From: Myrddin Emrys
To: Steven Lehar
date Dec 5, 2006
8:56 PM
subject Epistemology of Observation
I read through your cartoons explaining your view, and while
I have no particular disagreement with your overall interpretation, I strongly
disbelieve the physicality of your argument.
Apologies if my arguments duplicate some of those you linked... I deliberately
did not read them, so that I wouldn't be infected by their ideas. :-) I'll read
them after I send this.
Specifically, I disagree that any coherent, physical, volumetric physical spot
within my mind hosts a virtual representation of the world around me. I do
agree that all of my perceptions are really my perceiving the workings of my
senses... I do agree that it is indirect, as you argue. But I believe that the
symbols within my mind are so abstract that it's impossible to point to any one
location in my mind and say 'there's the representation of a house!'. There are
layers upon layers of abstraction within the mind, that go so deep it's
impossible to even understand it. Even a computer genius of the highest caliber
would have an impossible time understanding the purpose of a computer program
by examining the physical transistors switching off and on inside a processor,
assuming they had a way to observe that directly at all. And processors were
designed to be logical and orderly... the mind is an evolved instrument, with
no requirement to be transparent to our understanding, so I have no belief that
there will be a coherent, recognizable representation of reality that we can
see within it by examining the low level details of the brain.
Second, there is a strong argument that the more perfect a representation
becomes of the world, the more perfectly it simulates reality, the less
important the distinction between the representation and reality becomes. For
example, look out a window. The photons from the world beyond pass through that
window and reach you. When you see a flower, you can reasonably state that you
are looking at a flower. Now replace that window with a photosensitive surface
that absorbs photons and re-emits them identically on the other side (ie, an
invisibility suit). You are no longer seeing the photons that bounced off the
flower; instead, you are viewing the emitted copy of those photons,
deliberately designed to simulate the light from the flower in as fine a detail
as you are able to observe. The 'window' is no longer transparent, but it
appears to be as far as you can tell. Are you looking at a flower, or are you
looking at a representation of the flower? Does it matter?
With the internal representation of the universe, since we cannot touch it or
taste it or measure it (or even FIND it, in my opinion, since I disagree that
it is at a definable point within our brain), it becomes difficult to separate
the representation from reality. Our observational limits (like our inability
to see infrared) are invisible to us because we have little experience beyond
them. This is the source of many problems in communication... describing a
viewpoint to someone, when that person has no frame of reference to understand
the alien viewpoint. The impossibility of describing light to the blind, sound
to the deaf, or emotion to the Vulcan.
But it is very easy to communicate with another normal person (normal being
'the same perceptive limitations as ourselves') about the world we're in,
because they share our perception of the universe. If my friend stands where I
stood a moment before, he will see something so indistinguishable from what I
saw that we can talk about it for hours and not find a single discrepancy
between them. There are so many senses, so much data that we perceive about the
world, and so much of it is identical between two people that rarely does a
conflict arise. Those subjective conflicts ("Brr, I'm cold."
"What, but it's nice and warm in here!") are so limited in scope that
we can, for all intents and purposes, agree that we are perceiving the same
world. Our perceptive world matches the real world, and we know this because we
can communicate our perceptions to others and find that they match; they
corroborate our reality.
The question becomes, 'What value is there in acknowledging the indirectness of
our senses when these indirect senses so closely model reality?'
"What value is there in acknowledging that this window is really an
invisible plate of metal, since it looks just like a pane of glass"
What insights has this view of reality led you to?
From: Steven Lehar
To: Myrddin Emrys
date Dec 6, 2006
10:19 AM
subject Re: Epistemology of Observation
Hi Myrddin,
Thank you for your interesting email. Your key point is
summarized in your opening statement:
>>
I
disagree that any coherent, physical, volumetric physical spot within my mind
hosts a virtual representation of the world around me. I do agree that all of
my perceptions are really my perceiving the workings of my senses... I do agree
that it is indirect, as you argue. But I believe that the symbols within my
mind are so abstract that it's impossible to point to any one location in my
mind and say 'there's the representation of a house!'. ... Even a computer
genius of the highest caliber would have an impossible time understanding the
purpose of a computer program by examining the physical transistors switching
off and on inside a processor
<<
Yes the computer genius would have trouble locating the representation of a
house in the computer. Nevertheless, the house is in there, whether he can find
it or not. Furthermore, if it is an *image* of a house we are talking about
(and I hope you agree that our *experience* of the world appears in the form of
a spatial "image") then every pixels worth of that image must be
explicitly present in the computer at some location. And that information must
be retrievable by the computer, for example when you ask it to print the image,
in which case that representation must be accessed and unpacked or decoded in
order to restore each pixel value literally in its proper location in the
image.
Yes
a computer often uses abstract symbolic codes that bear little resemblance
to the image itself. For example image compression schemes, like those used in
.gif and .jpg images, store image information in a very non-pictorial form. But the
computer also has access to the appropriate image *decompression*
algorithms required to unpack that compressed code back into a spatial image
when required.
The
question is: Does the brain's abstract coding need to be unpacked or
decompressed into an explicit spatial representatation when I am having a visuospatial
experience? Or is it sufficient for that experience to remain in abstract
symbolic form? My argument is that when I have a spatial experience of a
square, for example, my immediate
(pre-attentive, pre-cognitive) experience of that square contains a separate
and distinct experience of color throughout the surface of that square, and all
of those points are experienced together simultaneously as a spatial continuum
of a certain location, shape, and spatial extent. The *information content* of
immediate experience is identical to the information content of a model of a
square like a painted cardboard model in a museum diorama. That is
*not* the same as the information content of a symbolic code like square(Color: white, Size: 100, Location: (xLoc,
yLoc)). That is NOT the information I am experiencing when I
view a white square. That symbolic information would have to be reified with a
decompression algorithm something like:
// Paint that square!
for(y=0; y<Size; y++){
for(x=0; x<Size; x++){
MyExperience[x+xLoc, y+yLoc] =
white;
}
}
to paint out a square as it appears in my experience. This
means that there must be an "image buffer" of some sort somewhere in
my brain where this scene is explicitly painted out or registered, otherwise
there would be parts of my experience (specific points in that
square) which are experienced, without ever being represented in my brain.
So there are two issues that must be disconfounded. First: Is the
representation an *explicit* representation, in the sense that every pixel (or
voxel) value is explicitly stored somewhere in the brain? I believe the
*information content* of immediate experience argues to the affirmative. If so,
then Second:
Is that explicit representation necessarily spatially organized in the
brain? In other words, is the representation not only *explicit*, but
also *explicitly spatial*?
The second issue is more thorny.
We cannot tell from the structure of visual experience
whether it is encoded in an explicitly spatial representation. However it is
not only the structure, but also the *function* of experience that appears to
involve spatial field-like operations, or spatial algorithms. For example when
I dream or hallucinate a rotating cube, there is a cube-like structure in my
experience that undergoes coherent spatial transformations such as translation,
rotation, and spatial scaling by perspective. If these are not computed in an
explicitly spatial representation, then they must at least be computed in a
representation that is *functionally equivalent* to an explicitly spatial
representation, so that the experienced cube jumps seamlessly from pixel to pixel
*as if* they were spatially contiguous, even if they are not.
This argument is made more explicitly in this link:
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/
And some of the other objections you raise are addressed in
this link:
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/
Your analogy of the "invisibility window" is
interesting and apt. Yes it seem hard for us to distinguish the percept
from the reality if the representation is sufficiently vivid. But in fact there
*is* a simple way to distinguish the percept from reality, and that is to
simply close your eyes!
The part that continues to exist unchanged is the objective external world,
whereas the part that vanishes without a trace is the part that is subjective
experience. Like when you pull the plug on your "invisibility
window" and the screen goes black, while the world beyond the screen
continues to exist unchanged.
Furthermore, notice how your "invisibility window"
is itself spatially organized in an image-like array, an explicitly spatial organization, otherwise
it would be a very poor picture of the world it represents.
You might want to check out this PowerPoint presentation of
the above arguments in one animated audio-visual presentation from my talk at
the Tucson 2006 consciousness conference:
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/
Steve
From: Myrddin Emrys
To: Steven Lehar
date Dec 6, 2006
4:51 PM
subject Re: Epistemology of Observation
You discuss your mental manipulation of an object... such as
a cube. And you describe your mental processes when thinking about it... how
you rotate and transform it mentally, a very exacting mental manipulation that
clearly must use voxels.
I submit that your mental picture is an order of magnitude more precise and
exacting than mine... in fact, I would suspect your mental imagery is vastly more
detailed than most people (except those who routinely imagine three dimensional
constructs in their heads... I presume in the field of sculpting and
engineering this skill is relatively common). You say that you spent months of
introspection trying to figure out how your mental model functions... I propose
that due to these months of mental exercise, your mental machinery is no longer
typical.
I am of the opinion that different people have vastly different ways of
perceiving the world. I perceive it very abstractly... even in my dreams,
spaces have little detail unless I focus on it. People have amorphous faces,
perspective is malleable. Only in locations where I have a strong visual
reference (such as the view from my porch) is there significant visual detail
in my dreams.
Distance is similarly ill defined in my dreams... in fact, it is common to hear
descriptions of dreams have extremely ill defined spatial relationships. People
suddenly being beside you, or being unable to ever reach an objective despite
walking forever. I don't think these are anomalies... I believe this is due to
the ill-defined way in which we perceive distances. In most of my interaction
with the world, objects are clumped into five categories of distance relative
to my focus: far behind, behind, next to, in front of, and very near. These
definitions are fuzzy, but unless I'm looking at a room and attempting to
measure it in my mind, there is no precise spatial entity in my mind. A room
could be a sphere for all I notice, with me standing on the bottom, all points
equidistant. Only if I look at and focus on a corner does that corner become
'farther away' than the walls, or 'behind' the chair.
You discuss how the precision of detail follows our attention, but my own
observation of my world does not match your description. For example, I'll
discuss the act of sitting down.
I walk into work and look at my cubical. In it I see my chair. I can close my
eyes, take a step, grab the back of the chair, swivel it, and sit down... all
from memory. I know it is memory, and not a voxel model built by observation
because changing the chair, or moving me to an unfamiliar room, makes this
process far more difficult. Rather than being able to assuredly reach for where
I know the chair to be (because muscle memory remembers how high I need to
reach, how hard to push the swivel chair, how far down my butt goes before
reaching the seat), I am tentative, groping for where I think the chair is,
sitting down carefully, having to reassure myself by touch at every step that I
am on the correct path.
But that's a discussion of the mental model I create of the world without my
eyes open. WITH my eyes open, I have a different view of the world... but I
still don't believe in mental voxels.
I think that our visual perception is purely two dimensional, and only our
mental focus (attention, stream of consciousness, active symbols) changes that
two dimensional video stream into a volumetric mental model. When not in my
mental focus, the illusion of a triangle is not present (referring to the three
circles/triangle illusion you use frequently), it is merely three black blobs.
Even if I focus on something IN the triangle... for example, a picture of a
bicycle... the triangle is not present unless I focus on the cutouts on the
circle. That triangle is a creation of my attention.
I believe only the vaguest of spatial indicators exists without conscious
thought... reflexive learned behaviors, like catching a ball that someone
throws at me. I don't know where the ball is throughout its flight... instead,
my mind reflexively determines approximately where it will be when it arrives
due to neural network style training over hundreds if not thousands of objects
I have caught previously.
In other words, for the vast quantity of sensory data we receive, I believe it
is acted upon by our automatic and reflexive neural pathways which do not
measure 'distance' or 'size', but instead measure 'from my past experience of
sensory input that matches this, what motor behavior will result in the desired
outcome'. Catching a ball, walking, sitting down...
these are all actions we perform automatically, without thinking. I believe
that these activities do not form a voxel model in our minds because our minds
don't really consider the three dimensional location of the relevant objects
while performing these tasks automatically.
However, if our thread of consciousness becomes involved, of course we notice.
We judge where things are and where they've been retroactively from the moment
our mental thread touches the object. It may be noticed strongly enough that we
remember it, and then it is placed within a model of our world (at least, if
that's what we are paying attention to). If I'm alphabetizing a list of books,
I may not even notice anything about where a book is tossed (right side up,
upside down, back up, face up), though I will assuredly notice which pile I
tossed it into.
I only know things if my consciousness has touched on it. This is also born out
in experiments, such as the 'gorilla walking through basketball game'
experiment. The subjects did not see the person in the gorilla suit. It is such
an extremely noteworthy item, of such obvious uniqueness and memorability, that
it is inconceivable that they saw and dismissed the gorilla. Instead, they saw
a black obstruction; an annoyance, something to try to look around while
watching the basketball game. Assuredly the pixels of information were received
by their eye... and certainly it was processed by the brain, but only by the reflexive
portion, the neural networks... not by their thread of consciousness. Because
it was not NOTICED, all the details that would be extracted from it beyond it's
shape and location (reflexive properties) are not analyzed... the face is not
identified as inhuman, the obstruction might not even be noticed as animate.
Had the gorilla done something to attract the reflexive portion of the persons
mind, such as throw something at the observer or make a threatening noise, it's
much more likely it would be noticed.
Though I have not performed the experiment, I suspect that after the gorilla is
noticed and identified for what it is the observer can trace back a few seconds
to identify the 'black blob' that walked into their view as the gorilla,
retroactively, and thus perhaps be able to give such information as when the
gorilla arrived in their view.
So I believe that different people have significantly different mental
processes. I am a relatively abstract thinker... my world runs on automatic
more than other people, and I am not aware at all of things that my symbolic
mind does not notice. 'Absent minded professor' is applicable. Other people
have more awareness of their surroundings. Whether they focus more of their
time on examining their senses, whether they can have multiple symbolic threads
operating simultaneously, or whether they just think differently than
I don't doubt that we CAN observe the world and create a volumetric
representation in our minds, to a certain extent. I doubt that we DO, as a
normal matter of course. Perhaps you do, having practiced it for months trying
to figure out how you perceive the world... but I don't think that is the
normal course of events for most people.
From: Steven Lehar
To: Myrddin Emrys
date Dec 7, 2006
6:20 AM
subject Re: Epistemology of Observation
>>
I think
that our visual perception is purely two dimensional, and only our mental focus
(attention, stream of consciousness, active symbols) changes that two
dimensional video stream into a volumetric mental model.
<<
Wow!!! You really believe this? You see the desk in front of
you, your hands on the keyboard, your body on the chair below you, all as
a 2-D projection?
And I suppose when you view a "kinetic depth
effect" stimulus, all you see is a bunch of dots moving on the flat
screen?
http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac
And all you see in this stimulus is a bunch of flat ellipses
in rotation?
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot
And in this stimulus all you see is a bunch of shaded patches on a flat screen?
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~psyc351/Images/DepthFromShading.jpg
I'm sorry, but I am forced to conclude that your
observations of your experience are fatally tainted by your theoretical
preconceptions. Three-dimensional spatial perception is so basic and primary,
to deny it is like denying that the world itself is three dimensional!
How would you even *know* that the world had three
dimensions if your brain did not automatically and instinctively see the world
as such? Why would you not believe that the world itself was 2-D?
I'm sorry, but if you tell me that your visual experience of
the world is of a flat two-dimensional projection, then we simply have no
common basis from which to debate. You and I inhabit profoundly different
universes!
Steve
From: Myrddin Emrys
To: Steven Lehar
date Dec 7, 2006
12:25 PM
subject Re: Epistemology of Observation
>>
I think that our visual perception is
purely two dimensional, and only our mental focus (attention, stream of
consciousness, active symbols) changes that two dimensional video stream into a
volumetric mental model.
<<
Wow!!! You really believe this? You see the desk in front of you,
your hands on the keyboard, your body on the chair below you, all as a 2-D
projection?
>>
And I suppose when you view a
"kinetic depth effect" stimulus, all you see is a bunch of dots
moving on the flat screen?
http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac
<<
You mistake me... I said that only when I focus on an object, look at it
directly, does it obtain a three dimensional aspect. In other words, when I
don't pay any attention to those dots, and move them from my focal point to
just off, and pay attention to the words on that page... they have no
dimensionality. They are a wash of moving dots in the near periphery of my
vision, and have no inherent dimensionality.
Only when I LOOK at them, or focus my attention on them (even if they are not
in the focal point of my eye) does the wash of pixels obtain a three
dimensional aspect.
>>
And all you see in this stimulus is a
bunch of flat ellipses in rotation?
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot
And in this stimulus all you see is a
bunch of shaded patches on a flat screen?
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~psyc351/Images/DepthFromShading.jpg
<<
Of course I see these visual illusions, and experience the false sense of depth
they engender. But only when I focus on them. Try this... with the middle
illusion you chose, look off to the side, do NOT focus your attention on the
moving circles (that means not just a lack of eye focus, but a lack of mental
attention) and tell me if there is any sense of dimensionality to the moving
blob. For me, there is none at all.
From
my experience of the world, dimensionality is a result of attention. Not
necessarily of focusing my eye on something, but merely of my attention, the movement
of my thread of consciousness to examine sensory input. Now, that thread of
thought flits around my visual input constantly... I see movement out of the
corner of my eye, and I think about it briefly, identify it as the head of a
coworker walking past my row of cubes, and the dimensionality of the input is
identified. This flit of thought ricochets around constantly, as fast as... er,
thought. But input to which I give no thought is mere input, flat shapes, until
it is identified at least semi-consciously.
I recommend this test for you. Take many flashcards, and on each flashcard put
a strong visual illusion... the more vivid the better. Then, force yourself to
pay attention to a video... perhaps, take a video filled with a crowd and try
to count how many red shirts/coats you see. Have a third party move the
flashcards into your periphery and WITHOUT removing your thread of thought from
the video, does any visual illusion occur at all?
It's a difficult test. My thread of consciousness flits faster than I can
control it usually. I can only identify one thing at a time, but that 'one at a
time' is in excess of 5 things a second. Preventing it from identifying input
is rather difficult.
And I completely agree that my experience of the world is different from yours.
I think that you have yet to admit that yours is different from MANY people,
and perhaps your insight into cognition is not applicable to everyone. We do
not all think alike, at least, not with our conscious minds. Our reflexive
thought is mostly instinctual, so in that we are probably all nearly identical.
Myrddin
From: Steven Lehar
To: Myrddin Emrys
date Dec 8, 2006
2:15 PM
subject Re: Epistemology
of Observation
>>
For me, the moving dots become nothing
but a moving blur when I'm forcing my attention to ignore them.
<<
Yes,
me too! And for me, the moving dots disappear altogether when I close my eyes.
I don't care how vision works when you *don't* pay attention to it. That is as
interesting as how a computer works when the power is shut off! What is
interesting is how spatial vision works when you DO attend to it, with eyes
wide open, and you see a volumetric spatial experience for all the world like a
3-D model.
If
you *don't* see a volumetric spatial experience from the moving dots in
the kinetic depth effect stimulus, then I have nothing more to say to you.
My theory only addresses how vision works in people who DO see a spatial world in their visual
experience.
Steve
From: Myrddin Emrys
To: Steven
Lehar
date Dec 9, 2006
9:36 AM
subject Re: Epistemology of Observation
I guess my point is that I don't 'see' a volumetric
whole. My mind processes several visual stimuli a second (unless I'm
daydreaming of course) which are held in memory, per my own introspection, in a
very similar manner to one of the theories you dismissed in your powerpoint
presentation. You discuss an end table in a corner, and how we do not perceive
it as some kind of semantic network but as a volumetric whole.
I DO perceive it as a symbolic web... overlaid on a two dimensional video
stream (my eyes). The persistent dimensionality of the world is an illusion
that my mind creates, in the same manner that my mind helps me not notice my
optic blind spot. Dimensionality is gained via attention, conscious thought
parsing my optic input. This dimensionality is only there as long as I pay
attention to or remember it... my mind does not 'retain' dimensionality in any
kind of volumetric way. The volume I perceive is almost purely logical... ie,
'that is in front of that, I know that balls are round' rather than voxel (a
mental model of the object(s) held within my awareness in its entirety), and
though I maintain a visual reference to items that I don't pay attention to,
their dimensionality is lost.
In other words, in my experience my vision is processed in a massively
parallel, streaming, reflexive stream... but the dimensionality of symbolic
content of my world is created by the linear, single tasking process of my
consciousness.
I wanted to email because your theory does not explain how I perceive the
world... its descriptions are not accurate in that respect. Much of what you
describe makes perfect sense, but the mental voxel model is completely alien to
my way of perceiving the world. I cannot vouch for anyone else... perhaps other
people do use mental voxels. I'm certain I do not. My world is not a variable
scale bubble, it's a video (and audio, and tactile, etc) stream with symbolic
content overlaid. My vision is processed in parallel... three dimensional edges
have a near 'luminance' to them that attracts the attention (as my vision uses
parallax and stereoscopic cues to identify edges), but they are still two
dimensional until my conscious mind notes them and places them within the
world. Dimensionality is symbolc, not volumetric, for me.
>>
Yes, me too! And for me, the moving dots
disappear altogether when I close my eyes. I don't care how vision works when
you *don't* pay attention to it. That is as interesting as how a computer works
when the power is shut off! What is interesting is how spatial vision works
when you DO attend to it, with eyes wide open, and you see a volumetric spatial
experience for all the world like a 3-D model.
<<
That doesn't make sense. On one hand you describe your perceptions of the world
as a kind of volumetric mental model processed from our senses. On the other
hand, my vision is processed primarily in a two dimensional way with a symbolic
dimensionality. This seems to be to be a relatively clear data point outside
your theory... or at least a type of visual processing you don't discuss. If
anything that does not fit within your theory is uninteresting to you, then
doesn't that make you out to be a kook like others have labeled you?
>>
If you *don't* see a volumetric spatial
experience from the moving dots in the kinetic depth effect stimulus, then
I have nothing more to say to you. My theory only addresses how vision works in
people who DO see a spatial
world in their visual experience.
<<
Except that you claim your model of vision describes how humans process vision.
So far, all you have possibly proven is that it is how you process vision. Data
to the contrary should be valuable, so you can refine your ideas.
In fact, I've never read anything that gives a serious discussion to the
possibility that different people have vastly different ways of cognating about
the world. I think there is a wider variety of 'thought' than most AI
researchers believe.
Myrddin
From: Steven Lehar
To: Myrddin Emrys
date Dec 9, 2006
12:40 PM
subject Re: Epistemology of Observation
Phenomenolgy
is often criticized as being too subjective to be scientific, and this
disagreement of ours, about how we experience vision, would appear to support
that criticism. But scientific phenomenology is always contingent on the reader
confirming the phenomenology of the author. If you don't see the world as a
volumetric spatial structure, then go ahead and reject my conclusions that
follow from that initial observation. In a debate between opponents like you
and I, let the reader make their own judgment whether they see the world
as a volumetric spatial structure, or as a series of brief and fleeting
two-dimensional impressions.
This is not at all a "clear data point outside your
theory" it is a difference in the initial observation on
which any theory can be based. And it is bare-faced nonsense to suggest that
*my* visual system operates by such different principles than the average
person's that I see the world in more dimensions than they do! If I were the
only one to see things in 3-D, then why is there so much interest in those
Gestalt illusions where a vivid 3-D percept pops out mysteriously from what is
clearly a 2-D stimulus? If *I* were the only one to see these things, how do
you explain the popularity of these illusions in the literature and across the
internet, and in theoretical papers about vision? They are popular because it
is nothing short of *magical* how a vivid 3-D experience pops out of a 2-D
stimulus, and it is that magical emergence, and how it is computed in the
brain, that I wish to investigate.
You, on the other hand, seem to be dedicated to denying the very existence
of the single most prominent and significant aspect of visual experience, which
is that it is spatially structured. Well, even if you were right, and visual
experience really is "a symbolic
web... overlaid on a two dimensional video stream", then 1: How come that symbolic web overlaid on a
2-D image appears in experience as a vivid volumetric structure that is so
striking in its volumetric realism that it is replicated in books and papers
and web sites across the internet? How does the experience, which is supposedly
experienced as a symbolic web, *seem* (at the same time?) to be a vivid spatial
structure? And 2: Even if you are right, and the experience *is*
actually a symbolic web overlaid on a 2-D image, then what I am interested in
modeling in the brain is how that symbolic-2D experience is made to *SEEM* like
a vivid 3-D structure (even though it isn't one !?!). It is the magical process
of that SEEMing function that I wish to explain.
I don't deny that visual experience *can* be analyzed into components. I
too can separate out the 2-D component of my 3-D experience, and I can
analyze my experience into edges and colors and shapes and motions, as
individual impressions. In fact under meditation, or under the influence of
psychedelic substances, I have even seen the visual world fragment into a
chaotic jumble of disconnected pieces, like the shards of a broken mirror.
There is a condition known as visual agnosia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
It is
*easy* to explain fragmented vision, given the fragmented nature of the visual
cortex, and it is *easy* to explain 2-D vision given the 2-D nature of the
retina and the visual cortex. The real mystery of vision is how, given that 2-D
fragmented architecture, we get to have a vivid integrated 3-D experience. THAT
is the great challenge of understanding vision, and we can either face up to
the problem, or we can give up, and simply deny that there is a 3-D experience
that requires explanation.
If vision
were as you propose, a series of brief visual impressions, then we would all
suffer from visual agnosia, and like agnosics, we would stumble around
half-blind.
Visual
agnosia is the absence, or failure, of the visual function whose existence you
so confidently deny.
It is not your vision, but your theory of vision that suffers
from visual agnosia!
Steve
