Mark DeBellis wrote:
On 17 Jun 2005 23:48:24 GMT, "Buster Mudd"
wrote:
Mark DeBellis wrote:
On 16 Jun 2005 03:14:23 GMT, wrote:
If you hear something but do not retain a memory of it (sufficient to
carry out a certain kind of test), you still heard it. No?
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this book here befo Daniel Dennett's
_Conciousness Explained_. Probably my favorite treatese on the physical
process of cognition & perception -- thought-provoking, challenging,
elucidating and funny to read! Highly recomended.
Anyway, I mention this book because, in a nutshell, according to
Dennett, the answer to your question is "No."
That is an interesting book, and I do remember reading it a while
back, and I second your recommendation, but what exactly is the reason
to think "No"?
Because "hearing" is a cognitive process; it takes place in the brain,
not in the ear. So if your brain tells you you didn't hear it, even if
soundwaves did strike your eardrum...and even (!) if at an earlier time
your brain told you that you did hear it...for all intents & purposes,
you didn't hear it. Saying "I heard it" is only useful if you can
access the perception in order to make subsequent discriminations.
There are cases all the time when people perceive
things and then forget them.
At which point any information they may have gleaned from perceiving
that thing is lost to them. Hence, the distinction between whether they
actually perceived it & then forgot it, or never perceived it in the
first place, is moot.
In a slightly bigger nutshell, Dennett goes on to explain (with far
more conviction & evidence than I could possibly muster in a newsgroup
posting) that there is often a significant & meaningful difference
between What We Perceived, and What We Think We Perceived.
True, but how does that difference play a role here?
It goes to the core of your initial question: How valid can an audio
test be if it's measuring the perception of phenomena which may not
actually exist?