Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!godot.cc.duq.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!utnut!utgpu!pindor
From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: When is a simulation of a Y a Y? (Was Bag the Turing
Message-ID: <D2z6xA.B2H@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <D2D0sM.55o@spss.com> <D2KLCv.C23@spss.com> <D2pzFL.L38@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <D2xL96.AMB@spss.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 19:17:33 GMT
Lines: 64

In article <D2xL96.AMB@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>In article <D2pzFL.L38@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
:
>>Let me present a quote from a recent net article (by Andrzej Pindor): 
>>
>>  In another posting I have pointed out that we sometimes act not only
>>  on what is in our peripheral vision, but even on objects in the
>>  surrounding area which we do not see, but know from previous
>>  inspection that they are there.  Hence we _do_ have a filled-in
>>  picture of what is around us.
>>
>>To me, at least, this "filled-in" is a perfectly reasonable way
>>to talk and doesn't owe anything to Cartesian Theatres.  So I offer
>>it as an example.  It's possible to say "filled-in" without getting
>>into trouble.
>
>Certainly we know things about the world even with our eyes closed;
>but we still find it useful to keep them open, even in our own bedrooms
>with nothing changing.  So Andrzej's remarks do not show that the brain 
>fills in details that the eyes do not see (because of the blind spot or the
>lower resolution outside the fovea); on the contrary, with our eyes closed
>we have an even lower information content than non-foveal vision offers.
>
It seems to me that we runnining into an interpretation of "filling-in".
Perhaps I have not read enough books or papers where this term is used (just
Dennet's CE). If most of those who use this term mean some sort of Cartesian
Theater (filling-in as creating a complete picture for some conscious 
'observer') then I'd agree with Dennet's critique. However, on the face of it, 
'filling-in' means for me creating in the brain more or less complete (no 
holes or empty regions) model of the surrounding space, which is available to 
any brain process which might need it as an input. Say I am moving backwards in 
a gym - there is some process in my brain which keeps of account where I am. It 
must use such a model and monitor my position within this model, since at 
a certain moment I might stop (an interrupt from the monitoring process 
arrived) becoming aware that I may be close to the wall. When I look behind me 
I may sometimes find that I might have made another step back, but important 
thing is that a warning sounded on a basis of a model which includes parts 
not currently available to the senses.
:
>>Now, when someone talks about "filling-in", we can think about what
>>they say in more than one way.  We might try to figure out what
>>they're talking about, and, sure enough, we find that there is a 
>>blind spot and that we're not normally aware of it.  We might then
>>wonder whether "filling-in" is really the best way to describe this
>>or just what this talk of filling-in really amounts to.  
>
>Exactly.  That's just what Dennett is doing, IMHO: wondering whether
>"filling in" is the best way to describe what's going on.  If he hadn't
>read these authors "the wrong way", if he had just cut them some slack
>and let them write sloppily, he wouldn't have stumbled on such an
>interesting question.  
>
Well, I find such a discussion (is this a best way of describing or isn't it)
a bit scholastic. Some of Dennet's battles against 'central meaner' or
'central observer' (in a Cartesian Thetatre) make sense but some, in my
view, are just vacuous fights about words.

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
