AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - A model of the brain, & quick-switch

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I know that you have a body of data which is consistent, but it would
appear that most or all of the blind tests supporting your position
were not designed in acknowledgement of basic subjective phemonena,

What is a subjective phenomenon? I'm only familiar with the objective
kind.

Something that happens in the realm of personal experience.

You mean like stubbing your toe?

"Subjective phenomenon" is an oxymoron. What you are talking about (and
doing) is misinterpretation of an objective phenomenon (which is, of
course, redundant). The objective phenomenon we are talking about is
this: You listened to something twice, and it sounded different to you
the second time. That is objectively true. The problem comes when you
try to explain that difference.

That I said the words out loud "I hear a difference" is objective. What
exactly I heard, or what experience I constructed out of those sounds,
is subjective.

such as the fact that a spontaneous observation of a property of sound
A involves a different perceptual mechanism than asking oneself, yes or
no, if A is present in the sound.

This is not a fact.

A paradigm which proceeds on the
assumption that there is no such distinction, would not be able to show
that it exists.

But a paradigm that assumed the distinction was irrelevant could.

Hmm, I don't follow you here. For example, suppose we design an
experiment to measure the speed of light. The nature of light, whether
particle or wave, is not relevant to the experiment. How then, would
the experiment show that light is either particle or wave? I.e., it
would turn out the same either way.

The speed of light is not a paradigm.

Assumptions about its nature, or the decision a priori that its nature
is not relevant, are/is a paradigm.

And
so far, the only "distinctions" I've seen made by subjectivists have
been either fanciful or semantic.

You're
the one who thinks there's some big mystery here.

Precisely. My statement was that the objectivist prefers to choose a
paradigm in which the more mysterious observations are declared a
priori to be not worthy of investigation, probably because he doesn't
like having untidy dark corners in the universe.

One doesn't "choose" a paradigm. This is a scientific paradigm, and
there are no dark corners in the little bit of the universe involving
differentiation of audio components. Everything you claim, the paradigm
can explain. That's why it's the paradigm.

Well, in my experience, one can choose what's important and what's not;
what is worthy of investigation and what not. It appears to me that
psycho-acoustics, as you describe it, has implicitly chosen to
deemphasize variation in one's use of attention, and has implicitly
deemphasized distinctions in experience when they can only be verbally
reported and not measured.

Nonsense. Psychoacoustics doesn't "de-emphasize" anything. It rules
things out empirically. One thing it has ruled out empirically is the
notion that detection of small changes in sound can improve when we
extend the time between the changes.

I would say rather that detection of small changes, for a certain set
of changes, when listened to as sound (not as music), and when
discriminated via comparison and the intention to hear differences in
sound, reveals that detection improves with less separation in
time---at least over the time scales that have been investigated.

The paradigm is in the choice of these particular foundational
assumptions--the choice of differences to be investigated, the means of
using awareness, and so on.

That's the important difference
between psychoacoustics researchers and you. They test things
empirically. They do not simply make up "facts" in their own head.

As far as "everything you claim, the paradigm can explain." Well,
exactly. My paradigm can also explain everything you claim.

First of all, you don't have a paradigm. Or, to be more specific, you
don't have a theory. All you have is blind belief.

What makes you think I have blind belief?

And there's a whole
host of things you can't explain, like why our perceptions differ
sighted vs. blind and why measurements correlate with audibility tests.

Perceptions differ under all sorts of conditions.

Some measurements correlate with some styles of audibility tests. This
does not mean that we fully understand how measurements do or do not
correlate with, for example, musical beauty.

Mike

The fact
that a theory explains everything does not make it right.

Explaining things is the ONLY thing that makes a theory right.

We're also the ones
who are willing to be proven wrong.

What you don't seem to be willing to do, is to look at whether your
standards of proof have themselves defined a limited paradigm.

Sure we are. But we'd need evidence that this is the case.
Specifically, we'd need phenomena that we cannot explain. So far, we
haven't seen any.

Right. And I haven't seen anything I can't explain, either.

Why do blind and sighted perceptions differ? Why do audibility tests
correlate with measurements? Why does our ability to notice small
differences decline (sharply) with time?

Actually, you can't *explain* anything. You haven't got a theory.

bob