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#201
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#202
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"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
... wrote in message ... "Harry Lavo" wrote in message ... wrote in message ... Yes, it does sound like you have bought into Harry's anti-scientific worldview. I suggest you endeavor to talk to a real scientist for a change. Nothing I have said in this or any other group is "unscientific". It does not support ABX without questioning some of the basic premises. That simple. If you are truly a scientist, you think about these things objectively, at least. If you have become dogmatic and accept it as an article of faith, then questioning it becomes tauntamont to heresy. I leave readers to decide which is operational here. I'm forever interested in how those of Harry's persuasion would go about determining if there is an audible difference between 2 devices. The question is always the same. Can you hear a difference between 2 presentations? You can listen as long as you wish; you can ask other opinions; you can switch between them slowly or quickly; you can take notes; you can change the source material, etc., etc. The only things you cannot do is peek or make measurements. IOW, you have to make your choices on the basis of what you hear. To my way of thinking, ABX seems to be one of the more sensitive methods of making such a determination. But if you don't, suggest something else. I'm certainly open to suggestions. One last point: DBT seems to be the gold standard for evaluating most everything else. Why should high fidelity audio be an exception? Norman, I've explained in detail here and on other forums exactly how a blind, monadic test would be used to detect and define (statistically) a difference, if it existed. Then ABX could be tested to see if it revealed those differences. I know you have, Harry, but yours truly has either misplaced your description or misunderstood it. In any event, I no longer have it. Could you supply a link for me with a concise description? Then I won't bother you about it again--I promise! Thanks, Norm |
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#204
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I am just as sceptical as anyone, Stewart, but you go betyond
scepticism to dogmatism. You claim that no differences are ther to be heard, not that it is difficult to hear differences reliably. These are two different claims. The former is dogmatic; the latter is sceptical. I would argue that it is difficult, and that not everyone has the skill to do it. One has to learn to listen for the various kinds of differences that audio cables have, and one first must have a lot of recordings with different kinds of sounds on them. I find brushed cymbals provide a very nice sound for comparative listening. Such a recording as: Paul Motian Trio: Le Voyage is excellent. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...823333-7255045 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=music The ability or inability of the cable to pass transients well is clearly revealed in such a recording. Continuous tones, such as voices, are not as good to listen to. Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 19 Jul 2005 00:48:16 GMT, wrote: Many of these questions have been dicussed before. Using an ABX is NOT equivalent to DBT as is used in drug testing. The ABX machine itself is a limitation, especially if interconnect is neing evaluated. How good are the contacts? How good is the internal mating? ABX is a test protocol, not a machine. The problem in any audio evaluation is that we MUST rely on audio memory. True DBT (such as drug DBT) has no such limitation. It is IMPOSSIBLE to listen simultaneously to two different components. One is always listening to one or the other, while holding in one's memory the sound of the other. Yes, which is why quick-switched ABX via a switch-box is the most effective method. Compare and contrast with *any* other audio comparison. I have heard differences between various interconnects. Yeah, riiiigghht......... I performed medium-term listening in the dark, so that my sense of hearing could hone in on the matter at hand. Evaluative listening undertaken with the lights on is not as precise, beacause the brain is occupied with vision, which is very demanding on the brain. 'Going dark' is VERY revealing. Those who SWEAR they cannot hear differences in cables should try it! Sitting in the dark is also very good for enhancing the imagination. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#205
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On 21 Jul 2005 00:16:14 GMT, wrote:
I am just as sceptical as anyone, Stewart, but you go betyond scepticism to dogmatism. You claim that no differences are ther to be heard, not that it is difficult to hear differences reliably. These are two different claims. The former is dogmatic; the latter is sceptical. The former is however demonstrably true, making the latter redundant. I would argue that it is difficult, and that not everyone has the skill to do it. One has to learn to listen for the various kinds of differences that audio cables have, and one first must have a lot of recordings with different kinds of sounds on them. Not one single person has *ever* been able to demonstrate an ability to hear 'cable sound', when they did not *know* which cable was connected. Why do you think there's been a pool of about $5,000 lying on the table for six *years*, with no takers? I find brushed cymbals provide a very nice sound for comparative listening. Such a recording as: Paul Motian Trio: Le Voyage is excellent. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...823333-7255045 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=music The ability or inability of the cable to pass transients well is clearly revealed in such a recording. Continuous tones, such as voices, are not as good to listen to. Utter rubbish. Are you prepared to step up to the plate and try your luck, or is this more baseless assertion? -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#206
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 21 Jul 2005 00:16:14 GMT, wrote: I am just as sceptical as anyone, Stewart, but you go betyond scepticism to dogmatism. You claim that no differences are there to be heard, not that it is difficult to hear differences reliably. These are two different claims. The former is dogmatic; the latter is sceptical. The former is however demonstrably true, making the latter redundant. No, it certainly is not. To say so is to take a dogmatic position. To say "there are no differences to be heard" is a dogmatic assertion. If you were to say "I am not convinced there are any differences to be heard", you would have an argument. One cannot prove a negative. I would argue that it is difficult, and that not everyone has the skill to do it. One has to learn to listen for the various kinds of differences that audio cables have, and one first must have a lot of recordings with different kinds of sounds on them. Not one single person has *ever* been able to demonstrate an ability to hear 'cable sound', when they did not *know* which cable was connected. Why do you think there's been a pool of about $5,000 lying on the table for six *years*, with no takers? I find brushed cymbals provide a very nice sound for comparative listening. Such a recording as: Paul Motian Trio: Le Voyage is excellent. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...823333-7255045 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=music The ability or inability of the cable to pass transients well is clearly revealed in such a recording. Continuous tones, such as voices, are not as good to listen to. Utter rubbish. Are you prepared to step up to the plate and try your luck, or is this more baseless assertion? Why don't you try it yourself, and quite being a dogmatist? I have no interest in meeting the requirements that you have set out. I amskeptical about ABX. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#207
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On 22 Jul 2005 23:48:32 GMT, wrote:
Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 21 Jul 2005 00:16:14 GMT, wrote: I am just as sceptical as anyone, Stewart, but you go betyond scepticism to dogmatism. You claim that no differences are there to be heard, not that it is difficult to hear differences reliably. These are two different claims. The former is dogmatic; the latter is sceptical. The former is however demonstrably true, making the latter redundant. No, it certainly is not. To say so is to take a dogmatic position. Nope, it is an opinion based on much testing. To say that there *are* audible differences, in the presence of *zero* reliable and repeatable evidence that this is the case, is indeed dogmatic, a true act of blind faith. To say "there are no differences to be heard" is a dogmatic assertion. If you were to say "I am not convinced there are any differences to be heard", you would have an argument. One cannot prove a negative. One can however have a very good idea where to place your bet, given that not one single person has *ever* been able to demonstrate an ability to hear 'cable sound'. I therefore assert, with considerable confidence, that it is a fact that there are no differences to be heard. I would argue that it is difficult, and that not everyone has the skill to do it. One has to learn to listen for the various kinds of differences that audio cables have, and one first must have a lot of recordings with different kinds of sounds on them. Not one single person has *ever* been able to demonstrate an ability to hear 'cable sound', when they did not *know* which cable was connected. Why do you think there's been a pool of about $5,000 lying on the table for six *years*, with no takers? I find brushed cymbals provide a very nice sound for comparative listening. Such a recording as: Paul Motian Trio: Le Voyage is excellent. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...823333-7255045 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=music The ability or inability of the cable to pass transients well is clearly revealed in such a recording. Continuous tones, such as voices, are not as good to listen to. Utter rubbish. Are you prepared to step up to the plate and try your luck, or is this more baseless assertion? Why don't you try it yourself, and quite being a dogmatist? I have no interest in meeting the requirements that you have set out. I amskeptical about ABX. I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#208
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On 23 Jul 2005 17:10:46 GMT, Stewart Pinkerton
wrote (among other things): I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. Looks to me like the statement "two great drummers" is an opinion. Not in my experience, there have been hundreds of better drummers make the scene over the past 80 years. -=Bill Eckle=- Vanity Web Page at: http://www.wmeckle.com |
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#209
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 22 Jul 2005 23:48:32 GMT, wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 21 Jul 2005 00:16:14 GMT, wrote: I am just as sceptical as anyone, Stewart, but you go betyond scepticism to dogmatism. You claim that no differences are there to be heard, not that it is difficult to hear differences reliably. These are two different claims. The former is dogmatic; the latter is sceptical. The former is however demonstrably true, making the latter redundant. No, it certainly is not. To say so is to take a dogmatic position. Nope, it is an opinion based on much testing. "Much testing?" To say that there *are* audible differences, in the presence of *zero* reliable and repeatable evidence that this is the case, is indeed dogmatic, a true act of blind faith. To say the opposite in the presence of *zero* reliable and repeatable evidence is every bit as dogmatic and every bit true act of blind faith. There have ben numerous acounts of claims of difference under blind conditions. What you are really doing is simply picking and choosing your anecdotal evidence. One can draw any conclusion they wish to draw with this MO. To say "there are no differences to be heard" is a dogmatic assertion. If you were to say "I am not convinced there are any differences to be heard", you would have an argument. One cannot prove a negative. One can however have a very good idea where to place your bet, Of couse, always bet on the house. only a fool sets up a bet that will be a loser. given that not one single person has *ever* been able to demonstrate an ability to hear 'cable sound'. Or visa versa.... I therefore assert, with considerable confidence, that it is a fact that there are no differences to be heard. I assert with considerable confidence that assertions made with considerable confidence are a dime a dozen. I would argue that it is difficult, and that not everyone has the skill to do it. One has to learn to listen for the various kinds of differences that audio cables have, and one first must have a lot of recordings with different kinds of sounds on them. Not one single person has *ever* been able to demonstrate an ability to hear 'cable sound', when they did not *know* which cable was connected. Why do you think there's been a pool of about $5,000 lying on the table for six *years*, with no takers? I find brushed cymbals provide a very nice sound for comparative listening. Such a recording as: Paul Motian Trio: Le Voyage is excellent. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...823333-7255045 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=music The ability or inability of the cable to pass transients well is clearly revealed in such a recording. Continuous tones, such as voices, are not as good to listen to. Utter rubbish. Are you prepared to step up to the plate and try your luck, or is this more baseless assertion? Why don't you try it yourself, and quite being a dogmatist? I have no interest in meeting the requirements that you have set out. I amskeptical about ABX. I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. And what did you do to control your bias that they would sound the same? Scott Wheeler |
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#210
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Keith Hughes wrote:
Mark DeBellis wrote: snip The skeptic claims: for all we know from the result of this test, there could be a perceptual difference between the two sources in normal listening (as opposed to testing) situations. For all we know, in listening to 5-minute stretches, say, Karl derives greater satisfaction or pleasure from one source than he does from the other. To postulate this requires stipulating that Karl did, indeed, make a distinction. Not sure why. Ah, but the ABX-proponent says, then let him listen first to one stretch, then the other, and if he derives greater pleasure from one than the other, then he *will* be able to discriminate them. That is *implicit*. You cannot enjoy one more than the other without being able to discriminate between them. There would be *no* basis. No basis for what? I mean discrimination in the sense that Karl can reliably judge whether A is the same as B. By pleasure I mean a feeling. So I am not understanding the force of your "cannot." Exactly why is the following impossible? Karl hears A and gets a strong feeling of pleasure. Then he hears B and gets a weaker feeling of pleasure. By the time he gets to the end of B, he has only a vague memory of A. So he cannot reliably judge whether A was the same as B. How or in what sense is this impossible? The skeptic replies, not necessarily. He will be able to do this only if, say, he is good at *comparing* the pleasure he derives from one passage with the pleasure that he derives from the other. If not, then he cannot, by definition, know that he enjoyed one more than another. Perhaps, but I was saying that he enjoyed one more than the other, not that he knew he did. And he may not be good at this if he is not able to retain an accurate representation in memory of the pleasure derived from the first while he listens to the second, or if he is just not very good at comparing two memory traces. In other words, to say he *must* be able to discriminate in such a case is to impute to him a greater power of introspection than he may in fact have. Nonsense. You have already *stipulated* that he enjoyed one more than another. That very fact *defines* extant discrimination. Suppose I went to a greasy spoon in 1999 and had a cold hamburger. Then in 2005 I went to a fancy restaurant and got a great meal. I got greater pleasure from the latter than I got from the former. But I could have completely forgotten about the first meal by the time I got to the second. It can be a fact that I enjoyed one more than I enjoyed the other even though no comparison took place. (I enjoyed one to degree x, I enjoyed the other to degree y, and x is greater than y.) OK, then the ABXer's response is that the skeptic's notion that two experiences can differ in satisfaction or pleasure derived, if they cannot be reliably discriminated as such, is empirically meaningless. No, rather, that which is not repeatable is not considered valid empirical data. The skeptic replies: not necessarily. For example, if during listening Karl is asked to rate his satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10, and if the ratings for one source are significantly different from those of the other, that would be an empirical difference. And if these results were not repeatable, then they would be empirically meaningless, within the context of a verifiable difference (sonically, emotionally, musically, whatever). Further, if the tests were not relatively contemporaneous, Karl's emotional state would be as likely, if not more so, to be responsible for a disparate reaction (between A and B for e.g.) than would be an actual audible difference. Certainly it would introduce sufficient doubt as to invalidate the test. (And it wouldn't follow from the fact that the ratings are significantly different that Karl would be able to pass a *discrimination* test. He just *did* 'pass' a discrimination test, by definition. That he didn't say "A is better than B" is irrelevant. If he states that "A engenders a pleasure level of 9 and B engenders a pleasure level of 2" he has clearly discriminated between the systems. Yes, I agree with you on that, but I am talking about discrimination of the kind where you have to say if A is the same as B. Differential response, in one situation, does not necessarily imply an ability to *compare* reliably, in a much different situation.) Reproducibility is the hallmark of *valid* data, irrespective of context. If, in the context the orginal observation was made, the observation cannot be repeated, it must be considered either an anomaly, or simply erroneous. There are no other interpretations, although there are a myriad of possible underlying causes. Yes, I agree with that too. It is important that the differential response be reproducible and that extraneous causes be controlled for. Mark |
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#211
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#212
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Keith Hughes wrote:
Mark DeBellis wrote: snip The skeptic claims: for all we know from the result of this test, there could be a perceptual difference between the two sources in normal listening (as opposed to testing) situations. For all we know, in listening to 5-minute stretches, say, Karl derives greater satisfaction or pleasure from one source than he does from the other. To postulate this requires stipulating that Karl did, indeed, make a distinction. p.s. There is a difference between 1. Karl listens to SACD and derives pleasure in the amount x. Then he listens to CD and derives pleasure in the amount y. And x is greater than y. 2. Everything in 1, and, moreover, Karl judges *that* the pleasure he derived from SACD is greater than the pleasure he derived from CD. In 1, it is the case that x is greater than y. In 2, not only is it the case, but Karl judges it to be the case. Mark |
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#213
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On 23 Jul 2005 18:11:58 GMT, William Eckle wrote:
On 23 Jul 2005 17:10:46 GMT, Stewart Pinkerton wrote (among other things): I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. Looks to me like the statement "two great drummers" is an opinion. Not in my experience, there have been hundreds of better drummers make the scene over the past 80 years. That would also be an opinion, and much more contentious. IMNVHO, Jim Keltner is one of the top ten of all time, and Ron Tutt will of course always be famous as drummer to the King. Besides, WTF has any of that to do with the sound quality of that recording? -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#214
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On 23 Jul 2005 22:00:30 GMT, wrote:
Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 22 Jul 2005 23:48:32 GMT, wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 21 Jul 2005 00:16:14 GMT, wrote: I am just as sceptical as anyone, Stewart, but you go betyond scepticism to dogmatism. You claim that no differences are there to be heard, not that it is difficult to hear differences reliably. These are two different claims. The former is dogmatic; the latter is sceptical. The former is however demonstrably true, making the latter redundant. No, it certainly is not. To say so is to take a dogmatic position. Nope, it is an opinion based on much testing. "Much testing?" At least twenty of my own, plus those of Tom Nousaine, Arny et al. As against *zero* of the opposing camp. To say that there *are* audible differences, in the presence of *zero* reliable and repeatable evidence that this is the case, is indeed dogmatic, a true act of blind faith. To say the opposite in the presence of *zero* reliable and repeatable evidence is every bit as dogmatic and every bit true act of blind faith. Except of course that your claim is false - there is plenty of evidence. There have ben numerous acounts of claims of difference under blind conditions. None of them however stood up under examination, Zip's 'Sunshine Trials' being a classic in this regard, where he claimed to have 'aced' the test blind, but fell apart totally when Nousaine and Maki actually put him to a properly controlled blind test. What you are really doing is simply picking and choosing your anecdotal evidence. One can draw any conclusion they wish to draw with this MO. You however don't even have *that* luxury, as you have nothing from which to choose. As ever, you're just arguing for the sake of it. Why don't you try it yourself, and quite being a dogmatist? I have no interest in meeting the requirements that you have set out. I amskeptical about ABX. I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. And what did you do to control your bias that they would sound the same? At that time, I had no such 'bias', I was still a true believer. My current view came later, after many such tests failed to reveal *any* difference whatever among cables, and none among well-designed amps and CD players either. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#215
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In article ,
Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 23 Jul 2005 18:11:58 GMT, William Eckle wrote: On 23 Jul 2005 17:10:46 GMT, Stewart Pinkerton wrote (among other things): I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. Looks to me like the statement "two great drummers" is an opinion. Not in my experience, there have been hundreds of better drummers make the scene over the past 80 years. That would also be an opinion, and much more contentious. IMNVHO, Jim Keltner is one of the top ten of all time snip While I would certainly agree that Keltner is almost mythic in session playing circles...probably the best known along with Stevie Gadd..... it is certainly difficult to make "top ten of all time" sort of statements. Do you mean only rock drummers? All percussionists? If the later, how does one compare Keltner to Bellson to Rich to Mitch Peters? I don't mean to be argumentative or "contrary", but that kind of statement always raises my hackles bit :-) |
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#216
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On 24 Jul 2005 15:44:51 GMT, Stewart Pinkerton
wrote: On 23 Jul 2005 18:11:58 GMT, William Eckle wrote: On 23 Jul 2005 17:10:46 GMT, Stewart Pinkerton wrote (among other things): I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. Looks to me like the statement "two great drummers" is an opinion. Not in my experience, there have been hundreds of better drummers make the scene over the past 80 years. That would also be an opinion, and much more contentious. IMNVHO, Jim Keltner is one of the top ten of all time, and Ron Tutt will of course always be famous as drummer to the King. Besides, WTF has any of that to do with the sound quality of that recording? Not trying to be contentious, just trying to point out that greatness (IMO) is not based on popularity. And opinions are based on taste. I acknowledge we have vastly different tastes, and therefore differnet opinions. -=Bill Eckle=- Vanity Web Page at: http://www.wmeckle.com |
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#217
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"Mark DeBellis" wrote in message
... wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: ... but the ABX-proponent says, then let him listen first to one stretch, then the other, and if he derives greater pleasure from one than the other, then he *will* be able to discriminate them. The skeptic replies, not necessarily. He will be able to do this only if, say, he is good at *comparing* the pleasure he derives from one passage with the pleasure that he derives from the other. And he may not be good at this if he is not able to retain an accurate representation in memory of the pleasure derived from the first while he listens to the second, or if he is just not very good at comparing two memory traces. In other words, to say he *must* be able to discriminate in such a case is to impute to him a greater power of introspection than he may in fact have. Except that, if he's unable to do this blind, then he is unable to do it sighted. If he's no good at comparing the pleasure he derives from each, then how did he arrive at the original judgment that SACD sounds better than CD? (And if he didn't start from this, why even do the blind test?) Good question ... He arrived at the original judgment (more like a vague impression) in an unscientific way, influenced by various factors, including expectation. And assuming he did somehow arrive at the original judgment that SACD sounds better than CD, why can he not duplicate that comparison blind, multiple times, to see if he arrives at the same judgment consistently? I'll tell you why--because he's afraid of the result. Or because the original comparison was unscientific to begin with, where numerous factors aren't controlled for. If you repeat the same 5-minute passage, how do you control for changes in attention, the effect of having heard the passage already, fatigue, and so on? No wonder it's not easily repeatable. Perhaps there is just something random or intermittent in our response. The idea is to replace this with something scientific. But the inadequacy of the original comparison by scientific standards does nothing to establish, one way or the other, the adequacy of a particular test. OK, then the ABXer's response is that the skeptic's notion that two experiences can differ in satisfaction or pleasure derived, if they cannot be reliably discriminated as such, is empirically meaningless. The skeptic replies: not necessarily. For example, if during listening Karl is asked to rate his satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10, and if the ratings for one source are significantly different from those of the other, that would be an empirical difference. "If" isn't empirical. All the empirical evidence suggests that a test like this would fail, for reasons you've been given over and over and over again. Give it a rest. Actually ... you were explaining to me how we know that when sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve are the same, but the explanation didn't get past sounds that are just over the audible threshold. That's not exactly "reasons given over and over and over again." (And it wouldn't follow from the fact that the ratings are significantly different that Karl would be able to pass a *discrimination* test. Differential response, in one situation, does not necessarily imply an ability to *compare* reliably, in a much different situation.) Opinion stated as fact. There is no evidence that "discrimination" in hearing and "comparing" in hearing are different. You are merely playing at semantics, without a shred of evidence to back you up. I am saying it doesn't logically follow, and that is a fact not an opinion. So again ... what seems to follow from what you're saying is that no one knows. Or, if there is evidence or compelling theoretical reason to believe that if Karl can't reliably discriminate A from B (in the sense of same-different judgments), where A and B are long passages, then he *must* give them the same ratings (more or less, within statistical bounds), then what is it? Has this been studied? Not to *my* knowledge. The way to do so is via monadic evaluative testing, with the rating given for only one test variable, immediately after the fact of listening. And then a statistical comparison to a second cell evaluating the second variable. Such a test would put the fewest intervening variables into the equation. And if such testing does show a difference, then short-snippet, quick-switch AB and ABX tests can be evaluated to see if they can reliably show the same result. Thus the former serves as a "control test" to the latter. |
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#218
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Mark DeBellis wrote:
Keith Hughes wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: snip The skeptic claims: for all we know from the result of this test, there could be a perceptual difference between the two sources in normal listening (as opposed to testing) situations. For all we know, in listening to 5-minute stretches, say, Karl derives greater satisfaction or pleasure from one source than he does from the other. To postulate this requires stipulating that Karl did, indeed, make a distinction. Not sure why. The minute you say "from one source than he does another", a distinction, or differentiation more accurately, is implicit. If you have a different reaction, or degree of reaction, to A vs. B, then you've made a distinction between them. You simply cannot enjoy one more than the other if you think they are identical, or conversely, you cannot think they are identical if you enjoy one more than the other. Ah, but the ABX-proponent says, then let him listen first to one stretch, then the other, and if he derives greater pleasure from one than the other, then he *will* be able to discriminate them. That is *implicit*. You cannot enjoy one more than the other without being able to discriminate between them. There would be *no* basis. No basis for what? For a differential enjoyment response. If he thinks they are identical, there can be no basis for a differential response. See above. I mean discrimination in the sense that Karl can reliably judge whether A is the same as B. By pleasure I mean a feeling. So I am not understanding the force of your "cannot." Exactly why is the following impossible? Karl hears A and gets a strong feeling of pleasure. Then he hears B and gets a weaker feeling of pleasure. By the time he gets to the end of B, he has only a vague memory of A. So he cannot reliably judge whether A was the same as B. How or in what sense is this impossible? The skeptic replies, not necessarily. He will be able to do this only if, say, he is good at *comparing* the pleasure he derives from one passage with the pleasure that he derives from the other. If not, then he cannot, by definition, know that he enjoyed one more than another. Perhaps, but I was saying that he enjoyed one more than the other, not that he knew he did. If he didn't *know* he did, then he didn't. You cannot have greater enjoyment without a standard of lesser enjoyment to compare to. And he may not be good at this if he is not able to retain an accurate representation in memory of the pleasure derived from the first while he listens to the second, or if he is just not very good at comparing two memory traces. In other words, to say he *must* be able to discriminate in such a case is to impute to him a greater power of introspection than he may in fact have. Nonsense. You have already *stipulated* that he enjoyed one more than another. That very fact *defines* extant discrimination. Suppose I went to a greasy spoon in 1999 and had a cold hamburger. Then in 2005 I went to a fancy restaurant and got a great meal. I got greater pleasure from the latter than I got from the former. But I could have completely forgotten about the first meal by the time I got to the second. Putting aside the lack of relevance this has to time-proximate testing, if you've completely forgotten the first meal, you *cannot* judge comparable levels of enjoyment relative to the second meal. You have no reference against which to compare. It can be a fact that I enjoyed one more than I enjoyed the other even though no comparison took place. (I enjoyed one to degree x, I enjoyed the other to degree y, and x is greater than y.) But of course, you do not know this - the point you seem to be missing here. Maybe both were X, maybe both were Y. If you cannot identify, let alone quantify, what X is, you cannot determine that another experience is "Y"...it might just as well be "X". You cannot just say "well, OK but just *suppose* that he enjoyed one more than the other, even though he doesn't remember one of them" because that simply uncouples the scenario from objective reality. The underlying basis for making comparative observations has been removed when you 'suppose' results for a test case, but disallow the only mechanism by which those results could be obtained. As soon as you say "more than", a comparison is implicit. You're trying to postulate a scenario such as "OK but suppose that 1999 cold burger *were* to be compared, contemporaneously to the high dollar great meal, I would have clearly enjoyed the great meal more than the burger". But the fallacy in that postulate is that that comparison did not actually happen, rather they are two time isolated non-quantified events, and you cannot extrapolate comparison results for which you don't have the data. Let's reconfigure your supposition to illustrate; Suppose in 1999 you were out of work, hadn't had a real meal since breakfast yesterday, when you sat down with that burger. Suppose further that in 2005, you took a date you were crazy about to a fancy restaraunt, had a great meal in the midst of which she dumped you. Would the circumstances affect your relative level of enjoyment? I would say yes, clearly. Knowing the *actual* response in 1999 *and* the actual response in 2005 is the minimum predicate to determining which was more enjoyable to you. No reference = no comparison = no basis for determining relative response. OK, then the ABXer's response is that the skeptic's notion that two experiences can differ in satisfaction or pleasure derived, if they cannot be reliably discriminated as such, is empirically meaningless. No, rather, that which is not repeatable is not considered valid empirical data. The skeptic replies: not necessarily. For example, if during listening Karl is asked to rate his satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10, and if the ratings for one source are significantly different from those of the other, that would be an empirical difference. And if these results were not repeatable, then they would be empirically meaningless, within the context of a verifiable difference (sonically, emotionally, musically, whatever). Further, if the tests were not relatively contemporaneous, Karl's emotional state would be as likely, if not more so, to be responsible for a disparate reaction (between A and B for e.g.) than would be an actual audible difference. Certainly it would introduce sufficient doubt as to invalidate the test. (And it wouldn't follow from the fact that the ratings are significantly different that Karl would be able to pass a *discrimination* test. He just *did* 'pass' a discrimination test, by definition. That he didn't say "A is better than B" is irrelevant. If he states that "A engenders a pleasure level of 9 and B engenders a pleasure level of 2" he has clearly discriminated between the systems. Yes, I agree with you on that, but I am talking about discrimination of the kind where you have to say if A is the same as B. OK, I'm confused. You agree that saying the ability to identify one system as a "9" and another as a "2" (relative to any parameter of interest) demonstrates the ability to discriminate between them, but that's different than being able to tell if they are the same?????? Discrimination between two systems/items/passages etc., for any parameter, in any context, at any time, *defines* them as not the same. How is this confusing? Differential response, in one situation, does not necessarily imply an ability to *compare* reliably, in a much different situation.) Reproducibility is the hallmark of *valid* data, irrespective of context. If, in the context the orginal observation was made, the observation cannot be repeated, it must be considered either an anomaly, or simply erroneous. There are no other interpretations, although there are a myriad of possible underlying causes. Yes, I agree with that too. It is important that the differential response be reproducible and that extraneous causes be controlled for. Well, you must agree then that creating 'thought exercises' (like the one above) that, by their very nature, preclude any possibility of demonstrating reproducible results (you cannot repeatedly go back to 1999 for eg. - but if you find a way, I'm all ears:-) does nothing to further understanding of the issue at hand. Keith Hughes |
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 23 Jul 2005 22:00:30 GMT, wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 22 Jul 2005 23:48:32 GMT, wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 21 Jul 2005 00:16:14 GMT, wrote: I am just as sceptical as anyone, Stewart, but you go betyond scepticism to dogmatism. You claim that no differences are there to be heard, not that it is difficult to hear differences reliably. These are two different claims. The former is dogmatic; the latter is sceptical. The former is however demonstrably true, making the latter redundant. No, it certainly is not. To say so is to take a dogmatic position. Nope, it is an opinion based on much testing. "Much testing?" At least twenty of my own, plus those of Tom Nousaine, Arny et al. As against *zero* of the opposing camp. There you go again, picking and choosing your anecdotes. There are plenty of anecdotal reports of people hearing differences amoung cables under blind conditions. To say that there *are* audible differences, in the presence of *zero* reliable and repeatable evidence that this is the case, is indeed dogmatic, a true act of blind faith. To say the opposite in the presence of *zero* reliable and repeatable evidence is every bit as dogmatic and every bit true act of blind faith. Except of course that your claim is false - there is plenty of evidence. Nope. Plenty of anecdotes. As any person with any knowledge of science would know, anecdotes are not good evidence. There have ben numerous acounts of claims of difference under blind conditions. None of them however stood up under examination, How many of them have actually been propperly examined/ Zip's 'Sunshine Trials' being a classic in this regard, Classic? If that's classic then the objectivists have no leg to stand on. where he claimed to have 'aced' the test blind, but fell apart totally when Nousaine and Maki actually put him to a properly controlled blind test. That is your idea of a propperly controlled test? That does put things into perspective. I'd like to see any published peer reviewed research paper that contains all the baggage that the infamous "Sunshine trials" had. Really, what a joke. What you are really doing is simply picking and choosing your anecdotal evidence. One can draw any conclusion they wish to draw with this MO. You however don't even have *that* luxury, It is not a luxery, it is a gross error in judgement. But you are right i don't allow myself the luxry of making those kinds of gros errors. as you have nothing from which to choose. As usual, you are wrong again. I have done numerous blind comparisons on numerous subjects. I just don't pretend that i am doing valid scientific research. You really seam to lack perspective. As ever, you're just arguing for the sake of it. As ever you are now making unfounded personal attacks in the absence of a legitimate argument. Why don't you try it yourself, and quite being a dogmatist? I have no interest in meeting the requirements that you have set out. I amskeptical about ABX. I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. And what did you do to control your bias that they would sound the same? At that time, I had no such 'bias', Really? Is that why you did twenty some odd tests as you claim? You expected to hear a difference each and every time? Interesting. I was still a true believer. I'd say you still are but anyways.... My current view came later, after many such tests failed to reveal *any* difference whatever among cables, and none among well-designed amps and CD players either. You never did tell us which of the amps were not well designed. Was it the yamaha or the Levinson? But anyways, I have no problem with you convincing yourself of whatever it is you believe. I just take issue with your apparent belief that your convictions are actually better than anybody eles's. Scott Wheeler |
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Mark DeBellis wrote:
Keith Hughes wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: snip The skeptic claims: for all we know from the result of this test, there could be a perceptual difference between the two sources in normal listening (as opposed to testing) situations. For all we know, in listening to 5-minute stretches, say, Karl derives greater satisfaction or pleasure from one source than he does from the other. To postulate this requires stipulating that Karl did, indeed, make a distinction. p.s. There is a difference between 1. Karl listens to SACD and derives pleasure in the amount x. Then he listens to CD and derives pleasure in the amount y. And x is greater than y. 2. Everything in 1, and, moreover, Karl judges *that* the pleasure he derived from SACD is greater than the pleasure he derived from CD. In 1, it is the case that x is greater than y. In 2, not only is it the case, but Karl judges it to be the case. You're talking about Karl's perceptions. If Karl doesn't judge x to be greater than y, then x isn't greater than y. You're merely playing at semantics. bob |
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Mark DeBellis wrote:
Actually ... you were explaining to me how we know that when sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve are the same, but the explanation didn't get past sounds that are just over the audible threshold. That's not exactly "reasons given over and over and over again." Well, I'm not responsible for the fact that you don't know enough of the basic science here to understand what's been explained to you over and over again. We are, in all cases, talking about sounds that are "just over the audible threshold." It doesn't matter whether the context in which we hear that just noticeable difference (JND) is background noise or something louder and more complex. It's still a JND, and it's still "just over the audible threshold." And, as Stewart explained to you, the louder and more complex that context, the larger the difference has to be to be noticeable, because of masking. (And it wouldn't follow from the fact that the ratings are significantly different that Karl would be able to pass a *discrimination* test. Differential response, in one situation, does not necessarily imply an ability to *compare* reliably, in a much different situation.) Opinion stated as fact. There is no evidence that "discrimination" in hearing and "comparing" in hearing are different. You are merely playing at semantics, without a shred of evidence to back you up. I am saying it doesn't logically follow, and that is a fact not an opinion. Lots of physics won't logically follow if you don't know physics. Ditto psychoacoustics. So again ... what seems to follow from what you're saying is that no one knows. The only thing that seems to follow from this discussion is that YOU don't know enough of the basic science here to render such judgments. Or, if there is evidence or compelling theoretical reason to believe that if Karl can't reliably discriminate A from B (in the sense of same-different judgments), where A and B are long passages, then he *must* give them the same ratings (more or less, within statistical bounds), then what is it? There's no evidence whatever to this effect, because it is not true. There is no reason to expect Karl to give the same rating twice, even to identical stimuli. You could test Karl a large number of times, and see if he rated one higher than the other consistently. But any scientist would consider that a waste of time, since you've already conceded that Karl can't distinguish between the two. And if a real scientist wouldn't consider this worth doing, who are you to suggest otherwise? bob |
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#223
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#224
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#225
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On 24 Jul 2005 18:53:06 GMT, Jenn wrote:
In article , Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 23 Jul 2005 18:11:58 GMT, William Eckle wrote: On 23 Jul 2005 17:10:46 GMT, Stewart Pinkerton wrote (among other things): I have tried it on many occasions with acoustic jazz, music which typically does have a very large amount of cymbal brushwork. Purely for test purposes, I also recommend the classic Sheffield 'Drum' record in this regard, being an especially dynamic, wideband and detailed recording of two great drummers. Looks to me like the statement "two great drummers" is an opinion. Not in my experience, there have been hundreds of better drummers make the scene over the past 80 years. That would also be an opinion, and much more contentious. IMNVHO, Jim Keltner is one of the top ten of all time snip While I would certainly agree that Keltner is almost mythic in session playing circles...probably the best known along with Stevie Gadd..... it is certainly difficult to make "top ten of all time" sort of statements. Nah, it's extremely easy to make such statements. Backing them up is perhaps another matter...... :-) Do you mean only rock drummers? All percussionists? If the later, how does one compare Keltner to Bellson to Rich to Mitch Peters? I don't mean to be argumentative or "contrary", but that kind of statement always raises my hackles bit :-) I entirely agree, which is why *my* hackles were raised at the suggestion that there have ben "hundreds of better drummers" than Keltner. And no, I wasn't including classical percussionists such as Evelyn Glennie. OTOH, Bellson would certainly be in my personal top ten, along with Joe Morello. And of course, let's not forget Ann 'Honey' Lantree....... :-) -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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Keith Hughes wrote:
Mark DeBellis wrote: Keith Hughes wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: For all we know, in listening to 5-minute stretches, say, Karl derives greater satisfaction or pleasure from one source than he does from the other. To postulate this requires stipulating that Karl did, indeed, make a distinction... snip The minute you say "from one source than he does another", a distinction, or differentiation more accurately, is implicit. If you have a different reaction, or degree of reaction, to A vs. B, then you've made a distinction between them. I am making a distinction, looking at the situation from outside, but Karl need not have a view about whether he liked A better than B in order for it to be the case that he derived greater pleasure from one than the other. (I'll say more about this below.) You simply cannot enjoy one more than the other if you think they are identical, There is a third possibility in addition to thinking that A and B are identical and thinking that they are different, which is not to judge the matter either way. Can it not be the case that a person enjoys A more than he enjoys B while failing to judge them either the same or different? What if he simply does not consider the matter? Perhaps, but I was saying that he enjoyed one more than the other, not that he knew he did. If he didn't *know* he did, then he didn't. You cannot have greater enjoyment without a standard of lesser enjoyment to compare to. That is just false. To change the example, suppose yesterday Karl scratched his finger slightly. Today he stubbed his toe really hard. Consider the statement * The pain Karl felt on scratching his finger was less than the pain he felt on stubbing his toe. For * to be true, Karl doesn't have to know it's true or do a comparison. By this morning, let's say for the sake of argument, he'd forgotten all about yesterday. There is a difference between something's being true (about Karl) and Karl's knowing it to be true. Suppose I went to a greasy spoon in 1999 and had a cold hamburger. Then in 2005 I went to a fancy restaurant and got a great meal. I got greater pleasure from the latter than I got from the former. But I could have completely forgotten about the first meal by the time I got to the second. Putting aside the lack of relevance this has to time-proximate testing, if you've completely forgotten the first meal, you *cannot* judge comparable levels of enjoyment relative to the second meal. You have no reference against which to compare. We are taking a third-person perspective. To stick with the toe-stubbing example, it is we who grasp the thought that one episode is more painful than the other, not Karl. It's not irrelevant because we are talking about problems of comparison of longer excerpts. It can be a fact that I enjoyed one more than I enjoyed the other even though no comparison took place. (I enjoyed one to degree x, I enjoyed the other to degree y, and x is greater than y.) But of course, you do not know this - the point you seem to be missing here. Maybe both were X, maybe both were Y. If you cannot identify, let alone quantify, what X is, you cannot determine that another experience is "Y"...it might just as well be "X". Again, there is a difference between what we, on the outside looking in, are specifying to be the case, and what the subject being described is aware of. That can get confusing if the example is put in the first person (as I had it), so let's stick with Karl! :-) You cannot just say "well, OK but just *suppose* that he enjoyed one more than the other, even though he doesn't remember one of them" because that simply uncouples the scenario from objective reality. The thing about objective reality is that it continues to exist even when it's not being measured or observed (on a macroscopic level anyway, like the tree in the quad). The underlying basis for making comparative observations has been removed when you 'suppose' results for a test case, but disallow the only mechanism by which those results could be obtained. As soon as you say "more than", a comparison is implicit. You're trying to postulate a scenario such as "OK but suppose that 1999 cold burger *were* to be compared, contemporaneously to the high dollar great meal, I would have clearly enjoyed the great meal more than the burger". But the fallacy in that postulate is that that comparison did not actually happen, rather they are two time isolated non-quantified events, and you cannot extrapolate comparison results for which you don't have the data. You seem to be saying something like the following: Pain 1 cannot be meaningfully said to be greater than Pain 2 unless the subject actually compares them. This is an extreme form of reductionism, or verificationism, or operationalism. Surely, at the very least, we can have evidence that Pain 1 is greater than Pain 2 in other ways, for example, by measuring the force of the impact on the toe, noting whether Karl says "Ow!" etc. ... I am talking about discrimination of the kind where you have to say if A is the same as B. OK, I'm confused. You agree that saying the ability to identify one system as a "9" and another as a "2" (relative to any parameter of interest) demonstrates the ability to discriminate between them, but that's different than being able to tell if they are the same?????? There are two relevant kinds of tasks. One involves listening to sources A and B and judging if they are the same or different. The other involves rating (say) how much you like a given source. I am saying I do not see how these tasks are equivalent. There can be memory effects that play a role in one but not the other. I do agree with you that both can aptly be called "discrimination," but I had been using that term to mean the first of the two kinds. Maybe "same/different judgment" would be a better term. Discrimination between two systems/items/passages etc., for any parameter, in any context, at any time, *defines* them as not the same. If Karl responds differently to A and B, does it follow that he judges *that* they are not the same? No, as the toe-stubbing example illustrates. Moreover, the outcome of a "rating" test need not (as far as I can see) correspond exactly to that of a "same/different judgment" test. If Karl gives higher ratings to A than B in the first sort of testing protocol, does it follow that, in the second sort of test, if he listens first to A then B, he will be able to judge correctly whether they are the same? I don't see why. Well, you must agree then that creating 'thought exercises' (like the one above) that, by their very nature, preclude any possibility of demonstrating reproducible results (you cannot repeatedly go back to 1999 for eg. - but if you find a way, I'm all ears:-) does nothing to further understanding of the issue at hand. The principal value of thought exercises is to exercise thought, and I don't think that's at all irrelevant to understanding. (I think we agree about a lot, but diverge on the claim, "You cannot just say 'well, OK but just *suppose* ....'" Why can't I say that?) Mark |
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Mark DeBellis wrote:
wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: Actually ... you were explaining to me how we know that when sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve are the same, but the explanation didn't get past sounds that are just over the audible threshold. That's not exactly "reasons given over and over and over again." Well, I'm not responsible for the fact that you don't know enough of the basic science here to understand what's been explained to you over and over again. We are, in all cases, talking about sounds that are "just over the audible threshold." It doesn't matter whether the context in which we hear that just noticeable difference (JND) is background noise or something louder and more complex. It's still a JND, and it's still "just over the audible threshold." So how do you get from the premise you cite, which is about very quiet sounds, No, it's not. It's about just noticeable differences within what may be very loud sounds. to the conclusion that whenever sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve must be the same? What do you mean, how do I get there? I'm already there. If you accept as fact the idea that DBTs and measurements of nerve reactions give similar estimates of JNDs, then the conclusion is a slam-dunk, as George Tenet would say. If you don't accept that as fact, take it up with experts in the field, of which I am not one. Or, if there is evidence or compelling theoretical reason to believe that if Karl can't reliably discriminate A from B (in the sense of same-different judgments), where A and B are long passages, then he *must* give them the same ratings (more or less, within statistical bounds), then what is it? There's no evidence whatever to this effect, because it is not true. There is no reason to expect Karl to give the same rating twice, even to identical stimuli. You could test Karl a large number of times, and see if he rated one higher than the other consistently. But any scientist would consider that a waste of time, since you've already conceded that Karl can't distinguish between the two. It would be nice to know *why* the scientist thinks this, Because he has done the work. what the scientific reason is for coming to this conclusion. What is the evidence that, if Karl can't reliably discriminate A from B (in the sense of same/different judgments), he won't rate one higher than the other consistently? Are you saying there is no such evidence? Then on the basis of what does the scientist decide the question is a waste of time? You are giving a grossly mistaken picture here of the scientific attitude and method. Scientists do not decide matters such as this a priori, without some basis in evidence. That's right, and we've tried to explain to you what the basis of that evidence is. You apparently do not want to accept that, so I'll repeat the advice above: Take it up with experts in the field. But be prepared to be humbled. bob |
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Harry Lavo wrote:
Not to *my* knowledge. The way to do so is via monadic evaluative testing, with the rating given for only one test variable, immediately after the fact of listening. And then a statistical comparison to a second cell evaluating the second variable. Such a test would put the fewest intervening variables into the equation. And if such testing does show a difference, then short-snippet, quick-switch AB and ABX tests can be evaluated to see if they can reliably show the same result. Thus the former serves as a "control test" to the latter. No comparative or evaluative listening can be "scientific", simply because one is listening to one or the other at one moment, comparing that to the memory of the other. In other words, ABX testing is no more valuable than long-term evaluation. It is scientifically worthless. |
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Mark DeBellis wrote:
Keith Hughes wrote: snip The minute you say "from one source than he does another", a distinction, or differentiation more accurately, is implicit. If you have a different reaction, or degree of reaction, to A vs. B, then you've made a distinction between them. I am making a distinction, looking at the situation from outside, but Karl need not have a view about whether he liked A better than B in order for it to be the case that he derived greater pleasure from one than the other. (I'll say more about this below.) You *cannot* look at it from the outside. That's the point. Karl's satisfaction must be apprehended *by him* or it simply does not exist, and there is no mechanism by which an "outside" observer can ascertain that Karl liked one better than the other. You are trying to create a scenario where *your* interpretation of Karls internal reality supplants his actual perception, and then base an argument on what you presume Karl's response would have been had he had a response. This is fantasy, not theoretical supposition. You simply cannot enjoy one more than the other if you think they are identical, There is a third possibility in addition to thinking that A and B are identical and thinking that they are different, which is not to judge the matter either way. Can it not be the case that a person enjoys A more than he enjoys B while failing to judge them either the same or different? What if he simply does not consider the matter? This is the same as "the same". Two presentations are the same, or they are different. If, for whatever reason, you do not distinguish between the two, then for your internal reality, they are the same. You do not have to make a conscious evaluation of "sameness", the absence of conscious "difference" is the same thing. Perhaps, but I was saying that he enjoyed one more than the other, not that he knew he did. If he didn't *know* he did, then he didn't. You cannot have greater enjoyment without a standard of lesser enjoyment to compare to. That is just false. Simple logic, and use of English. Greater than...what? Cite one, grammatically correct, example of where you can say "X is greater than" without supplying a reference quantity. To change the example, suppose yesterday Karl scratched his finger slightly. Today he stubbed his toe really hard. Consider the statement * The pain Karl felt on scratching his finger was less than the pain he felt on stubbing his toe. You *might* make the statement that the neuronal excitation resulting from the scratch was less than resulting from the toe stubbing, but you cannot interpret, FOR HIM, the relative level of his apprehension of pain. Don't confuse level of stimulus with level of perception - while they may be proportional at times, at other times, given other physical and emotional inputs, they may have no correlation whatsoever. For * to be true, Karl doesn't have to know it's true or do a comparison. By this morning, let's say for the sake of argument, he'd forgotten all about yesterday. There is a difference between something's being true (about Karl) and Karl's knowing it to be true. No, there is not, not when Karls perception is the subject at hand. *YOU* do not, cannot, and will never have the capacity by which to judge Karl's perception of events. You are trying to project what *you* believe to be an absolute level (in this case pain) of response, based on *your* personal psychological/physiological makeup, onto Karl and assume that holds true for all circumstances. This is untenable. You again miss the basic point. No one other than Karl can assess whether the scratch or the stubb was more painful. If Karl didn't do it (i.e. he didn't compare them), then no comparison was made, and there is no objective data to determine his relative response. You can suppose all day about what you think his response obviously would have been, but that is pointless since *you* cannot know. The severity of the injury is not directly proportional to the perception of pain. Suppose I went to a greasy spoon in 1999 and had a cold hamburger. Then in 2005 I went to a fancy restaurant and got a great meal. I got greater pleasure from the latter than I got from the former. But I could have completely forgotten about the first meal by the time I got to the second. Putting aside the lack of relevance this has to time-proximate testing, if you've completely forgotten the first meal, you *cannot* judge comparable levels of enjoyment relative to the second meal. You have no reference against which to compare. We are taking a third-person perspective. To stick with the toe-stubbing example, it is we who grasp the thought that one episode is more painful than the other, not Karl. This is ludicrous. *We* cannot grasp the internal response of another person. We can question that individual and determine their response, but when they have none (as in your example), it is pure fantasy to say *we know what Karl felt, even though he doesn't*. You're using Karls perception on the one hand to prove your point, while on the other hand you're saying Karls perception is irrelevant because *we* know what it was whether he peceived it or not. It's not irrelevant because we are talking about problems of comparison of longer excerpts. It can be a fact that I enjoyed one more than I enjoyed the other even though no comparison took place. (I enjoyed one to degree x, I enjoyed the other to degree y, and x is greater than y.) But of course, you do not know this - the point you seem to be missing here. Maybe both were X, maybe both were Y. If you cannot identify, let alone quantify, what X is, you cannot determine that another experience is "Y"...it might just as well be "X". Again, there is a difference between what we, on the outside looking in, are specifying to be the case, The fallacy in a nutshell. You specify Karls response (separate from any perception that Karl may have) and then use that to as though it were actual data, to support your position. and what the subject being described is aware of. That can get confusing if the example is put in the first person (as I had it), so let's stick with Karl! :-) Not confusing at all. Just illogical. You once again want to stipulate that Karl has perceptual responses that A) he does not know about, and B) about events does not remember, and C) we on the outside nonetheless know the internal perceptual response he had but was unaware of. If Karl is unaware of it of a perception, then he *DID NOT HAVE IT*. It is not a perception if he is unaware of it - that's sort of the hallmark of perception. Your whole argument is based on this fallacy; that we can assume Karl had a perception that he didn't know about, and proceed from there to create causes and relationships for differential perceptions that he didn't have. You cannot just say "well, OK but just *suppose* that he enjoyed one more than the other, even though he doesn't remember one of them" because that simply uncouples the scenario from objective reality. The thing about objective reality is that it continues to exist even when it's not being measured or observed (on a macroscopic level anyway, like the tree in the quad). The objective reality is that Karl perceives an event, or he does not. We're not talking about Newtonian physics here, we're talking about *perception*. You can't talk about the perception that Karl was unaware of - without awareness there was no perception. If your postulate requires Karl to have serial perceptions of which he is unaware or can't remember, the lack of utility seems obvious. The underlying basis for making comparative observations has been removed when you 'suppose' results for a test case, but disallow the only mechanism by which those results could be obtained. As soon as you say "more than", a comparison is implicit. You're trying to postulate a scenario such as "OK but suppose that 1999 cold burger *were* to be compared, contemporaneously to the high dollar great meal, I would have clearly enjoyed the great meal more than the burger". But the fallacy in that postulate is that that comparison did not actually happen, rather they are two time isolated non-quantified events, and you cannot extrapolate comparison results for which you don't have the data. You seem to be saying something like the following: Pain 1 cannot be meaningfully said to be greater than Pain 2 unless the subject actually compares them. Quite true, because the perception of pain is A) not necessarily coupled, in magnitude, to the stimulus, and B) *ONLY* the subject can make the determination that pain1 is greater or less than pain2, and C) sans comparison of the two, even the subject cannot say which is greater or lesser. This is an extreme form of reductionism, or verificationism, or operationalism. No, just an awareness of how perception is not always coupled to externally observable reality. Perception is dependent on the peculiar cognitive processes of the individual under study, and can vary by orders of magnitude as the test conditions (including subject conditions) are varied. You're trying to pretend that everyone perceives a given stimulus in an identical fashion, under all circumstances. A quick Google search for "shock" will quickly disabuse you of that misapprehension. Surely, at the very least, we can have evidence that Pain 1 is greater than Pain 2 in other ways, for example, by measuring the force of the impact on the toe, We can monitor the stimulus, certainly. We cannot extrapolate from that what Karls perception will be. Sure, if we cut off his arm *we* know that will hurt more than breaking his toe. But for your argument to have any legs (pun intented) we have to pretend that Karl forgot about the broken toe and the severed arm. Not going to happen. noting whether Karl says "Ow!" etc. He says "Ow" both times. What did we learn? ... I am talking about discrimination of the kind where you have to say if A is the same as B. OK, I'm confused. You agree that saying the ability to identify one system as a "9" and another as a "2" (relative to any parameter of interest) demonstrates the ability to discriminate between them, but that's different than being able to tell if they are the same?????? There are two relevant kinds of tasks. One involves listening to sources A and B and judging if they are the same or different. The other involves rating (say) how much you like a given source. I am saying I do not see how these tasks are equivalent. There can be memory effects that play a role in one but not the other. OK, since you seem analogy driven, how can you say that you like an Outback steak more than a Big Mac if you can't tell them apart? You like Coke better than Pepsi, but they taste exactly the same to you. What is your preference based on? You were much happier last month than this month, but you can't remember last month. These things do not logically follow. Two things are either the same, or they are different. If you like one more than the other, then you are saying they are different. There may be differences in the evaluative processes used, but the fact remains that if you judge them the same, you have no basis for creating a preference. If you *have* a preference, it is implicit that you believe they are different. This is really a very simple logic exercise. I do agree with you that both can aptly be called "discrimination," but I had been using that term to mean the first of the two kinds. Maybe "same/different judgment" would be a better term. You're trying to use semantics to create an illusion of difference, and it doesn't wash. No matter how you cut it, if you have a preference, you have judged "different", or you lack the capacity for logic. If you ajudge "same", and yet have a preference, you once again are logically challenged. Discrimination between two systems/items/passages etc., for any parameter, in any context, at any time, *defines* them as not the same. If Karl responds differently to A and B, does it follow that he judges *that* they are not the same? No, as the toe-stubbing example illustrates. Failed to illustrate you mean. *YOU* cannot judge Karls perception, and if he is unaware of it, it is not perception. Moreover, the outcome of a "rating" test need not (as far as I can see) correspond exactly to that of a "same/different judgment" test. If Karl gives higher ratings to A than B in the first sort of testing protocol, If he does it blind, and level matched, and can achieve statistically valid results, then he can indeed tell them apart. If it's not reproducible, then the test means nothing, and the whole thing is moot. does it follow that, in the second sort of test, if he listens first to A then B, he will be able to judge correctly whether they are the same? Yes, it does. *If* he meets the criteria detailed above. I don't see why. I'm aware. How is this different? Answer...it's not. All Karl has to do is repeat *EXACTLY* what he did above. He say's to himself, "Hmmmm, I like A better than B, logic dictates that they must be different". And he's already shown he can decide which he likes better. It is a matter of the most rudimetary logic to extrapolate the "I like A more than B" to A is different than B. Well, you must agree then that creating 'thought exercises' (like the one above) that, by their very nature, preclude any possibility of demonstrating reproducible results (you cannot repeatedly go back to 1999 for eg. - but if you find a way, I'm all ears:-) does nothing to further understanding of the issue at hand. The principal value of thought exercises is to exercise thought, and I don't think that's at all irrelevant to understanding. (I think we agree about a lot, but diverge on the claim, "You cannot just say 'well, OK but just *suppose* ....'" Why can't I say that?) Oh you can say that...just don't snip the part about supposing a set of results, while stipulating a methodology that precludes any chance of achieving those results, and then pretending that the method has rigor. Keith Hughes |
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On 26 Jul 2005 00:39:25 GMT, "Mark DeBellis"
wrote: wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: Actually ... you were explaining to me how we know that when sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve are the same, but the explanation didn't get past sounds that are just over the audible threshold. That's not exactly "reasons given over and over and over again." Well, I'm not responsible for the fact that you don't know enough of the basic science here to understand what's been explained to you over and over again. We are, in all cases, talking about sounds that are "just over the audible threshold." It doesn't matter whether the context in which we hear that just noticeable difference (JND) is background noise or something louder and more complex. It's still a JND, and it's still "just over the audible threshold." So how do you get from the premise you cite, which is about very quiet sounds, to the conclusion that whenever sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve must be the same? That's not a commutative statement. What was said was that, if there's no difference in the nerve impulse, it's *impossible* for there to be an audible difference. If all cats are black, that doesn't make all black animals cats. Or, if there is evidence or compelling theoretical reason to believe that if Karl can't reliably discriminate A from B (in the sense of same-different judgments), where A and B are long passages, then he *must* give them the same ratings (more or less, within statistical bounds), then what is it? There's no evidence whatever to this effect, because it is not true. There is no reason to expect Karl to give the same rating twice, even to identical stimuli. You could test Karl a large number of times, and see if he rated one higher than the other consistently. But any scientist would consider that a waste of time, since you've already conceded that Karl can't distinguish between the two. It would be nice to know *why* the scientist thinks this, what the scientific reason is for coming to this conclusion. Because he thinks logically? If it's a given that he can't discriminate the two stimuli, there is simply no interest in testing him, it would be a priori a waste of time. What is the evidence that, if Karl can't reliably discriminate A from B (in the sense of same/different judgments), he won't rate one higher than the other consistently? Statistics. Given that it's a blind test, of course. In sighted listening, sound quality is one of the more minor differentiators..... Are you saying there is no such evidence? Then on the basis of what does the scientist decide the question is a waste of time? You are giving a grossly mistaken picture here of the scientific attitude and method. Scientists do not decide matters such as this a priori, without some basis in evidence. They do, if the inability to discriminate is already conceded. That would be like sending a lunar mission to test for green cheese. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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On 26 Jul 2005 00:48:25 GMT, "Mark DeBellis"
wrote: Keith Hughes wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: Keith Hughes wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: For all we know, in listening to 5-minute stretches, say, Karl derives greater satisfaction or pleasure from one source than he does from the other. To postulate this requires stipulating that Karl did, indeed, make a distinction... snip The minute you say "from one source than he does another", a distinction, or differentiation more accurately, is implicit. If you have a different reaction, or degree of reaction, to A vs. B, then you've made a distinction between them. I am making a distinction, looking at the situation from outside, but Karl need not have a view about whether he liked A better than B in order for it to be the case that he derived greater pleasure from one than the other. (I'll say more about this below.) You simply cannot enjoy one more than the other if you think they are identical, There is a third possibility in addition to thinking that A and B are identical and thinking that they are different, which is not to judge the matter either way. Can it not be the case that a person enjoys A more than he enjoys B while failing to judge them either the same or different? What if he simply does not consider the matter? What if he doesn't care? What if *we* don't care? Perhaps, but I was saying that he enjoyed one more than the other, not that he knew he did. If he didn't *know* he did, then he didn't. You cannot have greater enjoyment without a standard of lesser enjoyment to compare to. That is just false. No, it's an obvious truism. To change the example, suppose yesterday Karl scratched his finger slightly. Today he stubbed his toe really hard. Consider the statement * The pain Karl felt on scratching his finger was less than the pain he felt on stubbing his toe. For * to be true, Karl doesn't have to know it's true or do a comparison. By this morning, let's say for the sake of argument, he'd forgotten all about yesterday. There is a difference between something's being true (about Karl) and Karl's knowing it to be true. Suppose I went to a greasy spoon in 1999 and had a cold hamburger. Then in 2005 I went to a fancy restaurant and got a great meal. I got greater pleasure from the latter than I got from the former. But I could have completely forgotten about the first meal by the time I got to the second. Putting aside the lack of relevance this has to time-proximate testing, if you've completely forgotten the first meal, you *cannot* judge comparable levels of enjoyment relative to the second meal. You have no reference against which to compare. We are taking a third-person perspective. To stick with the toe-stubbing example, it is we who grasp the thought that one episode is more painful than the other, not Karl. It's not irrelevant because we are talking about problems of comparison of longer excerpts. Sure it's irrelevant. How do *you* know how Karl feels pain? You make a classic scientific error. He may have damaged nerves in his toe and feel little sensation. You are *assuming* something about the *perception* of another person. The principal value of thought exercises is to exercise thought, and I don't think that's at all irrelevant to understanding. (I think we agree about a lot, but diverge on the claim, "You cannot just say 'well, OK but just *suppose* ....'" Why can't I say that?) You can certainly say it. What you can *not* do is have any reasonable expectation that anyone will take you seriously. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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Keith Hughes wrote:
Mark DeBellis wrote: Keith Hughes wrote: snip The minute you say "from one source than he does another", a distinction, or differentiation more accurately, is implicit. If you have a different reaction, or degree of reaction, to A vs. B, then you've made a distinction between them. I am making a distinction, looking at the situation from outside, but Karl need not have a view about whether he liked A better than B in order for it to be the case that he derived greater pleasure from one than the other. (I'll say more about this below.) You *cannot* look at it from the outside. That's the point. Karl's satisfaction must be apprehended *by him* or it simply does not exist, and there is no mechanism by which an "outside" observer can ascertain that Karl liked one better than the other. You are trying to create a scenario where *your* interpretation of Karls internal reality supplants his actual perception, and then base an argument on what you presume Karl's response would have been had he had a response. This is fantasy, not theoretical supposition. I think I see where you are coming from, but I don't think your conclusion follows. You are talking about Karl's satisfaction also, so you are looking at it from the outside just as much as I am. Moreover, even if it is true that Karl's sensation does not exist unless he apprehends it, there can be relational properties his sensation has that he does not apprehend, for example, occurring 10 minutes earlier than some other sensation, or having a greater subjective strength than some other sensation. It is just false that there is "no mechanism" by which someone else can tell if a person likes A more than he likes B. One can observe the person's behavior. Common sense says that we can have some conception of, and information about, the mental states of others. Common sense says that if a person scratches his finger one day, forgets about it, and stubs his toe the next, the pain on the first occasion is likely to have been less than the pain on the second occasion. I *think* you are saying that to suppose this is actually meaningless, on the basis of some sort of sophisticated philosophical consideration, maybe about the impossibility of knowing "other minds"? If so, I think that philosophy has led us astray here. Common sense is right. One of the writers who I think supports my view of this is Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Philosophical Investigations. I would say that most philosophers nowadays would not take such an extreme operationalist view as you do. Your view, as I understand it, is that it makes no sense to say sensations A and B enter into a certain relation unless the subject perceives them as so related, and I think most philosophers would deny that. You simply cannot enjoy one more than the other if you think they are identical, There is a third possibility in addition to thinking that A and B are identical and thinking that they are different, which is not to judge the matter either way. Can it not be the case that a person enjoys A more than he enjoys B while failing to judge them either the same or different? What if he simply does not consider the matter? This is the same as "the same". Two presentations are the same, or they are different. If, for whatever reason, you do not distinguish between the two, then for your internal reality, they are the same. You do not have to make a conscious evaluation of "sameness", the absence of conscious "difference" is the same thing. So you are saying that if you fail to judge whether A and B are the same, then you cannot enjoy one more than you enjoy the other? Again, that just seems to fly in the face of common sense. I enjoy a hamburger on one occasion, I stub my toe on another, and it never occurs to me to think of the two together in one thought. I never actually compare them. You are saying that it's not the case that one was pleasurable and the other painful? It's not the case that I derived more pleasure from one than the other? I think that you are possibly being led astray by theory here! Failing to judge whether two things are the same or different is, patently, *not* the same thing as judging them to be the same. Maybe you think they *ought* to be the same thing, but they're not. And what is a "presentation," anyway? Perhaps, but I was saying that he enjoyed one more than the other, not that he knew he did. If he didn't *know* he did, then he didn't. You cannot have greater enjoyment without a standard of lesser enjoyment to compare to. That is just false. Simple logic, and use of English. Greater than...what? Cite one, grammatically correct, example of where you can say "X is greater than" without supplying a reference quantity. It is false to say that if he didn't know that he enjoyed one more than the other, then he didn't enjoy one more than the other. That's because the logical form of the statement "He enjoyed one more than (he enjoyed) the other" is, more or less: He enjoyed one thing to degree x; he enjoyed the other to degree y; and x is greater than y. In the last clause, x and y do not occur in the scope of "enjoyed" or any other mental predicate applied to Karl. Yes, "greater" implies a comparison, but it isn't necessarily a comparison undertaken by the subject of whom the enjoyment is predicated. If I understand you right, you are saying that applying a word like "greater" to Karl's sensations is meaningless unless Karl makes an actual comparison. But the links between language and direct observation aren't one-to-one like that. We make this assumption all the time when we talk about loudness; to say that one sound is louder than another does not imply that anyone has actually heard and compared them. To change the example, suppose yesterday Karl scratched his finger slightly. Today he stubbed his toe really hard. Consider the statement * The pain Karl felt on scratching his finger was less than the pain he felt on stubbing his toe. You *might* make the statement that the neuronal excitation resulting from the scratch was less than resulting from the toe stubbing, but you cannot interpret, FOR HIM, the relative level of his apprehension of pain. Don't confuse level of stimulus with level of perception - while they may be proportional at times, at other times, given other physical and emotional inputs, they may have no correlation whatsoever. The statement isn't about neuronal excitation; it's about pain. Exactly then what are you saying about the status of *? It couldn't be true, it's not meaningful, I'm not in a position to assert that it's true, no one can know that it's true; what exactly are you saying about it? If by "you cannot interpret, FOR HIM, the relative level of his apprehension of pain" you mean that I'm unable to state a true proposition of the form "The pain Karl suffered on occasion x was greater than the pain he suffered on occasion y," that's simply false, and contrary to common sense. Don't doctors make such judgments all the time? And don't they compare the pain someone *would* suffer in one hypothetical situation to the pain they would suffer in another? Here there is no question of an actual comparison on the patient's part, since it is possible pains, not actual pains, that are being compared by the doctor. For * to be true, Karl doesn't have to know it's true or do a comparison. By this morning, let's say for the sake of argument, he'd forgotten all about yesterday. There is a difference between something's being true (about Karl) and Karl's knowing it to be true. No, there is not, not when Karls perception is the subject at hand. Well, I guess we just disagree there. One example would be where Karl sees a blue color patch (and, as expected, it looks blue to him) but then forgets what color it was. Now he sees another patch and it also looks blue. There is the same perceived color, but he doesn't know that they are the same. Or Karl's visual experience of the blue patch can last 2 seconds but he loses track of time. He does not know how long it lasted. (Or would you say it can last 2 seconds only if he knows that it does?) *YOU* do not, cannot, and will never have the capacity by which to judge Karl's perception of events. You are trying to project what *you* believe to be an absolute level (in this case pain) of response, based on *your* personal psychological/physiological makeup, onto Karl and assume that holds true for all circumstances. This is untenable. How does the truth of * has anything to do with *me* or my projections? It is true independently of whether I exist, certainly. But I disagree with your claim that people other than Karl never have the capacity to make true judgments about his perceptual states. Obviously, there are many cases in which we are in a position to know things about the perceptions of others. The whole of psychophysics is founded on that idea. You again miss the basic point. No one other than Karl can assess whether the scratch or the stubb was more painful. If Karl didn't do it (i.e. he didn't compare them), then no comparison was made, and there is no objective data to determine his relative response. You can suppose all day about what you think his response obviously would have been, but that is pointless since *you* cannot know. The severity of the injury is not directly proportional to the perception of pain. This is a different point. The former question was whether something can be *true* aboue Karl's perceptions without his knowing it. The present question is whether someone else can be in a position to "assess" it, i.e., have evidence about it. If Karl screams on one occasion but not on the other, that is one kind of evidence that another person can have. And it is well known that certain kinds of injuries are more painful than others, with various exceptions that are also known. So very often people *are* in a position to assess these things. We are taking a third-person perspective. To stick with the toe-stubbing example, it is we who grasp the thought that one episode is more painful than the other, not Karl. This is ludicrous. *We* cannot grasp the internal response of another person. We can question that individual and determine their response, but when they have none (as in your example), it is pure fantasy to say *we know what Karl felt, even though he doesn't*. You're using Karls perception on the one hand to prove your point, while on the other hand you're saying Karls perception is irrelevant because *we* know what it was whether he peceived it or not. No, I wouldn't say that "we know what Karl felt, even though he doesn't," because, even if we know that one pain was greater than another, that isn't something he felt, because he didn't make the comparison. What we would know in that case is a proposition, *that* the pain experienced in one case was greater than the pain experienced in the other, but, by hypothesis, he didn't feel *that* the pain was greater. What we would know in that case is a fact *about* his perceptions. As far as the claim that "we cannot grasp the internal response of another person" is concerned, it depends what you mean, but in general we do have a pretty robust conception of the mental lives of others. Babies develop that along with everything else, and psychologists track some of the ways. For discussion of the whole issue, Wittgenstein is quite valuable and I recommend him; also Gilbert Ryle and Norman Malcolm. It can be a fact that I enjoyed one more than I enjoyed the other even though no comparison took place. (I enjoyed one to degree x, I enjoyed the other to degree y, and x is greater than y.) But of course, you do not know this - the point you seem to be missing here. Maybe both were X, maybe both were Y. If you cannot identify, let alone quantify, what X is, you cannot determine that another experience is "Y"...it might just as well be "X". For it to be a fact is one thing, for someone to know it is another, and the operational definition or "criterion," if there is one in the first place, need not be restricted to the subject's actual comparison but can include other behavior also. Philosophical behaviorism, which to some extent received inspiration from Wittgenstein, acknowledges that you can't "peer into the mind" of another person to feel the pain directly, but argues that the concept of pain or other mental states is logically tied to behavior. (But a wider range of behavior than you seem to want to allow.) Again, there is a difference between what we, on the outside looking in, are specifying to be the case, The fallacy in a nutshell. You specify Karls response (separate from any perception that Karl may have) and then use that to as though it were actual data, to support your position. I'm just saying "suppose one pain was greater than another"; what the data or evidence would be for this is an important question, but I don't understand what you mean when you say I'm using the supposition "as" data. Look, is what I'm describing really so unusual? Karl hears a long, involved musical passage. Psychoacousticians would say (yes?) that each of the notes in the passage has a certain loudness (for him, subjectively). So, the fifth note has a certain loudness. The twentieth note has a certain loudness. Oh, but wait, Karl has no idea if the fifth note was louder than the twentieth note or vice versa. So I guess we have to go back and reject the idea that each note had a certain degree of loudness. That seems quite implausible, but it follows from your view, no? and what the subject being described is aware of. That can get confusing if the example is put in the first person (as I had it), so let's stick with Karl! :-) Not confusing at all. Just illogical. You once again want to stipulate that Karl has perceptual responses that A) he does not know about, and B) about events does not remember, and C) we on the outside nonetheless know the internal perceptual response he had but was unaware of. A) There can be facts *about* Karl's perceptions that he does not know to be true. B) He can have perceived something and not remember it (common sense). C) I am saying that we can know facts about Karl's perceptions that he does not himself know. For instance, suppose he sees a succession of color flashes. Did he see red or blue first? He may not know that now, or may never have known it, but we may know. If Karl is unaware of it of a perception, then he *DID NOT HAVE IT*. A dubious principle: suppose he has forgotten. Then he is unaware of it now. So he never had it? Contrary to common sense. It is not a perception if he is unaware of it - that's sort of the hallmark of perception. There is a difference between being aware of the object that is presented in perception and knowing everything that is true about the perception. Your whole argument is based on this fallacy; that we can assume Karl had a perception that he didn't know about, and proceed from there to create causes and relationships for differential perceptions that he didn't have. You make it sound as if I'm saying that he had a perceptual experience without knowing, at the time, that he was having one, whereas I'm merely saying that he need not know everything about his perceptions. And the proposition that one pain is greater than another is not a perception. The objective reality is that Karl perceives an event, or he does not. We're not talking about Newtonian physics here, we're talking about *perception*. You can't talk about the perception that Karl was unaware of - without awareness there was no perception. If your postulate requires Karl to have serial perceptions of which he is unaware or can't remember, the lack of utility seems obvious. There is a distinction between (a) Karl being unaware of his perception, or its object, at the time he had it and (b) his not being aware of some fact about it, either then or at some later time. There are perhaps two senses of "aware" floating around he being aware of some perceivable quality and being aware *that* something is the case, i.e., being aware of some fact. I am saying he can have a perception without being aware of every fact about it, everything that is true about it. This is an extreme form of reductionism, or verificationism, or operationalism. No, just an awareness of how perception is not always coupled to externally observable reality. Perception is dependent on the peculiar cognitive processes of the individual under study, and can vary by orders of magnitude as the test conditions (including subject conditions) are varied. Your view, if I understand it, is an extreme form of operationalism because you want to link everything we understand to be true about a mental state to a very narrow set of operations performed by the subject. Notions of perceptual states have logical connections to a lot more things than that, e.g., other sorts of behavior. You're trying to pretend that everyone perceives a given stimulus in an identical fashion, under all circumstances. No. Surely, at the very least, we can have evidence that Pain 1 is greater than Pain 2 in other ways, for example, by measuring the force of the impact on the toe, We can monitor the stimulus, certainly. We cannot extrapolate from that what Karls perception will be. Well, if you mean we can never have a justified belief about what level of pain Karl will experience based on the knowledge about the stimulus and Karl's physiological state, that's just false. We know a lot about what stimuli are correlated with what levels of pain. In a parallel way, we know a lot about how intensity levels are related to loudness. It can be a fact that the perceived loudness of one sound to a person is greater or less than the perceived loudness of another sound, and this will be true whether or not the person actually compares them. Sure, if we cut off his arm *we* know that will hurt more than breaking his toe. But for your argument to have any legs (pun intented) we have to pretend that Karl forgot about the broken toe and the severed arm. Not going to happen. In a situation like that, it is more likely that he will experience the levels of pain he does without thinking of any comparison, and they will be what they are, and it will be a fact that they are the same or different, or close or far apart, independent of whether he realizes that they are. noting whether Karl says "Ow!" etc. He says "Ow" both times. What did we learn? Nothing, try again. ... I am talking about discrimination of the kind where you have to say if A is the same as B. OK, I'm confused. You agree that saying the ability to identify one system as a "9" and another as a "2" (relative to any parameter of interest) demonstrates the ability to discriminate between them, but that's different than being able to tell if they are the same?????? There are two relevant kinds of tasks. One involves listening to sources A and B and judging if they are the same or different. The other involves rating (say) how much you like a given source. I am saying I do not see how these tasks are equivalent. There can be memory effects that play a role in one but not the other. OK, since you seem analogy driven, how can you say that you like an Outback steak more than a Big Mac if you can't tell them apart? You can say that if, say, you can tell them apart following one protocol but not another. There might be one kind of test where you can tell them apart, another where you can't. I do agree with you that both can aptly be called "discrimination," but I had been using that term to mean the first of the two kinds. Maybe "same/different judgment" would be a better term. You're trying to use semantics to create an illusion of difference, and it doesn't wash. No matter how you cut it, if you have a preference, you have judged "different", or you lack the capacity for logic. A subject may indeed react differently to two stimuli without judging that they are different. There is a difference between being illogical and failing to be logically omniscient. You may argue that if a person reacts differently to A and B then, if he fails to judge that they are different, he has failed to follow through on a logical inference he should make. But that is not quite the same as being illogical. The axioms of arithmetic have lots of logical implications we are not aware of, but our failure to be aware of all of those implications means we are not logically omniscient, not that we are illogical. Moreover, the outcome of a "rating" test need not (as far as I can see) correspond exactly to that of a "same/different judgment" test. If Karl gives higher ratings to A than B in the first sort of testing protocol, If he does it blind, and level matched, and can achieve statistically valid results, then he can indeed tell them apart. If it's not reproducible, then the test means nothing, and the whole thing is moot. does it follow that, in the second sort of test, if he listens first to A then B, he will be able to judge correctly whether they are the same? Yes, it does. *If* he meets the criteria detailed above. I don't see why. I'm aware. How is this different? Answer...it's not. All Karl has to do is repeat *EXACTLY* what he did above. He say's to himself, "Hmmmm, I like A better than B, logic dictates that they must be different". And he's already shown he can decide which he likes better. It is a matter of the most rudimetary logic to extrapolate the "I like A more than B" to A is different than B. Sure, replicate one kind of test within the other! Give Karl a pencil and paper, replicate the ratings test within the same/different protocol, and all will be well. But you have illustrated my point. The way the same/different test is set up, it's not likely that Karl will do this, nor is he encouraged to do this. Karl's attention is focused differently in the two tests; the demands are different. We are talking about two different psychological experiments, and the mechanisms a subject will employ in following their instructions are likely to be different, even if it would be possible for someone, bending over backwards, to satisfy one protocol by performing the other. Nobody in psychology thinks that experimental outcomes will be dictated by logical omniscience, or even an adherence to logic, on the part of the subject. Look at Kahneman and Tversky's demonstration of how people's utilities are often illogical. ...just don't snip the part about supposing a set of results, while stipulating a methodology that precludes any chance of achieving those results, and then pretending that the method has rigor. Sorry if you felt I should retain this in the quotations (so here it is) but if you take me to have "stipulated" a methodology that is consistent with some "results" I have "supposed," and then to have engaged in some sort of pretense, then possibly what you have represented is not quite my position. Mark |
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Keith Hughes wrote:
Mark DeBellis wrote: There is a third possibility in addition to thinking that A and B are identical and thinking that they are different, which is not to judge the matter either way. Can it not be the case that a person enjoys A more than he enjoys B while failing to judge them either the same or different? What if he simply does not consider the matter? This is the same as "the same". Two presentations are the same, or they are different. Concerning your notion of a presentation, I would be interested in your views about the following. 1. You say one presentation is either the same as or different from another. It would seem a plausible principle that presentations are different just in case the corresponding stimuli are discriminable. It would also seem plausible that sameness of presentation is transitive, i.e., if presentation x is the same as presentation y, and if y is the same as z, then x is the same as z. (This is a special case of the transitivity of identity.) However, there are cases where, when you compare stimulus A with stimulus B, you cannot tell them apart, and you cannot tell B from C, but you can tell A from C. In this case it would follow from the above principles that the presentation corresponding to A, call it pA, is the same as the presentation corresponding to B, or pB, and pB is the same as pC, but pA is not the same as pC. But then transitivity fails. If, for whatever reason, you do not distinguish between the two, then for your internal reality, they are the same. You do not have to make a conscious evaluation of "sameness", the absence of conscious "difference" is the same thing. 2. Suppose you listen to a melody. You perceive each note as, among other things, having a certain pitch. Suppose note i (say, the 5th note) of the melody is E and note j (the 17th note) is F. You are asked if notes i and j have the same pitch (say they are indicated by light flashes in the course of the melody). Not being a trained musician, you can't tell. From what you say, it appears to follow that, on this occasion, you perceive the notes as having the *same* pitch. They are the same "in your internal reality." This seems quite counterintuitive. And it would seem to follow from your principle that the average person hears many of the notes of a melody as being the same, even when they aren't, since there is an "absence of conscious 'difference'" with many arbitrary pairs of nonconsecutive notes. Moreover, say you can't tell if note i is the same as note k (the 18th note) of the melody, but you can tell that note j is not the same as note k (because they occur in succession). Then by your principle, the presentation of note i = the presentation of note j, and the presentation of note i = the presentation of note k, but the presentation of note j is distinct from the presentation of note k. Again a failure of transitivity. It is a well established notion in the psychology of music, as well as common coin, that listeners perceive pitch in the course of hearing a melody. If your principle about discrimination and sameness of presentation were true, however, there would be no need for ear training. Mark |
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 26 Jul 2005 00:39:25 GMT, "Mark DeBellis" wrote: wrote: Mark DeBellis wrote: Actually ... you were explaining to me how we know that when sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve are the same, but the explanation didn't get past sounds that are just over the audible threshold. That's not exactly "reasons given over and over and over again." Well, I'm not responsible for the fact that you don't know enough of the basic science here to understand what's been explained to you over and over again. We are, in all cases, talking about sounds that are "just over the audible threshold." It doesn't matter whether the context in which we hear that just noticeable difference (JND) is background noise or something louder and more complex. It's still a JND, and it's still "just over the audible threshold." So how do you get from the premise you cite, which is about very quiet sounds, to the conclusion that whenever sounds can't be discriminated from one another, the signals travelling in the auditory nerve must be the same? That's not a commutative statement. What was said was that, if there's no difference in the nerve impulse, it's *impossible* for there to be an audible difference. If all cats are black, that doesn't make all black animals cats. Bob's claim was "if you can't hear it in a listening test, we're on pretty safe ground in assuming that it can't excite the aural nerve, and therefore that your brain cannot react to it in any way."[1] In other words, if there is no audible difference, then there is no difference in the nerve impulse. That's the converse of what you said was said. Because he thinks logically? If it's a given that he can't discriminate the two stimuli, there is simply no interest in testing him, it would be a priori a waste of time. Logic does not tell us that what can be discriminated in one situation can always be discriminated in another. Statistics. Ah, so it has been studied and reported on? I would be interested in a reference. Mark [1] Mon, Jul 11 2005 9:51 pm, Message-ID: , Date: 12 Jul 2005 01:51:06 GMT |
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