Are Our Visual Sensations Actually Flat Rather Than 3-Dimensional?

[zazed]

8 hours ago, Space said:

I've always been confused by this. Correct me if i'm wrong, but is this not just a support for materialism? That everything we perceive is actually happening inside the brain. What is the source of the image inside your brain? And surely the brain itself must also be included into what is happening inside the brain?

This is a valid point, i was only explaining what science considers real.
None of this is spiritual, it is more to say "what exactly is real, how deep does the rabbithole go?"

The point to take home is, whatever perspective you follow scientific, spiritual, immaterial. Reality does not exist such as it seems to us. 
The only consistent agreed upon result, by all fields, is that our experience is illusionary. That alone should be enough to at least detach.
 

Immaterialism is also true, because none of us can prove the world exists, nor that the physical body exist. The mind exists, because you can experience the world in your mind and you can also think and dream. So reality exists at least as an experience within a mind.
A mind does not inherently have eyes, legs, nose or feet or ears. During dreams you can see, walk, smell and hear stuff.   How can we prove the reality of the  sensory inputs, by using the very senses that may not exist at all, to prove they exists?

This mind trying to prove reality is real results in a loop consisting of only mind. Using ideas in the mind (the perception of a microscope) to prove that ideas in the mind(seeing eye-tissue enlarged) are created by ideas in the mind(eye tissue allows sight). As such you can never prove reality exist, every time you try, you realize its just the mind examining the mind examining the mind examining mind, into infinity. You cannot get out of mind as mind, you are stuck in mind and can only experience what appears within this mind.

This is my loose interpretation of the philosophy of one George Berkeley (1685—1753), very fascinating.

Edit : Definitions of reality may differ. In this post i mean the physical material reality made by atoms.

Edited January 11, 2018 by zazed

[star ark]

I'm pretty dense when it comes to the hefty scientific stuff but has this idea being put forth? I've read the idea many times that reality may not be 3d and our eyes are creating the illusion of 3d from a pair 2d images. To me this does not prove anything. If i take a picture with a camera of the real 3d world then that picture is 2d. But it is a 2d picture of the 3d world. So why is one human eye expected to be able to see 3d in the first place? Maybe I'm missing a big point in the argument but I never understood this one.

[Faceless]

Yeah this is interesting 

[alyra]

On 1/10/2018 at 2:42 PM, Joseph Maynor said:

I know when you consider tactile sensations, visual sensations can appear to be 3-dimensional. 

huh, for me I would think it is the other way around. to me, tactile is everything. in fact i think in tactile lmao. 

 vision... people get all excited about 3d movies, but to me regular movies are 3d enough as it is. what 3d is - is the perpective my imagination sees, creates. the sensation itself is just sensation.

[Joseph Maynor]

I'm kind of having a problem believing that reality is two-dimensional shapes and colors only.  That's a big claim to me.  Maybe I haven't done enough empirical investigation into the issue.  But, I definitely have a sense that sight is three-dimensional.  And this is not just a belief, it's a factual kind of determination, if that makes sense.  Does anyone want to engage me in this issue?

Think about this -- you can believe that sight is a series of planes of two-dimensional shapes and colors.  This is cute, and seems plausible at first, but it is still a belief, a conception.  What kind of relevance does this kind of belief have regarding drawing conclusions about sight?   When I say a series, I mean one after the other.  Like thinking of sight as a series of planes.

Edited January 12, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Leo Gura]

Just don't swing the pendulum too far in the opposite end.

The distinctions you make still matter very much.

To be effective in the world is to make finer and more accurate distinctions than other people make.

An expert is someone who has a collection of really good distinctions in a particular field.

In this work you must learn to both destroy all distinctions, and make a ton of highly accurate and useful distinctions, all at the same time.

The mind is like a horse. It needs to be properly reigned in and tamed, then it is good. Living without mind is not an option. So your only options are to learn to use it well, or not.

[Jamie Universe]

38 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I'm kind of having a problem believing that reality is two-dimensional shapes and colors only.  That's a big claim to me.  Maybe I haven't done enough empirical investigation into the issue.  But, I definitely have a sense that sight is three-dimensional.  And this is not just a belief, it's a factual kind of determination, if that makes sense.  Does anyone want to engage me in this issue?

When we look in front of us we can in a sense see both the 2d dimensional and 3d dimensional aspect. The same way we can look at a painting and see the 3d dimensional aspect, but also the 2d dimensional aspect. When we look at the painting, we can tell that the 3d dimensional part is an illusion, we know that the painting is on this flat 2d surface. 

So if we can paint what we see, exactly as it is. We can say that what we see is also 2d dimensional, that we're in a sense always looking at a painting. So you could conclude that we're always looking at 2d, and that 3d dimensional is just an illusion.

But you should also consider that 3 dimensional exists, meaning this concept that something can have 3 dimensions can exist. And it so happens that your brain computes what's happening in front of you as 3 dimensional. 

 

And so it sounds like your trying to figure out which one it is. 2d vs. 3d. And my take on it, is that you can (technically) see both in front of you

You can see how your direct experience is 2d (using the painting example)

And you can see how your direct experience is 3d 

 

(Less sure about this point) And your trying to plot one against the other saying "2d makes 3d" or "3d makes 2d" is a duality. Whereas the both exist simultaneously. Both are concepts, because yes there is something there, something that makes these things appear 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional. But yet you can change whether you see 2d or 3d (at least if your looking at a painting).

A painting makes 3d out of 2d (the actual canvas, then the 3d illusion)

your view makes 2d out of 3d (seeing a flat surface in your 3d world view)

 

If I were to draw any conclusions from what I just said. I would say that 3d/2d are both neither a conclusion of sight, yet they are just ways of perceiving reality (since you can choose between them), and they're might be 4d... 5d... 6d.... x Infinity.

P.S. Not 100% sure this is correct, and I also haven't had any awakening experience yet

 

[Mulky]

Nothing is 2 dimensional, you can only think about 2 dimensionality, if something was 2 dimensional, it would have no thickness whatsoever and wouldn't exist. Even the images in a magazine aren't 2 dimensional, they have to have some thickness to be visible at all.

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Contemplating this is sweetly slippery. I sense that you can bring so many angles into the discussion of our sensation of sight. 'They' put sight up there at something like 75% of your sensory field input, it's the biggie. (Until you lose your eyesight somehow, then a large part of the section in your brain that used to run your eyes dedicates itself to integrating & processing your braille input, it can't use your eyes anymore so it lends a hand to your fingertips. No pun intended 'til I realized it was punny.)

I wonder where in our discussion here lay the distinctions most folks make between 2D & 3D. I imagine my current field of vision with two good eyes open features a 3D effect. I can look at a lamp on a table, realize there's a backside to it all and see this play out in 3 dimensions as I walk around behind it to confirm this. Now, if I close one eye and do the same thing, the same impression of a backside to it is there, I can confirm this by walking around behind it.... but the whole experience is a little flatter, right? Sort of like booting around first-person in a video game, on a flat monitor. You know to scoot around behind the barrel to whack the enemy but there's no natural depth of field to it, it's implied but not experienced on anything more than a 2D surface.

Hmmm, it'all very slippery. We're in the 'wakey wakey' part of the forum here.

If it's interesting and fun to get all curious & definitive about the features and workings of vision, are you peering down the rabbit hole or already sliding?

What are you looking at? Are you biologically 'seeing' all that big world out there, supposedly in your visual field? Photons hitting the retina and converting to electro-chemical impulses that are zipped around a bunch of different regions of the brain, all responsible for a different feature of vision and then re-assembled into an (almost) real-time movie in a little spot near the back of your skull, about an inch in from the top of your neck?

It's pretty dark in there, if you really think about it.

What the eff is really going on? (What's our context, how big-picture is our thinking regarding our sensory field?)

What are we seeing?

Is what we are experiencing in our sensory field coming into us?  Are we going out to it? 

Is it to us, or of us?

Definitely fun...

Edited January 12, 2018 by FirstglimpseOMG
grammar

[zazed]

Do you need to know how a movie was made, when watching a movie, to know you are not in the movie?

 

On 1/12/2018 at 5:42 AM, Joseph Maynor said:

But, I definitely have a sense that sight is three-dimensional.  And this is not just a belief, it's a factual kind of determination, if that makes sense.  Does anyone want to engage me in this issue?

Sure, i'll engage. It is best to do some self inquiry on it, to be able to experience the mind as a separate world.You already assume that you are seeing a real thing and not only yourself, or perhaps dreaming. How can you prove that the world you see, does not only exist as a part of you? Everything you use to prove there is such a thing as seeing, uses what appears to be seen to prove this. 

You think you are talking about sight as having a sense of  being 3d, but it is not sight at all. This is your mind world, the reflection you constructed. This 3d world exists for you alone, as a part of you. And yes, your sense is right, it is 3d. It is 3.5d even, because you have even a sense of the inside of certain objects and much more. Look at a mug from the side, do you not have a sense of the inside of it? 
And when you trip, it is the same. You are tripping inside yourself. You are not seeing an external objective reality everyone sees. But your mind world experiences another "reality" reflected there. In this case, perhaps it is more easily seen that this mind world is more than just a 3d mirror of "outside reality" created by sight. The sight is part of the illusion, it cannot be proven to exist. Perhaps it does exist, but you cannot prove this.

 

Scientifically, sight is two 2d images, offset by the distance between your eyes. Because there is distance between your eyes, the images are not exactly the same. Your brain is very powerful and from the angles and the shifts, it can construct a 3d world for you to experience. This 3d world resembles the "real" 3d world, but it is in fact a world existing only inside your mind. Even science agrees, this world exists only for you and is created by you. Watching a 3d movie, the movie is shown in 2 shifted 2d images to trick your brain in creating a 3d world for you to enjoy.

Close one eye, and the world still appears 3d, because the mind is smart and remembers the previous image.
Go drive around in your car, and close one eye while driving. Soon it is more difficult to tell how far objects are. As your brain still has size to go on, but you haven't memorized the size of all objects in the world.

All of this applies to all the senses. Every sense terminates within the mind world as a mind mirror. We experience only our mind. It would take enlightenment to go outside of the mind.

Some self inquiry you can do:

• Touch a coffee mug, and the feeling of sight and touch converge in your mind-world.
  Ask yourself: "where do I see this, where do i feel this?" Do you see it outside of yourself, or inside yourself? Where does sight happen, what is its location, does touch join sight. How and where?
• Look at your arms without moving your head. Where exactly does vision stop in your mind world? Is the sensation of your invisible shoulders really detached from the vision of your arms? 
• Smell your morning coffee while looking at it. Is smell completely separated from sight? Where is the smell, where is the sight?
• Would a bat with its sonar also have a mind world, what does sonar look like, how would sonar and smell mingle? Can you imagine this?

You should answer this for yourself. Are the senses really separated, or does it all mingle in some coherent whole, existing seperatly from the outside reality?

Non-Dual warning:

This all doesn't mean anything.  In the end, you do not even need to know. If you have this mind world, constructed by various seemingly real senses, what is knowing this mind world?
And, if there is a being, experiencing our own self mind world, does it then matter how our lower self constructed this mind world? 
Do you need to know how a movie was made, when watching a movie, to know you are not in the movie? Yes my movie character does like to know how "the movie" is made, but that's just a hobby for this guy making the movie.  The only thing that such a hobby(philosophy) is good for, is humbling the self by realizing as a self, that humanity knows very little about being in the movie. And off-course, it's a way passing the day inside the movie.

 

[zazed]

This is more or less what i was saying/talking about. But better explained. @Joseph Maynor

 

[star ark]

We evolved with 2 eyes to process a 3d world.

The line of reasoning most you use is that the facts you use to prove that nothing exists relies on the facts - that don't exist remember.

So the answer to the equation is 42 even though the numbers don't exists. Or even the concept of numbers. Everything is one. How can you feel everything is one if everything is simply one? You need 2 as a metaphor to understand what one is.

[Nahm]

The eyeball, the air, and the object are all the same. Life is pretty amazing. That there are physics is more amazing - fields that we can’t even see are magically keeping all this happening. Superposition is even more amazing, what it reveals - ?. String theory is just mind blowing. The more we look at reality the more we see how amazing it is. Realizing it was you all along is unspeakable. 

[Joseph Maynor]

I’m realizing that to say anything at all is not the Truth.  And that applies to this matter.  We wanna be making beliefs less rigid.  Why does there need to be a theoretical answer here anyway?  We’re trying to conceptualize what is.  How foolish is that?   But we’re addicted to it.  The Mind keeps egging us on and convincing us that this is possible.  Even I fell into this trap by asking this question.

Edited January 14, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[DocHoliday]

@Joseph Maynor There's definitely a differnt quality and motivation behind the questions one asks after he truly realised that nothing matters. Prior to this realisation many people still believe to "get something" out of their inquiry but once you crossed the line, all your attachments to your mind and to the questions it comes up with are non-existent anymore, they have been left aside - detached from. When you realise, profoundly, that nothing matters, it will be so utterly indifferent to you if you get your questions answered or not, because even when you get the answer, your experience of life doesn't change. The only thing that truly matters is the deconstruction and breakdown of ignorance and the boundaries of seperateness towards others - that's what will truly move you and the people around you. See, we kind of have to start to become more practical here and not dwell so much on mere theory because theory will not fundamentally be what changes the world. 

Edited January 14, 2018 by DocHoliday