> There is nothing magic about perception to distinguish it meaningfully from symbolic representation; in point of fact, that which you experience is in and of itself a symbolic representation of the world around you.
You're right that there's nothing magic about it at all. The mind operates on symbolic representations, but whether those are symbolic representations of external sensory input or symbolic representations of purely endogenous stochastic processes makes for a night-and-day difference.
Perception is a map, but it's a map of real territory, which is what makes it useful. Trying to navigate reality with a map that doesn't represent real territory is not just not useless, it's dangerous.
You're right that there's nothing magic about it at all. The mind operates on symbolic representations, but whether those are symbolic representations of external sensory input or symbolic representations of purely endogenous stochastic processes makes for a night-and-day difference.
Perception is a map, but it's a map of real territory, which is what makes it useful. Trying to navigate reality with a map that doesn't represent real territory is not just not useless, it's dangerous.