A revolution in thought

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

No, I don't derive any satisfaction from proving you wrong. For one thing, it's trivially easy, and for another that isn't my goal. I want to know why you show no interest at all in addressing potential problems with your own claims. It isn't very scientific of you. If you were rational about this you'd want to investigate the problematic aspects of your ideas to see if they can be corrected or overcome. That you show no interest in this shows that you know these ideas of yours don't hold up under scrutiny.

Bump.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

The only premise I've started from is your own, so if it is wrong then it's your own damn fault. I've started from YOUR premise that the light at the retina at 12:00 came from the Sun and was previously located there. That leads to a direct contradiction because there is no possible time when this light could have been located at the Sun. That means your account is contradictory and wrong, but you continue to evade the point because you lack any trace of intellectual honesty.

Bump.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Tell me when when I said sound and smell or touch happen in the nose or ears or skin? Strawman.

We were talking about recognition and identification of information, not the stimuli itself.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I was going to put mammal but wiki used the word fish. They should fix that.

Yes there are, in fact there are several fish that use echolocation such as dolphins, river dolphins, killer whales, and sperm whales; in addition, it's also used by ...

Do any fish use echolocation

LOL you rely on Wiki to know whether dolphins are fish or mammals? My 7 year old knows the difference.

And who is "they"? Wiki checkers? That would be you, or me, or whomever wants to edit Wiki...because it is edited by anyone.

[Vivisectus]

I think she means the google quick-search function, which gives you suggestions as to how you want your search-term finished as you are typing it.

But yeah my own 7-year old was indignant that I would even ask such a question.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Bump.

My ideas hold up to scrutiny but I'm not interested in talking about photons. I don't have to investigate the problematic aspects of these ideas because they are not problematic, therefore they don't need correction. I know this is your goal; to get me to see that Lessans was wrong. This has been your intention since you met me. You have never taken this work seriously. You have no desire to understand his reasoning as to why man's will is not free. All you do is try to defend your compatibilist position.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Spacemonkey, have you been taking a nap? I just said that hearing is considered more complex than seeing, so that rationalizaton doesn't add up at all. Secondly, recognizing anything from the external world through stimuli involves some sort of cognitive process. A dog smelling steak versus an onion would have to identify through a cognitive process what he is smelling in order to know which to choose. The same applies to sight. You are completely mistaken and you are just trying to dismiss anything I say on very strong grounds just because you don't want to have to deal with cognitive/dissonance, or have to think about the fact that science could have gotten it wrong.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

My point has nothing to do with whether hearing is more complex than seeing, and I am not denying that all perception requires cognitive processing
I am saying that facial recognition is a complex and specialized cognitive mechanism that can be absent through either brain damage or not having evolved in the first place, even when vision is otherwise perfectly functional. There is therefore no reason at all to expect it to be present in dogs just because they see afferently, and there is also no reason at all to expect it to be absent if dogs see efferently.

It is true that facial recognition is a special mechanism that requires language to distinguish the subtle differences in features, and dogs don't have the language to be capable of doing this. That is why their sense of hearing is so much better than ours because they don't identify through sight; they identify through smell. This actually supports efferent vision because this demonstrates how words allow us to see these differences in substance that dogs cannot see because they don't have the language.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

No way. Again, you are trying to compare two things that are not comparable because you don't want to admit that you could be wrong. Echolocation is the ability to locate where something is because that is how blind creatures find their prey, and also know where something is located so they don't smash into it. Afferent vision, on the other hand, would expect a dog to recognize its master by his very familiar features, just like a dog can recognize his master through hearing because both types of stimuli would be entering the brain and going directly to the center of the brain where this recognition would take place.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

All you've done here is repeat your claim that we should expect facial recognition given canine afferent vision. That simply isn't true. And I was comparing two things that are perfectly comparable. Facial recognition is to vision what echolocation is to hearing. Both are specialized cognitive capacities which may be absent even when the relevant sense (i.e. vision or hearing respectively) is perfectly well developed.

Like I said, the fact that dogs don't have this cognitive capability supports efferent vision because it is a specialized function of language that they don't have.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Well plenty isn't enough. It doesn't cut it. There can be mistakes with these type of tests especially when the expectation that the results should turn out a certain way are [possibly] skewing the results.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

No amount of evidence is ever enough for you, because you don't care about evidence. Nonetheless, plenty-of-evidence beats no-evidence-at-all every time. Oh, and can photons ever have come from somewhere they were never located?

I care about evidence but I am not convinced that he is wrong. And I never said photons can come from somewhere they were never located. And please don't get into this again.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

My ideas hold up to scrutiny but I'm not interested in talking about photons. I don't have to investigate the problematic aspects of these ideas because they are not problematic, therefore they don't need correction.

But they don't hold up to scrutiny at all. you know this, and that's why you refuse to discuss it. You aren't fooling anyone. Your account is obviously wrong, because it posits light coming from someplace where it could never have been located.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I know this is your goal; to get me to see that Lessans was wrong. This has been your intention since you met me. You have never taken this work seriously. You have no desire to understand his reasoning as to why man's will is not free. All you do is try to defend your compatibilist position.

Unlike yourself, I have taken his work seriously and I do understand his reasoning as to why man's will is allegedly not free. That's why I am able to explain how and why his reasoning is fallacious. Again, you were the one to stop replying to me on this subject.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You said vision is a very complex process as if the other senses are not as complex.

No I didn't. I never said that or anything like it.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You are trying to make facial recognition a special mechanism. Yes, it is...

It is indeed, and you agree with me.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

...because it requires language to distinguish these subtle differences, and they don't have the language to be capable of doing this.

It has nothing to do with language. This is just one more invented claim you have zero evidence for.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Like I said, the fact that dogs don't have this cognitive capability supports efferent vision because it is a specialized function of language that they don't have.

It still isn't a fact that dogs lack this capacity, and all available evidence suggests the opposite. Even if we accept all that you are saying, you only have evidence that dogs lack language, not that they lack afferent vision.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I care about evidence but I am not convinced that he is wrong. And I never said photons can come from somewhere they were never located. And please don't get into this again.

You couldn't care less about evidence, as proven by your insistence on rejecting all evidence against your father's claims and continuing to believe those claims without any evidence to support them. And you HAVE said that the photons come from somewhere they were never located. You said they came from the Sun, and you know perfectly well they could never have been located there. If you deny this, then you owe me an answer to the simple question of when they could have been located there.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by thedoc

That wasn't Wiki. Peacegirl, you don't even know where your wrong answers are comeing from.

It says Wiki answers right up top.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I never said photons can come from somewhere they were never located.

You said the photons at the retina at 12:00 (when the Sun is first ignited) came from the Sun. They could never have been located at the Sun. Do you disagree with this?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Sight hounds do not just respond to movment, each dog will respond and pursue a particular prey, and will not chase any animal indiscriminatly. they can recognize a particular animal as prey and others as something to be ignored, and they may ignore other humans but not their master by sight alone. Birds of prey can be trained to hunt a particular animal, and in the wild will prefer some prey over others. This requires the recognition of features on the same level as facial recognition, but recognizing prey is necessary for survival.

Birds of prey can recognize movement which helps them identify their target. Sight hounds may be able to see the shape and size of an animal which gives them information as to whether this animal is prey. But when it comes to very subtle differences in still pictures or videos (without any other clues), it cannot distinguish its master from someone else because it doesn't have this capability.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

You said the photons at the retina at 12:00 (when the Sun is first ignited) came from the Sun. They could never have been located at the Sun. Do you disagree with this?

You are completely lost here, and I also do not like the way you belittle me and then act as if all is well. All is not well.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You are completely lost here, and I also do not like the way you belittle me and then act as if all is well. All is not well.

I'm not lost and I'm not belittling you. My post is perfectly reasonable. You were wrong to say you'd never said that the photons came from somewhere they were never located, because that is exactly what you have claimed. You have said these photons came from the Sun. Do you disagree that they could never have been located there?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

They are taught to select a picture of their trainer. Do try to keep up.

Where's the damn video? Show me the proof!!!

Actually yes. An expression through their bird body language (haha) that there is a noticeable change in their behavior which indicates recognition. It certainly beats clicking a lever.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

But you yourself are admitting you are asking for the impossible: you type (haha) after bird body language. And indeed it is ludicrous: that does not happen outside of disney cartoons. We cannot interpret bird body language in an unambiguous, clear way.

I didn't say haha because I thought it was ludicrous. It just sounded funny, but it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be able to see subtle changes in the bird's behavior. Isn't that what bird watchers try to observe? Different types of behavior in different circumstances, and what their movements might mean?

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

That is why your demands for "The kind of baa-ing or bleating that would indicate recognition" is so stupid. My seven year old knows better than that.

It's not stupid at all. All creatures have their own communication system which doesn't involve words even though they can be trained to a certain degree to follow commands or to identify objects when given a word. When I say the word "toy" to my dog, she starts to look for her pull toy. But she certainly doesn't have the kind of language that can help her identify subtle differences.

I'm not flailing. I'm trying to be objective and so far I don't see the proof.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Perhaps if you took your head out of the sand it would be easier. It certainly is there.

No it's not.

Can you get me the link again? I'd like to know how the test was set up, what made it statistically significant, and how many times it was replicated.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

It was a few posts ago. On that link you can find a link to the extract of the study that will give you the data.

I don't want to see the results. I want to see the actual video of the experiment.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

The problem is that I doubt you have the capacity to understand it, but hey you might come up with something to top the non-traveling non-absorbed light being the other side of the coin of the reflection mumbo-jumbo. You never cease to surprise me: every time I think you could not possibly say something more preposterous, you reach down deep and find something even more insane.

If it's so insane, why do you stay? I know I know, for entertainment.

It would seem to me that if a pigeon knew his trainer, he would show some kind of recognition without having to get rewarded for it.

This is not conclusive in my opinion unless, of course, the person has a reason to want them to be able to do that.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

I am sure they do show some sort of recognition - many pigeon fanciers say they do. However, in order to test if they do in a scientific manner you need to make sure they exhibit unambiguous behavior that leaves no room for alternate interpretation, so some training is required.

You seem unable (or more likely, unwilling. No-one is THAT dense.) to grasp that.

They may be trained to see a shape (I don't know), but even if they could do this and it was statistically significant, this is not true recognition where the bird actually knows that he is picking out his trainer.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

But please, do refrain from getting it this time as well. If you stop saying deeply ignorant things, I lose a major source of entertainment.

I knew this was all it was. That's why you'll never take this discussion seriously, so I won't either.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Claims of bias are not very convincing when you are simply refusing to accept mountains of evidence against your position. In fact they are kind of funny when you realize that the only reason you dismiss that same evidence is because you desperately want your father to have been right.

Where is the evidence? Show me.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

You have been shown tons. At considerable length.

Tons of half baked evidence. No conclusive proof; just what people want to believe is true based on flimsy results.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Are you sure you went to college? I saw you claim that you had a Bachelor of Science in special education but I really do not see how you could have managed even that if you do not understand such basic concepts.

Ad hominen attack. Is this what you do when you feel cornered?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

I'm not lost and I'm not belittling you. My post is perfectly reasonable. You were wrong to say you'd never said that the photons came from somewhere they were never located, because that is exactly what you have claimed. You have said these photons came from the Sun. Do you disagree that they could never have been located there?

I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to show that time is involved and therefore we see the past because photons travel, and since they can't be at the Sun at 12:00 and at the retina at 12:00, there must be a delay. I cannot help you here. All I'm saying is that in efferent vision it does not take 8 minutes to see the Sun because all that is required is for the Sun to be bright enough to see it. We are not seeing the image from photons. Look, you think you have it all figured out but you don't. You don't understand the mechanism of why this model is even plausible.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to show that time is involved and therefore we see the past because photons travel, and since they can't be at the Sun at 12:00 and at the retina at 12:00, there must be a delay. I cannot help you here. All I'm saying is that in efferent vision it does not take 8 minutes to see the Sun because all that is required is for the Sun to be bright enough to see it. We are not seeing the image from photons. Look, you think you have it all figured out but you don't. You don't understand the mechanism of why this model is even plausible.

It isn't plausible and you don't have a mechanism. Your only offered account is flatly contradictory. The photons you say are instantly at the retina couldn't possibly have come from the Sun (given that they could never have been located there), so where would you have them come from? Until you can answer this, you don't have any plausible explanation of efferent vision at all.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I cannot help you here. [...] You don't understand the mechanism of why this model is even plausible.

If you can't help me at all with a flat contradiction right in the middle of your own explanation, then how can you still claim it to be plausible?

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It says Wiki answers right up top.

There is Wikipedia, but there are other types of wikis that aren't Wikipedia. Anyone can use wiki software to create a website. That was a question and answer site, meaning anyone could ask or answer questions on it, but it is not Wikipedia...it uses wiki software so it has wiki in the URL

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

A wiki is a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser usually using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.[1][2][3] Wikis are powered by wiki software. Most are created collaboratively.

Wikis serve many different purposes, such as knowledge management and notetaking. Wikis can be community websites and intranets, for example. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access). For example, editing rights may permit changing, adding or removing material. Others may permit access without enforcing access control. Other rules may also be imposed to organize content.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

All I'm saying is that in efferent vision it does not take 8 minutes to see the Sun because all that is required is for the Sun to be bright enough to see it. We are not seeing the image from photons.

Question. The Sun is turned on at noon and we see the Sun at noon (as per Lessans), are there light photons physically in contact with the retina, meaning located on the retina, at noon?

Spacemonkey is asking about your claims as to the location of light photons, and you have answered using "seeing" with no mention of a location. Does seeing efferently include light photons being physically located on the retina of eyes?

[Vivisectus]

Where's the damn video? Show me the proof!!!

I am sure that if you write to the people who did the test, they will send you some of the recordings from the tests. Just try not to sound too crazy or they won't bother. Most of them are recorded in one way or another these days.

Now you should do the same and share your fathers research.

Oh wait! There is nothing there. Never was. So I guess your fathers claim to have studied so hard for so long is based on no evidence whatever?

I didn't say haha because I thought it was ludicrous. It just sounded funny, but it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be able to see subtle changes in the bird's behavior. Isn't that what bird watchers try to observe? Different types of behavior in different circumstances, and what their movements might mean?

No, no it is not what bird watchers try to observe. At all. Truly there is no end to the subjects you do not know anything about.

And actually, it IS ludicrous.

I already explained at length why we cannot use body language. It is too ambiguous and it is too easy to project human responses on to animal ones. You need something far more clear than that.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

That is why your demands for "The kind of baa-ing or bleating that would indicate recognition" is so stupid. My seven year old knows better than that.

It's not stupid at all. All creatures have their own communication system which doesn't involve words even though they can be trained to a certain degree to follow commands or to identify objects when given a word.

No they do not. The common earthworm is one, for starters. That is just another mindless claim you have pulled out of thin air.

And for those animals that do communicate, it is very difficult to assign precise meanings to these communication. Which is why we do not rely on them in tests like these.

When I say the word "toy" to my dog, she starts to look for her pull toy. But she certainly doesn't have the kind of language that can help her identify subtle differences.

That words are needed to see subtle differences is your baseless claim. The outcomes of multiple tests suggests otherwise, and no single expert shares your opinion.

I'm not flailing. I'm trying to be objective and so far I don't see the proof.

I don't want to see the results. I want to see the actual video of the experiment.

That is funny - you assume the statement "dogs cannot recognize faces" purely on your fathers say-so, but for the opposite even a peer-reviewed study is not enough.

If you want that kind of material you will have to write to the people who did the study and ask them to send in the footage. It is not uncommon to record test results in that way.

In the meantime, can you hand over your own research on safety and your fathers research on conscience?

If it's so insane, why do you stay? I know I know, for entertainment.

Yeah, the kind of stuff you say is pretty funny. "The kind of bleating or baah-ing that indicates recognition" was especially good, and just about anything you say regarding light and sight is very funny too.

It is also instructive to see the kind of mental contortionism you go through just to avoid facing some of the more obvious conflicts between your ideas and reality. It is like having my own pet fundamentalist, only the idiocy is all the more clear because the things you believe are just so insane.

They may be trained to see a shape (I don't know), but even if they could do this and it was statistically significant, this is not true recognition where the bird actually knows that he is picking out his trainer.

And yet they pick out new pictures of their trainer that they have not seen before. But hey, it is not *real* recognition if it is convenient for you to say it was not. Ayup.

I knew this was all it was. That's why you'll never take this discussion seriously, so I won't either.

I will, the moment there is anything there to take seriously.

Tons of half baked evidence. No conclusive proof; just what people want to believe is true based on flimsy results.

Flimsy like the observations of the moons of jupiter? Which we then confirmed by skimming a probe past it? Or flimsy like the evidence from all those tests where animals are shown to recognize individual animals, human faces, and images of both indiividual animals and human faces? How about flimsy like the evidence of the laser we shoot at the moon... and not see until the light has hit the moon and bounced back? Which we then also confirmed by using machines to record the same thing?

I could go on for a whole page like this.

On the other hand, anything that is in the books, now THAT you can just assume to be correct without any evidence at all, such as in the case of his claims about how conscience works, for which even you have not been able to find any evidence anywhere in the book.

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Are you sure you went to college? I saw you claim that you had a Bachelor of Science in special education but I really do not see how you could have managed even that if you do not understand such basic concepts.

Ad hominen attack. Is this what you do when you feel cornered? [/QUOTE]

Actually, I am genuinely curious. I do not think someone who is incapable to fathoming such basic concepts could finish that course.

You see, there is a rather familiar thing going on on the page where you claim to hold that bachelors degree: a lot of claims with nothing to back it up. You claim to have done "extensive research" into "safety". That is a meaningless thing to say, as it could mean just about anything. Then there is the claim that this research "identified a gap in safety knowledge"...

First off, it sounds made up. On top of that you have shown that you do not know the first thing about research of any kind! Your idea of thorough research is reading some books and cooking up some half-baked ideas without ever actually checking if you are correct!

It is the same way you father desperately tries to paint himself as some sort of authority on human psychology and behavior. He claims to have done all this research... but where is it? What did it consist of?

It sounds like something you just said to make yourself look like an authority on a subject. It sounds fake, to tell you the truth.

So while we are on the subject of demanding all the material before we accept a piece of research, how about you show me the research you did yourself?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

LOL you rely on Wiki to know whether dolphins are fish or mammals? My 7 year old knows the difference.

And who is "they"? Wiki checkers? That would be you, or me, or whomever wants to edit Wiki...because it is edited by anyone.

True, but this doesn't mean Lessans is wrong, which you are constantly trying to prove with moot stuff.

[peacegirl]

I saw this on the news. Extremely touching because it shows dogs have strong emotion. I don't know why the audio isn't working, but he even cries because his friend is gone.

Bella (dog) mourns death of Beavis (beaver) -...

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Question. The Sun is turned on at noon and we see the Sun at noon (as per Lessans), are there light photons physically in contact with the retina, meaning located on the retina, at noon?

Spacemonkey is asking about your claims as to the location of light photons, and you have answered using "seeing" with no mention of a location. Does seeing efferently include light photons being physically located on the retina of eyes?

I will not even go there with you LadyShea because you are doing what Spacemonkey is doing; not even considering the opposite conclusion that must be if the eyes are efferent. You have no clue.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

There is Wikipedia, but there are other types of wikis that aren't Wikipedia. Anyone can use wiki software to create a website. That was a question and answer site, meaning anyone could ask or answer questions on it, but it is not Wikipedia...it uses wiki software so it has wiki in the URL

Good, so I learned something. You still aren't all that LadyShea, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

It isn't plausible and you don't have a mechanism. Your only offered account is flatly contradictory. The photons you say are instantly at the retina couldn't possibly have come from the Sun (given that they could never have been located there), so where would you have them come from? Until you can answer this, you don't have any plausible explanation of efferent vision at all.

If you can't help me at all with a flat contradiction right in the middle of your own explanation, then how can you still claim it to be plausible?

No Spacemonkey, the problem is not with the claim; it's with your ability to grasp the plausibiltiy of this claim. And I will not talk to you about this any further. I am tired of your attitude toward me. It stinks.