Ode to our infallible senses....

[BaalChatzaf]

Please have a look at these remarkable images and then utter on ode to our Infallible Senses.

http://naldzgraphics.net/inspirations/a-showcase-of-breathtaking-3d-street-art-paintings/

Amazing!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[George H. Smith]

Not to be too anal about this subject, but fallibility signifies the possibility of error, and error is possible only when there is a cognitive judgment. The senses per se do not judge anything, so they are neither fallible nor infallible.

The blurb preceding the artwork says that the 2-D paintings appear 3-D "when viewed from a fixed point through a camera lens". Does this mean that the optical illusions work only in 2-D photos and not in person?

Ghs

[BaalChatzaf]

Not to be too anal about this subject, but fallibility signifies the possibility of error, and error is possible only when there is a cognitive judgment. The senses per se do not judge anything, so they are neither fallible nor infallible.

The blurb preceding the artwork says that the 2-D paintings appear 3-D "when viewed from a fixed point through a camera lens". Does this mean that the optical illusions work only in 2-D photos and not in person?

Ghs

They work even better in person. At a certain distance the illusion is complete. The artists who do this trick are really talented.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

Please have a look at these remarkable images and then utter on ode to our Infallible Senses.

http://naldzgraphics...-art-paintings/

Amazing!

Ba'al Chatzaf

What incredibly sense-betraying images these are!! Simply awesome! As for the ode, it should be recited in honor of the pavement artists who made them.

Not to be too anal about this subject, but fallibility signifies the possibility of error, and error is possible only when there is a cognitive judgment. The senses per se do not judge anything, so they are neither fallible nor infallible.

Ghs

But can't one say that in optical illusions, the eye is being 'tricked' into providing 'wrong' info to the brain?

[BaalChatzaf]

Please have a look at these remarkable images and then utter on ode to our Infallible Senses.

http://naldzgraphics...-art-paintings/

Amazing!

Ba'al Chatzaf

What incredibly sense-betraying images these are!! Simply awesome! As for the ode, it should be recited in honor of the pavement artists who made them.

Amen. If our senses were not so "infallible" the trick would not work. The artists are very talented.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

And Ode? Gee, that sure is a lot of work just to show that you do not appreciate the power and beauty of an illusion. What would Penn & Teller say? An ode...

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

What are these bothering my weary eyes?

To what misshapen image, O clever painting artist,

Arrang'st thou that fallen rising to the streets,

And its deepened shadows with highlights blessed?

What my eyes do tell me over-more

or denying me my easy guess

is fullened now with 'lusion chose

And my brain does tease for evermore

with smart lights and shades to lie to mine

eyes which tell my gray aright what they see.

For Christ's sake, Bob, have some mercy! Its bad enough your wanting proof, but in cadence?

[syrakusos]

I read Great Scientific Experiments by Rom Harre and reviewed it on my blog. I did not mention Harre's summary of the work of James J. Gibson on perception. (Gibson bio in Wikipedia. See also "The Ecology of J. J. Gibson's Perception" by E. Bruce Goldstein in Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), pp. 191-195 online here.)

Harre says that experimental psychology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was stuck in a paradigm of perceptual passivity. They thought that the receptors passively relay to the brain the stimuli from the environment. Attempting to isolate perception, says, Harre, experimenters restrained the subjects, more and ever more, and never changed their opinions as subjects perceived less and less. That got my attention.

Moreover, Gibson's work involved pilots and the landing of aircraft, a problem I have solved successfully hundreds of times. From the first every instructor I had told me to find the spot ahead that does not move. That is where the plane will touch down. That fact came from Gibson's studies. (Obviously, you want to choose that spot, rather than letting it happen, and manipulate the controls to coordinate the action with your intentions.) It remains, though, that this simple empirical fact speaks volumes about perception. Gibson's theory of "affordance" comes from even more basic experiments with cookie cutters which showed that in order to perceive, we must interact with the environment. Perception is not passive. (Place a cookie cutter on the palm and "many" people can tell its shape. Let the subject actively feel the cookie cutter and "very few" get it wrong.)

In a different famous experiment, babies are shown a (false) visual cliff.

Dr. Gibson and Dr. Walk (1960) hypothesized that depth perception is inherent as opposed to a learned process. To test this, they placed 36 infants, 6 to 8 months of age, on the shallow side of the visual cliff apparatus. The researchers found that 27 of the infants crawled over to their mother on the "deep" side without any problems. A few of the infants crawled but were extremely hesitant. Some infants refused to crawl because they were confused about the perceived drop between them and their mothers. The infants knew the glass was solid by patting it, but still did not cross. In this experiment, all of the babies relied on their vision in order to navigate across the apparatus. This shows that when healthy infants are able to crawl, they can perceive depth. However, results do not indicate that avoidance of cliffs and fear of heights is innate. (Wikipedia here.)

Note that the "Gibson" is Eleanor Gibson, the wife of James J. Generally, infants who had not learned to crawl seemingly did not perceive the visual cliff. This bears directly on the optical illusions offered at the start of this thread.

As I understand the Objectivist theory of perception (summarized by Smith above), the senses are passive receptors. I had accepted this premise, but now I reject it. Perception is learned by interaction with the environment.

Moreover, I also just finished closely re-reading Thomas Kuhn's classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Harre largely ignores Kuhn's thesis, but knowing Kuhn allowed a deeper understanding of the experiments chronicled by Harre. What scientists discover by experiment depends on what theory tells them to expect to find.

(This is not always the case, and Kuhn differentiates "normal science" from the resolution of "anomalies." Harre's book provides 20 different experiments from Aristotle forward, within an intricate framework of philosophy. Some experiments do tease out hidden facts from which theories are built. The fact remains that sometimes over centuries competent researchers failed to perceive processes in their own laboratories until they were informed by a new theory.)

A colleague of mine about my own age told me of an older relative from a rural society. Her aunt was always afraid of electrical outlets. She expected the electricity to leap from them, as her only experience with electricity was lightening. I had read of that, generally, when electrification began 100 years ago, but this was a personal story. You can say that the old lady was being silly, but the cogent fact is that when she looked at a wall plug, she saw something more than two narrow rectangles within a circle. And Gibson's point is that if she were immobilized, she would not even perceive the abstract geometric shapes.

Perception is complicated and the Objectivist theory of perception seems over-simplified. For instance, a theorem in linguistics says that people do not invent words for purple and brown until after they have differentiated blue from green. If perception is passive and infallible, this is hard to explain. We call color-blindness "Daltonism" because the chemist was the first person ever to describe it, though apparently, it had to have existed for many centuries, even for ages - unless, someone can show that it is a new mutation.

[BaalChatzaf]

I read Great Scientific Experiments by Rom Harre and reviewed it on my blog. I did not mention Harre's summary of the work of James J. Gibson on perception. (Gibson bio in Wikipedia. See also "The Ecology of J. J. Gibson's Perception" by E. Bruce Goldstein in Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), pp. 191-195 online here.)

Harre says that experimental psychology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was stuck in a paradigm of perceptual passivity. They thought that the receptors passively relay to the brain the stimuli from the environment. Attempting to isolate perception, says, Harre, experimenters restrained the subjects, more and ever more, and never changed their opinions as subjects perceived less and less. That got my attention.

Moreover, Gibson's work involved pilots and the landing of aircraft, a problem I have solved successfully hundreds of times. From the first every instructor I had told me to find the spot ahead that does not move. That is where the plane will touch down. That fact came from Gibson's studies. (Obviously, you want to choose that spot, rather than letting it happen, and manipulate the controls to coordinate the action with your intentions.) It remains, though, that this simple empirical fact speaks volumes about perception. Gibson's theory of "affordance" comes from even more basic experiments with cookie cutters which showed that in order to perceive, we must interact with the environment. Perception is not passive. (Place a cookie cutter on the palm and "many" people can tell its shape. Let the subject actively feel the cookie cutter and "very few" get it wrong.)

In a different famous experiment, babies are shown a (false) visual cliff.

Dr. Gibson and Dr. Walk (1960) hypothesized that depth perception is inherent as opposed to a learned process. To test this, they placed 36 infants, 6 to 8 months of age, on the shallow side of the visual cliff apparatus. The researchers found that 27 of the infants crawled over to their mother on the "deep" side without any problems. A few of the infants crawled but were extremely hesitant. Some infants refused to crawl because they were confused about the perceived drop between them and their mothers. The infants knew the glass was solid by patting it, but still did not cross. In this experiment, all of the babies relied on their vision in order to navigate across the apparatus. This shows that when healthy infants are able to crawl, they can perceive depth. However, results do not indicate that avoidance of cliffs and fear of heights is innate. (Wikipedia here.)

Note that the "Gibson" is Eleanor Gibson, the wife of James J. Generally, infants who had not learned to crawl seemingly did not perceive the visual cliff. This bears directly on the optical illusions offered at the start of this thread.

As I understand the Objectivist theory of perception (summarized by Smith above), the senses are passive receptors. I had accepted this premise, but now I reject it. Perception is learned by interaction with the environment.

Moreover, I also just finished closely re-reading Thomas Kuhn's classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Harre largely ignores Kuhn's thesis, but knowing Kuhn allowed a deeper understanding of the experiments chronicled by Harre. What scientists discover by experiment depends on what theory tells them to expect to find.

(This is not always the case, and Kuhn differentiates "normal science" from the resolution of "anomalies." Harre's book provides 20 different experiments from Aristotle forward, within an intricate framework of philosophy. Some experiments do tease out hidden facts from which theories are built. The fact remains that sometimes over centuries competent researchers failed to perceive processes in their own laboratories until they were informed by a new theory.)

A colleague of mine about my own age told me of an older relative from a rural society. Her aunt was always afraid of electrical outlets. She expected the electricity to leap from them, as her only experience with electricity was lightening. I had read of that, generally, when electrification began 100 years ago, but this was a personal story. You can say that the old lady was being silly, but the cogent fact is that when she looked at a wall plug, she saw something more than two narrow rectangles within a circle. And Gibson's point is that if she were immobilized, she would not even perceive the abstract geometric shapes.

Perception is complicated and the Objectivist theory of perception seems over-simplified. For instance, a theorem in linguistics says that people do not invent words for purple and brown until after they have differentiated blue from green. If perception is passive and infallible, this is hard to explain. We call color-blindness "Daltonism" because the chemist was the first person ever to describe it, though apparently, it had to have existed for many centuries, even for ages - unless, someone can show that it is a new mutation.

Thank you for the references and the insights.

I did not know you were a pilot. I was licensed to fly sail planes (aka "gliders") but have since given it up since my hand eye coordination has gone south and is not likely to return. It was grand fun while it lasted.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

I did not know you were a pilot. I was licensed to fly sail planes (aka "gliders") but have since given it up since my hand eye coordination has gone south and is not likely to return. It was grand fun while it lasted. Ba'al Chatzaf

I also lost my right to fly for medical reasons. I wrote about 25 or 30 articles for aviation periodicals while learning to fly. It was a way to cadge free time. I interviewed a sail plane club and went up in one. It is pure flying. Anything will fly if you push it hard enough. Sail planes are the truest flying experience.

[BaalChatzaf]

I did not know you were a pilot. I was licensed to fly sail planes (aka "gliders") but have since given it up since my hand eye coordination has gone south and is not likely to return. It was grand fun while it lasted. Ba'al Chatzaf

I also lost my right to fly for medical reasons. I wrote about 25 or 30 articles for aviation periodicals while learning to fly. It was a way to cadge free time. I interviewed a sail plane club and went up in one. It is pure flying. Anything will fly if you push it hard enough. Sail planes are the truest flying experience.

Yup! A solar powered aircraft. God Himself sustains it aloft.

Ba'al chatzaf

[Jonathan]

Please have a look at these remarkable images and then utter on ode to our Infallible Senses.

http://naldzgraphics...-art-paintings/

Amazing!

Ba'al Chatzaf

I looked at all of the images, and my senses were fooled by none of them.

J

[Jonathan]

Not to be too anal about this subject, but fallibility signifies the possibility of error, and error is possible only when there is a cognitive judgment. The senses per se do not judge anything, so they are neither fallible nor infallible.

The blurb preceding the artwork says that the 2-D paintings appear 3-D "when viewed from a fixed point through a camera lens". Does this mean that the optical illusions work only in 2-D photos and not in person?

Ghs

They work even better in person. At a certain distance the illusion is complete. The artists who do this trick are really talented.

Ba'al Chatzaf

They work best when viewed through one eye. The depth perception of binocular vision destroys the illusion.

J

[syrakusos]

I looked at all of the images, and my senses were fooled by none of them.

They work best when viewed through one eye. The depth perception of binocular vision destroys the illusion.

So, most of Renaissance art is lost on you? Is it that you are so clever that you cannot be fooled or do you have some anomaly the prevents you from seeing this below as any more than a disjointed array of meaningless shapes?

Most of the 3-D street art is fantastic in the sense of being ultimately unreal - sharks, dolphins, monsters, geographies out of place or time, ... - so it is easy enough to look again to see the trick, the trompe l'oeil, knowing that it must be there. Still, for many of them, especially the originals of torn up streets, which were credible prima facie, even if you know the trick works -- for most people. Perhaps like the 3% who could not identify a cookie cutter's shape by actively feeling it you perceive the world differently. Individualism is not just a political philosophy.

Put "3-D Street Art" in your browser and find much to read and see. 50 more here (give it a minute to load).

"Optical Illusions" from the National Institute for Environmental Health and Safety of the US NIH.

It is an old, old science trick to give a blindfolded subject a cube of potato to eat while they smell an apple.

Perceptions of cold and hot are conditionable. We returned to northern Michigan from Albuquerque for the Fourth of July. All the cousins were in shorts and t-shirts. We were in slacks and long sleeves. No surprises there. But subjective, not objective, measurements of ambient temperature.

[Jonathan]

So, most of Renaissance art is lost on you?

That's quite a leap you've made! So, your opinion is that if I look at a painting and recognize it as such, rather than being fooled into believing that it's a three dimensional scene in front of me, then it must be "lost on me" as a work of art, and I must experience it as a "disjointed array of meaningless shapes"? Heh.

Is it that you are so clever that you cannot be fooled or do you have some anomaly the prevents you from seeing this below as any more than a disjointed array of meaningless shapes?

No, I think it has more to do with the fact that I instantly see errors in perspective, proportion, coloring, modeling and lighting, etc., where you apparently don't, and such errors impede the effect that is intended. I think that my eye could be "fooled" by sidewalk art that was better executed.

J

[syrakusos]

So, your opinion is that if I look at a painting and recognize it as such, rather than being fooled into believing that it's a three dimensional scene in front of me.. I instantly see errors in perspective, proportion, coloring, modeling and lighting, etc., where you apparently don't ...

I think that being hung on a wall in a museum in an ornate wooden frame tells you what you are looking at before you see it.

When you look at a skyscraper from the ground up, do you see parallel lines as intended, or do you see diverging lines fooling the less perceptive?

You might be missing a lucrative career as a coach to all these second-rate cartoonists, but, to me, you sound like the kid coming out of a monster movie claiming he wasn't scared because he knew it wasn't real.

Having had art classes in junior high school and college, I know how it is done. That does not detract from the experience. As I said above, most of the scenes are fantastic and therefore give themselves away. Like the works of M.C. Escher, they are enjoyable - and even if you know how it is done, the "trick of the eye" is still there, which is the point of this topic.

[Brant Gaede]

Digression warning!

I'd like to do some flying again now that I live in the Southwest and I'd most want to experience it in a sailplane. I have little taste for acrobatics but did spin training. I don't much like adrenaline rushes. I only use the fixed point on the runway on landing as one point of reference and not the most important unless it's a very short strip. I prefer high wing Cessnas as I want to look down. Using power and a high angle of attack I was once taught how to do such a short short-field landing that there was hardly any roll out and I'd drag the tail tie down. I'll never do that again for if not done precisely right you can lose it. Basically the engine is holding the plane up by the nose and you're only slightly ahead of the stall. When the tail drags you chop the power. I'd hestitate today to even think about this for I don't remember the power settings. I was taught the technique by an instructor in Tucson in 1980. He crashed a Baron in 1983, buying the farm for both him and his student owner. The NTSB did not investigate the cause to a conclusion but I suspect they were doing one engine out power on stalls and induced a flat spin. There is no recovery from a flat spin and the Baron was subject to them, something I knew way back then but I don't think they did for, unlike me, that instructor did not read any current flying publications.

--Brant

RIP Freddie Sprung

[Jonathan]

I think that being hung on a wall in a museum in an ornate wooden frame tells you what you are looking at before you see it.

If a painting were hung on a non-museum wall without a frame, would you run into it Wile E. Coyote-style? That's how easily your eye is fooled? Interesting.

When you look at a skyscraper from the ground up, do you see parallel lines as intended, or do you see diverging lines fooling the less perceptive?

You might be missing a lucrative career as a coach to all these second-rate cartoonists, but, to me, you sound like the kid coming out of a monster movie claiming he wasn't scared because he knew it wasn't real.

Having had art classes in junior high school and college, I know how it is done. That does not detract from the experience. As I said above, most of the scenes are fantastic and therefore give themselves away. Like the works of M.C. Escher, they are enjoyable - and even if you know how it is done, the "trick of the eye" is still there, which is the point of this topic.

I wonder how poorly a drawing would have to be executed in order for your eye not to be fooled into believing that it was a real 3D object in front of you.

How about this one that I found online:

Did you have to reach out and touch your monitor to discover whether or not it was a real camera?

Let's try it this way: If a man at a numismatic convention told you that you could trust him because he was a sheriff, and he showed you his badge...

...and then tried to sell you some very rare, valuable coins...

...would you fall for it? If not, would that make you a Mr. Cleverpants who is missing out on a lucrative career coaching second-rate counterfeiters and police impersonators?

J

[Brant Gaede]

What a hoot!

--Brant

[syrakusos]

Jonathan, what we seem to agree on is that perception is interactive, not passive.

As for the other points, I recognize legal authority, even if I do not trust it - and having been flashed several kinds of government ID, I seldom bother to inspect it, (since I have desktop skills of my own) but pay more attention to the person claiming it. And I have paid good money for Mardi Gras doubloons and given them out as valuable mementos. The ones from the Crewe of Atlas are compelling, but many pagan themes resonate with celebrations of enjoyment and productivity.

[syrakusos]

If a painting were hung on a non-museum wall without a frame, would you run into it Wile E. Coyote-style? That's how easily your eye is fooled?

I might. That is what makes the gag funny, otherwise no one would get it and the artists would not create it. It is said that the painter Zeuxius fooled birds with the grapes in his painting, or perhaps that is only hyperbole, come down to us as fact. Again, if there were no ambiguity, no chance for error, the statement would not have been made in the first place. There was one time, at a convention, I was standing at the sales booth, watching something else in the hall, not moving and when I did, I startled a child who thought I was a mannikin. I could go on, but I believe that it is you who owe us an explanation of your own infallibility.

Is it a natural gift you always have had? Or did you learn it? Or is it a combination in some proportion? Never fallen off your bike? Never had an automobile accident? Never dropped a cup or glass or plate? Never bumped into another shopper in the super market? Never misheard someone? Never had an auditory phantom, like when you hear your name spoken but no one is there? Sometimes, in music, to simulate an archaic keyboard instrument, they just put tacks on the hammers of a piano. You can tell the difference? Always know the oboe from the bassoon and clarinet, the viola from the violin, the coronet from the trumpet, the trombone from the french horn?

We just had sushi out last night. Salmon is pretty distinctive, easy to tell from tuna. Mostly, though, it is just fish. How many can you tell apart by taste? Do you go to wine parties? Cheese parties? (Sure, swiss, gouda, cheddar, bleu ... But swiss from emmenthaler? Australian cheddar from wisconsin? Not I, I confess.)

All in all, if you have such acute senses, count yourself blessed.

... or perhaps you are normal and Ba'al and I are the ones laboring under handicaps.

How would we know, short of bad experiences at art museums?

[BaalChatzaf]

Please have a look at these remarkable images and then utter on ode to our Infallible Senses.

http://naldzgraphics...-art-paintings/

Amazing!

Ba'al Chatzaf

I looked at all of the images, and my senses were fooled by none of them.

J

were you not impressed at all by the illusion of depth they created? Of course there were no holes in the street but the impression of depth is still unmistakable. The artists hit on many of the unconscious cues we all develop to comprehend depth and perspective. These clever drawings use the same cues and clues as one and two point perspective drawing. That is the way a three dimensional scene is suggested by a two dimensional drawing

Of course you were not fooled. But you experienced some visual puns and clever ones at that.

By the way, there is a four dimensional analog to all this. Have you ever made a tesseract? It consists of two skeletal cubs (made, say, with tooth picks). You connect the correspond corners of each cube skeleton to its counterpart in the other cube and what you have is a three dimensional projection of a four dimensional cube. See

http://www.google.com/search?q=tesseract&hl=en&prmd=imvnsal&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pe7_T6O8E6fr6wHbrIz5Bw&sqi=2&ved=0CG4QsAQ&biw=1280&bih=688

for some examples.

The same sort of visual punning is used as is the case with the sidewalk drawings, No one is fooled but many are amused.

Similar tricks are invoked for the Ames Room Illusion. The Illusion will not go away even after you know how it is done.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Jonathan]

I could go on, but I believe that it is you who owe us an explanation of your own infallibility.

I haven't claimed infallibility. In fact, in post #14 I wrote:

"I think that my eye could be 'fooled' by sidewalk art that was better executed."

All in all, if you have such acute senses, count yourself blessed.

... or perhaps you are normal and Ba'al and I are the ones laboring under handicaps.

I think that I have very advanced visual/spatial abilities, and I seem to recall that you can be quite susceptible to visual errors (if I'm remembering correctly, you were the list member here who misidentified what was going on in a video clip of the Earth in space).

J

[Jonathan]

Similar tricks are invoked for the Ames Room Illusion. The Illusion will not go away even after you know how it is done.

Indeed, the Ames Room Illusion can be very effective, especially, as I said earlier, "when viewed through one eye."

J

[Jonathan]

(if I'm remembering correctly, you were the list member here who misidentified what was going on in a video clip of the Earth in space).

Here's the thread that I was thinking of:

http://www.objectivi...?showtopic=7998

J

[BaalChatzaf]

Similar tricks are invoked for the Ames Room Illusion. The Illusion will not go away even after you know how it is done.

Indeed, the Ames Room Illusion can be very effective, especially, as I said earlier, "when viewed through one eye."

J

The Ames room illusion works with either one eye or both eyes.

Ba'al Chatzaf