Yeah, good point, we build models of the world, or at least of our senses, we don’t automatically build models of what our neurons are doing.
(Maybe any learning in the brain can be interpreted as a “model” of the neurons that feed into the learning neurons, but the details of that sort of thing aren’t available to our faculties for navigating the world, doing abstract reasoning, or communicating—they’re happening at a lower layer in the software stack of the brain.)
That’s veering towards a more “Mary’s room” sort of definition of “ineffability,” where you can’t freely exchange world-models and experiences, which isn’t really what the Jell-O box analogy was about—it was about interpersonal comparisons, and our inability to experience what other people experience.
But I guess they’re connected. Suppose we’re both listening to a simple tone, but my pitch perception is more accurate than yours. If you want to experience my experience for yourself, you might try taking your own experience and then imagining “adding on some extra pitch perception”—an act of model-to-experience exchange reminiscent of what Mary’s supposed to try.
Yeah, good point, we build models of the world, or at least of our senses, we don’t automatically build models of what our neurons are doing.
(Maybe any learning in the brain can be interpreted as a “model” of the neurons that feed into the learning neurons, but the details of that sort of thing aren’t available to our faculties for navigating the world, doing abstract reasoning, or communicating—they’re happening at a lower layer in the software stack of the brain.)
That’s veering towards a more “Mary’s room” sort of definition of “ineffability,” where you can’t freely exchange world-models and experiences, which isn’t really what the Jell-O box analogy was about—it was about interpersonal comparisons, and our inability to experience what other people experience.
But I guess they’re connected. Suppose we’re both listening to a simple tone, but my pitch perception is more accurate than yours. If you want to experience my experience for yourself, you might try taking your own experience and then imagining “adding on some extra pitch perception”—an act of model-to-experience exchange reminiscent of what Mary’s supposed to try.