Chapter 2: What an Experience (2)
Read Our Reality and What an Experience (1) prior to reading this post
Qualities and Qualia
Contents are being placed in our Experience all the time but what are these contents? Different places in our Experience have different qualities. In some places there are blue patches, in others grey zones with sounds attached and so on. There is a type of quality for each sense, such as smell, touch, sight etc. Qualities are the various contents of our Experience.
Qualities occupy space and last for a period of time. If something has no extent or exists for no time at all it is not possible to have it in our Experience. Qualities exist because they have an extent and a duration. Qualities also have simultaneous parts. When we look at a white page all the tiniest parts of what we see as "white" on the page are present at the same time, they are simultaneously in the view. That we have extended objects in Experience is due to their having simultaneous parts. Although it is possible to calculate if two separated events occurred simultaneously they can be immediately compared and evaluated as simultaneous when referred to a separate point, such as our observation point in Experience.
Notice that the different types of quality can overlie each other at a particular patch in Experience. As an example we hear the sounds of words coming from the red lips of a speaker so that sound overlies vision but does not replace it.
Within each type of quality there are individual qualities such as red or the sound “middle C”, each of these is called a “quale”. The plural of the word "quale" is "qualia". Colour, intensity, pitch etc are qualities that are qualia. Each small dot of visual Experience seems to host qualia of colour, intensity, edge etc. each with its own time extension.
It is tempting to imagine that these qualities, these events in our Experience, are simple material objects that are illuminated by some inner light. Lets take a closer look.
The illustration above is an “Auto-stereogram”. If you look at it with your eyes relaxed so that you are looking into the distance, with your eyes focussed beyond the image, you can see a “3D” image of a loop around two eyes and a mouth (all crudely rendered like a smiley face).
If you cannot see the loop try lying straight out on your back and holding this page up at the level of your waist (as close to your eyes as permits you to still see the image) then adjust your toes so they are just above the image. Look at the image and try to focus your eyes at the same time on your toes. The “3D” image should appear as a loop that floats above the surface of the page. If you have not seen an autostereogram before it is worth the effort of adjusting your eyes to see it. A smiley face floating in a sort of clear aquarium on the page is uncanny.
Having seen the “3D” we can move our heads from side to side and notice that the background moves faster than the smiley face. We can also see that the “3D” image is crisper and brighter than the 2D pattern from which it is derived, probably because it is synthesised directly in our brains.
Once you are able to see the “3D” image, try covering the right hand quarter of the image on the page with a finger held midway between your eyes and the image so that the finger appears transparent. Notice that part of the “3D” face disappears although the 2D picture remains. Auto-stereograms need information from large areas of the physical image to create the floating image in our Experience. Everything in Experience is much more than a simple thing.
The image containing the autostereogram in our Experience seems to be divided into two planes, one for the background and one for the smiley face. These planes are at different distances in front of our observation point and are not at the same distance as the surrounding page. We know that the image on the actual page is flat so the autostereogram is yet more evidence that our Experience is a model in our brains.
The “3D” image is in our brain, the image views itself and the separation between the viewing point and the image is probably a separation in time.
At this point you may be thinking "hold your horses! Seeing through time!?". What is the alternative? We only have our Experience and this must extend in time to exist. There is nothing in Experience that exists for no time at all. Everything in Experience has a location in Experience and everything extends in time. Experience is arrangements of things in what we call space and time. We know that Experience contains at least three independent directions for arranging things and these correlate with the independent directions (dimensions) of space and the occurrence of time in the world.
When we see something and think about it, our verbal thoughts, imaginings and feelings are all "out there" in the model that is Experience, arranged in the time and space of Experience. How much of a thought would you have in no time at all?
This is a very important point: our Experience is the end of the line, where the data from our thoughts and senses is arranged and stops. The bit of brain that contains this data extends in time and so “views” itself. See the Appendix.
Types of quality, such as the visual, auditory etc., are separate nets of events, they are complicated patterns containing events that overlay, and are weakly connected to, each other. The term "net" is used because, as we saw with the autostereogram, each patch or dot is composed of contributions from all over the sensory source. Each dot is an octopus drawing in its surroundings.
There are separate nets for sound, vision, smell, touch, kinaesthetic, somaesthetic and taste sensation etc. Imagination can weakly populate these nets and sensation strongly populates them.
Notice that sensory qualia are never at a point out there in the view – they are always spread over a patch – and they cannot occur for no time at all – they are always extended in time. Sensory qualia are composed of events in a whole zone of each network. Qualities are not simple physical phenomena but zones of events in a net and between nets that are brought together.
How are these different types of quality that reside in their own patterns, or nets, brought together?
We have already noticed that our observation point is simultaneously connected to the contents of our Experience. In the same way each dot in our Experience is connected to the content of the nets around it.
Its all connected and all the connections are connected as the observation point brings together all the connected patches in each net.
Green, red, middle C, a pain in your finger etc. are complex, they seem to be one, simple thing but they are actually many things at each dot in Experience. But what is it like to have many things at every small dot in our Experience? Look at a violinist from a distance, we hear and see many things where the musician's bow touches the instrument. Think of the sound, sight, movement pattern and tiny puff of rosin around the violin.
Memory is involved in qualities in two ways, the first is Direct Memory where the events in experience are coloured or formed with parts derived from memory. We have already covered "saccades" which show that our senses update the internal model that is Experience. Experience is updated in small sections so most of Experience has not been updated in the last second or so and is composed of very recent Direct Memories. Much of Experience is a very recent, direct memory.
If we are experiencing familiar objects we may also populate our Experience with qualities linking to much older, prior events. As an example, we might assume that a familiar face has a moustache and see the face with a moustache even though its owner shaved off the moustache yesterday. The memory is still direct because we look straight into it.
The second way that memory affects qualities is through Recalled Memory. Some memories, for instance those of a guitarist playing a malaguena on a cool evening in a Spanish church, are not directly attached to the things we are sensing now. These memories seem to have a place of their own in our Experience when they are recalled. As an example, we may recall a musical phrase, if we are not very musical the phrase may be sung “la la la di, la la la di..” or if we are musical we may imagine the sound of the instruments. The recalled sounds are overlaid on the sensed sounds near to our heads, like an interposed layer. This is similar to the way that each type of sensation overlays Experience. Memories and imaginings can have their own nets.
Each type of quality, such as a sound, sight, smell etc, is only weakly linked to other types of quality. For example, sound and colour are linked in the sense that the sound of speech comes from the red lips of a speaker but the link is not obligatory because we can easily wrongly position sounds or have sounds without any visible source such as a bird tweeting behind the foliage of a tree.
Each type of quality has its own arrangement in space that overlaps that of the other types so that, for instance, the arrangement of auditory events is not perfectly linked to the arrangement of visual events.
The various types of quality are distinguished by being transparent to one another. We can see this transparency when we lift our hand to obscure the image of a guitarist and the music from the position of the guitar continues uninterrupted. In the case of sound and vision the transparency is nearly perfect.
The time extension of qualities varies between types of quality. About half a second to a second of sound exists in our Experience but this can be divided into several different qualia, for instance a whole bar of a tune can be in Experience but it might be composed of four different notes.
Visual Experience usually extends less than a tenth of a second. The short duration of the visual object at each point in its path is hosted in the longer durations of the time extension of eye muscle movement etc. so that although the time extension of the visual object is short it may be accompanied by other qualities that have a longer time extension.
But what are these qualities in themselves, what sort of physical event is a quale?
Consider blue. Blue exists in space and time. There is no blue that exists for no time and no blue that occupies no space. Blue is a four dimensional object.
The colour of an object in our view seems to be generic, a true"quale", but on closer inspection each object is composed of contributions from related things. As an example, when we first hear the tweet of a bird the sound is not as clear and complete as when we recognise on the second tweet that it is a blackbird. Sounds carry with them various relations to their source and colours have relations such as where they have been seen before. Every part of the view shares the ability to be a place where the relations of that part of the view are brought together. When we have blue in our view each dot of the blue is a connection to its relations.
Blue extends in time, it is a four dimensional object. It has a geometrical form that we call part of a 'view'. The form is like a cone in four dimensions with the viewing point connecting all of its parts. You can observe this form, just look around. All that you currently know is in what we call the space and time of the view. If there were no space and time composing the view it would not exist.
The blue in Experience is a matrix of connections that are connected to each other at the place in Experience where the blue occurs. At the far end of the connections there are probably real materials distributed in space and time that, when connected together are merged into a new entity, an event. An event in Experience is a set of connections.
To immediately know that two patches in an area of white have the same colour the two patches need to be compared. This comparison involves taking a bit of data from both patches and bringing the two bits together to make another, single bit that means "same colour". The white of this page has thousands of patches, it becomes an area of white in our Experience because all the thousands of white patches are connected as a single "white". The "white" or "blue" etc. in Experience lies in the connection through the connection point. The smallest patch of "white" that we can have in our Experience still occupies an area and so consists of at least one connection.
The creation of an event in Experience probably uses the same physics as is used to create the observation point.
When we do eventually discover the physical events and forms that create blue in our Experience these events will only be blue if they are slotted into that Experience. Obviously descriptions of these events will not be blue, only the conjoined events are blue.
Can we imagine a colour that we have never seen? Or, more correctly, can we have a colour in our Experience that we have never previously derived from retinal stimulation? Whether we have the capacity to generate a blue quale without ever having sensory experience of blue ultimately depends on whether or not this capacity can occur in dreams or imaginings even though it has never been triggered by sensation.
The layout of qualia in sensory Experience can be very similar to the layout of the things in the world that create this sensory Experience. This strongly implies that it is the early parts of the sensory pathways that supply much of the qualia. Our Experience has a haziness until we focus on particular objects and this suggests that the core of Experience is of low definition in a part of the brain that crudely integrates sensation but extends to contain the content of other areas of the brain. The multilayered nature of Experience, with overlaid nets of qualities, would also suggest a low definition conscious part that can connect to other areas of the brain.
We have focused on vision but each type of sensation, such as touch, hearing, taste etc. has a separate net on which it occurs with the contents of each net being heavily interconnected. The nets overlie and connect with each other relatively weakly.
Look around and focus on a colour. The patch of colour is a connection into its relations which extend from the sensory input at the eye to other experiences containing that colour. Every patch spreads out to its relations. The extension in time that lets us know these relations is discussed in chapter 4.
Nets and qualia
Experience is patterns of activity that are either passing over or creating nets. Does our Experience exist in the activity or in the nets?
If you wear a blindfold in a darkened room the visual net contains black qualia. There is still a visual space despite the absence of input to visual experience. A similar space and time composes the other sensory and mental nets. If the visual net can be solely black qualia this would imply that Experience is embedded in material objects such as cells or parts of cells even when there is no obvious activity. Experience would be a property of the nets and not solely of the activity passing over them.
An important consequence of the existence of nets that do not contain specific data is that it is possible that they are substantial, material things inside our brains such as the membranes of, permanent fields on, or protein strands within, brain cells rather than the transient electrical impulses that feed data into the nets.
To put it in another way, our Experience resides in permanent components of our brain. It could, for instance, reside in the membrane potential of nerve cells because even when the cells are resting they have a membrane potential. If nerve impulses pass through a nerve cell they change the membrane potential but the membrane potential exists before the impulses and is still there after the impulses have gone. There are other possibilities for the physical basis of experience such as microtubules inside cells or cell membranes, various types of field etc. etc.
If we rapidly rotate our heads from one view to another we can experience the whole visual net being re-loaded with data every time we stop. The fine detail takes about half a second to be loaded. We do not seem to reload some of the other nets such as those that contain sound and the general mapping of our location when we rotate our heads. The sound and mapping nets extend right around our heads so do not need to be updated as our head moves whereas the visual net is forward facing and needs to be updated as its contents change. The visual net aligns with the part of the sound and map nets that correspond to where our heads are pointed in the world. This allows long time extensions to exist in the sound net as the qualia for each sound stay at the same place in their net.
The short time extension of the parts of the visual image (less than a tenth of a second) means that moving objects can be rapidly re-drawn in the view. This short time extension also allows the fairly accurate positioning of moving objects.
Moving visual objects lose their fine detail, whereas moving sounds, such as a bird cawing as it flies, lose their positional accuracy.
Objects and containers
Objects in Experience are collections of qualities and the most immediate attribute of any quality is usually it’s position. Position is also the most important attribute of whole objects. Green grass belongs on lawns and meadows which belong on the ground. Experience is objects within objects within objects. Each event belongs in an object and each object is contained in other objects.
Objects connect to events and events connect to objects. The quale "black" is a general colour that could appear anywhere but the event "black" always exists within an object. The particular black of this letter “T” is connected to where it appears so it is a particular “T black" on a page of text. Experience is objects within objects within objects and in the opposite direction connections to objects that connect to objects etc.
Qualities, objects and types of event
Experience is the container of all our current objects and objects contain events. The distinction between objects and events is loose and an object might also be described as an event that contains events. A bar of a tune might be described as an object that contains notes which are events. But even individual notes consist of more than a single connection and so are also objects.
The central node of Experience is our observation point where all of the events in Experience connect simultaneously. This means that Experience is an object that contains all the other objects.
An event cannot exist for no time at all so each event is a time extended object. Each event that is out there in Experience is connected to itself through time.
Events and the space of Experience.
The connection at the observation point is between the individual events and the rest of Experience. This is a very important distinction: an event out there in Experience connects to its relations and its previous state whereas the observation point interconnects various events at different places and times in Experience.
This gives us an insight into the nature of the observation point. How can many things be at a point? They cannot flow into the point because they would jam it up and to propose a flow contradicts our experience because we do not have any observation containing flow from things out there, in Experience, into the observation point.
Were we unable to see or hear and only had the other senses it would be obvious that no flow is needed within Experience to create its geometry. We have no rays or waves of touch yet the geometry of Experience still occurs with the qualia of touch apparently "out there" but also at an observation point. Experience is a geometrical phenomenon.
Nothing flows yet everything in Experience is simultaneous at the observation point. The only obvious alternative to flow is the idea that space disappears between the contents of Experience at the observation point. Experience is a geometrical phenomenon but involves one of those mathematical geometries such as are found in Relativity Theory that can mix space with time so that space itself can shrink or expand.
We know the content of Experience is in our brains so nothing that we have in Experience can in reality be more than a few centimetres from any observation point yet because the content is a projection from a point we regard our Experience as having the scale of the world around us. That scaling would stay intact even if Experience were a centimetre or a millimetre or effectively no distance at all from the observation point.
Point projection
The Experience containing light or sound has two components, the apparent emitter of the sound or light (apparent because nothing is emitted within the model that is Experience) and the second component is the connection of this event through the observation point to the rest of Experience. The apparent transmission of light or sound is what the connection between an event and the rest of experience is like.
The connections should be construed as the disappearance of space and time between the components rather than as a movement of the components.
Look through one eye. Our vision is events arranged radially around a point. The events could be near or far from the point but their arrangement will stay the same. Space could disappear between the observation point and the events but the radial arrangement would stay the same.
We observe no flow into the observation point so the most likely explanation is that there is no space between the observation point and the events that surround it. Such a possibility sounds absurd but it is not impossible according to physics. We should not let a passion for nineteenth century physics blind us to even the possibility of physical explanations.
Events are brought together at a small patch of the time and space of a net, out there in our view. No material actually moves into this patch because, in the same way as nothing moves into our observation point, the event in Experience is a connection point that marks where objects can be no distance in space and time from each other.
Separations in Quality, Space and Time
As will be seen in Chapter 4: Time, our brain loads the part that contains Experience with ”splashes” of events that occupy a short interval of time. What is the nature of the content of these splashes? Are they successions of pulses or a continuous field? How are gaps between splashes at different places in Experience filled in? There are thousands of colours, sounds and textures, what distinguishes one from another?
Each dot of Experience has multiple possible arrangements attached to it. As an example “blue” has hue, saturation and brightness as well as connections to its associations. Similar multiple, attached arrangements occur with touch, sound etc. Each dot is characterised by the number and intensity of its connections, the distance of those connections (in time) and the length in time of its splash.
Consider the hue-saturation diagram above. When we first look at colours we have the general characteristic (hue) of the colours in Experience but then, as we exercise attention we see the unsaturated whiteness of the colours in the centre. Attention seems to alter the strength of the connections to the aspect of interest. This ability to stare through to the connections of dots in Experience increases the number of perceptible arrangements but does not explain the nature of the content.
We can only speculate about the physical nature of the content of Experience.
Meditations on the Observation Point
Sit or lie comfortably. What we see is in our brains. It is a model based on the world outside. This model is our Experience. Look at the colours of the things around you. They are in Experience.
If you close your eyes and gently press your eyeball through your eyelid for thirty seconds you can see little coloured dots and patches without the need for external light (these colours are called phosphenes) So vision does not need light. When the particles of light, the photons, strike your open eye they are just triggering the first step in our colour producing mechanism, photons are not colours in themselves.
In the world outside of Experience a flow of light illuminated the objects but that flow is not happening in Experience. A blue quale is a blue quale, not a frequency of reflected electromagnetic radiation out there in the world. The "light" in our Experience is the quale that is the colour and is not something reflected from an object. The blue is the quale. The apparent light is the blue that is the quale.
Look at this page through one eye. The distance between this line and ten lines above is an angular separation at your eye. The distance between this line and five lines above is half of that angular separation. Both of these angles are actually in your Experience, in the model in your brain.
Listen to a sound. The sound is in Experience, at its place in Experience, not emitted from that place. Listen to inner speech. Our thoughts are arranged in Experience. We only have our thoughts when they appear in Experience. Our Experience is like a space and time with events arranged within it. All our current experience is in Experience.
The observation point is just a point, there is nothing that we can experience within it. All that we can currently experience is in Experience.
A Meditation on the Future
Touch your head briefly. Before you moved your hand the touching of your head was in your future. After you touched your head the touch was in the past. All of the events that will affect you are in your future and almost all of the events that are affecting you now were in your future. This is obvious but we like to think that when a bat hits a ball the past has determined what happens but it is the future strike of the ball on our body that determines the bruise. The future becomes today, the past is always gone.
However, as will be seen in the following sections the past might be gone but it probably still exists.
Next in the series: Chapter 3: Observation and Modes of Experience