Human brains can’t encode value for the objective properties of external stimuli because human brains throw away that information at the transducer.
for two reasons.
Human brains throw away some of that information at the transducer. (What an odd way of putting it, by the way: the whole point is that it isn’t the brain that’s doing the throwing away.) That means that some objective properties aren’t directly available to us. It doesn’t mean that no objective properties are available to us. And, in any case, …
The fact that something isn’t directly available to our senses is no reason why we can’t value it—excuse me, I mean no reason why our brains can’t encode value for it. I can perfectly easily care whether I have $2 or $2000000 in the bank even though my nervous system isn’t wired to my bank’s computers. I can perfectly easily care whether my wife loves me even though my assessment of whether (and how much, how consistently, etc.) she does is a matter of subtle inferences. Why on earth should we only be able to value things we can perceive directly?
Further to #2, you could certainly argue that there’s a particular kind of valuing—a particularly immediate and instinctual sort—that can’t be applied to the absolute values of things we perceive only relatively. Maybe so (though I’m not convinced; it’s possible, e.g., to feel visceral terror at the prospect of losing your job or having a slow degenerative disease or something, even though those aren’t things we’re wired up to perceive directly) but so what?
What an odd way of putting it, by the way: the whole point is that it isn’t the brain that’s doing the throwing away.
Agreed, fixed.
Human brains throw away some of that information at the transducer.
Well, it throws away information about objective stimuli intensity in such away that the objective stimuli intensity cannot be recovered. Obviously it doesn’t throw away all information, but merely information needed to encode value for objective stimuli intensities.
The fact that something isn’t directly available to our senses is no reason why we can’t value it
Exactly; hence the puzzle. If our brains aren’t encoding value for X, how can we be said to value X? This is something we’ll explore in future posts.
I’ve had the most pleasant evening trying to find research discounting your claims and instead having my beliefs whipped around by evidence (though I still don’t understand how a neuron can be said encode in a purely reference independent manner given as with pain receptors’ sensing thresholds for mechanical, thermal, and chemical changes or absolute pitch recognition).
One of the few sources my motivated cognition discovered was the work of Padoa-Schioppa, who found, for instance,
In the experiments, monkeys chose between different juices and their choice patterns provided a measure of subjective value. Value ranges were varied from session to session and, in each session, OFC (Orbitofrontal Cortex) neurons encoded values in a linear way.
Which of course seems another reference independent encoding, though there is just about as much evidence the other way on the subject of the OFC, such as Elliott (2008).
The passage was from Range-adapting representation of economic value in the orbitofrontal cortex. You might also be interested in The orbitofrontal cortex and beyond: from affect to decision-making (Rolls, Grabenhorst 2008), which presents a high level summary of research on the topic, with dozens of citations of consistent and continuous stimulus representations in OFC for a few species and and primary reinforcers.
Psychophysics also provides examples of absolute value encodings over external stimuli such as the thresholds of pain, the absolute threshold of hearing, and absolute pitch.
Related: What is Evidence?. There needs to be some way that makes the facts about the world control your actions (beliefs, application of moral considerations), but it can be arbitrarily complicated, so long as some dependence is retained.
This is wrong:
Human brains throw away some of that information at the transducer. (What an odd way of putting it, by the way: the whole point is that it isn’t the brain that’s doing the throwing away.) That means that some objective properties aren’t directly available to us. It doesn’t mean that no objective properties are available to us. And, in any case, …
The fact that something isn’t directly available to our senses is no reason why we can’t value it—excuse me, I mean no reason why our brains can’t encode value for it. I can perfectly easily care whether I have $2 or $2000000 in the bank even though my nervous system isn’t wired to my bank’s computers. I can perfectly easily care whether my wife loves me even though my assessment of whether (and how much, how consistently, etc.) she does is a matter of subtle inferences. Why on earth should we only be able to value things we can perceive directly?
Further to #2, you could certainly argue that there’s a particular kind of valuing—a particularly immediate and instinctual sort—that can’t be applied to the absolute values of things we perceive only relatively. Maybe so (though I’m not convinced; it’s possible, e.g., to feel visceral terror at the prospect of losing your job or having a slow degenerative disease or something, even though those aren’t things we’re wired up to perceive directly) but so what?
Agreed, fixed.
Well, it throws away information about objective stimuli intensity in such away that the objective stimuli intensity cannot be recovered. Obviously it doesn’t throw away all information, but merely information needed to encode value for objective stimuli intensities.
Exactly; hence the puzzle. If our brains aren’t encoding value for X, how can we be said to value X? This is something we’ll explore in future posts.
I’ve had the most pleasant evening trying to find research discounting your claims and instead having my beliefs whipped around by evidence (though I still don’t understand how a neuron can be said encode in a purely reference independent manner given as with pain receptors’ sensing thresholds for mechanical, thermal, and chemical changes or absolute pitch recognition).
One of the few sources my motivated cognition discovered was the work of Padoa-Schioppa, who found, for instance,
Which of course seems another reference independent encoding, though there is just about as much evidence the other way on the subject of the OFC, such as Elliott (2008).
Which Padoa-Schioppa paper is that?
The passage was from Range-adapting representation of economic value in the orbitofrontal cortex. You might also be interested in The orbitofrontal cortex and beyond: from affect to decision-making (Rolls, Grabenhorst 2008), which presents a high level summary of research on the topic, with dozens of citations of consistent and continuous stimulus representations in OFC for a few species and and primary reinforcers.
Psychophysics also provides examples of absolute value encodings over external stimuli such as the thresholds of pain, the absolute threshold of hearing, and absolute pitch.
Related: What is Evidence?. There needs to be some way that makes the facts about the world control your actions (beliefs, application of moral considerations), but it can be arbitrarily complicated, so long as some dependence is retained.