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From: sher@ROCHESTER.ARPA.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: Re: Representationalist Perception
Message-ID: <8607112103.14547@ur-seneca.rochester.arpa>
Date: Fri, 11-Jul-86 17:03:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: ur-senec.8607112103.14547
Posted: Fri Jul 11 17:03:37 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Jul-86 22:39:21 EDT
References: <8607100457.AA12123@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
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Reply-To: rochester!sher (David Sher)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
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In article <8607100457.AA12123@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@wisdom.BITNET
(Eyal mozes) writes:
>The "output" of perception (if such a term is appropriate) is our
>awareness. Realists claim that this awareness is directly of external
>objects. Representationalists, on the other hand, claim that we are
>directly aware only of internal representations, created by a process
>whose input are external objects; this means that we are aware of
>external objects only INDIRECTLY. That is the position Gibson and
>Kelley argue against, and I think they do understand it accurately.

I may be confused by this argument but as far as visual perception is
concerned we are certainly not aware of the firing rates of our individual
neurons.  We are not even aware of the true wavelengths of the light that
hits our eyes.  We have special algorithms built into our visual hardware
that implements an algorithm that decides based on global phenomena the
color of the light in the room and automatically adjusts the colors of
percieved objects to compensate (this is called color constancy).  However
this mechanism can be fooled.  Given that we don't directly percieve
the lightwaves hitting our eyes how can we be directly percieving objects
in the world?  Does percieve in this sense mean something different from
the way I am using it?  I know that for ordinary people the only images
consciously accessible are quite heavily processed to compensate for
noise and light intensity and to take into account known facts about
the tendencies of objects to be continuous and to fit into know shapes.
I don't know how under such circumstances we can be said to be directly
aware of any form of visual input except internal representations. 

My guess is that you are using words in a technical way that has
confused me.  But perhaps you can clear up this.