Sorry, I was typing faster than I was thinking. I was talking about Natural Selection–Darwinism–and used the word “evolution” mistakenly. Natural Selection is only one part of the overall theory of evolution, but I made it sound like I was generalizing about evolution as a whole. Of course there are positive adaptations–flight, for example–that enable an organism to better exploit its environment. Sorry, far too oversimplified in my attempt to communicate that evolution is basically passive; it has no inherent forward or upward movement.
As I have noted already, I use differences between wavelengths as an ostensive similarity, in other words, something one might be tempted to think of as a similarity. My point is that similarity relations between color perceptions do not track any objective physical similarities in any direct way, whatever you think might constitute an objective similarity. Of course, to an extent, over some intervals, color similarity judgments do track differences between light wavelengths, and that is the reason I wavelengths up as the most plausible physical “similarity” around.
Quite right, and a similar fact holds over some intervals with regard to color, just as I have said.
I agree that the senses represent a consistent picture of the physical world. What I do not agree with is that similarities amongst what we might call “sense data” correspond directly to similarities amongst the physical objects that cause them.
Given what you’ve said in response to my posts, tell me, then, what objective, physical dimension of similarity do our judgments of color similarities tend consistently to reflect? I have denied there is any such dimension of similarity.* The only way to successfully disagree with me is to show me an example of such a thing.
-FrL-
*By dimension of similarity I mean this. (Unfortunately, this gets complicated. But I can’t think of a simpler more intuitive way to explain it than this. I start with very intuitive examples, but if you still need a definition, there will be some slogging to go through.)
One dimension of similarity is the spectrum of wavelengths in sound. As things are closer or further apart along ths dimension, there is a sense in which they are more or less similar. (You get to just stipulate that “there is a sense” in which things are more similar. The challenge is to come up with a dimension that is intuitive i.e., that shouldn’t make one squirm when one comes to the phrase “there is a sense in which.”)
So a dimension of similarity is this: a set of possible measurements over which a relationship has been defined, over which in turn a relation we will call “more similar” has been defined (I’ll explain what I mean by these two terms in the next paragraph) such that from any set of four measurements out of the dimension, it is determinate whether the first two of those measurements have the relation (i.e. the relation “more similar”) with each other or not.
Let me further explain. Say you have a range of possible measurements, for example, measurements of temperature. The range of possible measurements of temperature range from 0 degrees Kelvin on up to, I suppose, infinity. That’s our range of possible measurements. That’s our dimension of similarity, once I say the following. I define a relationship on that range of measurements as follows: The relationship between two measurements is the difference between them. Call this relationship R. Now, clearly, there is a continuous range in R, ranging from zero to infinity. I now define a relation on the members of that relationship as follows: Given two members of R, r1 and r2, r1 is “more similar” than r2 if and only if r1 is less than r2. r1 is “identically similar” to r2 if and only if r1 is the same as r2. Otherwise, r1 is “less similar” than r2.
That was complicated as well, but hopefully you see I’m just being very clear as to what it means to say one pair of things is “more” or “less” similar than another pair of things.
I did not know about this term, thanks for that! I’ll check it out and see if its a good example of what I’m talking about. (From what you’ve said, it looks like it probably is.)
-FrL-
It is in fact the case that “‘same’” is different from “identical.” Read it carefully, what I just said. Look for little punctuation marks and things like that.
Now notice that what I just said is not quite what you claimed I said. This is because you did not read carefully and notice where I was putting quotation marks and where I was not. (I do count one instance in this thread where I forgot to put the quote marks.)
Octaves are heard as “the same.” They are not heard as the same.
I know I didn’t explain what I meant by using the quotation marks, but I mean, come on, nobody’s so stupid that I would have to explain that. Once you’ve noticed them, you know I’m using them for a reason. Once you know there’s a reason, given the subject matter and what I’m claiming, it should be pretty obvious what I mean by them.
I just don’t think you’re right about my (or your) level of understanding of the issues in this thread, or my success in posting fairly clearly about them. But I don’t think there’s any use discussing it.
I can say this: Apparently some people in this thread have understood me just fine. Also, when I discussed this in person with an evobio’ist, using pretty much just the phraseology I’m now using, he understood me with little difficulty, and we had a nice conversation about it.
I’ve also put up a list, in a recent post, of the parts of my posts in which I stated what my point has been in this sub-conversation on this thread. If you find something in that list which is unclear, I’d like you to point it out to me and say something about why it is unclear.
As to what I should do when someone tells me I don’t know how to count to three, you said I should believe them?! It seems the opposite is clearly the case: I should think they don’t understand how to count to three, instead.
And I do not think hypotheticals are examples. Someone asked me how it could come about that something might happen, which means they were asking me for a hypothetical. I then gave one. This was in order to satisfy a request for a hypothetical.
-FrL-
Here is what I said in post 101.
Someone else responded to this text by saying “Ah, is that what you’ve been trying to say?” They then went on to repeat what they took to be my point, in their own words.
Now, according to your last post, I then siezed on this person’s interpretation and basically pretended (if even to myself) that it was what I meant all along.
But notice that for you to be able to say this, we must conclude that you found my comment quoted above incomprehensible, meaningless, or whatever. You must have had specifically that passage in mind. It is the one you were referring to when you said that up to a certain point nothing I had said made any particular sense, and that I had to adopt someone else’s interpretation of my own words.
Really? Did you really find the quoted text incomprehensible?
What’s not to comprehend, then?
-FrL-
Are you reading the same thread I am?
Not only have you posted numerous incorrect statements, Frylock has patiently and courteously responded to you in every case that I have read.
Oh dammit, that’s twice now. 
I’m cursed!
-FrL-
That’s why I qualified my statement.
One of the questions in your OP has not been answered yet (I don’t think), and that is “wouldn’t we be just as fit if we perceived 5ths as the same”?
It’s an interesting question. I would like to know how that would change our interaction with the environment.
Well its several posts back so Brain Wreck probably won’t get a chance to read the present post before responding, but in fact, the word “must” should have been placed before (i.e., to the left of,) the word “correspond” in what I said here.
Sorry about that.
Oh crap, and this:
should read as follows:
-FrL-
Backing up to page two for a second:
I’ve just noticed that in this post, Brain Wreck (though he said I was wrong for us to think there is an evolutionary explanation for it,) offers an evolutionary explanation for the fact that we don’t hear fifths as “the same.” (I mean to refer here to the bolded part in the quotation above.) Sure he did so under percieved duress, but if I’m reading him correctly, he thinks the explanation he offers is basically right, just (for some reason) beside the point or something.
So he did offer an evolutionary explanation, and it is of just the sort I have said satisfies me. I have said it satisfies me to note that octave are objectively similar, so in general, auditory systems will evolve to percieve them as similar, unless some other factor makes it advantageous to do things some other way–where “some other way” includes as one possibility the notion of hearing some interval other than the octave as similar.
I notice also that the evolutionary explanation he does offer here implicitly allows for the possibility that had there been some advantage in hearing fifths as the same, it very well may have come about that organisms do in fact hear fifths as the same. Which is exactly what I have argued for.
-FrL-
And then I explained, again, why there is no remotely realistic path, even in the realm of fanciful contrivance, where it would be more advantageous to hear octaves as more similar than fifths. And we went through it and you offered a bunch of useless analogies to wavelengths of light which you are entirely unable to demonstrate through mathematical or physical principles, only pages of appeals to shaky logic. And through it all, you will cling tenaciously to what you’d already decided to believe before you even opened the thread, making specious arguments that others who vocally disagree with you are in fact secretly agreeing with you. I am finished with this effort in futility; good evening to you.
That you did, and I did try to give scenarios etc. But that was all quite beside the point, as I even explained at the time.
My point was, if there had been an advantage to evolving that way, then we could well have evolved that way.
You apparently agree, as per my previous post and as per what I take to be the implication of your previous post (i.e. the one I’m presently responding to).
We disagree as to whether it is possible for there to be an advantage to evolving that way. We’ve discussed that at some length. It seems to be the issue that exercises you da most. It is not the case for me–I have responded in regards to this particular issue primarily because you have asked me to clarify and demonstrate my claim, and because I find it interesting and fun to clarify and demonstrate claims. But I am not centrally concerned to discuss this claim. I’m happy to either drop that particular question, or move it to GD.
-FrL-
Good day. I bid you good day.
Except I’ve just realized that can’t be the end of it.
In one place, you admit that had there been an advantage to it, we could have evolved to hear fifths as “the same.”
But elsewhere, you insist that evolution can not but give us perceptual apparatus which give rise to similarity judgments which track actual physical similarities in the environment in a direct way.
These two claims are incompatible, as the latter one implies that there is no way to percieve fifths as more similar than octaves, no matter how advantageous it might be to do so.
I have advocated that you accept the first claim, and reject the second. You do accept the first claim, but you also accept the second. You can’t; they contradict each other.
In order to challenge your acceptance of the second claim, I asked you to provide me with a “dimension of similarity” in the physical world (I explain that phraseology in the post I’m presently describing) which the visual system tracks. I maintain there is no such dimension. Indeed, I offer an argument that there is no such dimension, as follows. The most plausible candidate for a dimension of similarity is the differences between wavelengths of the lightwaves that stimulate our eyes. Indeed, over some intervals, our own color similarity judgments do track these differences, such that smaller differences correspond to judgments of “more similar.” But over many intervals, this correspondance fails to hold. That’s the most plausible candidate I can think of. Given the nature of vision, its apparent purpose, the facts about what stimulates its receptors, and so on, it is difficult to imagine what other candidate for a dimension of similarity there could be. That the most plausible candidate doesn’t work, and that there are no other plausible candidates, together give us a good reason to think there is no such thing. But you insist there must be one. So, let’s have it.
-FrL-
Not sure if you meant “octaves as more similar than fifths” or if you meant “fifths as more similar than octaves”.
Either way, how can you possibly be so sure of your position?
Consider this thought experiment:
A warehouse contains thousands of rats.
Food is only supplied via some number of machines.
Every hour, each machine produces 3 tones. Randomly, they are either all fifths, or they are a mixture of any old frequency.
If the tones are all fifths, and the rat presses a bar, then food is dispensed.
If the tones are not all fifths, and the rat presses a bar, then a mild shock is administered.
This situation seems like it would have the ingredients for causing an ability to categorize tones in fifths to develop (over a long time). Although it might just as easily cause big rats to push smaller ones onto the bar everytime there is a noise.
Either way, the point is that you seem to be dismissing the possibility that any conditions would influence the development of neural structures to categorize certain relationships over others.
Why do you dismiss this possibility? Is there sound mathematical or physical evidence that indicates this type of categorization can not evolve?
I think the question to ask about the evolutionary pressures on hearing is not why octaves sound similar. Octaves sound similar because the physical apparatus for detecting a given wavelength will naturally resonate at multiples of that wavelength. To not sound the same would require extra work on the part of our ears, work that there is no selective pressure to perform. I think a better question to ask about our hearing is why two notes that are very close together don’t sound the same.
Contrast this with color, where two tones that have a very similar frequency response look pretty much the same. The nerves in your eyes send four signals to your brain (brightness, red-versus-green, blue-versus-yellow, and a fourth channel for the rods) and that sort of data compression of the full spectrum seen in a scene has been good enough for the human race to get by on.
Our ears, on the other hand, have no such compression. You could make an argument that distinguishing very similar sounds from one another dovetails nicely with our modes of communication; where altering tones slightly can change one statement from pleasant to sarcastic, or in the case of some languages, change the words’ meanings entirely.
Right, I think that’s the consensus on this thread as to how to answer my original question. The physics of sound make it, so to speak, “natural” for us to hear octaves as similar, and there’s been no reason it would have been advantageous for us to hear things in some other way, so its no suprise we’ve ended up hearing “in octaves” as we do.
I would suspect the origin goes back further than language use, as the feature of hearing you’re describing (if I’m understanding you right) is one that we share with a lot of other animals.
But this feature of our auditory system certainly seems to have been, so to speak, “co-opted” by our language faculty. Our language is able to be the way it is only because our auditory perceptual system is the way it is.
-FrL-
There’s no advantageous reason why we should hear them as more similar, but in evolution, if something isn’t deleteriously disadvantageous it stays if it is too “hard” to evolve an alternative.
What do you think of my hypothesis of the need for a common musical language to enhance the social experience?
I have no objection to any nuanced scenario where any other interval was seen as “most similar”, provided that (and this is the important part) no other interval pair that is mathematically more similar would be seen as less similar. I can accept a scenario where fifths and octaves are seen with an equal amount of “sameness”. I explicitly reject any scenario where an interval of fifths is perceived as more similar than an interval of octaves. Please do not attribute any acceptance of such a scenario to me.
In this experiment, the rat’s brain is not required to judge the smilarity of the tones, or delude itself into thinking that fifths are “more similar” than octaves. It only has to distinguish fifths from other intervals and remember that they are the least painful. Judging fifths to be least painful only requires that the rat distinguish fifths from other intervals and remember that they are painful. It doesn’t under any circumstances favor the rat judging them to be more similar than an octave. The rat is helped by the fact that fifths are more similar than any interval except an octave, but it would probably get a lost of false hits on tones that were very close together or on the fringes of its ranges of acuity.
The sameness that the animal detects does not need to be “hey, these stimuli are the same, something good is going to happen”. This statement is sometimes true and sometimes not true. It’s the job of learning and memory to make that association. In your rat experiment it’s just “hey, these are the same stimuli I perceived the last time something bad happened”. It doesn’t matter whether they’re identical or wildly dissimilar… as long as the rat can identify what it is, and remember what it means, then it can get the reward. As long as the problem is easily solved by behavior and learning, there is absolutely no need for these complex physiological adaptations you guys keep trying to imagine.
If you didn’t want an answer, why did you ask the question?