Re: Temporal Learning


Allan C Cybulskie wrote:

> > In short, has evolution finally produced a brand of h.sapiens which is
> > no longer subject to the laws of evolution? Specifically, the tiny band
> > of so-called "philosophers". I think that Cybulskie inadvertently
> > proved "my" point, that animals [precursors to man] require
> > close-enough to accurate perception of their external environments,
> > just in order to not be culled by natural selection. But does this also
> > apply to philosophers?
>
> So, let me look at this before I go on. This response has nothing to do
> with what was originally being discussed in the post that you replied to,
> and is simply an attempt to draw a hostile reaction from myself in
> particular and philosophers in general. Seems to me that that fits the
> definition of "troll". So, feedbackdroids is trolling.
>


Methinks you confuse being a troll with the act of trolling. Very
different things. This entire thing is an experiment in evoking
imagination, after all. [mine, not yours].



> But I'll reply anyway, just for the education of anyone else that might be
> reading.
>
> But before I go on, I want to note the shift in discussion here.


Actually I have been using the term close-enuf representation for many
moons. Truth evolves, after all. Our perception of external reality is
much beetter than that of our common pets, and certainly much better
than a spider's [ref to another post]. To a dog, a tree is basically a
hard place to avoid hitting one's head upon when running. To a human, a
tree has abstract and hierarchical organization.


You are
> claiming that we require "close-enough to accurate perception of their
> external environments" in order to survive natural selection. But what does
> "close-enough" mean? I commented in another post that we probably get
> things GENERALLY right, but that surely the DETAILS matter. You did not
> reply that generally right was all you wanted from natural selection (you
> didn't reply at all). So now why are you claiming that I'm claiming that we
> don't even get things GENERALLY RIGHT? The question is what don't we get
> right, and how much would that matter, and will matter going forward?
>
> Moving on ...
>
> >
> > It actually works both ways, motor and perception are 2 sides of the
> > same survival coin. Eg, if a zebra is born with faulty locomotion
> > apparatus [eg, malformed legs], then it will be rapidly culled from the
> > herd by the first predatory lion to come along. Likewise, if a zebra is
> > born with malformed visual cortex, it's perception of "both" predatory
> > and also like species [ie, in protective herds] will be deficient, and
> > it will also be culled. If the zebra cannot both recognize a lion for
> > what it is, and also the environment in general for what it is, it will
> > both fail to run from the lion and also not know which way to run in
> > the first place. If it runs away from the herd instead of towards the
> > herd, it will surely die. If it runs off a cliff or into a river it
> > cannot perceive, it will surely die.
>
> Well, except that this isn't actually true. Plantinga has a good argument
> showing how these actions can happen even with evolution, but he deals with
> beliefs, not perceptions. So I'll go at that directly.
>
> 1) The argument above does not eliminate massive illusions that lump the
> wrong images into the same categories. Assume that a zebra knows that
> tigers and lions are both predators. However, its sense organs are set up
> such that it sees them both as looking exactly the same as tigers. So, to
> it, a lion looks like a tiger. It would still run away from lions -- since
> it thinks they're tigers -- and so its survival would not be impacted. In
> fact, if it was in an area where tigers were more frequent than lions, it
> would take it less time to LEARN that lions are predators (more on why
> that's important later) and so that would be a survival ADVANTAGE, as it
> would only have to learn that TIGERS -- things that look like tigers -- are
> dangerous, and not that lions are independently dangerous. And that would
> apply to the cliff/river examples as well. It doesn't matter if it sees all
> cliffs as also being rivers since it will avoid both since the proper
> reaction to both is avoidance. But surely in both of these cases it cannot
> be said that its sense perceptions are in any way accurate.
>


This was rather convoluted - the zebra "knows" that lions and tigers
are both predators, but cannot seem to tell them apart. Please.



> 2) There is a problem in that we generally LEARN how to react to various
> stimuli by observing it and reacting to it. So it wouldn't matter to the
> zebra what a lion ACTUALLY looked like to it, because HOWEVER it looked to
> it it would soon learn that it was a threat -- as it would be pushed to run
> away from it by its mother and would also see it killing other zebras -- and
> thus that it should run away from it. It could look like a fluffy pink
> bunny rabbit to it and it would still do the right thing: run away.
>


Deeper still. You're making my point again. Clearly what matters is
that it is able to distinquish predator from non-predator, not give it
a name. If the bunny were 10' long, had teeth as long as its head, and
ran at 30 MPH towards the zebra, twould not matter to the zebra if
"you" called it a bunny.




> This has a correlate in humans. A fair number of humans are colour-blind in
> the manner that they see red as green and green as red. Yet that does not
> mean that they cannot drive or function in society, because all red things
> look like green things to them, and all green things look like red things to
> them, and so they merely learn that they have to stop at what looks -- to
> them -- like green things. They never notice the difference until tested.
> So this sort of mapping makes the organism function properly despite having
> an illusory sense impression (in humans, only one of these two types of
> vision can be correct). As long as it doesn't map two different things to
> the same thing, or does it in a way that does not impact the survival of the
> organism, illusions do not necessarily confer a disadvantage on the
> organism, and thus need not be selected out by natural selection.


This really has little bearing on what was being indicated above. A
zebra can probably recognize a lion for what it is, even at night when
colors matter little. This is one reason why the term "close enuf" is
preferably to something more rigid.

However, the problem is really multi-dimensional, ie, 1 percept does
not a lion make. This is probably why there are 30+ visual centers in
the cortex. If the zebra had to relie on color cues "alone", then a
color blind zebra would probably die quickly. The result would not be
"close-enuf" to do an adequate job regards survival. Rather, with 30 or
so different types of processing being performed on the visual image,
many more cues can be cross-correlated, and the better the result. Dogs
are color-blind, but survive just fine, and why is that? Because they
have many different visual processing centers, and many other cues to
relie upon. You have to look at the whole picture, not just one part.
Color-blindness in male humans is not the norm, rather an abnormality,
probably related to the fact that the Y-chromosome is undergoing
continuous mutations. So V4 may not be functioning 100%, but luckily,
there are still at least 29 other visual cortical centers to
compensate.

Lower animals have fewer visual centers and relatively worse ability to
perceive different visual aspects. Eg, frogs perceive mainly movement,
and whether the thing moving is small or large. Not much else.
Classification of predator and prey is rather simple for a frog.
However, as higher animals evolved, more and more visual centers were
added, each with more or less special duties to perform on the visual
image. As additional visual centers were added, perceptions of what was
happening "out there" grew ever better. Color cues could be correlated
with depth cues, and with movement, and with shape, and with
orientation, and with texture, on and on. Truth evolves.


> >
> > However, somehow Cybulskie would have us believe that philosophers are
> > no longer subject to such constraints. Eg, a philosopher might sit
> > around and make up stories about the accuracy of his perception, and
> > thus rationalize not taking evasive action [when it should otherwise be
> > necessary], and apparently can do this without suffering any untoward
> > consequences. Thus, the philosophers among us have apparently escaped
> > the bounds and the bonds of evolution. Is this wrong? Maybe it's only
> > true for philosophers living in cushy apartments in the city, but not
> > for those who grew up in Uganda or Darfur, or somewhere where the lions
> > still live.
>
> Of course, this ignores the paragraph that I pointed out to you twice which
> says that I can not trust my senses and still react to them because there
> seem to be consequences for ignoring them. I simply cannot say WHY there
> are such consequences.


Because your body has a genetic predisposition to survive, and in times
of fight-or-flight [something we middle-class types rarely have to
worry about much anymore, so maybe we have forgotten why it's there],
our emotional centers relieve our rational centers of the obligation of
control. IOW, when push comes to shove, we run instead of thinking.
Then we get to think another day.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: the liver and the brain
    ... >wants to get to be an adult zebra. ... To flee from a lion, ... >baby learns on its own the first time a lion comes to eat it. ... The baby zebra wouldn't have to learn to discriminate lions. ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: the liver and the brain
    ... >>doesn't address my question regards the level of development of ... >>wants to get to be an adult zebra. ... To flee from a lion, ... > The baby zebra wouldn't have to learn to discriminate lions. ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: A Harley rider rescues a little girl
    ... the lion grabs her by the cuff of her ... Mind over matter, if you don’t mind, it don’t matter. ... Sorry, I just grill cows! ...
    (misc.news.internet.discuss)
  • Re: BBC hates nature
    ... flies enjoy a good scrabble evening. ... I remember a cartoon. ... The Zebra is saying "I give up, 'What is black and white and ... The zebra cannot make a social call on the lion, "Hello Mr. Lion, how ...
    (talk.origins)
  • PS
    ... Trying to catach a Monkey with ways to catch a Lion? ... matter what happens. ...
    (soc.culture.burma)
Loading