Due to overspecialisation of scientists, little ground-breaking work has been done in orde to enhance our fundamental understanding of nature/reality and how we, as conscious entities, are a part of this. At least, that is my opinion.

It was in the mid-twenties of previous century that people like von Bertalanffy already shared this vision. His General system theory was meant to resolve this issue and envisioned a unification of all the science branches based on the concept of a "system". (official site: http://www.isss.org/)
His concepts have been refined and are now widely applied in lots of engeneering branches, yet, it hasn't made that big change it was supposed to cause (this could be material for another topic).

Around the same time, the view of cybernetics was developed by Wiener et al. (see http://www.cybsoc.org/ for example). The study of cybernetics can be seen as a part of general system theory, because it concerns systems with feedback - and although many systems work like that, not all of them do.

In the '80's, several researchers developed the concept of Complex adaptive systems (http://www.casresearch.com/). Shortly said, this is more about simulating complex systems and their behaviour with computers and is philosophically speaking less developed.

It is not my intention to go in detail explaining these 3 holistic paradigma's, but to look for other interested people in this field. It is my conviction that only when there is enough discussion and feedback amongst scientists/students/etc. that we will have a chance of solving the great riddles of the universe and life. It could mean a Global brain (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAINREF.html ) but it doesn't necesarrily have to be so far reaching. A centralised data-based, interactive website, using universities as backbone, could already change the world. That is because new ideas are EMERGENT properties caused by interaction between different elements that make up a system/super-system/etc. The more interaction we get, the more chance we have for this to occure on a great scale.

It is my opinion that if we wish to model reality 'out there', we need to have understanding of our own Self as accurate as possible. Otherwise, all else is meaningless. I'll give you an example: My branch is archaeology. Most research in this field can be summarised as being focussed on material remains. Advanced methods (and expensive they are!) are used to gain ANY information from these remains - from where they came (for example a certain clay from a certain region), how old they probably are, from which group of people (based on form analysis) etc. It is their assumption that by doing so, they will figure out something about the lives of people now gone. Firstly, most of the focuss is on the material remains and no not on the human beings that made them. Second, I believe this assumption is a great mistake because even IF the material remains would be complete and even IF they would accurately know all the "where's", "what's" and "when's" about them, they still wouldn't understand these human beings. Why not? Because today, as it is, we still don't understand them either. First we must get to the core of this and then we may fill in all the rest, like using an equation to solve a riddle. I think an archaeologist should not restrict himself to "arcaheology" - this human made artificial border is partly meaningless. An archaeologist should have good knowledge of psychology, neurology, etc. in orde to take part in the debate about human nature. Multidisciplinary research shouldn't be a bunch of specialists working together without knowing of each other what it is that they actually do. Multidisciplinary research should start from multidisciplinary education and discussion.

At the following link you will be able to read a paper written by Billy T, which I have scanned and put in .pdf format so everyone can access it

Reality, Perception and simulation: A plausible theory
http://users.pandora.be/guerilla_tactics/Reality,%20perception%20and%20simulation.pdf

(full reference: W. R. Powell (1994) Reality, Perception and simulation: A plausible theory, Technical Digest 15, 154-163)

I have also added is other piece of work: Genuine Free Will

http://users.pandora.be/guerilla_tactics/Genuine%20Free%20will.pdf

You may want to save these files as they may disappear within weeks.

If anyone knows any articles on such subjects, you are most welcome to post the references so I can look them up. It is these kinds of models that may guide us towards a better understanding of human behavior.

another helpful link:

http://optometry.berkeley.edu/class/opt10/Opt10-04_Brain_DeValois.pdf

...I don't know how long I'll keep this file up ... it could be gone when I need the webspace (the file is too large too attach here and I like to keep it together) ...
There is also another article entitled 'Free will and out-of-africa' (if i'm not mistaken) which took the conclusions of the previous paper into different subjects (such as why the neanderthaler got extinct). I seem to have lost it, maybe Billy T can put it back online here. ...Thanks for scanning the APL/JHU paper. I have copy in my local computers storage, if it is dropped form your site and someone wants to see it later.
I vaguely remember posting your other reference to my papers, but the forum Biology & Genetics thread "about determinism" has the essence of both my free will argument and my suggested explanation of the Out of Africa event in it. See my post of 6 Oct 05 there for this part of the longer APL/JHU paper.

Probably the most important part of the APL/JHU paper is the justification for my statement:
"I propose that when a set of boundary detectors can form a closed contour and synchronize their firing patterns by mutual reinforcement, then the area inside that contour will be taken as part of the surface of some unique object."

Few think about how much of a problem it is to separate the continuous visual field into separate objects, which we can then (later) try to identify, despite their being under-determined as DeValois discusses in your other post. (This presumably man and wife team's book Spacial Vision is very good and my reference 2.) I offer one neural mechanism that can achieve this and give experimental results that support it in the APL/JHU paper on page 158.

Just yesterday, while visiting a friend in the 12 floor of a hospital, I discovered a strong visual illusion that I have never seen discussed (and I know of many).

Out of the 12th floor window, the view down a straight street, radial leaving the hospital, that is actually sloping down hill from the hospital elevation, seems to be very sharply rising in elevation as one looks at the more distant parts of it. (My wife first comment that she did not realize it was so steep, and I knew it was actually actually slightly down hill from the hospital.)

The reason for this is rather straight forward, I am almost sure. It is related to the undetermined nature of the visual image that De Valois discusses, but ignoring that, it is due to the fact that we are not normally on the 12th floor and automatically assume in our visual processing that if we see more street (instead of sky) when we raise the angle of our gaze, then it is a rising street that we are looking at (from ground level)

We can do noting to overcome this automatic process. I understood immediately what was happening, and why, but the perception that the streen was rising up a hill was impossible for me to distory with mear conscious knowledge.

Billy T, what is the conventional explanation for the fact that our visual experience is uniformly rich in details over a wide area when we know that only a small part of the eye - the fovea - has a high resolution?

Can we achieve understanding of our own Self through indirect observations ?

In Billy T's theory, the Self is not the brain. It is not physical, just like information is not physical, yet it is still created by the brain. This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter. (correct me if I say anything wrong)

This virtual world is an accurate reflection of the outside world, as it helped us survive. The brain is basically a tool which analyses input signals. It is not perfect though! It is just good enough for you to do basic things with your body - and there comes my question/point - it was not meant for analysing its own or other's structure

an analogy: you have a ruler measuring 30 cm. This is your tool with which you will be analysing all other existing rulers. You establish that they all measure 30 cm. However you still don't understand anything about rulers.

Aren't we caught up in a circular process? Imagine an alien with a different nature of mind. Instead of thoughts he has "Tb's". He can perfectly analyse our thoughts with his Tb's, yet, he cannot communicate the meaning of it to us.

I think we can rephrase the same statement within systems theory: a system with lesser complexity cannot understand/examine a more complex one (or the other way around: only something more complex than the brain can understand the brain)

It is a pitty that nobody here has interest in this.

Few think about how much of a problem it is to separate the continuous visual field into separate objects, which we can then (later) try to identify, despite their being under-determined as DeValois discusses in your other post. (This presumably man and wife team's book Spacial Vision is very good and my reference 2.) I offer one neural mechanism that can achieve this and give experimental results that support it in the APL/JHU paper on page 158.

Could you give me your n°1 one reference as to what I should certainly read?

---------
billy t, we had in the past some discussions on the nature of this "Self" and how I had problems with this "informational" Self and its perception (how does this Self "see"? etc.)
These last weeks I was focussing a lot on my visionary experience and I really had the feeling somehow that this Self is the vision. The funny word play it started with was: I is the Eye. I don't think the explanation of consciousness is far away, once the entire visionary experience is understood. The line between them seems to be very thin to me. That's why for example your theory of vision needs to be worked out in more detail: the nature of that virtual world entangling this Self is still much unsaid about. I was working on a few representations using a bit of cybernetics concepts of input, output and feedback. It's a start of something ...

c'est moi: You state above: "The Self is not the brain. It is not physical, just like information is not physical, yet it is still created by the brain. This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter....This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter."

There is a century long debate as to what differentiates the mind from the brain: all consider the brain as physical and the mind as a manifestion of the physical brain. In medical science today, we all consider the brain as a physical organ of our body. This is indisputable. So you are contadictory yourself above.

Then you seem to want to imply that "entire visionary experience" can constitute consciousness, at the expense of all of our other senses. Think about the extraordinary indepth insightful consciousness of the blind.

Billy T's .pdf file is excessively large but I did finally manage to download it - a half hour later! I hope that it did not include a virus? As it is called: http://users.pandora.be/guerilla...simulation, as in "Pandora's Box," "guerilla warfare," "simulation" or "speculation?

Hey, I'm not going to bother wasting my tiime reading this nutcase's paper. He starts off by stating, "I ignore here all the processes that focus the eye....Doesn't the world appear to lurch as objects jumping to new locations..."

I see no reason to read more.

For you information, pandora is just the name of the server my cable company uses, there's nothing wrong with my webspace, nor nickname.

There is a century long debate as to what differentiates the mind from the brain: all consider the brain as physical and the mind as a manifestion of the physical brain. In medical science today, we all consider the brain as a physical organ of our body. This is indisputable. So you are contadictory yourself above.


There is no contradiction. Where have I said that the brain is not an organ of the body?

Then you seem to want to imply that "entire visionary experience" can constitute consciousness, at the expense of all of our other senses. Think about the extraordinary indepth insightful consciousness of the blind.

It is not at the expense of other senses. It seems to me that the other senses all add something to our visual experience, whether blind or not. A person who's blind has still a visual experience in his inner world. Blind people dream as well. When you feel something with your eyes closed, you will immediately imagine how that thing looks like. Many people believe that our visionary experience is the strongest sense of all and there are plenty of reasons to believe this.

This is a repeat from "Humans have a sixth sense and I can prove it." You might want to review the entire forum:

"If you take into account all the different chemo- and sensory receptors in our body, we have a lot more than five senses. But quite obviously to our brain we also have the following:

1. The inner ear detects gravity - important for balance.
2. The bladder senses when to urinate (not a sense of touch or feeling - as in "peeing in your pants")
3. Hunger and thirst

There is also the so-called sixth sense of "instinct" or ultrasensory spiritual perception."

I have dreams that are entirely non-visual. Different parts of the brain add to the sensory receptors that make up our consciousness and awareness. We know this from animal experiments - parts of which were cut then monitored. Dreams are not always images: they can be patterns, scenarios, and thoughts. Visual is definitely a large proportion, but a small ingredient to overall consciousness. All is combined, or maybe just only one sense.

I have dreams that are entirely non-visual.

Dreams are not always images: they can be patterns, scenarios, and thoughts.

Can there be any thoughts without a visual experience? You always think of *something*. It is a process of which you yourself are a part of. It is so much our nature that you forget that it is always there.
Patterns and scenarios are connected to vision as well. Without a form, there are no patterns.

I do know what you mean with dreams without images. You wake up and you remember just what you were dreaming, yet, you don't really seem te remember any images. Just thoughts, situations or scenarios as you say. There is more darkness in the memory of such a dream. I don't think this is an argument against this perception "model" (it should have a name, would make it easier to communicate). The very fact that such dreams (as per my experience) are remembered as dark proofs that is also a visionary experience. You were still 'seeing' things in these dreams, but more abstract. It is however an interesting thing to think about. Any good links/publications on this you're aware of?

1. The inner ear detects gravity - important for balance.
2. The bladder senses when to urinate (not a sense of touch or feeling - as in "peeing in your pants")
3. Hunger and thirst

Wihout vision, you wouldn't know what "up" or "down" means. Anything you think of forms images in your mind. Yet many processes in our bodies are not situated in our conscious mind, because we would be overloaded with information. They are not part of the constant conscious experience. The body regulates most of its processes without us having to do a thing. If we did know about them, then there wouldn't be any medical research required. So can we state that this unconscious processes are part of our Self? Another good topic!

A full bladder hurts. It is clearly just a sense of pain. Nothing special there IMO.

Hunger and thirst: Certainly part of a visionary experience --> you can see a bottle of water already at the end of a long hike; you can see a full plate of food when starving to dead ... Show someone some food he likes, and the saliva will be produced instantly in his mouth. Sense enforces this visual experience because we know how the cool water will taste and stop our thirst. Again, I think that your conscious Self revolves around a visionary experience, complemented by other senses.
The moment you feel thirsty, and no image has yet been formed about it, is a subconscious process - Your body calling for attention.
As I said, this is an interesting issue in this discussion.

Billy T, what is the conventional explanation for the fact that our visual experience is uniformly rich in details over a wide area when we know that only a small part of the eye - the fovea - has a high resolution?I do not know there is one. This question is seldom discussed. I have read considerably and never seen this clearly set forth as a paradox for those who believe that visual experience "emerges" as the end result of many stages of neural processing. I would really appreciate a reference to some explanation within the standard view of "emergent" visual experience.

.. "The Self is not the brain. It is not physical, just like information is not physical, yet it is still created by the brain. This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter....This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter."There is a century long debate as to what differentiates the mind from the brain: all consider the brain as physical and the mind as a manifestation of the physical brain. In medical science today, we all consider the brain as a physical organ of our body. This is indisputable. So you are contradictory yourself above.c'est moi is correct and Valich is wrong.
There is no contradiction in recognizing a difference between the physical representation of information and the information. If these were the same, then you could just eat the cook book, in which the information about how to bake a cake is recorded (represented by little blobs of ink).

THE INFORMATION IS NOT THE SAME AS THE MANIFESTATION OF IT. THE MIND IS NOT THE SAME AS THE BRAIN THAT MANIFESTS IT.

Representation in the brain, by some combination of synaptic connections and active regenerative neural firings, is like those little blobs of ink in the cook book, but the information is something else that can have many different representations.

For example: These thoughts are represented by, in sequence: my key strokes, a set of active binary devices, some tones in a telephone, some electrical pulse in a telephone line, probably more in many others, then light pulses in an optical cable, and then this sequence is reversed near your location, producing little glowing luminous points on a 2D screen, chemistry in a retinal cell aray, retinal cells electrical pulses, many more neural circuit pulses and in most people, some final comprehension, but in you case, perhaps not as you believe it is a contradiction to think these "manifestation of information" differ from the information.

(1)...Billy T's .pdf file is excessively large...(2)He starts off by stating, "I ignore here all the processes that focus the eye....Doesn't the world appear to lurch as objects jumping to new locations..." (1)File is probably large and not too clear as I believe it was scanned in as a photo. I have now access to an optical character reader and will try to post with it.
(2)I ignored the physics of refractions at the air / eye interface (much more important that by the lens in the eye) in forming the retinal image as this physic is well understood and including it would make the paper longer. If you do not know how interface refraction works, I will explain it to you. (3)You are mis quoting. What was said is the despite the saccadic movement of the eyes the world does not lurch. This is just one of several points that seem strange superficially - also mentioned was that we do not see the shadows the blood vessels cast upon the retina as light passes them on the way to the photosensitive cells (Unlike octopus eyes and those of some other marine creatures, human eyes are badly designed by our "Intelligent"?? Designer with the photo cells behind a lot of other structures.)



I see no reason to read more.[/QUOTE]

to Valich:

I have pointed out to you in other threads, but you still seem to equate "conscious" with "sensate." Machines can be better sensors, but non-conscious ones. With possible exception of the general ability to taste and smell (and even here, in limited areas) machines can be better than human sensors. Sense lower levels of stimulation, discriminated between two more accurately, just about any test you want for "better." (Humans still are better at evaluating coffee and wine for other human than machines, but if you want to really know what is there, my money is on the gas chromatography, spectrograph, and /or electrophoresis machine.)

Just because "conscious" is essentially impossible to define or test for, does not mean you should confuse it with "sensate."

The design of the human eye was necessary to meet the competing evolutionary demands for high visual acuity and a large field of view. There is simply not enough neural real estate available in the brain to support a visual system that has high resolution over the required field of view. Even if we left no room in the cortex for any other senses (not to mention housekeeping functions like breathing or keeping the heart beating), the human cortex could not support the optimal size/resolution sensor. Some animals stay within the design limits by restricting their field of view (e.g., a hawk); others give up high resolution in favor of a larger field of view (e.g., a rabbit). Rather than picking one or the other solution, humans evolved the anisotropic retina with very high spatial resolution in the center of the visual field (the fovea), surrounded by a much lower resolution region (the peripheral retina). In the human retina, the high-resolution fovea encompasses less than 0.1% of the visual field visible at any instant, and the effective resolution falls by an order of magnitude within a few degrees from the fovea. This variable-resolution retina reduces bandwidth sufficiently, but is not an acceptable solution alone. Unless the point of interest at any moment happened to fall in the exact center of the visual field, the stimulus would be relegated to the low-resolution periphery. The 'foveal compromise' was made feasible by the evolution of a complementary mechanism to move the eyes. In order to ensure useful vision, the eyes must be moved rapidly about the scene.

source http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/pelz/

The essence:

In the human retina, the high-resolution fovea encompasses less than 0.1% of the visual field visible at any instant, and the effective resolution falls by an order of magnitude within a few degrees from the fovea.

The 'foveal compromise' was made feasible by the evolution of a complementary mechanism to move the eyes.

This is the explanation offered by this researcher, and I suspect that this is a common view (I'll look further though).

However, it fails to explain my visionary perception completely. My entire image is experienced as being of the SAME resolution. I don't need to constantly move my eyes to have this experience. It is only when I truly want to focus on something, like reading a line of text, that I'll need my eyes to turn and focus on that particular thing.

Billy T's model explains this. I think the mechanism we use to enable this can be called the guessing mechanism. You guess the things that you can't see directly. And you guess them pretty good. Good enough to survive many millenia as a species. Our power of guessing has brought us far.

However, how does this mechanism operate.?
Does you brain make millions of calculations of which your conscious mind is not aware? Like when you juggle with a ball (if you can :p), you don't have to think about your motions, nor you balance. You can throw the ball up in the air and let it land on your foot without it to bounce back upwards. How in the hell how we able to do this?

How could such a mechanism evolve?

...In the human retina, the high-resolution fovea encompasses less than 0.1% of the visual field visible at any instant, and the effective resolution falls by an order of magnitude within a few degrees from the fovea. .... it fails to explain my visionary perception completely. My entire image is experienced as being of the SAME resolution. I don't need to constantly move my eyes to have this experience. ...Nor could you move them to 1000 different fixation points each second to build up an "emerging" high resolution visual experience. Your world, is not static even for a second. Vision just does not work the way most "experts" believe it does - as the "emerging" end product of many neural computations.

This resolution argument is one of my stronger ones, but do not forget that even it that were overcome, there would still be at least a 1/3 to 1/2 second of processing delay thru the many neural processing stages. Try to juggle or hit a fast baseball pitch with that much delay in your visual experience of it!

to Valich:

I have pointed out to you in other threads, but you still seem to equate "conscious" with "sensate." Machines can be better sensors, but non-conscious ones. With possible exception of the general ability to taste and smell (and even here, in limited areas) machines can be better than human sensors. Sense lower levels of stimulation, discriminated between two more accurately, just about any test you want for "better." (Humans still are better at evaluating coffee and wine for other human than machines, but if you want to really know what is there, my money is on the gas chromatography, spectrograph, and /or electrophoresis machine.)

Just because "conscious" is essentially impossible to define or test for, does not mean you should confuse it with "sensate."Originally Posted by c'est moi
.. "The Self is not the brain. It is not physical, just like information is not physical, yet it is still created by the brain. This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter....This Self resides in a virtual created world of his own, which is constructed through incoming signals from the brain and prior experiences of the latter."

Now how is this right and I'm wrong. First he's saying the "Self resides in a virtual created world of his own." If it's virtual, then it's not real, and how is it created? A "world of his own"? Then it's not part of this world, or our world. Maybe it's an extraterrestrial or fifth dimension world?

"which is constructed through incoming signals," in other words: sensations.

If you cut the brain stem, you cut off access to sensations coming in from the spinal chord. If you cut the brain stem, you immediately lose consciousness.

Sometimes I think you don't want to understand :p

Really

I can't say "sometimes": I say I know that you're not reading what I post. Without sensation there is no consciousness. This is a fact. Cut the brain stem, sometimes even when you divide the hemispheres, and also one other brain component (thalmic region?) and you lose consciousness.

Let me put it another way. Without sensations from sensory receptors, what else could you be conscious of?

...Without sensation there is no consciousness. This is a fact. ...No it is not a "fact." It is a false idea of yours, without support!
The use of high spinal cord blocks for surgery indicates that you are full of nonsense and prone to make up your "facts" to serve you false ideas.

In addition to this there have been many studies of "sensory deprivation" (Subject float in totally dark, body-temp water tank with foam rubber constraints to prevent even self touching, ear plugs, etc.) The subjects usually are paid graduate students who have not slept for hours and spend the first 12 or so hours "unconscious" as they are making up lost sleep. Then when they wake up, they think about things they have been too busy to do calmly, some times making life altering decisions. Finally, with out exception, if they do not "opt out" of the tank, they begin to hallucinate. - This is very much like dreams, when the sensory connections to the environment is also greatly reduced. Their completely conscious mind, begins to build up a "reality" out of the noise in the signals coming to it from the pathways that normally do provide information about the environment. (All very consistent with my theory of how we construct our perceived world. - But you did not read as I did not explain the well know part of vision having to do with light refraction at the eye/air interface but instead I when straight to the difficult part of understanding perception. Read it and find errors if you can.)

Not only is there a lot of evidence to show you are wrong, there is none to support your postulate that consciousness stops. Normally one can depend upon you to "Google up" something. Fact you have not in this case also illustrates you are full of ____ on this.

Billy T, what is the conventional explanation for the fact that our visual experience is uniformly rich in details over a wide area when we know that only a small part of the eye - the fovea - has a high resolution?My understanding is that the visual experience is not uniformly rich over a wide area. The area we focus our attention on is visually rich, so it is that visual richness we notice.

My understanding is that the visual experience is not uniformly rich over a wide area.

But what is your experience? That has little to do with understanding.

Do you really perceive only a small area which is clear, whilst the greater part of your visionary field is blur?


I tried to blur a picture using photoshop in a way it could be (it's probably not correct - also, looking at the size of the fovea, the area of high resolution in the pic should probably be a lot smaller) if our vision wouldn't be so uniformly rich. I don't think this looks familiar. We do experience a high resolution, though pure physically, it's not possible. Even without moving your eyes, you never get so much blur - yet you should.

http://users.pandora.be/guerilla_tactics/ing.jpg

C'est moi, you do - see it blurred. But since I can't readily locate some quality sources that would demonstrate this unequivocally [and I am very comfortable in my specific understanding of this specific point], I'll abandon you to your false perception.

C'est moi, you do - see it blurred. But since I can't readily locate some quality sources that would demonstrate this unequivocally [and I am very comfortable in my specific understanding of this specific point], I'll abandon you to your false perception.C'est moi's picture is much too sharply in focus to accurately represent the fall off of resolution as one moves from the fovea. I too lack convenient references, but know that the resolution as function from fovea is well known. Let me tell you of a related experiment:

With modern eye moving sensors, and fast computers it is possible to accurately predict where each saccade of the eyes will terminate. (Saccades are called/ described as "ballistic" as they are commanded and not changed while in progress. You only need to monitor approximately the first 1/3 of the saccade to know very accurately where the new fixation point will be.)

Thus, one can put eye movement monitors on a subject and display for him/her a page of text on the computer screen for him/her to read with all of the letters of this text randomly and constantly changing except for a few (I forget exactly how few, but remember that they are asymmetrically located about the fixation point - perhaps 4 characters to the left and 8 to the right of it). No one looking over the subject’s shoulder can make out any sense in the page full of constantly changing letters, but it is quite common for the subject too read for a while and then remark: "OK I am ready, lets start the experiment." (He has not noticed anything dynamic in the display.) This is very strange to see happen, as one would expect that the change in peripheral field of view would at least be noticed even if nothing there can be identified because of the low resolution. I think it is because one is not really consciously aware of peripherial field changes that are automatically processed to force, almost involuntarily, a redirection of your fixation and it is this you are more consciously aware of, not the actual peripherial activity. Thus if all 360 degrees from fixation are making the same dynamic intensity of change, perhaps the unconscious automatic "redirect fixation point" system
does not "know which way to jump" and you are then not aware of the "non-jump"
I had a friend who could often catch flies on a table between his two slowly and symmetrically approaching index fingers, but I only did it once. This is related to "not knowing which way to jump" idea I just expressed.
The reason why the currently non changing set of letters that is at the subjects fixation point is best made non-symmetric has to do with some unconscious processing that is going on to determine the next point of fixation desired. I.e. if you analyze the fixation points chosen they are far from random or fixed "skip distance," but instead do pick up the more "important" and "complex" words of the text. (This implies that a lot of quite high level processing is also taking place unconsciouslyas many "dicotic listening" studies have also proven.)

Too realize just how poor your resolution is off fixation point, get someone to hold up some large printed letters even only 20 degrees from fixation and try to read them while you maintain, if you can, steady fixation. (a small light blinking will help you to do this.)

Very near fixation, you can see things you cannot at fixation, when dark-adapted, because the rods are denser than exactly at fixation where there are more cones. Old time astronomers (back when eyeballs were at the small end of a telescope instead of a CCD) knew this and by fixating slightly off the star, but directing their attention to it, were able to see the faintest stars.

If you really did process the retinal image to emerge with a visual experience, it would be much more like looking thru well-frosted glass except for the less than 1% of the field of view. Put a small hole in a piece of tissue paper and view C'est moi's (or any other) photo to get a more accurate idea of the fall off of resolution that "emergent vision" would give.

I was looking for papers on the subject, didn't find one yet. Give me some time.

I've also tried to blur the same picture a bit better (gaussian blur combined with different layers). It's still not good though.

BUT, still, is that how you see landscapes etc? With a great blur around one point of clarity? The truth is that your visual experience is too rich and left unexplained by the conventional theory. You can only focus on a small area (fovea - ca. 2% of your visual angle), I can for example read the lettres D F G H on my keyboard without moving my eyes or head. The rest I cannot read, yet the surrounding keys do not appear to be blurred. This seems contradictionary (Unable to read <--> Not blurred). This experience must be an illusion - exactly, That's what it is! Your visionary experience is only partly based on incoming signals. Most of it is simply assumed. This process has nothing to do with the eyes. It's part of your internal reality.


http://users.pandora.be/guerilla_tactics/ing2.jpg




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye :

The visual system in the brain is too slow to process that information if the images are slipping across the retina at more than a few degrees per second (Westheimer and McKee, 1954). Thus, for humans to be able to see while moving, the brain must compensate for the motion of the head by turning the eyes. Another complication for vision in frontal-eyed animals is the development of a small area of the retina with a very high visual acuity. This area is called the fovea, and covers about 2 degrees of visual angle in people. To get a clear view of the world, the brain must turn the eyes so that the image of the object of regard falls on the fovea. Eye movements are thus very important for visual perception, and any failure to make them correctly can lead to serious visual disabilities. To see a quick demonstration of this fact, try the following experiment: hold your hand up, about one foot (30 cm) in front of your nose. Keep your head still, and shake your hand from side to side, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. At first you will be able to see your fingers quite clearly. But as the frequency of shaking passes about one hertz, the fingers will become a blur. Now, keep your hand still, and shake your head (up and down or left and right). No matter how fast you shake your head, the image of your fingers remains clear. This demonstrates that the brain can move the eyes opposite to head motion much better than it can follow, or pursue, a hand movement.

If you shake your head really hard, it does get blurred. It does hurt though.

...The truth is that your visual experience is too rich and left unexplained by the conventional theory. You can only focus on a small area (fovea - ca. 2% of your visual angle), I can for example read the lettres D F G H on my keyboard without moving my eyes or head. The rest I cannot read, yet the surrounding keys do not appear to be blurred....A closely related, classical example, of this is to imagine a tirger, with your eyes closed. For most people, who have seen a few tigers, a relatively easy task. They will be able to tell you if its head is to the right or the left, but then ask them to count it stripes, and they will not be able to, yet it seem to be a clear visual experience.

Yes much of our experience is illusion that fades with attempt at detail extraction. - Just like the other letters on your key board seem equally clear until you try to read them. I point this out, as it tends to illustrate that even the internal representation, with eyes closed, is not actually as clear, well defined, as our experience of it would lead us to believe and this is not entirely due to the decrease of resolution "off fovea" but probably is related to it.

In fact, there are those who argue that "mental images" do not even exist. I am sort of at a middle ground on this question. I think the parsing of objects from the continuous visual field, as separate distinct objects to be identified later is a quite "image like" 2D process, but the parsed "images" are not compared to any “stored mental images" for identification. Instead, to recognize the objects we have parsed in some 2D closed loop** of V1 cortex activity, the loop and other extracted "features" are compared to a previously constructed (by experience with many different objects in many different positions etc.) “quasi* invariants“ or “object recipes.” This comparison is much later, and more in the temporal lobes, after many other features (color, movement etc) have also been extracted in addion to the 2D outlines formed in V1 (and to some extent in V2).

Recipes are constantly used for "constructing the objects" in our internal simulated/experienced world for us to experience. Thus, it is my view, that all our visual experience is in some sense "illusion" as there are no "visual images" in our simuated world - only interacting "recipes" - I am sure this all sounds crazy to most, but it is result of years of considering many different well established facts.
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*This is why it takes significantly longer to recognize a flashed photo of penguin as a bird. It does not match, in a hierarchical structure of the bird category. I.e. the “bird recipe,” but does not take significantly longer to classify it as “animal,” “living” etc., at still higher levels in the hierarchical structure of categories, where the “match to recipe” is better.
** I have published a detailed explanation, at the neuronal level, of how this closed-loop 2D outline is parsed by mutual interaction of the V1 neurons, but it is too complex to set forth here. See first post for it.

A closely related, classical example, of this is to imagine a tirger, with your eyes closed. For most people, who have seen a few tigers, a relatively easy task. They will be able to tell you if its head is to the right or the left, but then ask them to count it stripes, and they will not be able to, yet it seem to be a clear visual experience.

Yes much of our experience is illusion that fades with attempt at detail extraction. - Just like the other letters on your key board seem equally clear until you try to read them. I point this out, as it tends to illustrate that even the internal representation, with eyes closed, is not actually as clear, well defined, as our experience of it would lead us to believe and this is not entirely due to the decrease of resolution "off fovea" but probably is related to it.

Can this have something to do with our subconsciousness? When we let images "flow", somehow, everything is fine (details etc.). Like when I'm not paying attention on my bike, suddenly I would react faster to a changing situation (car, crossing people) than I'm able to comprehend (be really aware of). Somehow, I did see it all - well, my subsconcious mind did - whilst my conscious mind was dreaming away. Here one can wonder again about "free will" -- my subconscious mind controles me on many instances and makes me react without I being able to analyse it and make a decision.

So maybe such mental images are not illusions at all, but they do become blurry when we 'disturb' them by manipulating them with conscious thinking (analysing).

When we wake up and just had a vivid dream, it suddenly all seems so blurred leading to a confusing moment. It could be due to the same process.

I've been looking around for publications on the subconsciousness, but haven't been very succesfull. Someone here knows of research connecting psychoanalysis with brain research. And what are the main schools of though in this? I think this part has been missing in your theory Billy T, or how do you see this?

...I've been looking around for publications on the subconsciousness, but haven't been very succesfull. Someone here knows of research connecting psychoanalysis with brain research. And what are the main schools of though in this? I think this part has been missing in your theory Billy T, or how do you see this?I am not sure that the 'subconscious" (of Freud et al) is still as well thought of as it once was.

Certainly a very large percentage of neural activity is concerned with things that can not be conscious. Other things that can be, often are not, but can thrust themselves into consciousness. Certainly, people do deny, to themselves the reality of many facts, typically unpleasant ones. I think this is mainly what is called the "subconscious", by followers of Freud etc. (Many psychoanalysist, even those who have little regard for Freud's "talking therapy," still think we can repress some experiences etc. into the "subconscious.")

My real time simulation (prediction of sensory inputs a fraction of a second into the future, to compensate for neural processing delays) making fast conscious actions (like playing fast ping-pong) possible does not include any of these "unconscious mental actions."

Your brain is taking care of your body, very efficiently, with little help from conscious "you". That includes the rapid reaction, without conscious decision to act that you spoke of and many routine activities, like regulating the rate that water if recovered from you intestines, etc.

I know only a little about what I prefer to call "non-conscious" processing of images. There have been some studies of "subliminal exposures" where people are successfully biased in their conscious decisions despite no conscious awareness of the subliminal priming. A brief unconscious exposure of a nude or threatening man point gun, etc. will produce measurable physiological and psychological changes in conscious "you." We seem to process even to the ideas and concepts level prior to consciousness of them.

Also in studies of "dichotic listening," where two different messages are delivered by head phones and you must "shadow" one (repeat it out loud to insure you are consciously paying attention to it.), you can not tell anything about the other message, but if your name or some common vulgar words are included in it, you are very likely to briefly break shadowing and become consciously aware of them.

More amazing and strong evidence that the unattended message is being fully processed thru the extraction of semantic meaning is the fact that ambiguous words and phases in the message you are attending is strongly biased to the meaning of the same words unambiguously used in the message you are not consciously aware of or do not even hear as noise.

For example, if the story in the ear you are not aware of has some boys "fishing on the river bank" and the one you are carefully shadowing and fully consciously of, has some boys throwing stones "at the bank" before deciding to go to a movie and then realizing they must go home to get money first etc. (or something else related to "bank" as a financial deposit place, but this "money bias" interpretation comes after "river bank" in the message you did not hear, then later when you are recalling / telling the researcher about / the story you did shadow, and he asks about he target of the stones, you are very likely to describe rocks hitting the mud of a river bank, not the sides of a money bank. Etc.

So even if you have no conscious experience of unattended sensory information, it is processed to a very high level automatically in parallel. (The brain is much more of a parallel processor than most people realize.)

I think that, my "real time simulation model," which has "us" (our psychological selves, not our bodies) as an important subcomponent (Our bodies are only a part of the "real world" but a very necessarily part of the real time simulation, "we" live in /exist in.) of the simulation is where the parallel processing stops. I.e. the task of creating "ourselves" and modeling with slight forward projection of the external world is so complex, we can consciously entertain / create only one "personality" and one "external world" at a time not many in parallel as we do unconsciously and at a very high level as the dichotic listening studies show we do.

Have you never wondered why you cannot simultaneously form a mental image of something, say you house, from two different perspectives, say front and back views? - For me, the answer is the same as why the parallel processing demonstrated in dichotic listening stops, just short of consciousness. I.e. our consciousness does not "emerge" as the end result of often conflicting parallel sensory inputs as most cognitive scientists would have you believe, but is created as unique, unified, part of the real time simulation.

Note I often put "me" "us" "I" etc in quote as a way to make clear I am not referring to anything like a human body, but a psychological object in the simulation that can interact, via the body, with the real world, which of course does always include the body. -"I" can not get away from my body, but my body can get away from "me" (And does when it is in deep sleep state, or dead. :( )

Could the meaning of this be that through evolutionary change of the homo sapiens (and his ancestors), of which the biggest part was real survival (not like now), many controle systems became partly automated (=subconscious) enhancing performance overall? Like a pilot can let the computer on-board do most of the nasty jobs, yet he can still take controle when necesarry.

It is possible that the emergent "I" is a faculty of just a part of the brains, limiting its controle over other parts. Relations are there, but controle is difficult or impossible. Some people are able to controle their rate of heartbeats, but that's not the rule.They do show that it is not a 100% one-way relation when it concerns controle.

The conscious "I" is trained in intercepting messages from its subconscious "I" that could be of value, importance, .. it could mean survival. For example, martial arts experts are trained in absorbing their environment - not just "observing". Where we get hit "suddenly", they manage to duck. I've noticed the difference in conscious awareness when doing chinese boxing (after having done karate some years). Like you say, you can't picture more than one thing at the time in your conscious mind, but the subconsciousness can do a trillion things at a time (or so it appears). Somehow, one can bring these two faculties more close - maybe even merge them when experienced - and experience the input of the environment in a total different way. In a fight there's simply no time for analysing changes in the normal way. You "feel" what to do next, what your oponent will do. If you don't, for a brief moment, you will get hurt.

I think the growing individualisation of the human species which has taken place, has to do with the fact that we have lost most of our ability to be subconscious aware (maybe there was not even a gap in the past), thereby focussing on one-to-one relations in which individual elements play the key role.

...It is possible that the emergent "I" is a faculty of just a part of the brains, limiting its controle over other parts. Relations are there, but controle is difficult or impossible. ... Like you say, you can't picture more than one thing at the time in your conscious mind, but the subconsciousness can do a trillion things at a time (or so it appears). ... In a fight there's simply no time for analysing changes in the normal way. You "feel" what to do next, what your oponent will do. If you don't, for a brief moment, you will get hurt....I think we have a conscious self, mainly to more rationaly consider "delayable choices" with alternatives to evaluate. I forget which cognitive scientist suggested that with consciousness, we can let the Hypotheses die instead of us.

I have not done much in the martial arts line but have fallen off a horse . I landed on the side of road where trrain was steep. I landed well rolled or tumbled a few times, ( I do not know because "I" was not there, my body was in full control and did not have time for "me." I did not get hurt. When my coscios self returned, I was amazed how far from the road I was. /the trees I had not hit growing on the steep slope etc. Lots of choices (which arm to extend etc) had obviously been made by my body, but as they were not "deferable choices" "I" had nothing to do with it - I was not even there!

I am reminded of Woody Allen's joke. He said: "He did not fear death. He just did not want to be there when it happened." That is entirely possible, quite common in fact. Although commonly it is called dying in your sleep.

Summary: I think we agree.

No it is not a "fact." It is a false idea of yours, without support!
The use of high spinal cord blocks for surgery indicates that you are full of nonsense and prone to make up your "facts" to serve you false ideas.

In addition to this there have been many studies of "sensory deprivation" (Subject float in totally dark, body-temp water tank with foam rubber constraints to prevent even self touching, ear plugs, etc.) The subjects usually are paid graduate students who have not slept for hours and spend the first 12 or so hours "unconscious" as they are making up lost sleep. Then when they wake up, they think about things they have been too busy to do calmly, some times making life altering decisions. Finally, with out exception, if they do not "opt out" of the tank, they begin to hallucinate. - This is very much like dreams, when the sensory connections to the environment is also greatly reduced. Their completely conscious mind, begins to build up a "reality" out of the noise in the signals coming to it from the pathways that normally do provide information about the environment. (All very consistent with my theory of how we construct our perceived world. - But you did not read as I did not explain the well know part of vision having to do with light refraction at the eye/air interface but instead I when straight to the difficult part of understanding perception. Read it and find errors if you can.)

Not only is there a lot of evidence to show you are wrong, there is none to support your postulate that consciousness stops. Normally one can depend upon you to "Google up" something. Fact you have not in this case also illustrates you are full of ____ on this.



In another study in the 1950’s, Donald O. Hebb and his coworkers investigated the effects of sensory deprivation, as well as lack of movement, by having each subject lie on a bed in a soundproof room and remain completely still. Tubes covered the subjects’ arms so that they had no sense of touch, and translucent goggles cut off their vision. The subjects reported that the experience was extremely unpleasant, not just because of the social isolations, but also because they lost their normal focus in this situation. Some subjects even had hallucinations, as if their brains were somehow trying to create the sensory experiences that they suddenly lacked. Most asked to be released from the study before it ended.

Hebb. D. O. (1949) The organization of behavior: A neurophysiological theory, New York

About such water tanks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank):

An isolation tank (also commonly known as a sensory deprivation tank) is (ideally) a lightless, soundproof tank in which subjects float in salty water (denser than the human body) at skin temperature. It was devised by John C. Lilly in 1954 in order to test the effects of sensory deprivation. Such tanks are now also used for meditation, prayer, relaxation, and in alternative medicine.

The isolation tank is also called float tank, floating tank, floater tank, floatation tank, Samadhi tank, sensory deprivation tank, REST tank (Restricted Environmental Stimuli Therapy), and John Lilly tank.

In the original tanks, people were required to wear complicated head-masks in order to breathe underwater; in newer tanks, Epsom salt (1.30 grams per cubic centimeter) is added so that the subject floats with his or her face above the water. However, since the ears are submerged when the subject is in a relaxed position, hearing is greatly reduced, particularly when ear-plugs are also used. When the arms float to the side, skin sensation is greatly reduced because the air and water are the same temperature as the skin, and the feeling of a body boundary fades. The sense of smell is also greatly reduced, especially if the water has not been treated with chlorine.

A therapeutic session in a flotation tank typically lasts an hour. For the first forty minutes it is reportedly common to experience itching in various parts of the body (a phenomenon also reported to be common during the early stages of meditation). The last 20 minutes often end with a transition from beta or alpha brainwaves to theta, which typically occur briefly before sleep and again at waking. In a float tank the theta state can last for several minutes without the subject losing consciousness. Many use the extended theta state as a tool for enhanced creativity and problem-solving or for superlearning. Spas sometimes provide commercial float tanks for use in relaxation.

Shorter sessions may be relaxing and other benefits are claimed by Lilly but have not been confirmed by other scientists. Common reactions to extended sensory deprivation are hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, anxiety, and depression, and some researchers believe this to be evidence of a deep human need for almost constant input of stimuli (the opposite of Lilly's conclusion).

Photo taken from Lilly's website:

http://www.tomigaya.shibuya.tokyo.jp/lilly/gifs/isotank02.gif

to c'est moi:

Thanks for the reference and supporting text. In general, these types of experiments, when halucinations occur, support my "perception is of/from simulation," not the external world, view.