h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm fairly sure that this wouldn't count as changing me

but I would like to be able to play the recorder better

I can just about do Old McDonald, Feed the Birds and Bear Necessities

Yes, Music.
Thanks to Recumbentman for pointing to A2466100.
Hadn't even thought of Music in this discussion

but yes, of course, it is one the best ways to
achieve change and to soothe savage breasts.

It can also animate and incite and seduce. The
bagpipe, cymbal, drums and horns have all been
used as weapons.

I dare say Music is perhaps the greatest agent
of change we have.

~jwf~

I want to be seduced - Leon Redbone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRFQK6Cctmc

I've been out several days, so taking it from Post 48:

...or elusive...




Post 50 "...dynamic opposites... ...could also produce stalemate..."

As in catatonia....

Muscular illustration: one contracts the muscles of the inside of the forearm to make a fist; one contracts the muscles of the back of the forearm to open one's hand; one needs to be able to do both.

Sensation, perception and emotion originate in pleasure and pain, the first great psychological duality.




Post 52, "...believe... ...proof presented by an illusion..."

...I might, if it worked when I checked it.




Post 54, one mustn't confound physical reality with sensation and perception.

Darkness is merely the absence of light in physical reality, but is represented by a discrete neurotransmitter in the rods that govern night vision, which serves as the anti-component for its companion neurotransmitter, coding for illumination.

With that and the neurotransmitters coding for red, yellow, green and blue coming up in the sensory-perceptual apparatus of color vision, when the neuron fires one or the other of the neurotransmitters, the signal it introduces into the nervous system is canceled when the anti-component fires reflexively a moment (about a 50th of a second) later.

Red and green light are sensed by separate cone cells in the visual cortex of the retina, but they operate oppositely, the green serving merely as the anti-component for red in the red sensitive cones, red serving merely as the anti-component for green in the green sensitive cones.

Things get a little more complicated with the blue sensitive cones, yellow serving as the anti-component of blue, even though it is not anywhere represented as a neurotransmitter coding directly for a sensory experience.

When one sees something which appears yellow, its a perception triggered when approximately equal numbers of red and green sensitive cones are being stimulated simultaneously.

The red and green sensitive cones have an overlapping range of sensitivity and this is why the color yellow appears so much brighter than the other colors, since it takes stimulation of two sensory cones to produce a perception of yellow.

Similar mechanics operate with cyan (or sky blue), the cyan section of the visual spectrum being located in a region of overlap of the ranges of sensitivity of the green and blue sensitive cones.

...and the neurotransmitter coding for yellow, in context of the blue sensitive cones, merely serves as the anti-component of blue, as the neurotransmitter coding for black in the night vision rods serves only as the anti-component for white, which in turn indicates merely the presence of light somewhere between about 1600nm wavelength and about 300nm wavelength.

Heat and cold are sensed similarly, each serving as the anti-component for the other, though heat and cold are sensed by separate and distinct sensory neurons, in a manner somewhat analogous to the operation of the red and green sensitive cones, though there are differences in the way hot/cold sensory neurons operate as well.




There is a fundamental difference in the way neurological apparatus works and the way cybernetic machines do.

In the latter case, the codes always reduce to binary groups, a 'switch', either in the 'on' or 'off' position.

With neurosensory and perceptual apparatus, its a case of 'component' plus 'anti-component' equals nullity; as though the cybernetic machine were producing signals like; (+1) + (-1) = 0; only the +1 or the -1, one or the other, coding for a sensation or perception; and the given 'cell' ready to receive only when in the null state.




Psychological dualities do have their roots in opponent process mechanisms of compensation, but the neural physiology is already very complex even at the raw sensory or perceptual level.


http://www.google.com.au/search?as_q=oponent+process+theory+of+sensory+perception&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=#hl=en&lr=&tbo=d&as_qdr=all&spell=1&q=opponent+process+theory+of+sensory+perception&sa=X&ei=-z0DUcK1DojniAKRloGoCQ&ved=0CC8QvwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&bvm=bv.41524429,d.cGE&fp=b987864691354c7e&biw=1280&bih=652




Post 59, "...as mentioned in that other thread..."

Strictly speaking, light is a sensation and black is a perception.

ITIWBS: Would you accept that lightness is both a sensation and a perception? Colours are clearly perceptions but based on sensations. Black is still linked with sensation as it is generated as a form of contrast with light (low intensity versus high intensity light). For that reason you can't get black by closing your eyes ... ?

But you don't need sensation to perceive light, dark and colours as demonstrated in sleep.

Lightness certainly can be either a sensation or perception.

In the technical jargon, a 'sensation' is a perception engendered by actual sensory experience, whether vision, sound, taste, touch or odor.




With respect to sleep, what the traditional, as distinct from psychoanalytical, dream analysts call 'dreams of contraries' are engendered in part by opponent process mechanisms, as the accumulated component/anti-component pairs of the day are recycled, giving rise to an apperception conditioned by the experience of the preceding day, usually reflecting suppressed anxieties.

Related effects, if one stares fixedly at an object of a given color for a minute or so then transfers one's gaze to a neutral field, one sees a somewhat blurred after-image in the complement (anti-component) of its color, which gradually fades.

If ones stares fixedly at the object for half an hour or so, one won't be able to see it at all any more on account of saturation of that region of the visual cortex with accumulated component/anti-component pairs.

An example of the effect in terms of emotional response can be taken from the maxim, "There are no atheists in foxholes."

The accumulated stresses and horrors of war engender an opponent process compensatory apperception, which for some becomes an inspiration and an ideal.

Re: last line of Post 64, restricting the discussion to activity in the retina and the neural apparatus immediately serving it.

Harking back to post 27, an illustration of the principle of stress related deontogenic reaction taken from the workplace:




1) Taking passive aggression as a dysfunction of cerebral needs, employee in workplace situation is slacking off, taking inappropriate advantage of their position, etc..

Supervisor 'cracks the whip', so to speak.




2) Employee tightens up, begins exercising elevated self critical capacity, reacting in the direction of intellectual or analytical needs, with a concomitant association of mildly dysfunctional compulsive behavior, taking compulsive disorder as a dysfunction of intellectual and analytical needs.

Supervisor cracks the whip again.




3) Employee becomes confused, begins following supervisor around asking questions, responding in a dependent manner, taking dependent and obsessive behavior as dysfunctions of existential or passive observation needs.

Supervisor cracks the whip again.

The supervisor is in this case somewhat out of control.




4) Employee responds by actively avoiding supervisor, taking avoidance as a dysfunction of manipulative needs.

The supervisor has reduced the employee to a state where they're going to be getting less work done than they would have otherwise.

Supervisor chases employee down and cracks the whip again.




5) Employee is reduced to borderline behavior, taking borderline manifestations as dysfunctions of social self image, or sociocentric needs.

Blustering or physical aggression may follow.

Supervisor applies even more pressure to employee.




6) Histrionic manifestations follow, histrionics taken as dysfunction of superego.

Supervisor cracks the whip again.




7) Employee responds with protestations founded in their experience and past performance, narcissistic manifestations taken as dysfunction of ego.

Supervisor just doesn't know when to quit, cracks the whip again.




8) Antisocial manifestations, dysfunctions of what Sigmund Freud called 'libido' and many modern authors call 'tribal needs', follow, employee thinks of murder and may respond offensively in some other way.

Dysfunctional supervisor just will not quit.




9) Schizotypal manifestations follow.

Employee stops speaking to supervisor altogether, or may respond with inappropriate domineering behavior, schizotypal manifestations representing dysfunctions of id.




If further stresses are applied, employee may quit, or exhibit manifestations of insanity.




At any level of the the cascading deontogenic reaction, the employee may bring to bear a process of over-control, responding in terms carefully considered of what Erich Fromm called 'transcendence needs'.

Ouch! Okay, okay, I'll wear the bloody saddle.
Just put that whip away wouldja.




~jwf~

Myself, I'd call it quits when I came to the foaming at the mouth stage of physical exertion, except the doctors have been telling me to take it easier on myself.




If one wants to change one's personality, first one has to know which part of it one wants to change and what one would like to have instead.

Only then can one brave the perils of trifling with the unconscious mind.

Character acting is a good training device, especially since it entails no commitment to permanence.

A snip from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where the writer is made aware that he has undergone 'Annihilation ECS', an extreme electric shock therapy:

[quote]
It was explained to me finally that "You have a new personality now." But this statement was no explanation at all. It puzzled me more than ever since I had no awareness at all of any "old" personality. If they had said, "You are a new personality," it would have been much clearer. That would have fitted. They had made the mistake of thinking of a personality as some sort of possession, like a suit of clothes, which a person wears. But apart from a personality what is there? Some bones and flesh. A collection of legal statistics, perhaps, but surely no person. The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.

But who was the old personality whom they had known and presumed I was a continuation of?
[/quote]

>> "There are no atheists in foxholes." <<

I wasn't aware of this maxim (sounds like an "american" saying from the Vietnam war?). It would have been useful in a discussion I saw on H2G2 a while back.

>> In the technical jargon, a 'sensation' is a perception engendered by actual sensory experience, whether vision, sound, taste, touch or odor. <<

This confused me ... a "sensation" is a perception ...


So I looked into it a little (wiki etc) and it seems that I haven't been using the word "sensation" in a "strict" correct sense. In wiki it says:

"In psychology, sensation and perception are stages of processing of the senses in human and animal systems ... considered part of psychology, and not anatomy or physiology, because processes in the brain so greatly affect the perception of a stimulus. ... "

I think I had conflated aspects of "stimulus" and "physiological responses to stimulus" with sensation (as used in psychology).

But digging a little deeper I couldn't find a clear distinction between "physiological response to stimulus", "sensation" and "perception" , that is the "edges" seem to overlap. It seems to be that "sensation" and "perception" are associated with forms of "mental" / "neurological" processing, with "perception" being a product of "higher level" processing and "sensation" a product of "lower level" processing.

In this respect would I be correct to say that "colour" is a sensation and "colour constancy" is a perception? The physical entity that is light (photons etc) would be the "stimulus / stimuli".

It seems to me that perhaps one would need to be experienced in the study of psychology to use sensation and perception in the "correct" way.

I should have written: conflated "physiological responses to stimulus" with "sensation" (with stimulus being something completed different).

>> sounds like an "american" saying <<

Very much so. A line from actor William Bendix
in the 1942 production Wake Island which was a
wartime propaganda drama about the tragic loss
of the Phillipines and countless American lives
in the early stages of the Japanese conquest of
the Pacific.

http://youtu.be/GTJBo7I02Eo

The specific quote is not in that 2 minute trailer
but that's William Bendix in the foxhole with the
machine gun commenting about the smell of hogs.

The line became a cliche with so many subsequent
users that my search for the original source was
a classic wild goose chase in a needled haystack.


~jwf~

Is there consensus about psychological jargon? I know that in linguistic philosophy there is no credibility attached to anyone's jargon, since disagreement about definitions is more or less the whole enterprise.

In a discussion such as this I would recommend avoiding appeals to authority, even textbooks and dictionaries. Dan Dennett sets a wonderful example (following Wittgenstein) by making all his arguments in common language.

ITIWBS, your post 68 (supervisor cracks whip repeatedly) is a fascinating account of the subversion of personality, or at least functioning. It reminds me of a story my father told from his school days (1920s) where a teacher repeatedly whacked a pupil on the back of the legs as he struggled with a calculation at the blackboard. After a number of whacks the teacher (making a point) asked the pupil his name; he couldn't answer.

The teacher thought he was making a point about the pupil.

">> "There are no atheists in foxholes." <<

I wasn't aware of this maxim (sounds like an "american" saying from the Vietnam war?). It would have been useful in a discussion I saw on H2G2 a while back."

I can't imagine what use it would be.

It has two major failings, as an argument:

1. it's not an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes.

2. it's demonstrably factually inaccurate.

It sets up the idea that, in extremis, when one's life is threatened, one will inevitably turn for solace to the supernatural... but it seems to take for granted that simply doing so validates the existence of the supernatural, which it quite obviously doesn't.

But, worse and more egregious than even this logical inconsistency, is the insulting and false fact that there damned well ARE atheists in foxholes. The person who offers this as an argument may indeed be so weak psychologically that the prospect of their own death causes them to quail and beg their imaginary friend for help, but that doesn't mean everyone is equally weak. There is mountains of evidence that there are plenty of humans with the strength of character to face their death with dignity and reason. It is reasonably well known that on cockpit voice recorders recovered from plane crashes, the most common last words heard from pilots who know they're about to die is not a prayer or hymn or other religious appeal - it's the single word "shit". Which, I like to think, says all that needs to be said about religion.

On post 73, the distinctions between the verbalisms are a little blurred and predate the invention of flow-charting.

Back to somewhere near where this began, the pigment primary colors are red, yellow and blue, one can mix any color one wants by means of combinations in varying amounts of any two or all three primary pigments.

The optical primary colors are red, green and blue, one can mix any color one likes by means of combinations of the three in varying amounts.

The psychological primary colors are supposed to red, yellow, green and blue.

The physiology of vision depends of six neurotransmitters; two from the night vision rods coding for white and black, indicating respectively the presence and absence of illumination; red and green, operating oppositely as opponent process component/anti-component pairs on the red and green sensitive color vision cones; the neurotransmitter coding for yellow generated in the neural apparatus serving the red and green sensitive cones when approximately equal numbers of them are stimulated; yellow also coming up as the anti-component for blue on the blue sensitive cones; black indicating an absence of sensation on the night vision rods; yellow, of the six visual neurotransmitters, being generated only at a secondary or deeper layer of the visual process than actual sensation produced by stimulation of the sensory cells of the visual cortex; only white, red, green and blue 'sensed' directly by sensory cells of the visual cortex in response to physical stimulation considered visual 'sensations', perceptions engendered by physical stimulation of the sensory cells.


On post 76, one needs to accept the definition as given by the author, disregarding co-notations not relevant to the discussion, else bog down in a discussion of potentials for confusion and mistake, that, admittedly, an important aspect of the teaching and communication process.

One can hope that the author will use their terms in a self consistent manner over the scope of the article, and carefully note any deviations from that.

Standards of usage vary, established by convention within the psychology community, though the official standards of usage are not well conformed to even within the profession.

To get a definition of a given term accepted by lexicographers of the English language, its necessary only to show the term has been so employed by a number of authors in publication, separate definitions for a given term being called co-notations or connotations of it.

Establishment of official standards of usage within a profession represents an effort to avoid confusion.

Sometimes I rather envy the French their system, in which official usage of the French language is legislated by the French parliament.




The opponent process model itself is important since it points up the origin of many psychological dualisms.

Continuing, after breakfast, morning chores, a long nap and another round of chores.

At the outset the question was one of distinguishing clearly between the subjective and objective experience.

One does have a reasonably clear demarcator at the level of the sensory apparatus.

Anything on the subjective side of that is perceptual, while the reverse relates to objective reality.

(Its one of the great weaknesses of most AI programs that they've no distinction of the character built into them.

Unless 'self' is somehow limited and distinguished from experience originating outside the boundary of 'self', one hasn't any foundation for self awareness.)




"...there are no atheists in foxholes..."

So that phrase originated with William Bendix in the 1942 production of "Wake"*.

I hadn't been aware of that.

As a matter of fact I first heard it from a high ranking member of the American Atheists Society.

I think he intended to suggest that whether one believes in God or not, there are sometimes situations which make one wish there were a God.




Returning opponent process models, if one stares fixedly at an object of a given color for a minute or so, then transfers one's gaze to a neutral field, one sees a rather blurred after image of the object in the complement (anti-component) of its color, rather blurred because its difficult keeping ones eyes rigidly fixed and the eye drifts a bit around the target, in the complement of its color on account of accumulated opponent process anti-components crowding into the sensory-perceptual chain, registering in a way somewhat like that of a sensation.

If one stares fixedly at the same object for a much longer period, about half an hour, the moment comes when one can no longer see it at all, the neural apparatus in that region saturated with opponent process component/anti-component pairs.

Its in this kind of state that the maxim: "There are no atheists in foxholes." becomes relevant, a compensatory apperception conditioned in the emotional complement of that of the battlefield.

As mentioned, "...for some that becomes an inspiration and an ideal...".

I should perhaps have continued there, "...for some, a dedication.".

Important to remember that apperceptions of the character are conditioned only by long sustained experience.

Its not for nothing, by the by, that cases of combat stress fatigue bear a superficial resemblance, sometimes, to catatonic schizophrenia.




*The last American loss before the tide began to turn with the battle of Midway, a little further along the Marshall chain leading to Hawaii.