Veil of Fire

Ok, I'm confused.

When I see a bush, my eyes are collecting and processing light reflected off the bush. So I'm not really seeing the bush, just the light it reflects.

When I hear a gunshot, my ears are collecting and interpreting waves in the air. So I'm not really hearing the gunshot, just the waves it produces.

When I smell a biscuit.... what am I smelling, exactly?

When I pet my kitty-cat... what am I feeling, exactly?

Are there any critters that 'feel' things from longer distances (perhaps through some application of Universal Field Theory or something)? Bats 'see' the same way we 'hear', and snakes taste things from far away... but I don't know of any animal that has to touch an object to process the reflected light, or anything that has some organ allowing it to feel a texture from a distance.

It's really befuddling me.

[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: Veil of Fire ]</p>

Ought Naught

</strong>Airborne compounds that are given off by the biscuit.

</strong>That depends on what you mean by "kitty-cat".
Seriously, you are feeling the cat's interaction with mechanoreceptors in your hands and fingers. You are probably also getting input from proprioceptors in your hands and fingers that give you a sense of the shape of the cat.
</strong>
Bats aren't blind, but you are correct in that they have a very sophisticated sense of hearing that is in many respects similar to active sonar. Snakes do "taste" at a distance if by "taste" you mean "chemoreception that takes place in the mouth". Other than the anatomical location of the sensation, this is pretty much indistinguishable from a plain ol' sense of smell, though. Other than the passive and active electrical sensation that is exhibited by aquatic animals, I can't really think of other sensory modalities that occur at a distance.
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[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: Ought Naught ]</p>

Synaesthesia

This is kind of related to a topic which I'm studying (informally) now.

Are you really seeing light, or are you seeing your occipital lobe's interpretation of light? Or are you seeing the cerebal cortex's interpretation of the occipital lobe's interpretation of the retina's interpretation of light?

At what point do "I" fit in? Is there even such a thing as an "I" for which all of this information is re-represented?

Ought Naught

I'm really a bit out of my depth when it comes to questions about consciousness, but it seems that, depending upon the particular task, neural correlates of visual consciousness are all (AFAIK) within the cerebral cortex. They tend to be farther down the visual processing stream than V1, but I think that I recall some examples even at this earlier stage. As far as where the "I" is in the brain, I haven't really got an answer for you. My personal opinion is that "I" is distributed throughout the brain (and concentrated largely in the neocortex), but plenty of qualified people might disagree with me.

echidna

VoF, maybe what you are referring to are termed “qualia”, loosely how our consciousness interprets the various inputs from our senses.

To the age-old paradox, does the falling tree make a sound in the empty forest, scientifically it’s quite accurate to say no. Even a determinist would acknowledge that the tree would only generate pressure waves in the air. Only an observing consciousness can actually interpret them as sound.

Thanks for that. You can probably find more mention of qualia in the Philosophy forum where minds more patient than mine can debate endlessly the true nature of “blueness”.

[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: echidna ]

[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: echidna ]</p>

tronvillain

Of course, the consciousness also has to have the appropriate sensory apparatus and processing ability. Anyway, I answer the question affirmatively, since I prefer to define "sound" as something like "pressure waves capable of being detected by auditory sensory apparatus."

tronvillain

Veil of Fire:
As far as I can tell, "seeing the bush" means "detecting light reflected off of the bush." You are "really seeing the bush" if 1) you detect a bush visually and 2) an existing bush caused the detection.

As far as I can tell "hearing the gunshot" means "detecting the waves produced by the gunshot." You are "really hearing the gunshot" if 1) you detect a gunshot audibly and 2) an actual gunshot caused the detection.

echidna

Let me try again. I’d suggest that the answer to your question whether animals can feel from a distance might be yes, in that bat and dolphin sonar can actually give different reflected “signatures” depending on the surface properties.

However in qualia terms, it would not be a true sense of feeling, as this is defined in terms of the sense of touch, actual contact between surfaces. It would be the “sonared” impression of touch.

For example I can see a train heading at me, or I can hear its Doppler pitch change telling me it’s coming nearer, or I can even feel it as it impacts my head. As such, different qualia can be indirectly compared, but not literally, and especially between species.

Presumably one could also “feel” heat at a distance simply by extending the optical range of the eye into the infrared range. But again, this wouldn’t really be touch, unless the infrared was triggering the heat sensors in our skin.

As you can tell, I’m not sure exactly what your question is, so excuse my ramblings.

John Page

You are "seeing" a bush. The eye receives light, the brain matches sensory data with the concept of a bush. Hence, in your "mind's eye" you perceive a bush.

Cheers, John

Veil of Fire

echidna: A bat is 'hearing' a stalagmite, not seeing it or feeling it. But its hearing is just as precise as our seeing. It just gets processed differently by the brain.

If there was a hypothetical critter that absorbed reflected light through the skin, and had to touch things to 'see' them, would it be 'feeling' them or 'seeing' them, if it doesn't have an organ (like nerve cells) to process tactile information?

Seeing is the process of interpreting reflected light. Hearing is the process of interpreting waves through a medium. Smell is (thanks to the Ought) the process of interpreting airborne chemical compounds. I still don't quite understand what touch is.

My original post actually contained two questions; 1, what is it, prescisely, that we smell and feel (Ought answered smell, and tried to answer feel, but went way over my head), and 2, could it be theoretically possible for an organism to develop an organ that could process those sensations (particularly feel) from a radically different distance than humans do.

It's really a question brought up as I was trying to write a sci-fi short story... I want to know if it's even remotely plausible to have an alien critter that 'sees' through 'feel' like a bat 'sees' through 'hearing' and a snake 'sees' through 'smelling'.