Negative Space And Concept Permanence

[Telepresent]

Something I've not seen/heard anyone talk about before is object permanence: the idea that we learn to conceptually understand that an object, despite being out of our sight, still exists.  We're not actually born with this - children below a certain age don't have it, and have to develop it.

Now, in purely existential terms, permanence is not true.  If you look at a cup then look away, as far as your direct conscious-experience goes, the cup does not exist any more.  Look back, there it is again.  Same cup?  I'll leave that debate alone for now.  Suffice it to say that a concept of object permanence is crucial to our navigation of existence.  But, ultimately, it's a concept.  Just another concept: an idea, a story in the mind.

Now, let's turn inwards for a moment.  There are two areas this seems to relate to: patterns found in the 'negative space' of reality, and the permanence of the sense of self.

First, the negative space of reality.  Much of what we 'know' is in fact an inference we are generating from a few points of data.  Much like the optical illusions where you see a shape that doesn't 'actually' exist, the majority of our understanding of the world is formed from shapes we're interpreting from the 'negative space' of life.  We get a few data points, and infer the rest (often calling upon prior experience) - which is how two people can interpret the same circumstance extremely differently.  However, there seems to be a parallel to object permanence here - something we might call 'concept permanence': that once a particular pattern has been identified, it is EXTREMELY difficult to shake, and often becomes set in the mind as 'true', rather than an interpretation of negative space.  We often then find further patterns to reinforce it.  This seems to be particularly true of patterns relating to one's self-identity: a belief in the concept permanence that nobody likes you, for example, will lead to identification of negative space patterns 'proving' that belief.  Other patterns may potentially have been seen, but the permanent concept of your unlikability DEFINED what pattern you saw.

The idea of concept permanence is at its strongest when it relates to the sense of a permanent self.  It's a lot like looking at the cup: you look away, look back, and it's the 'same' cup.  I-thoughts appear to be the same.  We move from one thought calling itself 'I', to another, to another, to another, and make the foundational assumption that they are all the same thing, coming from the same source.  A permanent I.  Concept permanence.

But where's the evidence for this?  Isn't the I contradictory?  Doesn't it believe multiple, irreconcilable things at the same time?  Doesn't it want one thing one moment, and another the next?  Perhaps it's not that there is a constant I at all, but that our propensity to conceptualise permanence is pulling off a hell of a trick...

This is still an area I am exploring, but it's proving very interesting to question what patterns are being inferred from negative space, and particularly to question the apparent permanence of the conceptual I.  All thoughts, reactions, responses etc. welcomed and valued!