Visual Intelligence

Donald D. Hoffman

How We Create What We See

Chapter 1 A Creative Genius for Vision

Ben

Sarah

Muneeb

We do not realize how we interpret the world

Creative genius Visual virtuoso

Without exception, everything you see you construct:

Color, shading, texture, motion, shape, visual objects, and entire visual scenes. For example...

Magic Eye Books & Stereovision

Normal Viewing Focus on the thing you want to see Vision comes to a focused point at the object or image

Parallel-Viewing 3D illusions such as the Magic Eye Looking through or past the object (a window) Vision does not focus directly at image

Hint: Elephant

The Ripple

2D surface Impossible to view as flat Visual system not only fabricates the ripple, it endows it with pats Illusion works right side up or upside down

The Magic Square

The Impossible Triangle

Wavy Lines

Difficult to focus?

Hexagon or a Cube?

The Cube of Death

Phenomenal vs. Relational

Phenomenal Sense
The way things look to you. Hallucinations of pink elephants

Relational Sense What you interact with when you look A thing must exist to be seen in the relational sense.

Questions:
Fight Club Is Brad Pitt Relational or Phenomenal

Is it necessary to classify our vision into Relational and Phenomenal? Is there truly a difference in what we think we see and what we interact with?

The User-Friendly Icon Interface

Our vision and the icon metaphor

The Icon Metaphor

On the computer screen there are many icons representing many different things in the computer. These icons allow us to interact with the information.

Similarly, our visual experiences serve as our user-friendly icon interface with those things we relationally see.

Is the Icon Metaphor True?

Is this disk in my hand really the disk I am interacting with?

OR is it merely an icon representation of something else that I am really interacting with?

Is this something that I am interacting with, even really in this place? OR is this just an icon representation I am using to access something in a different location of space? Just as the icon on this computer screen allows me to interact the information of a given file.

Icon Metaphor Continuation:

Is the disk really a disk when you are not perceiving it?
Is the disk that I perceive, numerically identical to the one you perceive?

Semivision The vision of Animals

Adrian Horridge

Gold fish have four color receptors Honeybees see ultraviolet light Flies use visual motion Day old chicks can discriminate shapes Animals vision serve many different purposes

Of

all the species on earth and throughout time, how can we be sure our vision is the correct one?

To construct is the essence of vision.

-Don Hoffman

The fundamental problem of vision:

The image at the eye has countless possible interpretations

How do all children learn to see in the same way?

The Rules of Universal Vision and Visual Processing

The Rule of Universal Vision

Innate rules which grant visual mastery and lead to consensus in the visual constructions despite ambiguity Everyone constructs the same vision (with or without the same interpretation) Part of the childs biology, and allows the child to acquire, through visual experiences that might vary from one culture to another, the rules of visual processing Similar to Noam Chomskys innate language principles

The Rule of Visual Processing

Allows

interpretation of what is constructed, based on prior experience Allow the visually competent child or adult to construct specific visual scenes by looking Similar to Noam Chomskys rules of universal grammar

The rules are the key