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(http://media.tumblr.com/1b0c2996555b2354a47a5ba0457634db/tumblr_inline_mlsfnkg5Pz1qz4rgp.jpg) I was watching the Brain Games show last week and noticed that whenever peripheral vision is explained, an image which is focused in the center and blurred at the periphery is used. The curious part though is that that isn't really what peripheral vision looks like. While it is true that I can't resolve details or count objects in my peripheral vision, it is not because it is blurry. Indeed, it is not difficult to count the blurry blobs in the image above, and no matter how I play with comparing these kinds of images, it is always easy to tell which is blurred and which is not even in far peripheral vision. The blurry blobs, for instance, do not get blurrier in peripheral range, they just get 'less available' to my awareness. This is significant as it marks a testable difference between visual experience and optical data. I don't think that the experience of peripheral vision can be reproduced objectively. As long as you can look at something directly, even if it is blurred, you have a kind of command over the image which is elusive in the periphery. If you stare at a point on the wall and watch TV with your peripheral vision, you will notice that you can watch it and recognize what is going on, but it has a dream-like quality, similar to trying to make out a shape being drawn with a finger on your back. The data is not absent, not blurry or obscured in any literal way, but it is more like we cannot remember what we see is supposed to look like. I think that this is a different kind of information entropy than we see in a Turing emulation. It suggests a clear distinction between computationally interpreted formations and informed subjective experiences. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
