There is a book "Infinit in all directions" by Freeman John Dyson which is well worth reading, in my opinion.
Now, what we see, measure, hear etc. goes only through our brain.
Isn’t there an option that just because of that, we miss a lot of information which might exist in our environment, the universe?
Would we register a wavelength of e.g. 1 million km?
Looking forward to your ideas.
Dear Frank, sometimes our brains find missed things, because of synthesizing as already known patterns.
Speaking for myself, it's DEFINITE that I miss lots of info. And from what I manage to gather, how much do I keep? Such a lot that my brain would miss...
@Frank, here is how Our Brains Miss the Obvious! Read the following! regards!
http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/how-our-brains-miss-the-obvious-130521.htm
What do You think, which of these three is most missing?
http://healthdivas.tv/weight-loss/your-3-brains-and-eating/
Dear Frank, sometimes our brains find missed things, because of synthesizing as already known patterns.
Filtering out supposedly irrelevant information for the current needs of the body is indeed one of the most important task of our brain. It is saving us from a giant overload of information, which we would presumably not be able to process efficiently. But your question as to whether that might lead us to miss some very interesting facts is definitely valid! I guess one should always keep an open mind...
I am not sure! Do our brains always function? sometimes not? or most of the time not functioning?
Frank: Great question. I agree with most of the comments. I am not an expert but I think the brain would see what we would like to see. Generally we surround our self with information or atmosphere that matches our beliefs.
Our brain processes on things that our senses gather data from our surroundings, as it is an information processing organ but also it creates unobserved data by its own through its power of imagination - where man made machines lack. If our barin does process on what we sense, then it is limited on the limitations of our sense organs. There are things which do not have smell, color, observable physique, but exist and that means ou brain misses podering about those things. Besides our brain is a purpose driven functioning organ, it does things selectively. It keeps things behind the curtain when it decides their irrelevancy and deals with things that are relevant. Besides there are infinitely many data and truths out there in the universe which we are not yet knowing about them and therefore our brain does not work on them either, as the question explicitely says what our brain misses.
Brain not only miss a lot, but it build a lot of new things to fulfill the lack of information on relevant physical events. There are many prooves of this. One reason why it loose information is not the choice of what is relevant or not. It is just due to the sensitivity of the sensors (receptors) it uses to explore the physical reality. Sonds can be perceived only in a range of frequency. Visual stimuly can be perceived only in a range of wavelenghts.... and so on. Not all spectra are covered by sensors used by brain. Another reson is because of the structure of the body and the way sensors are organized in it. Take as example the visual system. Retina has a structure that does not permit the brain to explore all. Macula is an example of this. The way the optical nerve enter the brain produce a blind area on retina. Nevertheless, thanks to saccades and to the ability of brain to reorganize and rebuilt information to create a compete model of environment, we see all normally in front of us. So brain adapted in some way to overcome the lack of some relevant information, but, on the other hand, cannot rebilt any form of reality when information is completely lacking as for the case of those physical aspect (extreme wavelenghts or sounds out of the range) that for which it receive absolutely no information. Scientists, help brain by using instruments that transform stimuli not perveived in readable signale. Thanks to this, human brain of many people know that exists radio waves or UV radiations and ultrasounds.
By the way the topic is long, complicated and very hard to approach in whole although extremely fascinating :)
Approximately 90 % of information about surrounding world we receive through our eyes, which are the windows into world. At the same time eye itself represents a piece of brain, which during an evolution gains an independance and comes out from the brain, but still has a complicated structure. To regret the visible spectrum is only from 380 nm to a litle above 800 nm. The nature is a great inventor and I have a doubt that the man will reach it in the future .
"Approximately 90% of information about surrounding world we receive through our eyes"
Reference? Surely not true? My totally blind uncle got a first class degree in law from Balliol College, thrashed me at chess and acted as navigator for his car drivers, so where did his information come from?
Let me answer with the help by Helen Carter
Look down deep -
deep inside of your mind;
an old part of you
I know you will find.
The part that is hiding
and doesn't want to be found;
it has hidden too long
and won't come around.
You know it is there,
hiding way down inside
the place that you think
you have gone in to hide.
Let your inner self free;
let it run, let it ride.
Let it out, let it sing;
let it out from inside.
It has hidden too long,
that old self that is you;
because you were hurt,
let it out and run through.
There is something there
that is wonderful indeed;
it was once nourished -
it came from a seed.
That wonderful you
that you hide deep inside,
let it out, let it run;
please don't let it hide.
Those who really know you
miss the old you, it's true;
and for that they are sad.
They only want what's best for you.
So let yourself out;
be happy, be glad.
Don't let the past hold you -
the one that was bad.
Release your old self,
the one we once knew;
the one we came to love,
please let yourself shine through.
Oh, we see bits and pieces
every once in awhile;
the old you shines through
and gives us a smile.
We miss that part,
that old part of you;
we miss all the fun
and the laughter we knew.
Please just come back.
I hope you find the way
back into our lives
and we hope you will stay;
Because we do miss
that old part of you,
the one we once loved,
the one that we knew.
Come back to the world
where everyone's free;
come back to our world,
the one that we see.
That one that is hopeful,
joyous, and glad -
a world full of love,
even though good and bad.
The world won't change.
It's sad but it's true;
but we know that you can
come back to the old you.
The one who is happy
and sees all that is great -
the one who's optimistic,
who doesn't care if they're late.
Please, won't you return
that old wonderful you?
Won't you bounce back
to the one we once knew?
I've hidden too long
deep down inside.
I've crawled into myself,
and I tried to hide.
I'm still learning
to set myself free;
one day I will learn
how to be the old me.
How problematic it is, when the conscious part of the brain does not sort out the meaningful information, can be seen in schizophrenic disorders, where often the gating of sensory information from the environment is impaired.
Another more philosophical point I like to raise is, that the state of mind of so called 'enlightened' people, who went through a lot of meditation training, might be a state of a stronger connection of the conscious with the usually unconscious part of the brain. This then allows them to receive more information, or information that a 'normal' person does not process and leads to an extended perception of reality. However, it could also be just a state of endogenous 'high' because of increased endorphin production. I am not sure how well this has meanwhile been investigated.
Dear Dr Volke., I think nowadays majority of people brain missed a lot of things. Most important indicator is that, when people get everything, facilities, welfare , never appreciate, grateful and then try to abide others. Simultaneously when they get sick, not feeling well, suffer, face problem; same thing.......jealousing others, expiating, disappointing and...........This is what our brain missed.......good feeling, beautiful looking, and nice thinking. TQ
Our brain should not at any mean miss glucose and oxygen. It might miss a sleep which affect brain hormonal, biochemical, and physiological functions. Our brain needs sufficient sleep to retrieve all work happened during daytime. Thus effective mood and efficient person would sustain all day requirements. Without going to science jargon termenology, do not miss good and healthy food, regular exercise, early sleep and sufficient hours of deep sleep, keeping yourself away from stresses, your brain will not miss that much.
Dear sharing
It is the short memory called Memory loss and aging. Long memory however will not be affected that much until in later stage of the disease
I think that if my mind did not filter out most of this sensory noise, I would very soon suffer from some kind of sensory overload.
Dear Elwood! Let me again resort to arguments of poetry. I believe that in many situations in our lives we do not put questions about the overflow of our brain senses. For example, when reading the poems of Shakespeare.
So, sonnet 112
"Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue:
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides, methinks y' are dead".
There are good reasons why we are selective in what we retain. Besides avoiding sensory overload our differences in this capacity distinguishes our intelligence, special interests and other personal mental characteristics as well as allows us to retain pleasant experiences while forgetting the painful ones. Many conditions influence this ability. It decreases with dementia but in traumatic stress disorder the details are retained and mentally experienced repeatedly. A handfull of individuals have the ability to remember past events with phenomenal detail. It has been suggested that we all retain the records of experienced events in our brain but only a few have the capacity to access the information. Perhaps a mechanism to enable or disable this ability under our control will be developed in the future.
The basic reason of the image of the world we share is of the adaptation one. Another animals have different images of the world. Beginning of the impressions all the sensitive creatures get by their senses and ending by the conceptual order and the following communication system, which lets negotiate the world we share as "objective" one. So, in conclusion I want to say that our brain miss everything what we do not need to notice, to know and to communicate with the aim of surviving as any other animal.
The brain is the device of the information economy; the world, on other hand, is the information foam. The brain links to some environment's information that needs to complete its learning loops.
The memory, you discuss above, is so fragmented as in the remembrance of one nightmare; so the stories of the past are nearly pure creation. Thus art began; songs, myths, and books of history and science, so newest memory devices.
Dear Jolanta,
I agree with you that are our brain is a mystery which has a huge net. Its connectionism is a mystery too. Any minimum damage to any of its connection will make our brain miss a lot of things. Not only have memory but feeling, emotion, and responsibilities. Our brains have a lot of responsibilities starting from interpreting events, regulating muscle contractions, problem solving, keep tracking of memories, maintaining our senses and drive our feelings. Since our brains are packed full of nerve cells called neurons, which sends notes" to each other to control everything about us. Neurotransmitters are basically the messengers’ horses of our brains; they carry these messages from neuron to neuron. These messages help determine our emotions, or feelings, such as our motivation to perform a task, ability to focus and our positive or negative mood. When we mismatch the order and feedback mechanism to and from our brain-body in our neurotransmitter levels, our feelings can get out of thump. In fact, such imbalances have been connected to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit challenges. In theory, different neurotransmitters control different emotions such listening to music or of reverence during pray. If you are under chronic stress you are at risk of damaging enzyme which affects the neurons in your prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex controls such vital functions as complex thinking and problem solving. In addition the motor cortex initiates motor movement. The more damage done to the prefrontal cortex, and the motor cortex, the more difficult it can be for people under chronic stress realize awareness and have complete kinesthetic.
All human life consists of continuous errors. Our brain is the source of these errors. Our brain corrects these errors. This is life. Once our brain ceases to correct mistakes, then comes our death.
Our brain usually miss happiness moments and remember sadness for a long time.
Dear Hashem:
I think that it is very difficult to judge what is correct and what is wrong in one brain. We can suppose that something is useful --one brain function for instant-- and what is not useful to respond to this or that culture custom. So our judgment is relative, first, because we have no "objective" measurement what is correct or not --an idea of the correct is doubtful, and/or always linked to particularities of science, custom, individual feelings--; the second reason is that the brain with its products (sensitiveness: pleasure, pain, fear (...), internal and external senses' impressions; images, symbols, languages or codes, communication system, ideas, concepts, so on) is a ecosystem to its environment. This one, as we see above, is complex and unknown to us.
The limitation of our access to information is the vital task to our brain. So what is an mistake, or what is correct, are our ideal concepts, which remedy the lack of information. And because we always will stay in such a situation we talk stories. So here particular human's path began: that we are story tellers. Another animal have another ways to solve the similar situation. As always there is the universal problem but solution is local, particular to one ecosystem.
And, at the end: each of us is a particular being: I don´t think that I would like to say that somebody has the incorrect way to be. In the light of medicine is possible to help a person who wants to be intervened by medical care and technology. There are big differences of these needs: from the "correction" of nose size to use of the life support machines. If we want to think what is correct here from the point of view of ethics, it is other complicated story about customs and social communication environment, and about ethics traditions, plenty of them. But today no one works for us, Homo Novus, lets say after Sheldon Cooper. The Metaphysics is over all together with esthetics and ethics. We need to move to zero point of these: the rite.
Dear @Frank, interesting! So, accordingly, there might other people living with us and we do not have the capacity of feeling their existence? May be yes.
Dear Frank
We have a bias to believe that we will notice all the important things
Chabris and Simons"The Invisible Gorilla "
Dyson has suggested a kind of cosmic metaphysics of mind. In his book Infinite in All Directions he writes about three levels of mind:
"The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is the level of elementary physical processes in quantum mechanics. Matter in quantum mechanics is [...] constantly making choices between alternative possibilities according to probabilistic laws. [...] The second level at which we detect the operations of mind is the level of direct human experience. [...] [I]t is reasonable to believe in the existence of a third level of mind, a mental component of the universe. If we believe in this mental component and call it God, then we can say that we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus" (p. 297).
Salams to all
What a fascinating topic! The brain, this mysterious organ which capacity goes far beyond its physical constitution and appearance and we still did not understand all the aspects. I believe that every single person senses, understands, and feels her environment and the events around her in a very personal way. Even our time is not the same. My perception of the 24 hours and my use of them is different from any one's else. Of course their have been trials to identify "common" perceptions and understandings and feelings but still every single person has his/her own levels. In the end, the brain with all its mystery is but a "tool" to help us process the information we are receiving in all fields... there something else "the Soul" that is really responsible for the "quality" we are giving to those processed information. That's why, the brain could be functioning perfectly, but the person feels sick... There is a very interesting book by Dr. Norman Doidge: The brain that changes itself... that reveals a lot from what our brain can "hide"....
Dear all
Thankyou for the valuable informations you shared. I would like to sum up my comments.
brain should not at any mean miss glucose and oxygen. It might miss a sleep which affect brain hormonal, biochemical, and physiological functions. Our brain needs sufficient sleep to retrieve all work happened during daytime. Thus effective mood and efficient person would sustain all day requirements. Without going to science jargon termenology, do not miss good and healthy food, regular exercise, early sleep and sufficient hours of deep sleep, keeping yourself away from stresses, your brain will not miss that much.Dear sharing
It is the short memory called Memory loss and aging. Long memory however will not be affected that much until in later stage of the diseaseDear Jolanta,
I agree with you that are our brain is a mystery which has a huge net. Its connectionism is a mystery too. Any minimum damage to any of its connection will make our brain miss a lot of things. Not only have memory but feeling, emotion, and responsibilities. Our brains have a lot of responsibilities starting from interpreting events, regulating muscle contractions, problem solving, keep tracking of memories, maintaining our senses and drive our feelings. Since our brains are packed full of nerve cells called neurons, which sends notes" to each other to control everything about us. Neurotransmitters are basically the messengers’ horses of our brains; they carry these messages from neuron to neuron. These messages help determine our emotions, or feelings, such as our motivation to perform a task, ability to focus and our positive or negative mood. When we mismatch the order and feedback mechanism to and from our brain-body in our neurotransmitter levels, our feelings can get out of thump. In fact, such imbalances have been connected to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit challenges. In theory, different neurotransmitters control different emotions such listening to music or of reverence during pray. If you are under chronic stress you are at risk of damaging enzyme which affects the neurons in your prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex controls such vital functions as complex thinking and problem solving. In addition the motor cortex initiates motor movement. The more damage done to the prefrontal cortex, and the motor cortex, the more difficult it can be for people under chronic stress realize awareness and have complete kinesthetic.
In response to Louis Brassard, I would like to add that these three levels seem to be closely related to Leibniz's ideas.
Carine,
My post was intented to be posted on a thread about the Dawson's book.
What the brain "misses" is of crucial importance to adequate functioning in the form of selective inattention. In schizophrenia, autism and ADD for example the problem appears to be the inability to screen out the myriad sensory inputs both internal and external and "focus" on what is consciously intended.
In all we do, we are only conscious of .1% otherwise we would be overwhelmed. What is important is the selection process of this .1%, the quality of the relevancy to this .1% for the task at hand. Missing what is not relevant is a benefit.
@Louis Brassard - Your answer is very interesting and made me think about a case of a young child with ADHD that I have encountered in the past. I used to observe him during his childhood trying to do multiple things at once and then he used to get frustrated ... Today, he is excelling in college studying computer science with full scholarship.
We think that our brain does not notice much around and inside us. In fact, we have not yet learned how to extract the information that the brain accumulates regardless of our desires.
Ziad,
Some philosophers and neuroscientists have argued that consciousness is not important. They describe it as irrelevant to our choices. They put forward evidences showind how much consciousness depend on unconscious processes. But consciousness is relevant not a center of coordination of everything but as center detecting where what is automated fail and of detection of what is relevant for correcting the situation. We do almost everything in the zombie mode but consciousness allow us to escape it when it is necessary. This openess is essential. Since we are only conscious of these glimpses of consciousness, we tend to think that all we do is conscious. It is like thinking that we see everything in focus with our retina. All we consciously see is in focus but most of what we see is not conscious.
Interesting question. From an evolutionay point of view, the primary task of our brain is survival. Is has to help our body survive in a potentially hostile environment. Therefore, information processing has been optimized for this task. Everything else is a luxury causing the brain to use more energy than necessary. This in turn, may be an disadvantage in times of famine. Therefore, there is an evolutionary pressure to ignore all inforamtion that is irrelevant to survival. For example, our cognitive system has not developed any perception that helps us to recognize the large-scale structure of the universe. Our hunter-and-gatherer ancestors simply didn't need these skills.
I think that our brains do not miss but hide information not used or useful for our purpose life, a form of a scheduling and managing task. So when events or facts correlated with the information happen, the brain restores the information, and we could remember certain details may be sound not important or interesting but registered in our brains unconsciously. Sometimes the multitasking stress could generates missing information from basic daily life events or movements, here the brain is burden.
Unfortunately, our brains remember more frequently sad events than the happy ones, may be for security or human self surviving issues.
Dear all,
I would conclude this statement for wonder.
Discussion of the above issue provokes volley of critical thinking of what might our brain miss. Although, our brain knows many things starting from the smallest creature to largest one with holistic perception to a lot of thing, the brain still misses its function and who is controlling it.
Hashem,
''The brain still misses its function and who is controlling it.'' The brain's function is not to theoretically understand his function but to practically perform its function. There is no ''who'' controling the brain but the brain is not a ''who' either but there is no ``who`` without it.
Louis
I refer you to my previous answer. and I think the brain misses understand the function of the brain itself and misses who control the brain activity and its function.
Hashem,
I understood and my last post do not contradict what you are saying. Yes it miss this . But is it fair to say that it misses something that is not relevant to its function. It miss this as it miss billion of irrelevant other things.
The brain must make mistakes. This is one of the conditions of learning brain. The brain remembers the bad, because the brain learns from mistakes. Brain forgets about the good, which made another brain. I think that this forgetfulness is a cause to explain depression.
I think a more appropriate question is what are our brains conscious of? Our brains capture and filter tons of information, but we are only aware of a fraction of it.
Congratulation Amy!
Igor Severyanin
"We live as in an unsolved dream,
On one of the convenient planets ...
There are many, which does not need us
And what we want, no".
Whatever is dull or habituated. We are wired to noticed CHANGE or WEIRDNESS, that is, THREAT. So, what our brain does actually notice: whatever is new, strange, bright, loud, sudden, large, painful and/or whatever stands out. Everything else,usually, it is dismissed because it is perceived as non-threatening. The physical phenomena that our sensory systems do not sense are most likely not important to our survival, since we are surviving quite well without perceiving them. In fact, if you think about it, that is the best justification for the limit of the speed of light: if something material enough to harm us could get at us BEFORE we could perceive it, none of us would be around to tell the tale. If we think as what we call LIGHT as INFORMATION ABOUT CHANGE SPEED, then our sensory systems probably evolved to be able to sense whatever moves at that speed. Anything else faster we do not sense and survive because it does not harm us.
Brain reacts to what is greater than or equal to the threshold of perception. But this does not mean that the brain learns that exceeds the threshold of perception. Casual look for someone or oak leaf flying in the wind, sometimes remembered forever. Consequently, it is necessary to allocate the reflex reaction from memorization processes. Mechanisms of memory and experience, unfortunately, poorly understood. It remembers everyone who deals with the problem of memory.
And a specialist in memory never forgets about it.
Actually, the brain tells us to react to what passes a certain EMOTIONAL threshold. Two personal examples: 1 - walking down the street in a foreign country in which one speaks the language. There is a phone booth to the side with somebody talking. One acknowledges the presence and goes one's merry way UNTIL about 10 paces down one realizes "I understood that!" as in the person on the phone was talking in one's mother language.
2 - One is a VERY heavy sleeper. One sleeps through the neighbors party, one's kids' sleepover downstairs, assorted traffic noise, BUT, if in the middle of the night the neighbor's blind dog falls in the carp pond in the front yard and cries for help or one's kid is sick downstairs, one wakes up from DEEP sleep and goes to save the dog or take care of the kid.
Bottom line: the senses are scanning. The brain is making judgment calls: Don't worry about this noise, not important. Don't worry about that one, not important. WAKE UP, IT IS AN EMERGENCY. Works like a charm.
In the sense of processing perceptual incoming information via receptors, my opinion is the brain doesn’t miss anything contextual relevant for survival. But what is missing with this statement is to forget about the ability the brain brings in: to be able to form memory, to associate, to anticipate, to balance out possibilities, to combine… and so on. This balances out the narrow band of sensor sensitivity you talk about. Speaking more of the physiological way the brain works it still doesn’t miss information. The predictive coding theory for example says that we are constantly predict incoming sensory information, and only the prediction error is send bottom up the hierarchy to refine the prediction. The expectation and the attention modulate enhancement or suppression of surprise (prediction error) to gain context relevant information. So to say again, the brain doesn’t miss anything being contextual relevant at any time, it’s only not attending or expecting, if it does not “sense”.
We understand that our brain loses then when we lose something really close to us. In fact, everything is close to us is always inside our brain.
I can tell you that our brain miss only information which cannot be detected by sensory receptors (E.g. we cannot perceive U.V. wavelengths through our retina). Thus all the remaining information can be detected by the brain. However, at this point another interesting phenomenon plays a wounderful function: the attention which filters only information that in a particular moment could be interesting for us.
Thus, for example, what we see, represents the reality? Or is a construction of our brain? And what is the reality if our concept of reality is relative to our sensory receptors? Does exist an absolute concept of reality?
you are asking for is perception (perceptual experience) cognitiviely penetrable. This is a big debate and a never ending discussion. One qick example you should try out: look at any scene directly close to you, pick any colored object in it, and now, while you star at it, try to mentally stain your current percept. And, is it possible? what makes it different when you close your eyes and imagine the same object and also again stain it mentally. It would be quite impressive when you could see a blue pill red which you perceive in your real world blue ;). So what world are you talking about ;)
@Marco, whatever a species perceives is the best approximation of the physical phenomena that allows that particular species to survive. The reality dogs perceive or frogs or eagles is wildly different than what we do, because their survival needs are different from ours. The visual reality of people with color weakness is quite different than of those who can see the full visual spectrum. The reality of people with synesthesia is quite different than of the rest of us. Thus: we see much more colors than dogs. We need the extra discrimination because our eating habits are much wider. On the other hand, their sense of smell is much, but MUCH better. The reality of bats, which are blind but navigate through sound is also quite different. It is the old story: if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it, was there a sound? And the answer is NO. Sound is a construct of a brain, it is the neurological interpretation of the physical phenomenon air waves. Now, if the question had been: Were there air waves? If there were AIR, most certainly. But if you want a nice physical demonstration of what I am saying, just check this picture. Then outline the two monsters in a white piece of paper, cut them out and overlay that over the picture. Presto! An alternate reality appears!
http://cdn2.list25.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/206.jpg
Gloriam,
I agree that different species lives in different umwelt but the difference between the umwelt of the humans and those of the primates is not so much related to the senses. We have a much better fine motors skills than primates but the major difference is that we live into a symbolic umwelt. We always super-imposed a whole symbolic reality on top of the purely natural reality we are in. We interpret other humans behaviors mostly in terms of what they are doing not in terms of what their bodies are doing but in terms of what they are doing in these symbolic realities. When we are at work, we interact in symbolic work realities, when we are at home, we interact in symbolic family realities, when we are at a marriage, we interact in symbolic marriare realities, etc. As humans, apart from the professional athlete, our problems are mostly symbolic problems, not symbolic in terms of abstract mathematics, but symbolic in terms of imaginary worlds built throughout our life and throughout the history of civilisation. We are actors in such a symbolic human worlds and have to constantly guess what is the best or more appropriate moves in these symbolic actions. It is why education, enculturation is fundamental for us and what our brain misses in such contexts is not a question of senses but a lack of symbolic vision.
@Louis, no question that the level of sophistication in the interpretation of reality as well as the motivations of the individual will alter that reality (Elizabeth Loftus work in Eyewitness reliability is quite instructive in that matter). HOWEVER, we do not KNOW what level of symbolism there might exist in animals, some of them quite sophisticated in their emotional behavior (dog owners, cat owners, cetacean researchers and parrot researchers could vouch for that). So whatever they do, we cannot speculate on that matter (well, we can, but unless we can pull a Mr. Spock, we cannot measure it). However, on the matter of physical sensation we can talk from an empirical evidence point of view. From that ALONE, we CAN say that the perceived reality IS different because we know that the "measuring tools" AND the "transducers", so to speak, ARE PHYSICALLY different.
@Gloriam, my questions were provocative. I absolutly agree with you. Of course, you are able to explain the concept in English much more better than me! ;)
@Marco, provocative? You don't say. When I was teaching this stuff in college, I had at least one student who was so disturbed by the idea that the reality he perceived was truly a construct of his brain that might not be the same as what other people were perceiving, (and the realization that THEIR reality was as valid as his),he DROPPED the class! I had quite a few of discombobulated people, let me tell you...
Marco , with all nice points in the discussion presented above, I like that:
"I can tell you that our brain miss only information which cannot be detected by sensory receptors (E.g. we cannot perceive U.V. wavelengths through our retina). Thus all the remaining information can be detected by the brain." - thinking.
Regards
Frank
Frank and Marco, I think it is perhaps misfortunate that you have made such a strong statement about what the brain misses, because there is another factor that you have not taken into account, the ability of the brain to code information into a representation that represents all of the information possible from the senses, is also limited. Thus we can often sense colours for instance that we can not interpret, or hear sounds that do not make sense to us. Even if these make it through our attention, we cannot but miss in our understanding because we have no way of coding them into information.
Dear Greame, If you read my original answer you can find reference to the attention phenomenon. I would like to evidence a big difference between to MISS a thing and to PERCEIVE (or to AWARE) somenthing. For me, to miss means something that the brain cannot absolutely capture or detect. Perceive a stimulus, for me, is different because the brain can detect it or the information can arrive in cortex anyway, but through the attention the brain can decide to perceive or to aware it or not.
Marco, I understand that. What I am saying is that there are limitations to what we can perceive based on what we can encode as well. Sometimes we miss things simply because we have no percepts by which to understand them. That there are so many things that we can approximate in our precepts is a positive thing, but not everything that is detected can be encoded. In these cases it is not necessarily attention that limits our ability to perceive. Our ability to perceive may limit our ability to attend.
For instance, stimuli that come too close together interfere with each other and cannot be encoded. This has nothing to do with attention, and everything to do with the dynamics of perception. We can't chose to ignore what we don't perceive.
On the challenged and limitation of brain's capabilities for vast information, In the history of philosophy which is well worth reading from reference point of view concerning Hume and Kant's attitude towards currently problem. For Hume concerning about human understanding and Kant's parameter of impression on nature. Personal values determines the sensory choice of information. Second, Quantum physics laws randoms physical sensation in man's cognitive functional abilities. As realistic probabilities revelation of nature to man's brain functional choice. Prof. Dr. Stephen W. Hawking's book "brief history of time" use the evolutionary law of C. Darwin to demonstrate how nature teach man into discovery of a theory. Third, Motivational practice had a paradoxical effect on core values regarding risk management larking ahead of mull-over. Since, Personality development may expand sensory and cognitive capacity of man as a child becomes mature in decision making. The scope and delimitation in any information processing could be widen after educational graduate studies towards benefit rewards. Finally, Parallel question arise when considering the request of Nature or Nurture teach man. scenario shall be both, once only, none of the above, as calculate in the John Nash Equilibrium Theory Probabilities? Which is which? For scientific instrument could impose perception resulting into narrow sensation.
What might our brain miss? Some human abilities we learn gradually. For example, opportunities taste receptors. Many people know about the perception of sour, bitter, salty, sweet. By the way, the brain began to perceive information about sweet much later than the other taste sensations. Why? Perhaps there was a threat to the evolution of human death from overeating carbohydrates and obesity. In oral discovered receptors to glutamate. The brain receives information about the taste of bouillon cubes. And man has nice artificial broth. And violate the natural metabolism. What else we do not know about the information that gets the brain? And how the brain reacts to this information.
No, I don't think the later evolutionary development of sweet taste perception has to do with obesity. I believe it is probably for the same reason we have three PHYSICAL color sensors in the eye (green-leaves, red-blood, blue-water) and just later developed a COGNITIVE perception of yellow-ripe: as a species we are very physically weak. Our forebears were also. They had to survive at first by eating plants. It would behoove to find the plants that were not poisonous (too salty, bitter, sour) and discern which ones were actually good (yellow and sweet-RIPE). Those with such ability would survive to tell the tale. Let's not forget that breast milk is SWEET. Most likely, mothers whose milk tasted good with infants who LIKED such taste would be more likely to pass on the genes. Obesity is a modern dilemma of too much of a good thing.
Dear Gloriam! Sorry for misuderstanding. You pay attention to circumstances that were not the purpose of my argument. Please, read carefully the text below. This text explains what I said earlier popular.
Four qualitatively different perception of taste, sweet, sour, salty and bitter, involves the use of different mechanisms at the receptor level. Mechanism of perception of sweet formed long. It emerged later than the other taste sensations. All the mechanisms of taste perception in animals evolved long before the appearance of man. Then, in the course of evolution, these mechanisms became available as Homo sapiens. Thus, the attempt to link the evolution of sweet sensations with the process of obesity in humans, is incorrect. Not yet found the remains of human ancestors who were obese. But sweet receptors were already in the ancestors. The idea was that during the formation of the sensory systems (for example, the taste receptors) the brain is able to receive more information, due to the emergence of new communication channels with the external and internal world. At the same time, I analyzed the problem of glutamate receptors, whose role in the development of obesity is evident in the violent imposition of food filled with glutamate.
Our appetite system evolved in natural conditions long long time ago. Humans have transformed their food since the invention of fire. Humans have created new form of food by creating new breed of animals and new breed of plants since the early phases of civilisation. We are socially organized, and all the middle classes of the world can eat as much food, any kind of industrially produced food as they want and all the middle classes of the world are overwheigh and the trend continue. We design food that taste good and do not really feed us and so we are constantly hungry. It is in the logic of capitalist profit to design such bad food.
All science is subjective not objective. This is because all people view the world from their own personal and biased parallax. You think you see the world right side up but actually you see it upside down. George M. Stratton 1898 wore glasses that inverted the world upside down. After a couple weeks of wearing the goggles his world appeared right side up until he took off the goggles and the world then appeared to him upside down. In addition, only about 5-10% of the light actually reaches your retina. Retinal ganglion cells, horizontal cells, bipolar cells, and others are all in the way. In addition, you have two blind spots that your brain colors in for you. Finally if you think you see me standing in front of you (although processing beings at the retinal level the actual heavy lifting is processed at the back of your brain starting in area 17. So from one perspective, I am upside down, fuzzy, with two colored in blind spots, in your head (not in the real world what ever that is) and behind you. And all the while....people think they see the world just as it is. Depending on your personal prejudice, the Earth can be the mathematical center of the entire universe or not. Mathematically the Earth can be flat, or not.... And the Earth can be 1 second old, 6000 years old, or 13.5 billion years old depending on your physical location while observing the event. So to answer the question what can't our minds, brains, souls, spirits, see... I recommend watching a brilliant little flick called, "What the bleep do we know." For a real eye-opener, especially if you haven't seen it before (on Google) lookup, the Gorilla basketball video. On the positive side being so blind does keep us in our jobs publishing new peer-reviewed articles as (and we know this is true philosophically) "all" theories are constantly being modified or discarded in our inductive not deductive science. This is why science always deals in probability not truth....because we don't know...we just deal in different levels of certainty and I am 95% certain of my statement : )
"what we see, measure, hear etc. goes only through our brain.
Isn’t there an option that just because of that, we miss a lot of information which might exist in our environment, the universe?"
To return to the original question, as as well a some of the discussion.
1. it is true that phenomena like color are constructed by the brain. There is no color in the world, or rather, as per the umwelt references - some birds have five kinds of vision receptors, producing a colorspace incommensurable with humans. Various species have different senses - magnetosensing, infra red sensing, electrosensing, etc.
2. It is clear that our senses have evolved to help us manage a pre-- technological lifestyle. We see the range of electomagnetic wavelengths we do because they assisted us optimally in survival. (They are also the solar wavelengths of maximum energy on the earths surface). We build sensory prosthetics to 'see' other things we've become interested in.
3. One way of speaking about sensing is that it is not about collecting maximal 'information' - there is far too much out there for out brains to handle. In fact, a major task of sensing or perception is to toss out or ignore most of it, but to choose the right stuff.: the useful 5% for the current task.
4. "what we see, measure, hear etc. goes only through our brain."
What does this mean? Does it mean sensations are not bodily? Does it mean that measuring is not a bodily act, involving complex sensorimotor operatlons? Are you suggesting that the brain is made of some magic material that understands information in a way that bodily material cannot? If your reply to any of these is yes, then I suggest the way you have framed your problem falls victim of biologically impossible Cartesianism, and as such any 'results' are already compromised by that framing.
Simon,
The colours of the surfaces that we perceive are not arbitrary constructions of our visual system. The ripe tomatoes do reflect more of the red part of the spectrum and are perceived as red. Red surfaces do correspond to surfaces whose reflectance spectrum is is maximum in the red part. These are physical characteristics. There are colours in the world.
"The ripe tomatoes do reflect more of the red part of the spectrum and are perceived as red."
The ripe tomatoes do reflect part of the spectrum. The fact we see red is, I think, species specific. The fact we and call it red (or rojo etc) is culturally specific
Simon,
A lot of ripe fruit and flowers are red and this is recognized by a lot of species. I am not a linguist but I bet that there is a name for the colour red in all languages because we all perceive colour in the same way. But some culture will distinguish more varieties of red, or more varieties for snow colours in the case of the Inuits. So culture do have an effect on perception but culture is not arbitrary. The Inuit Umwelt is different and so their culture.
The range of "colour" we can see is based partly on the frequencies of light put out by our star, in the frequencies of light we can detect in our eyes, and the language we speak when we talk about them. Science can detect a much broader range of "colours" than we can perceive directly. One of the fun things about science fiction is that a character can come from a planet around a sun with a completely different frequency mix than we have here on earth.
Louis
"A lot of ripe fruit and flowers are red"
No, a lot of ripe fruit and flowers reflect certain wavelengths. The fact that we see these as 'red' is a neural artifact.
Graeme -
"The range of "colour" we can see" is a product of our evolved capability to exploit available radiation (ambient optic array) for perception. So your first two points amount to the same thing. omho.
"Science can detect a much broader range of "colours" than we can perceive directly. "
I'm glad you put colours in " " . But what can a color be outside of our species specific neural structure? Science can detect wavelengths but it cannot perceive colors.
I like the way you think Simon : ) Your 4th point... "what we see, measure, hear etc. goes only through our brain." What does this mean? Does it mean sensations are not bodily? Does it mean that measuring is not a bodily act, involving complex sensorimotor operatlons? Are you suggesting that the brain is made of some magic material that understands information in a way that bodily material cannot? If your reply to any of these is yes, then I suggest the way you have framed your problem falls victim of biologically impossible Cartesianism, and as such any 'results' are already compromised by that framing.
In an experiment spinal cats with their bodies supported over a tred mill "learned" to walk on a tred mill without any information going through their "brains." In addition, when blocks of wood were attached to the tred mill at constant reoccuring times (places) the cat's spinal cord (or perhaps muscles) learned to lift the foot to step over the block in "anticipation." So sensations and more importantly perceptions are processed actively outside the brain but perhaps still in the magical CNS ; )
Simon,
''No, a lot of ripe fruit and flowers reflect certain wavelengths. The fact that we see these as 'red' is a neural artifact.''
If you measure with a volmeter the potential difference between two points of an electronic circuit, would you say: the voltage is an artifact of the internal electronic of the voltmeter? It is obviously the case but it is also measuring something in the world. The red impressing is both a neural artifact and a measurement of something in the world.
Simon: ""The range of "colour" we can see" is a product of our evolved capability to exploit available radiation (ambient optic array) for perception. So your first two points amount to the same thing. omho."
No Simon they aren't quite the same thing, because individuals may or may not have the detectors for a particular colour range. It's called being colour blind. Plus the wavelengths include infra-red, and Ultra-violet, but these are not represented in our eyes ability to detect light frequencies. So the frequencies available and the frequencies we can actually detect are much different.
Christopher,
thanks. Can you give a citation for the experiment on spinal cats - more grist for the mill !
Dear Frank
You ask "What might our brain miss?" I will give you a certain answer, our brains miss a lot, including a lot of the obvious.
http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/how-our-brains-miss-the-obvious-130521.htm
Louis,
thanks for your thoughtful response. I must admit, I felt my was a little 'fuzzy' - because this is difficult. -
"the voltage is an artifact of the internal electronic of the voltmeter? It is obviously the case but it is also measuring something in the world."
First, a 'voltage' which we commonly take to be a quantative and perhaps (to the naive) absolute value is in fact a relation - potentail difference - between two points. Voltage, proper, does not exist. Nor is it an absolute quatitiy, it is not 'potential'. Voltage is an artifact - of current and resistance.
"The red impressing is both a neural artifact and a measurement of something in the world."
Red is most definitely a neural artifact. To take a colorful analogy - a goat sees a shirt on the washing line and thinks 'food'. I think 'my shirt', clothing, 'horrible shirt' or whatever. At a more fundamental level, what a pigeon or a butterfly see when they see what I call red (ie the wavelenghts in the world that stimulate the experience I have of seeing red) would be incomprehensible and indescribable to me. I think perhaps we can clarify this discussion if we distinguish between 'sensing' and 'perception'. This is the notion of qualia - though some reject the idea entirely.
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