinced me that no creature of the type I describe could ever evolve in any physically possible situation, I would still think the points in post 68 are right.
-FrL-
Funny… my post expressing some impatience came right after yours. 
(Still, I think my expression of impatience left the conversation open and cordial.)
Things seem to me as they seem to you, but I do not know how it is that I am failing to make them seem the same to everyone else. 
-FrL-
And on rechecking, indeed, you did. You misunderstood me.
And, you’ve accused me of misunderstanding the text at my link, but on checking, it seems, that’s not the case.
As a result of the different A’s being “pooled,” (whatever exactly that means,) we are able to “trans-code” them into an additional signal for a general A. This is why they have the same pitch quality, or, as I’ve been putting it, sound “the same.” (I put quotes around “the same” in all those instances for a reason. I mean we hear them as “the same note” though also as “octaves distinct from each other.”)
It is the placement of the neuron layers which allows for transcoding, and it is the transcoding which results in the identiy in pitch quality.
And what’s it say there at the end? That there is an anatomical basis for our internal chroma map. Implying? That different anatomies might have yielded different chroma map.
This is exactly what I said above in this thread.
Had the neuron layers been “pooled” differently, we would “transcode” entirely different sets of notes as yielding a common signal, and would therefore find this other set of notes to have the same “pitch quality” instead of octaves.
In this post I’m just arguing that I read the passage correctly. I recognize that you are not convinced that the alternate evolution I allude to could actually have come about.
-FrL-
You absolutely did.
It’s similar to the 20 or 30 visual processing structures that code for all kinds of different things (movement, contrast, etc. etc. etc.)
So how did all of these different creatures evolve from a simple organism if evolution doesn’t require some advantage?
If it’s all negative, just culling the weak, then we would still be that simple organism because anything extra does have a negative, it uses energy.
Then it’s a good thing I acknowledged that that was a vast oversimplification to make a point, and not an exhaustive precis of the entire theory of evolution. My point was in reference to Frylock’s assumption that every single trait an organism has must have an evolutionary advantage–like an appendix, for example.
But you eliminated the KEY reason for physical diversity, and that’s the positive aspects of variations. This is more than an oversimplification, it’s misleading.
If your point was to state that there exists physical attributes that are neutral and were not specifically selected for at any point during our evolution, then say that. What you chose to state was not correct and so your point was not made.
As for the appendix, do you believe this organ has arisen for no purpose? Do you think it never had a purpose? Did you know that current research shows it does appear to have a function (release of chemicals into intestine)?
Finally, do you think we evolved the brain circuitry to specially account for octaves for no reason? Do you think this specialized brain circuitry is a random structure? If so, how do you get thousands of neurons to consistently organize into a functional pattern if there is no selective pressure?
Because you are stuck in a logical argument from ignorance .
Only where they are mathematically more similar than others, and where no interference exists. Our senses perceive the physical world exactly where as it is, and makes cognitive judgements about whether 2 pairs of frequencies are more alike, or more different. Only then do we decide what importance to attach to that similarity.
You may think or imagine anything you like. However you cannot call it evolution, because cannot fit that definition. See below.
This line of conversation absolutely is related. Up in post 68, you courageously arrive at the incredibly obvious conclusion that it is best for an organism to perceive the physical world as it is. But you don’t understand how evolution works. Evolution works by selecting against traits that hurt reproductive fitness at some point in the past, and leaving alone those that aren’t. You’re asking us to imagine a case where evolution doesn’t work that way. That could not be evolution, it could only be engineering. Organisms survive by reacting to the physical world as it truly is. They may miss some physical cues, such as sightless animals like cave worms, but they do not perceive inconsistently with their existing senses.
The brain is wired to draw associations between perceptions… not to force itself as perceiving them as literally the same. Why you can’t see these as different concepts instead of forcing them to be the same, I don’t know.
Again, we did not evolve brain circuitry to specifically account for octaves. Our ears are physically designed as fluid-filled tubes. In such a tube, octaves have the same vibrational characteristics, whether it is your ear, a flute, or a coke bottle… a tone that is an octave above or below a given tone will resonate in nearly all the same physical locations in that tube. This is simply how tubes work. The way our brain works is to interpret things that as appear physically similar as being actually similar; this is the pattern-matching part of our brain, it does this with any stimulus. It tries to group it with things that are more similar and less similar.
Actually I realize there’s one possibility that exists… I haven’t really delved into it because it seems obvious to me, but…
It is true that many animals have a different ability to perceive “sameness”. For example, some animals see no colors, some animals see few colors, some see no light at all. Likewise it follows that with sound, some animals might have insufficient nuance to tell detect octaves as being more similar than fifths. In this case, these animals would perceive both fifths and octaves as being “same”. Just like some animals might not hear any differences in tones at all, and some animals are entirely deaf. But under no circumstances would an animal ever hear fifths and judge them as being more similar to one another than octaves.
But still, this does not mean they are viewing an altered perception of the world… just a restricted perception. I maintain the contrary case to be effectively impossible … that an animal would perceive fifths are more similar than octaves, or thirds more similar than fifths… because it contradicts the principles of physics, physiology, and evolution. If you want to consider the argument from ignorance and talk about unknown definitions of evolution, be my guest.
Frankly, this is bizaar. You are the one who is arguing that something is false only because it has not been proven true.
I am arguing that something is true, because there are good reasons for it to be true.
Do you not know, then, that Human beings judge colors to be similar which are, in terms of lightwave frequency, almost as dissimilar from each other as it is possible for visible lightwaves to be?
The human being’s perceptual apparatus causes us to percieve colors as similar and dissimilar in a way which only sometimes and only indirectly reflects facts about similarities and dissimilarites in wavelengths of light.
Red and violet are judged “similar” though their wavelength measures are about 300 nanometers apart. Meanwhile, red and ora
Frankly, this is bizaar. You are the one who is arguing that something is false only because it has not been proven true.
I am arguing that something is true, because there are good reasons for it to be true.
Do you not know, then, that Human beings judge colors to be similar which are, in terms of lightwave frequency, almost as dissimilar from each other as it is possible for visible lightwaves to be?
The human being’s perceptual apparatus causes us to percieve colors as similar and dissimilar in a way which only sometimes and only indirectly reflects facts about similarities and dissimilarites in wavelengths of light.
Red and violet are judged “similar” though their wavelength measures are about 300 nanometers apart. Meanwhile, red and orange are judged similar and their wavelengths are about fifty nanometers apart.
We judge the “distance” relation between yellow and blue to be greater than the “distance” relation between orange and purple (as we can see on the standard color wheel) yet the wavelengths involved have exactly the opposite distance relations.
Just think about it: Its a logical outcome of the fact that we see colors as arrangeable by similarity relations int wheels, and the fact that wavelenghts are not arrangeable into wheels, that our similarity judgments do not match the objective similarities between the things that are producing color stimuil, namely, things emitting photons as well as the photons they emit.
Generally, but not necessarily always, best.
Can you give me a cite for your (and Lissener’s) claim that evolution only selects against bad traits, rather than selecting for good ones?
I ask for my own education, but I still believe it irrelevant to the larger issues of this thread, as distilled in post 68. Whether your claim turns out to be true or not, my claim that it might not always be best for an organism to see the world as it is can still be argued for. Say evolution only selects against bad traits. Then my claim can be put as follows: sometimes seeing the world as it is could be a bad trait. My thing about the “imitator” birds was an attempt to show how this could possibly be.
I do not know what you mean by saying “they do not percieve inconsistently with their existing senses.” I have not suggested that anything “percieves inconsistently with its existing senses.” I have suggested that the internal, entirely consistent, logic of perception does not always map directly onto the external, entirely consistent logic of physics. There is a mapping, but it is not direct. What is percieved as similar is not always objectively similar, and vice versa.
I can not understand the view you are attributing to me here, nor why you should think it attributable.
And yet physics, physiology and evolution have conspired to produce a visual perception system in which sortings into similarity classes have only the most tenuous relationship to any objective similarity sorting we might perform on the physical cause of the stimuli involved.
-FrL-
By the way, Brain Wreck, I did not “bravely conclude” what you said I did in post 68. I was explaining, at that point in the post, what I have taken to be the case, taken to be an assumption of the conversation, all along. That’s not something I take to have learned in this thread.
Pretty much the only thing I have learned from this thread is some stuff about the physics of sound.
(And that very smart people can fail to understand very clearly explained concepts on occasion… take that in whichever direction you wish :p)
-FrL-
I’ve taken an extraordinary measure.
I am a graduate student. I have therefore felt somewhat free to send an email uninvited to a professor of evolutionary biology at the university at which I study. The text of my email is as follows:
My apologies for the uninvited email. I am looking either for a brief explanation, or a referral to someone else, or reading suggestions.
Here is the question that concerns me at the moment.
I believe it is possible for organisms to evolve perceptual systems which have the following characteristic. They cause the organism to make judgments of “similarity” which, taken in collection, do not map in any direct way the actual similarities that exist in the environmental stimuli which act on that perceptual system.
In fact, I don’t just think this is possible, I think this is actual. I think our visual perception system is like this. Its judgments of color similarity have almost nothing to do with similarities between light wavelengths. (By “similarities between light wavelengths” I just mean the difference between their wavelengths.) The visual system saddles us with judgments of similarity between colors, but these judgments don’t really have anything to do with any similarites (whether in terms of differences between wavelenghts or in any other terms) between light waves or the surfaces that produce them.
So, as I say, I think it is actual, therefore possible, that a perceptual system behave in the way I describe two paragraphs ago. (In fact I also think something possible which is not illustrated by the vision example–that a perceptual system could evolve which counts things as “the same” even though they might be, objectively speaking, entirely different, and that it might count things as “entirely different” which are objectively speaking very, very similar.)
However, some very intelligent and apparently knowledgeable people are insisting to me in personal conversation that it is not possible for a perceptual system to behave in this way. They insist that it is a consequence of principles of evolution taken together with facts about physics that perceptual systems must track actual physical similarities such that judgments of similarity between percepts always map onto similarities between the things causing the stimuli involved in the percepts, in a relatively direct and straightforward way.
Can you say something as to whether I have indeed misunderstood things as these people suggest? Or could you suggest something (preferably but not necessarily online) that I might read in order to correct myself on this point?
If I am wrong about evolution, I must be interpreting what I know about vision incorrectly as well. If that’s the case, I’d like to follow up on this. Do you know if anyone in your department works on the evolution of perceptual systems?
Thanks for any help,
-Kris
(I would like to be able to show the text of your response to the people I’m discussing this with, if you will allow me permission to do so. Something very simple, such as, “Dear Kris, if you’ve described your interlocutor’s position accurately, then you are basically right and they are basically wrong” should suffice. : ] Of course, I won’t relay your name or email address to them, only the information that you are a professor at my university.)
Well, we’ll see if he has the time or inclination to respond.
-FrL-
It’s possible that once we had the perception of octaves (or fifths) as similar, there was evolutionary pressure to keep the perception that way in the human brain.
If I’m not mistaken, there is a portion of the brain that is hard-wired to respond to music. If we evolved a common way to “hear” music, it might help our social interaction if we didn’t have everyone have different aesthetic tastes. Tribe cohesion and all that.