#scientific image

[miamaimania]

"Pine Rhizome" ⍋ David Read — cutaway photograph of a pine seedling and its root network

[frontal-cortex]

Hematopoietic Cells by NIH Image Gallery Via Flickr: Confocal image showing the accumulation of myeloid hematopoietic cells throughout the mesenteric adipose tissue. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

[philosophycorner]

Why the Hard Problem of Consciousness Isn’t Original

David Chalmers is often associated with the hard problem of consciousness, but I think the credit rightfully belongs to Wilfrid Sellars. The basic thrust of the problem was spelled out in such a manner as to be the equivalent of stating it explicitly. The fact that Sellars didn’t call the problem what we now call it, ‘the hard problem of consciousness’, doesn’t take away from the fact that he did much more work in attempts to unify two conflicting images which he dubbed manifest and scientific. 

At first glance, this might be a reframing of Kant’s phenomena and noumena, but it is useful to note that Sellars’ manifest and scientific images would both be categorized as phenomena. On Kant, the scientific image wouldn’t qualify as noumena. Some modern day philosophers, taking after Donald Hoffman, a professor at the University of California Irvine, have it that we have evolved in such a way that we are pretty much shielded from apprehending ultimate reality, i.e., the Kantian noumena. We evolved to perceive and thus, to solely apprehend the phenomena. 

With that in mind, Sellars’ scientific and manifest images correspond to the Kantian phenomena. Yet there appears to be an irreconcilable contradiction between them. On the manifest image, a Rubik’s cube has a distinct three-dimensional shape and six colors – usually yellow, orange, red, green, blue, and white. Assuming we are trichromats that don’t have green-red color blindness, we all apprehend this object more or less equally. On the scientific image, however, the cube doesn’t have a distinct shape; nor does it have colors. The cube is comprised of particles and empty space, and though the colors are fully explainable by the science of chromatics – namely as the result of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum – particles in and of themselves don’t have a color. Aside from that, the Rubik’s cube seems to have these colors because we have three photoreceptor cells in each retina allowing us to see these colors. The colors, to put it another way, are not inherent to the object.

Sellars was interested in the project of saving appearances or, in other words, unifying reality as it seems given human perception versus reality as explained through science. This is the hard problem of consciousness made explicit: neuroscience can’t explain phenomenal consciousness. This is Sellars’ exact dilemma. The contradictory images are best viewed in human consciousness. Neurologists and neuroscientists can explain to us why we see and what brain regions are involved when we see or even when we imagine seeing, but they can’t tell us why we see how and what we see. In other words, science can readily explain why we see the colors we see, but it cannot tell us how neurons and brain regions give rise to quaila; there is something it is like to see a Rubik’s cube and given the hard problem, the scientific image can’t be used to explain the manifest image.

In a recent post, I spoke about quaila and outlined why I’m suspicious of this conclusion and the consequences that follow, namely property dualism and panpsychism. Sellars’ made great strides in trying to reconcile the images, but perhaps his lack of success with regards to a reconciliation has all to do with the ignorance of his time. We can now identify quite a few strong suggestions that the scientific image does explain the manifest image. I gave some examples in the aforementioned post, but there are further examples still.

Think of synesthesia. For people who have synesthesia, hearing color, tasting sounds, and seeing numbers and letters as colored is a common experience. As with most sensory disorders, there is a neurophysical correlate to synesthesia. Sometimes the onset of the disorder is preceded by brain trauma. Jason Padgett, who was assaulted outside a karaoke bar, suffered a severe concussion. He claims to see geometric shapes and angles all around him. This is an unusual sense(s) for the majority of us and there would obviously be something it is like to experience the world in the way he does. There is, however, something to be said about the fact that a brain injury preceded the emergence of these peculiar senses. While I am wary of inferring causation from correlation, correlation is a powerful indicator and when considering that Padgett’s case isn’t unique, the correlation might be suggestive of causation.

Perception, it would seem, is entirely contingent on the condition of one’s brain. If a region is altered by injury or if communication between regions is either hindered or heightened, there are corresponding behaviors and perceptions that can be expected relative to the affected regions. This may indicate that the scientific image, in this case explaining how brain regions communicate and what each is responsible for, explains the manifest image, namely our perceptions or as Sellars would have had it, the world as it appears. Sellars’ disparate images are best exemplified in consciousness and in that, the hard problem was spelled out long before it was given a fancy name.

[miamaimania]

✧ Transparent — except for the parts that kill

[dmcreativestudio]

Mandy Barker - BEYOND DRIFTING: IMPERFECTLY KNOWN ANIMALS

[...]Presented as microscopic samples, objects of marine plastic debris, recovered from the same location, mimic Thompson's early scientific discoveries of plankton. The work represents the degradation and contamination of plastic particles in the natural environment, by creating the perception of past scientific studies, when organisms where free from plastic. Enveloping black space evokes the deep oceans beneath. Presenting new 'specimens' created from recovered debris, serves as a metaphor to the ubiquity of plastic and the anthropocene, encapsulating in miniature the much larger problem of an imperfect world.

[dmcreativestudio]

Jos Jansen - Universe / Facts in the post-truth era 

[thinkingmansmoneyshot]

[We can, of course, as matters now stand, realize this direct incorporation of the scientific image into our way of life only in imagination.] But to do so is, if only in imagination, to transcend the dualism of the manifest and scientific images of man-of-the-world.

Sellars, Wilfrid. "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man." Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963. 1-40.

[atelierentomologica]

Anatomy of a caterpillar