[FRIAM] mental imagery
glen
gepropella at gmail.com
Mon Nov 10 11:04:03 EST 2025
It's kinda weird to suggest this "does not calculate trajectories or predict where the ball will land". Holding Ψ constant is a calculation and at least an "indirect" prediction, right? And the physiological correlate to the calculation is the "continuously adjusting their movement".
Just because our "mental image" (aka calculation) isn't the one some tran-scient Daemon [⛧] might use doesn't mean we don't use *any* "mental image" (aka calculation). It seems a bit xenophobic! >8^D https://furm.org/misc/against-mind-blindness-levin.pdf
⛤ Obviously, I'm trying to find a word indicating a bounded scope of "science" or knowledge or percpetion or whatever, a scope somehow greater than a human but less than omnicience. I feel so stupid today.
Originally, I was going to double down on the gobbledygook with this paper:
Zeno and Anti-Zeno Dynamics at the Core of Conscious Agency: On the Teleodynamics of Meaning
https://philpapers.org/rec/RUDZAA?ref=mail
which I failed to read this morning because my intuition kept yelling about pseudo-profundity. I am at risk of being gulled into believing whatever nonsense my gaze happens on ... not a typical Monday, that's for sure.
On 11/9/25 2:42 AM, Santafe wrote:
> Sorry; Linear Optical Trajectory. But same question.
>
>
>> On Nov 9, 2025, at 1:25, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com> wrote:
>>
>> attn: Nick and Eric C
>>
>> Glen writes:
>>
>> But we've been here before, right? What does it mean to "do math"? Is the outfielder "doing math" when she catches a fly ball? I mean, we know missile interceptors are "doing math" ... maybe. Is a Kalman filter executing in the on board computer a "mental image". Can one understand quantum mechanics without doing the math? Etc.
>>
>>
>> Mike McBeath, one of my cogsci professors, wrote this 1995 short Science ecological psych article on how fielders catch fly balls.
>> https://redfish.com/papers/McBeath-BaseballCatch.pdf <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpapers%2fMcBeath-BaseballCatch.pdf&c=E,1,Z1f81H9_SvCwA7rDW2PG6vjeQqvRKyF8ZywILNgH3086P6cQ3MJdNR7VQzALV5B5jU_kPc4wWNYTxSc0EAUGkef91_qcmeME_AsR1IdUMw9uJSZp0FE,&typo=1>
>>
>> In Gibsonian and Turvey ecological language: the fielder does not calculate trajectories or predict where the ball will land; instead, they visually couple their locomotion to optical information that specifies the event of interception. By continuously adjusting their movement to maintain a constant optical acceleration pattern (the Optical Acceleration Cancellation strategy), they exploit invariants in the optic flow—the affordance of catching emerges directly from perceiving how the optical variables change, not from internal computation or prediction.:
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Stephen Guerin
>> CEO, Founder
>> https://simtable.com <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fsimtable.com&c=E,1,2crdSwIfa87nIRtrhHXjWoUtJvjN3l7SY6VKjbFctcgBoQvIYmOcGUr6HiP7n-sKqyZ5m_65Sa1WVBsUvYB9Q6GFXADTFeoiqtJVHvx6GAj7sw,,&typo=1>
>> stephen.guerin at simtable.com <mailto:stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
>>
>> stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu <mailto:stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu>
>> Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab <https://hwpi.harvard.edu/eps-visualization-research-laboratory/home>
>>
>> mobile: (505)577-5828
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 7, 2025 at 10:43 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I haven't read the New Yorker article. But the category seems hopelessly fraught. Even the 2 "objective" measures I'm aware of (pupil response and binocular rivalry) are intertwined with the body. I'm reminded of "motor imagery", where imagining some physical action causes similar patterns to performing that action, and so-called mirror neuron[al activation].
>>
>> But we've been here before, right? What does it mean to "do math"? Is the outfielder "doing math" when she catches a fly ball? I mean, we know missile interceptors are "doing math" ... maybe. Is a Kalman filter executing in the on board computer a "mental image". Can one understand quantum mechanics without doing the math? Etc.
>>
>> But I'm attracted to the invocation of analysis. My prof, which I managed to retain during all 3 of Anal I, II, & III, was a fan of priming. He'd *draw* graduate level concepts on the chalkboard before class, then really quickly run through all the jargon as if we understood whatever he was yappin' about. Then he'd callously erase the art and get on with what we were "supposed" to be learning. Dude was an artist. Full stop.
>>
>>
>> On 11/6/25 3:24 PM, Santafe wrote:
>> > I see; thanks Nick,
>> >
>> > I am happy the expected categories fell apart. But there have been occasions when I went looking for categories something like these on my own too.
>> >
>> > In college (which I hit about like a bird flying into a window), as sophomores we were taught algebra by Mike Aschbacher, one of the great algebraists of the just-past generation. A man who never brought notes, wrote every proof spontaneously, and could write on a chalkboard at the same speed as he talked.
>> >
>> > A friend and I — both of us just getting pounded into the ground — decided that there were geometric thinkers, who exapted visual thinking, and algebraic thinkers, who exapted syntactic thinking. Aschbacher being the most syntactically superhuman being we had ever encountered. And we decided we were both “algebraically impaired”.
>> >
>> > In contrast, analysis was straightforward, and always seemed to me to have a somewhat visual angle to it, and algebraic topology and differential geometry were even better. Although I never tried anything hard in those fields, like proving things about more than 3 dimensions. So not sure how much visual/geometric skill I have beyond the baseline for primates.
>> >
>> > I have continued to wonder where one should go to characterize “elementary” or “primitive” modalities of cognition, and how to take them to assemble into the kinds of synthetic things we call “skills”. Marc Hauser once gave some very compelling talks along these lines for mathematical reasoning. But since he was found fabricating data some years later, I don’t know how much of the earlier stuff I should continue to find compelling. It might not have been tainted at all; but I am not in the field.
>> >
>> > It’s a nice topic.
>> >
>> > Eric
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Nov 6, 2025, at 15:59, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I’m sorry for the misprint. The correct term is aphantasia.
>> >>
>> >> It took 15 minutes with a handful of people at thuam for the categories to break down horribly. My prediction was based on no great insite. I had divided the world up into picture people and word people assume that our word. I claimed no wisdom here, only prejudices I seem to be a.-side myself
>> >> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>> >>
>> >> On Nov 6, 2025, at 1:02 PM, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm <mailto:profwest at fastmail.fm>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Yes, please, what Eric asked.
>> >>
>> >> I would expect most people on this list to tend towards the "hyper," not the "apha."
>> >>
>> >> davew
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, Nov 6, 2025, at 10:38 AM, Santafe wrote:
>> >>> That’s interesting, Nick (on limited time here, but just for a while)
>> >>>
>> >>>> On Nov 6, 2025, at 11:19, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Given the work that many of you do, many of you are candidates for "aphatasia"
>> >>>
>> >>> Can you say more about why you expect a correlation? This is not an
>> >>> association that would ever have occurred to me.
>> >>>
>> >>> Eric
>> --
>> ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
>> ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
>>
--
¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
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