perceptual preference with the East aligned to more firmly to implicit belief ... structure into which all the worlds cultural systems can find orientation, input to .... 'characterisations' for the two visual pathways, the much maligned left and right ..... faiths and am not interested in them beyond their ability to serve as examples of.
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Vision-Space: What does perceptual structure indicate with respect to cultural development, the maintenance of social orders and communication between world-views? Abstract:
The assertion is that the explicit and implicit ‘takes’ on reality and the way they are mediated by mind are central to the operations of perceptual structure and so are evidenced within the phenomenon vision. The central factors governing the underlying perceptual structure combine and extend to govern behaviours involved in cultural development and the formation of world-‐views. I don't see this relationship akin to somehow ‘balancing’ two opposed systems. The implicit and explicit can’t be reconciled as such; they are and remain, distinct as they are cascaded and mediated by mind to form experiential reality. Are the major conflictions between East and West reflections of clashes of peoples aligned to different formulations of perceived reality based on perceptual preference with the East aligned to more firmly to implicit belief systems and the West increasingly to explicit materialistic approaches and technology? In the light of the isolationism that extends from extremist world-‐views, we need to understand perceptual structure in order to understand and defuse cultural conflict. It is not enough to wait for the pendulum to swing we need to actively pursue a hands-‐on understanding of the phenomenon and issues involved. For instance, these factors are also not evidenced in our current information communication technologies. We need something of a Renaissance in twenty first century ICT’s developing architectures that do conform with perceptual structure into which all the worlds cultural systems can find orientation, input to and benefit from.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 The assertion is that the explicit and implicit ‘takes’ on reality and the way they are mediated by mind are central to the operations of perceptual structure and so are evidenced within the phenomenon vision.1 The central factors governing the underlying perceptual structure combine and extend to govern behaviours involved in cultural development and the formation of world-‐views.
I don't see this relationship akin to somehow ‘balancing’ two opposed systems. The implicit and explicit can’t be reconciled as such; they are and remain, distinct as they are cascaded and mediated by mind to form experiential reality.
1 Jupe J. 2005 (2013) PAC (ERA) Replicating the Underlying Structure to our Presentations of Vision in Images, www.pacentre.org
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The structure of the phenomenon of vision involves processes of dynamic juxtaposition achieved by a complex system of composition and modulation so an image advancing ‘balance’ is not really using the right metaphor. Vision is a controlled hallucination involving conflicting ‘takes’ on reality from which we derive experiential reality. This is what’s involved in an act of observation. It’s also what’s involved in an act of objectivity.2 We cannot assume 3rd party objectivity remote from our perception of it.
2 Jupe J. 2014 PAC (ERA) The Ontology of the Experiential: What’s involved in an act of objectivity? www.pacentre.org
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If this is the case then perceptual preference involving the three factors (implicit, explicit & mind) both scales and builds predetermining the way we communicate, develop our social systems and interact through them. The specifics of the core arrangements stabilise to found our cultural and value judgements. The arrangements define our sense of individuality, cultural identity and allegiances forming our cultural pallet. While these factors turned forces, tend to build and deepen they must to some extent also react and evolve as external influences are encountered.
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In previous Vision-‐Space presentations I have attempted to consider what the implication would be for our perception of reality if we possessed an atypical perceptual structure.
Vision-Space: Health implications of non-perceptually structured content and screen technology http://youtu.be/6gizIuLL9mg Vision-Space: Typical and atypical perceptual structures Potential links to ASD and stroke related conditions http://youtu.be/Pss3UOoiuyQ
Situations were a significant and prolonged deprivation; say a particular sensory input at a critical stage of neurological development, lead to permanent disruption to a key neural pathway. This set of circumstances would intuitively appear to be linked to ASD related conditions? This has yet to be verified. If as Vision-‐Space suggests the modulation of data-‐potentials forming independent explicit and implicit ‘takes’ on reality need to be successfully modulated by mind in order for us to be objective, relate to others and so communicate, then we can consider that atypical perceptual structures are likely to lead to very different formulations of reality that will subsequently govern behaviours and hence world views.
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Could typical perceptual systems conforming to normal parameters also become aligned or biased towards one or the other ‘takes’ on reality, implicit or explicit and subsequently build systems and cultures reflecting that dominance? Could this be the leading constraint with respect to cultural development where entire peoples or nations become enmeshed and so identifiable as distinct cultures? Are the major conflictions between East and West reflections of clashes of peoples aligned to different formulations of perceived reality based on perceptual preference with the East aligned to more firmly to implicit belief systems and the West increasingly to explicit materialistic approaches and technology? If as Vision-‐Space suggests there are essentially three powerhouses involved in the operations of perceptual structure involving the two visual pathways each with their distinctive computational process and mind reliant on their input, then mind can self-‐organise along different lines. Does mind constantly and consistently mediate the two ‘takes’ on reality or does it listen to one more than the other? To what extent do environmental considerations even factors such as climate help to ‘load’ the dynamics of mediation one way or the other leading to persistent bias and so bias to the development of cultures with opposing world-‐ views? Engaging with this type of extreme extrapolation from a simple combination of factors into complex cultural interplay is fraught with difficulties if not absurdities and can only at best provide us with six-‐mile high generalisations at the point of delivery. It’s important to remember that vision is diagnostic in nature and hence one way (Thanks Jan Koenderink!). If this is the case then there is little point trying to reverse engineer the specifics of visual awareness
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© Copyright PAC 2015 back to events taking place on the retina. However it may be possible to jump from generalised experiential encounter (an understanding of experiential reality) to our relationship to light to better inform our approach to measurement and so to our understanding of retinal function and the processing taking place within the visual pathways. The proposition is that this understanding would scale, the same would be true of cultural formations and the decisions that individuals make with respect to international relations. What can be considered to be vague, contradictory if not simplistic at the high level can be traced back to fundamental physiology, namely the ‘what’ and ‘where’ ‘characterisations’ for the two visual pathways, the much maligned left and right hemisphere relationship together with the required overseer ‘mind’ controlling their mediation. If Vision-‐Space theory is correct3, we need to look very closely at the onset of light to our brain tissue as biological systems and then to the neural processing leading to the self-‐organisation of mind in a effort to understand how to become aware of what currently remains a ‘covert’ neural processing system. The implicit aspect of neural processing is covert precisely because the explicit approach to reality adopted by science is neither involved in its formation nor encounters it. This lies outside G. Bateson’s notion of ‘information’ and positions information as that which takes place between a receiver and a sender sharing a common code. If we truly wish to understand the nature of ‘experiential reality’ and ‘perceptual structure’ then we can’t escape the requirement to face and deal with the experiential first hand free from assumptions about the nature of information. Vision-‐Space theory suggests that the implicit form of spatial awareness is not just a ‘difference’ to be realised but also the ‘realisation’ of a difference. Implicit spatial awareness is a manifestation and we together with our biology can’t be extracted from the presentation and it’s realisation, this covert data-‐potential being prior-‐to the formation of ‘information’. Only with this ‘in hand’ can we hope to understand how to go about making observations and generating information that’s truly and fully meaningful. So actually, we need to undertake more subjective evaluation to understand how to direct investigation, not less for fear of falling foul of some ‘clarity’ threshold required to make a start. The requirement to ‘generalise’ based on subjective evaluation in an attempt to understand our cultures is as inevitable as it is unavoidable and pertinent. I have essentially slept walked through these issues as Vision-‐Space has developed.
3 Jupe J. 2005 (2013) PAC (ERA) Having the Courage of Your Perceptions, www.pacentre.org
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After years of education I finally went back to the beginning to start again! 1986
Beyond throwing out everything I had been taught and starting free from learned prejudice I have not been ‘in control’ of this process. Development has been essentially ‘hands free’. It’s not the result of premeditated intention and as far as I am aware is independent of any ‘belief’ structure. I can declayer myself to be essentially humanist or atheist having been exposed to organised religion at school. What a performance! Vision-‐Space attempts to model visual awareness ensuring that it addresses experiential reality and our perceptual structure as biological systems over notions of optical projection and intervention from the supernatural. It’s by carefully looking at the nature of experiential reality that I have become ‘attuned’ if that is the right word, to the influences that govern its formation and attributes. As my all too slow and cumbersome development as an artist took place I ‘posted’ some of the concurrent world events and which ‘penetrated’ this rather inward looking activity. I was quite ‘unaware’ of just why it was ‘necessary’ to consider them alongside the activities I was focused on. At the time they were just ‘context’.
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Natural Causes? (Pol Pot, dies 1998 of natural causes in Cambodia? A man ‘responsible’ for 2m+ of his fellow countrymen’s lives and for impoverishing his country? Can we understand this as an attempt to impose a purely ‘implicit’ system? Was this a natural phenomenon?
Chaos and Night? (Tiananmen Square 1989, an implicit system moves to stamp out a call for a more democratic house. The system has since tried to adapt and permit activities that admit of a more explicit approach to the economy to dramatic effect. Can the duality be controlled? )
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Russia? (1991 Former USSR dissolves through economic crisis to end the cold war it could no longer afford to sustain? The explicit stand off was maintained through the cold war to an orderly stand down – will the positions re-‐form when funds become available to finance the opposition? May-‐be we won’t be so lucky next time?)
Relief flight? (Somalia + Kosovo 1990’s. What’s in play here? How to respond to these very different situations? What explicit action to take?)
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Relief flight? (Somalia + + Kosovo 1990’s. What’s in play here? How to intervene?)
Do this in remembrance of me? (Srebrenica 1995: The former Yugoslavia, Bosnian War. Christian right wing nationalists organise the round up and massacre of Muslim’s from the community, a process termed ‘ethnic cleansing’. Concentration camps back in Europe.
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Crossing the Line? (Syria 2013: Authoritarian regime gasses it’s own population in brutal civil war as the world watched, handcuffed as a consequence of action taken in Iraq and amid clashes of ‘national interests’?) If anyone is interested as to why there is a 10-‐13 year gap in painting production, it’s because I had to sacrifice the studio to write the patents, have these analysed, raise the required seed investment and form the companies to oversee the creation of the first perceptual technology: Vision-‐Space.4
I just could not get my head around the thought processes that generated the extreme situations that were taking place. At a conscious level I considered the linkage to be simply references to inexplicable events that occurred ‘in my time’. Their inclusion also proffered some relief from the confines of my main preoccupations that were frankly pictorially rather feeble given what I had turned my back upon. These subjects allowed me the chance to deploy some of those former paradigm picture-‐space techniques to save my blushes! As Vision-‐ Space has matured into a viable system (a new form of illusionary space) it has become possible to stand back from the entire enterprise including the ‘news items’. I can start to form a rather different view of their contribution and significance. It wasn’t random; there was a genuine linkage that I just couldn’t address at the time. These subjects were examples of situations where the dynamic interrelations between the explicit and implicit ‘takes’ on reality had for one reason or another broken down. They may not relate well pictorially but do so on another level. 4 The Vision-‐Space patents are now ‘lapsed’ as the UK certainly does not possess the cultural strength to
develop paradigm-‐shifting technology. There’s absolutely no ‘appetite’ for taking on such scale hence no investment models or relevant business skills/experience. The West is a culture reliant on the ‘explicit’ and wedded to 2D pictures, detail and conventional 3D (stereo fusion) and consequently has little interests in developing an ‘implicit’ rendering system.
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Vase and Screen 2009. If the painting is viewed in a large mirror the depicted scene becomes experientially spatially salient (akin to traditional 3D in spatial effect without the need for visual aids).
So with Vision-‐Space articulated in paintings and through postprocess software5 this paper is a first attempt at a 180 degree about face to fearlessly if not recklessly point the beam ahead. I am encouraged in this pursuit by others such as Iain McGilchrist who’s book The Master & his Emissary,6 a thorough, honest and comprehensive look these issues, puts the case for the West’s overreliance on the explicit ‘take’ on reality and the possible longer-‐term consequences if unchecked. The derivation of the perceived ‘imbalance’ is taken back to ancient Greece where the integrated approach of Heraclitus is replaced by the segregation initiated by Plato. This separation of the absolute form the eternal, which can be known by logos (reason), from the purely phenomenological, which is now seen as inferior, leaves an indelible stamp on the history of Western philosophy for the subsequent two thousand years. Iain McGilchrist (Ch 8 The ancient world) The view is taken that the West has become over dependent on its technologies that are the result of close liaison between mind and the explicit take on reality, a relationship that is now running out of control with positive feedback having a seriously detrimental cultural effect. In his view the situation requires ‘re-‐ balancing’ with the window of opportunity closing. 5 Open source code is available on request. 6 It was a relief to pick up this book when published, as I realized that I was not going to have to
make the case myself! Something I would no doubt have made a totally unconvincing hash of!
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Left hemisphere: dependent on denotative language and abstraction, yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualised, explicit, disembodied, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless. The right hemisphere: yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, always imperfectly known. Iain McGilchrist (Ch 4 The Nature of the two worlds)
While it’s impossible not to identify with the encyclopaedic tableau envisaged by McGilchrist his approach, as a neuropsychologist is necessarily that of an observer looking in. He is not engaged in the investigation of the experiential first hand as is the artist and so is unable to envisage a pro-‐active way out of the current situation. The suggestion is that we must await the ‘rebalancing’ over a significant time scale and take the consequences. Vision-‐Space identifies that it’s possible to conceive of ‘perceptual technologies’ that actively address the stated deficiencies inherent in the prevailing development paradigm. We can overcome the positive feedback loop if we can grasp the fundamentals of perceptual structure. Note that I envisage the situation as a deficiency in our conceptual understanding of the nature of reality. What’s required are technologies that incorporate a working understanding of the dynamic mediation of both the explicit and implicit by mind. The current deficiency is manifest in all our current technologies that in turn generate stimuli devoid of the ‘implicit take on reality’ and which tend towards encouraging our further isolation from a core element of experiential reality. The ‘implicit’ processes are still functioning at a neurological level in all of us as we encounter the real environment and we should set about identifying the factors involved in order to manifest and deploy a new paradigm in data handling and information display. This active process is different from waiting for a pendulum to swing to re-‐balance the equation; we need to set out in pursuit of an understanding of perceptual structure. We need to take control. In order to bring this about we have to understand more about the computational systems involved in the generation of perceptual structure and why they’re there, both in terms of the attributes they afford us and what this tells us about the way we are embedded within the universe as biological systems. Much of the background to this is dealt with in previous Vision-‐Space articles and presentations,7 so let’s consider the possible implications of typical perceptual systems exhibiting dominance for either an explicit or implicit ‘take’ on reality lining up to face one another. Does this lead to incomprehensible scenarios and power struggles amid feelings of vulnerability, betrayal and disbelief leading to a lack of trust and naked unreserved aggression? Is the result 7 List of online presentations and articles for download from: www.pacentre.org
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© Copyright PAC 2015 barbaric behaviour justified in terms of the preservation of honour, cultural identity, national destiny and the presumed ‘right’ to prevail irrespective of consequence? To contemplate this and how to avoid such confrontation we need to be capable of considerable degrees of empathy, an order of empathy beyond that which our perceptual system readily generates within a dominant core arrangement, the deployment of empathy that transcends the system in which we reside. Of course we also have to set aside hatreds however ingrained. I think this becomes relatively easy once the artificial ceiling posited by the dominance between mind and an individual ‘take’ on reality is seen for what it is; a natural phenomenon with a natural cause. The difference becomes explainable, understandable. In short, we are required to understand the current scenario within one’s own culture alongside a tacit requirement for redress and attainment at home in order to progress. Once that is in place then it becomes possible to empathise with a culture requiring the same type of adjustment but involving different factors. Why is this not an insurmountable problem? Because each culture ‘requires’ the attainment of dynamic integration within their core arrangement in order to continue to survive and thrive, so the ‘solution’ to each culture’s shortcomings actually lies in the attributes developed within the opposing culture. We have to learn how assist each other to undertake this process. Vision-‐Space fully recognises this scenario as it plays out in the mechanics of perceptual structure and in the formation of experiential reality. What’s missing from western technology is awareness and knowledge of the implicit and how to apply that in order to make use of it, or in other words realise its potential. In the West we have lost contact with our ability to contextualise our world-‐view in relation to our ‘explicit’ activity that’s now to a great extent prescribed by our technology. To attain fully immersive technologies however, we are going to have to understand the ‘implicit’ and what’s actually involved in an act of observation. Engineered solutions for information display based on just the explicit are not going to cut it. Saliency is not a matter of increasing resolution or bandwidth, neither is it a conventional 3D issue! Our systems simply can’t detect or handle this elusive ‘implicit reality’. Where is it? In contrast what’s missing in some Eastern social and belief structures and so inhibiting their development is an ability to make the most of their resources and control the situation without resorting to suppression. This will involve involvement with other cultures and systems that appear alien. The (natural) fear being that any explicit control diminishes the cultural or religious bedrock (belief system) on which the implicit system is founded. The implicit system has to acknowledge other implicit and explicit systems and develop mechanisms of working with them, this is culturally challenging. It’s the fear of a cultural take-‐over by the explicit through trade, culture and technology that’s driving hatred of the West and we in the West just can’t understand the problem because we can’t ‘see’ or ‘quantify’ the threat we pose. After all, our technology works, our people seem broadly happy with the system they live within that creates it. What need for the implicit?
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© Copyright PAC 2015 Some neuroscientists see the right brain as essentially pointless as it can’t detect its contribution with technology developed by the explicit mind-‐set. The right hemisphere appears to be for the most part silent, unnecessary, however psychologists encounter it! At an international communication level this develops into being more than a situation to be overcome by more ‘open trade’! The mechanisms underpinning global trade are themselves perceived to favour the West as they were forged and remain managed by explicit processes and technologies. Unrestricted trade, without adaptation, will be seen as a cause of friction and not the route to greater understanding. In the West we have to acknowledge that the operations of our systems imposed on a global basis, are heavily biased by our explicit cultural take on reality and are in need of review. Otherwise trade and offers of assistance, military or otherwise, will be perceived, manipulated and presented within implicit social systems as invasion by proxy and by stealth in pursuit of cultural dominance. We all need to understand the mix of the core factors that underpin our own cultures in order that we can appreciate the inherent strengths, preferences and shortcomings of our respective systems. Then we can contextualise other cultures as being simply the result of the same biological systems controlled by a shared perceptual structure generating different cultural expressions deserving of and requiring respect and understanding. Each culture actually possesses what the other needs to maintain a healthy outlook on the world, ensure its diversity and it’s ability to develop a functional multicultural environment. This self-‐knowledge will enrich world culture. In the process the anxieties that feed the tensions at the political and religious level should ease. This is more than a win-‐win situation. We must affect this.
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Escape to Eilat? 2001
I was privileged enough to take two holiday’s in Eilat, Israel when my children were young in order to escape the worst of the English winter (to those who have no notion of ‘dull and dreary’, that was a luxury!). Apart from the obvious benefits of being a tourist on holiday I was also curious to experience the situation on the ground in this troubled environment. Eilat, situated at the head of the Red Sea on narrow strip of land extending up into Israel is a stupendously beautiful place. From Eilat you can see Egypt, Saudi and Jordon. The settlements around Eilat were at the time low rise, calm, demure and appeared to form part of the landscape. They ‘presented’ as natural extensions of the environment. This ‘belonging’ only comes with the centuries and the development of a culture in sympathy with its surroundings. In contrast Eilat was being developed at a fearsome rate into a serious Western, if not American style holiday resort. Putting aside the emotive history of nation building and land acquisition for a moment, there was a clear clash of cultures and while we had an unforgettable time, I have to say I felt uncomfortable and part of an unsympathetic intrusion into the landscape and possibly to the lives of those nearby. I doubt that ‘an impact assessment’ was made taking into account the interests of neighbouring settlements! I realises this is a trivial example, what’s evoked here is a situation that exists with development projects the world over, but these generally occur within stable national boundaries or with close neighbours that share deep cultural references. With planning and dialogue it’s possible the mediate the situation.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 In the broader context of Israel and Palestine, if we consider the pioneering spirit of America as a ‘young’ country and the way it has asserted itself over it’s landscape (think Miami and Houston!) and then consider the linkages with a ‘young’ Israel asserting its newly acquired territorial rights and developing economy within an area that had been under dual cultural occupancy for centuries, it’s a situation that without very careful choreography with respect to the interests involved at the outset would be bound to develop into straightforward hostility? A hostility that once entrenched had any number of potential avenues to feed itself. As we know, largely due to the pressures prevailing at the time, there was effectively zero choreography and consequently maximum affront visited upon the Palestinian interest that had little option but to formulate some sort of oposition in light of the betrayal. In the most general terms the implicit system and culture sees self as interconnected with everything else. It’s inclusive of everything that’s appreciated to be part of the system, extending across the system. If something isn’t aligned, the system struggles to comprehend it, indeed all ‘else’ is alien by definition and categorised together as extraneous, for example –infidel, barbarian, out side the set. Peripheral vision detects anomalies. In general all organised world religions and national identities fall into the ‘implicit’ category. There can be little surprise then that they struggle to contextualise one another. Whose God is it anyway? In contrast the explicit system encounters the world in fragments, boundaries and in detail that together build a picture. The explicit mind-‐set looks to apportion land and demark national boundaries. The approach handles decontextualized quantities one at a time and then looks for a relationship. Performing this explicit deed over land with dual imbedded and interwoven implicit cultural occupancy in clear favour of one interest group to leave the other to fight for its existence was beyond inappropriate. As we know the situation at the time at the end of the Second World War generated the conditions under which the fateful decisions were taken in order to try to alleviate the Jewish question where hands were forced in part by Jewish terrorism. This set up an enduring situation where the cultures operating under a secular and explicit take on reality were and are still seen to be responsible for an injustice visited upon an implicit culture that must then look to its interests through its strengths. There are then those that look for power through protraction and intensification exploiting the situation at the cost of those they represent. Integrated coexistence within one nation based on a mediated scenario in line with perceptual structure and mutual respect for each others belief systems that are of course related, is just a dream until the peoples decide that they have had enough and draw fixation for themselves. Take control and stop being re-‐presented by those determined to exclude or subjugate. I choose the Islamic faith for obvious reasons as representative of an implicit system where a religion aspires to control politics, economics and social order as a theocracy and where some are looking to enforce this on a global basis. Judaism is not much different in outlook but has different coping mechanisms
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© Copyright PAC 2015 and lacks the global domination aspiration. I know next to nothing about these faiths and am not interested in them beyond their ability to serve as examples of eastern implicit systems with embedded extremist elements adhering to the notion of theocracy. I claim no in-‐depth understanding of the religions and deal with the issues at the six-‐mile high altitude where the characterisations of implicit and explicit can perhaps hold some meaning. At the six-‐mile high altitude the grain is not even high enough to delineate the various denominations of the Christian or Jewish religions! So in contrast to the extremist Islamic contingent the Christian church (another implicit structure), can be characterised as playing a more conciliatory role in most Western societies where politics and economics dominate in secular states with liberal social values amid multicultural aspirations including millions of Muslims and Jews. Here implicit belief structures are managed within a national context so we can assume that a degree of ‘mediation’ between the explicit and implicit is enacted. So there are serious question marks as how a theocracy could participate within a multicultural society as all other structures within that society would remain outside the set, outside its collective ‘reality’. A blasphemy within a theocracy can be delineated as punishable by death and that law enacted. But that law does not hold for a territory or just its system, it’s considered ‘reality’ justified by God and extending across the universe! Salman Rushdie has been a victim of this nonsense. A theocracy as with a dictatorship evokes divine right or absolute right and by definition can’t acknowledge secular controls or freedom of speech as they negate its core beliefs and so its very existence.
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So the belief umbrella of a theocracy is extended to all who declayer themselves members or for our purposes here ‘Islamic’, wherever they are in the world. The system crosses national boundaries and continents where allegiance is to faith first. The mantra implies that any action that’s deemed to be a threat or an attack on a Muslim constitutes an attack on all Muslims and the system to which they form a part. This is obviously more than a statement of solidarity it forms a significant element of the belief structure, its membership appeal and hence its strength. It’s also the mechanism through which those wishing to impose a global theocracy are exploiting the Islamic faith and faithful. A very great deal of power resides at the centre of such a structure that’s essentially non-‐accountable to secular authority and will resist its imposition with a membership that spans the globe and is unaware of the conceit. Within the structure, as long as actions and deeds can be ‘aligned’ with the general structural tenets of the religion there is an implicit freedom to operate. Once taped, just one charismatic individual considered to embody its essence could control considerable segments of populations remotely presenting an attractive target and prize for the power crazed? It’s the calculated summoning up of this mass conditioning, usually by taking control of an existing system and using it parasitically by inadequate and misguided people that needs to be understood, controlled and where possible the abuse prevented from seeding.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 Hitler was of course a trained artist …as am I! Accessed by an individual, the ‘implicit’ is usually used creatively and positively in the celebration of life. In the euphoria associated with nationalism and religion individuals en-‐mass abdicate their personal responsibility to critically assess situations for themselves in favour of the vision supplied by the centre. They become ‘bound’ to the system, which is more than being ‘supportive’ the system becomes them as they are of the system. I guess it's a great relief to be a member? No need to fixate and draw focus, no need to mediate just follow, the explicit having been taken care of. Inherent in most implicit structures is the potential to set up subsidiary centres within the system as long as the basics tenets are adhered to. Not difficult in the case of religions once a few ‘golden rules’ in obscuration are mastered. Once established the centre is essentially powerless to act upon these sub-‐sets as they become indistinguishable from the system, to the system. The structure is self-‐ similar. Once established these new centres can grow in influence with their activities accepted as being a product ‘of the system’ and so the system naturally ‘works’ to defend or justify their actions.
Consequently, there is little in the way of ‘a process’ to deal with extremism from within the operational structure of an implicit system, a situation that opens it up to exploitation. As a consequence the implicit system is almost incapable of determining and facing down aspects that need internal redress as such action would imply that the very system to which all belong is in need of redress. In the case of the Islamic faith, it is? This is not intended to be, and is not an anti Islamic
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© Copyright PAC 2015 statement, it's a valid observation about he nature of ‘implicit’ structures and hence the rationale of theocracies. It’s something that all implicit systems should be aware of from belief systems to nationalist organisations. Condemnation of the actions of embedded individuals performing acts of terrorism or racism is not good enough unless reform is embarked upon within the system to isolate and so prevent the source of the abuse for the future. The implicit system by itself is not sufficient. It is not a stand in for ‘reality’.
The proposition here is that the holistic nature of an implicit system mirrors the holistic right brain take on reality so is entirely natural. If Vision-‐Space theory is correct it mirrors the nature of the field structure that plays out as contextual vision (known under the term ‘peripheral’ vision). We have to assume that these processes are ubiquitous in sensory perception, sensory integration and probably other mental systems including memory. It’s likely that they are Bayesian in a nature. The associated neural processing may be ‘covert’ but its contribution to experiential reality is very real. Attention in peripheral vision is holistic; the entire structure forms a web alert to vibrations or anomalies and is attended too as one structure. Within the phenomenon of vision, the field structure of peripheral vision detects unidentified encroachment; the situation is then handed over to the explicit system through a saccade where the threat is properly identified through fixation and decontextualised. A detailed analysis is then swiftly carried out with appropriate action taken.
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A heavily implicit system lacks and actively opposes the explicit toolset required to perform the necessary task driven actions to address its internal situation. It’s powerless to clean up its act. A form of paralysis sets in where ideological and cultural reform appears to be required to take even a simple step that would be deemed ‘obvious’ and acted upon almost instantaneously by an explicit system. In this context we can perhaps understand that the very last thing that can be countenanced is the West suggesting or providing the ‘explicit’ guidance required to distinguish irregular activity from the legitimate as it’s the West’s explicit fragmentary take on reality that’s identified by the implicit as alien and posing a threat? In contrast, the explicit system can’t begin to consider what could be wrong with defining more and more detail, establishing greater clarification, the removal of unwanted ‘noise’ that serves no purpose, the elimination of the distraction. It would fail to pick up encroachment from within the contextual environment and understand the related signals as it attends in detail, or focuses on its designated task. There is little in the way of contextual spatial awareness as the implicit web or field structure is not wired to conscious awareness. It’s been discarded or is ignored in order to freely pursue its explicit goals. Multiculturalism within an educated community with a sound legal framework must be manageable? Because the system rigorously looks at the detail in everything it can’t be missing anything significant, can it? The explicit mind-‐set refuses to even countenance the possibility that it’s actually operating partially blind. The same is true of the implicit system.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 This is of course not to say that the implicit take on reality is not operational in everyone’s experiential encounters, it’s just that the linkage is not being made between experiential awareness and our conceptual systems. The implicit is not actively involved in the formation of strategy or the planning of actions or attended to in the design of technology. Such suppression actually leads to gross inefficiency just as processing events in a linear fashion quickly leads to information overload. The solution is sought in terms of ‘in house’ efficiencies, working faster or for less. The West’s behaviour towards cultures centred in the implicit is often autistic in nature. The explicit is heavily task and delivery orientated so obstacles to its on-‐ going activity defined as ‘progress,’ must be resisted or countermanded if the economic benefits the explicit engine clearly provides are to continue to manifest. Control of the system is achieved by controlling the apparatus and systems the people use to deliver product. The imposition of our ‘enlightenment’ to an implicit system is considered disrespectful. Note the ‘personalisation’ of the impersonal. 1. The terrorist act was initiated in the implicit system that feels culturally threatened by the imposition of explicit systems and technologies from which there appears to be no escape. To the explicit systems the attack comes out of nowhere without warning or justification. So as the smart bomb takes out the individuals deemed to ‘be responsible’ for the terrorist act, the implicit social order responds with sorrow for the ‘Martyr’ of Islam and incomprehension with respect to a culture that thinks that the solution to its problems lies in harming the Islamic world-‐ view and belief system. It’s obvious to those within the system that another will take his place. The West would need to kill everyone one by one, with these remotely controlled smart bombs to defeat the system? 2. In the same way, as the explicit system experiences resistance to its commercial operations supported by its political apparatus it observes the brutal beheading of Western individuals as a tragedy for the family concerned and evidence of barbaric behaviour on behalf of individuals mislead by their culture or a perversion of their culture. It’s bewildered that those concerned are still maintained within the Islamic faith and appear to receive its tacit protection. Why don’t they take action to prevent this horror exacted against a system that brings advancement to so many? The West looks on in amazement as these pointless and horrific acts are performed, as they clearly don’t touch the explicit systems they were designed to harm. They only heap shame on a world religion. Each position is incomprehensible to the other unless we consider the perceptual roots that gave rise to the systems and how each is inherent in the other. However extreme the apparent dislocation is between the views acted out, the proposition is that they have evolved from very small differences in the arrangements of the core elements of a self-‐organising perceptual structure. In
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© Copyright PAC 2015 the absence of an effective collective mediator at the level of cultural interplay to match the role that ‘mind’ plays in sensory perception, one take on reality squares up to the other. We are doing all this to ourselves, how stupid is that? We simply don't have enough of an overview to deal with and manage the situations that arise naturally in our house and then play out across the globe.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 Infidel? Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-‐Baghdadi summons up the implicit? The implicit can be harnessed to the flip-‐side of the creative act: unrestricted destruction. The puppet masters mistakenly believe that they are both justified and in control – Their power is delusional, a vanity, as the implicit can’t be controlled once set free? The ‘subject matter’ in the panels forming the triptych is to be found as much in the context as it is located at the focus of attention. The context is not pictorial infill.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 Multicultural states cannot be ‘tyrant’ or ‘theocracy’ friendly on an internal basis. Those resident in multicultural states and belonging to faith systems that are sympathetic to these conditions will need to adjust and accept that faith is secondary to the state and that their belief system forms only part of a tapestry. Voting, practicing their religion and holding a passport should be conditional on acceptance of some basic tenets. Immigration should be subject to the relevant education being in place to culminate in complicity. There is little point in setting out to ‘fight terror’ instigated from within a belief system such as Islam without addressing these issues at home first. There has to be more to being a citizen of a multicultural society than being present within it. World religions do not have a right to deference and the Muslim faith is just one of many. Religions have the right to try to contribute to make multicultural states better places to live in pursuit of their agendas but those agendas are not separate from the state in which they are resident. There is no implicit God given right to be apart of a multicultural secular society. It's a privilege that can and should be withdrawn from any organisation or individual that finds itself unable to support and contribute on that basis. It's the structures in the form of organised religion, put around the implicit that sets up the potential for conflict between systems. Organised religions with their associated ideologies and dogmas may seek to define and control the implicit but they are actually incompatible with one another. As long as that is understood then it becomes eminently possible to practice a religion without fanaticism and so exclusion. Multicultural societies should be quite unequivocal and look to enforce this level of control and acceptance over all implicit belief systems operating within them. The ‘flowering’ of Islamic State should deliver some clear indicators as this affective hijacking of a world religion has the potential to form a genuine threat to Western multicultural societies. Blasphemy is an unnecessary social faux pas to be endured and so rendered toothless. Satire is a valid tool in keeping a multicultural democratic society buoyant and it also has that capability to shine enough light upon religious structures to reveal their shortcomings and the motivations of those that command their flocks, which is of course why those attempting to subvert multicultural secular societies target their court jesters. The satirist confronts and reveals the conceit. Vision-‐Space theory suggests that we may need to think again with respect to the specifics of McGilchrist’s interpretation of the explicit, implicit and mind relationship. While the West has indeed developed a strong conscious connection with the explicit take on reality I think the major catastrophes’ of the twentieth century are actually a case of the unaccounted for and often suppressed ‘implicit’ getting out of control as opposed to the overly strong bond between the mind and the ‘explicit’ take on reality. This is not just a change of emphasis as it suggests that instead of setting out to weaken the mind’s connection with the explicit we need to establish just what the ‘implicit’ is all
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© Copyright PAC 2015 about and reengage with it in a positive controlled manner in line with the operations of perceptual structure. What are the computational processes involved in the formation of the implicit take on reality and so what is it are we missing from our considerations about the nature of reality? We routinely fail to understand the processes associated with the ‘implicit’ and so they remain subconscious, ignored and essentially out of reach so out of effective control. It may well be the technologies, economic systems and weaponry of countries lined up to blow seven bells out of one another are undoubtedly the result of a strong explicit connection with mind, but it’s the lack of control over these factors that’s the problem. The lack of control reflects not just imbalance in our house it reflects a fundamental lack of perceptual understanding.
Attending the Gun -‐ A Fading Memory? Explicit verses explicit, let loose by implicit forces running out of control? The European killing fields were an entirely avoidable catastrophe with natural causes? What was the point, what was not in play at the political level that allowed it to happen, what were we blind too that imposed such an epic catastrophe?
We missed something at the start of the first world war because we failed to take proper account of a powerful contributing factor in the formation of perceptual reality, a very potent force active within our social system but without a name and not present or accounted for within our explicit approach to international relations. The implicit take on reality in the form of nationalism could take control of international relations and there was nothing in place to prevent escalation once set in motion. The detailed explicit political controls set up to deal with international relations were trumped and bypassed by irrational thinking at head-‐of-‐state level. All that was required was a near meaningless spark. This was enough to put in play the implicit forces bound up in nationalism. In failing to acknowledge the implicit, how it can be manipulated and motivated we failed to understand what was required to control and manage it’s excesses. It was also missing as the fire burnt itself out with the loss of 15-‐18 million lives (if we count disease) when punitive reparations were imposed on Germany to set up the next scenario with equally disastrous results. This time it was as if the implicit force was deliberately summoned as opposed to inadvertently let loose?
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© Copyright PAC 2015 Such simplistic reasoning would identify that it’s the ‘dark’ implicit that ultimately holds the trump cards despite what the explicit develops in isolation in the way of faith books, constitutions, treaties, and weapon systems and their controls. Push the implicit too far and not understand how to contain it and reasoned control will be lost. We need to understand when we are ‘pushing’ at this gate. This caricature runs counter too much that has been stated about the nature of the ‘implicit’. It’s generally thought of and experienced as, benign, passive, sub-‐conscious, harmless, peace loving, silent, demure, dark and right brain the acknowledged seat of creativity. Could this condition of mind become aligned to horror after sleeping like a dormant volcano? Is there a tipping point when the implicit system goes critical or becomes susceptible to exploitation? At such times or points in history it matters not what reasonable arguments are posed by the explicit system. Rational communication doesn’t just breakdown, it gets overwritten, trampled on as whole populations or segments of populations turn and stampede. If the implicit represents serenity at rest, when ‘running red’ it would also represent the single most destructive force in human nature. With the loss of control the defensive systems created by the explicit loose their deterrent value and switch almost instantaneously to being ‘offensive’ tools. When this state is reached the explicit is essentially countermanded by the implicit and the hunt rides out. With containment no longer an option we are simply engaged and enmeshed in the destruction right through to burn out. This is not really the same thing as to say the fire was quenched or extinguished, to then be termed a ‘victory’. War can be thought of as a natural event that eventually burns itself out. The question is have we learned enough about fire prevention? Remembrance in November is not enough. We need to understand this force that wells up from beneath us to ride-‐out. Remember these delineations remain just ‘characterisations’. We characterise for a reason. We accentuate in order to realise something that would otherwise remain hidden while in clear view. Only with a computational system for the implicit describing how it operates in the formation of experiential reality can methodologies be developed to deal with the related social issues and maintain the system in its benign state to contribute supportively alongside the explicit. Vision-‐Space theory suggests that the implicit unfolds from a noise function; it ‘presents’ to us so is alien to ‘re-‐presentation’ with which we are familiar. It can’t be touched or measured prior to presentation so lies beyond reach of our existing explicit tool set. We are not going to catch the implicit in the explicit net however fine the mesh. To understand the implicit we are going to have to look very closely at the nature of the presentation of sensory phenomena and at the sensory systems that receive and develop the related data-‐potentials. We know that the visual pathways are characterised with a ‘what’ and ‘where’ functionality. We also know that both pathways selectively ‘take’ from the other to assist and justify the development of their particular ‘take’ on reality. This is not the same as saying that the processing systems are communicating with each other, quite the opposite. These operations are more like raiding parties, taking
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© Copyright PAC 2015 things that are of useful to a formation and then scarpering! It’s not sabotage either, its covert operation, hacking? The pathways are entwined to this degree. At receptor level it would also appear that the implicit data-‐potential derives from the rods in the retina probably working in conjunction with other receptors, both intrinsically photoreceptive ganglion cells (ipRGC) and cones at photopic lighting levels.8 Conventionally rods are thought of as saturated at photopic levels so data transference is unlikely to be related to chemical processes measuring light intensity that we already know a good deal about. We should be looking at ambient light factors and for changes in neural coding coinciding with receptor transitions involving scoptic, mesopic and photopic lighting conditions. Within the visual pathways, we should be looking closely at dark light and the way that noise is retained and propagated through the system. A process that’s likely to use both internal (biological) and external (signal) noise events concentrating on the ‘where’ pathway strongly associated with the dorsal stream through the superior-‐colliculus and thalamic areas of the old brain (brain stem structures) and then cortical right brain activity. This work should be cross-‐ correlated with physiological conditions including ASD, stroke victims and of course with the developing academic programming architecture for Vision-‐Space and the stimuli that it produces for evaluation. In everyday circumstances our minds mediate the implicit and explicit with great dexterity to provide the necessary impression of the singular uniformity of our visual environment to assist in our daily tasks. Our cultures and social systems are not as well managed. We need to ‘learn’ how to look. Understand what’s involved in an act of observation and apply it at cultural and inter-‐cultural levels. A good starting point would be to jointly develop perceptual technologies that reflect the intricacies of perceptual structure and in who’s architectures we can all invest, learn from and deploy. We need something of a Renaissance in twenty first century ICT’s developing architectures that do conform with perceptual structure into which all the worlds cultural systems can find orientation, input to and benefit from. The critical element that’s missing from our current technologies is the implicit data-‐ set. Realising this data-‐potential is most likely to be reliant on the careful study of Eastern philosophies and cultures. A ‘collective mind-‐set’ is required to ensure that a methodology for mediation is achieved between our cultural houses. This would suggest that institutions like the United Nations operate under the wrong concept? We don't need heads-‐of-‐state posturing, what’s required are perceptually aware populations alongside a system of cultural management
8 Recent research identifies that this is not the case.
1. 2.
Tamas Szikra et al. Rods in daylight act as relay cells for cone-‐driven horizontal cell-‐ mediate surround inhibition, Nature neuroscience 2014. Cara M et al. Rod photoreceptors drive circadian photoentrainment across a wide range of light intensities, Nature neuroscience 2010.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 based on an understanding of perceptual structure and the self-‐organising nature of mind. We need the overview. This is ultimately all about how the light gets in. Take from that what you will. Vision-‐Space theory suggests that we need to understand light and how it fires up the human mind and soul and work with that understanding. Not shutter up in our respective ideologies and cultures to square up to one another on a routine basis dressed up under some notional ‘national interest’ or ‘frustrated religious ideology’. That's’ just so twentieth century! The distinctions that fuel the trouble are at source actually as inconsequential as they are natural. They now lie within our grasp to understand and manage and that’s in all our interests. We need to be empowered to get on with the production of the base toolsets, and to pursue the research and the development of perceptual technologies facilitating a truly ubiquitous, shared, creative and benign cultural buy-‐in.9 John Jupe 2015-‐01-‐18 PAC www.pacentre.org
9 As a footnote it’s perhaps understandable that in progressing the research and development of Vision-‐ Space I have had to work as an unfunded independent researcher with the smallest of budgets in the form of investment. No gallery has shown interest in showing the art work as the discipline has been entirely taken over with people illustrating their ideas enabled by their sponsors both private and public.
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© Copyright PAC 2015 Bibliography Gilchrist I. 2009 The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Yale University Press, 2009 www.pacentre.org - Jupe J. 2005 (2013) PAC (ERA) Having the Courage of Your Perceptions - Jupe J. 2005 (2013) PAC (ERA) Replicating the Underlying Structure to our Presentations of Vision in Images - Jupe J. 2014 PAC (ERA) The Ontology of the Experiential: What’s involved in an act of objectivity? Vision-Space: Online presentation list Vision Space technology: Vision Space presentation 1: The structure of monocular vision http://youtu.be/AO71a8LzZSg Vision Space Presentation 2: The incorporation of binocular stereo information http://youtu.be/xLY60lm86Mk Vision-Space: Process of information exchange within phenomenal field http://youtu.be/8hmgutPGJmQ Technology evaluation: Vision-Space: Monocular test, car demo http://youtu.be/uRR_Quu6WYA Vision Space: Embodiment demo http://youtu.be/sWZr5q1BtQ4 Vision-Space: Butterfly demo http://youtu.be/Cc00Neu2i2Y Philosophy: Vision-Space and the Experiential ontology http://youtu.be/WJVC48a__50 Visual art: The paintings and their story http://youtu.be/_Tj-r1XtWto Manifesting dark light and setting out a Vision-Space painting http://youtu.be/RJj7OdCzifM Setting out a Vision-Space painting: An up a up date http://youtu.be/HcmGkn5LMk4 Visual cues appearing within the radial structure of phenomenal field http://youtu.be/kYqsdTgI-i4 A still life painting together with mirror, mirrored http://youtu.be/F4J579YCW-8 Exploring Implicit Spatial Awareness http://youtu.be/WMh9j60ERxU Self-reference Pt 1, within spatial texture http://youtu.be/xUGOD1g3dtI Self-reference Pt 2, contributions from memory http://youtu.be/hDDoRGHaOwE Self-reference Pt 3, exploring the extents of phenomenal field http://youtu.be/SarFf6FA8Eg Self Reference Pt 4, painting phenomenal field, accessing the umwelt? http://youtu.be/g8rOhQhcl0A
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© Copyright PAC 2015 Physical theory: Having the courage of your perceptions - A physical theory http://youtu.be/NWdK8ZzuHgU Vision Space and dark matter http://youtu.be/MGZFpKDMOak
The scientific approach to understanding the nature of reality is incomplete http://youtu.be/BLFK8rd_QkQ Real-setting, decoherence, visual processing, awareness http://youtu.be/TzbyydODC1E Vision sciences: Retinal processing and the research proposition http://youtu.be/1ZMUPt6Oz_s Primary spatial awareness direct from the light array? http://youtu.be/8wUT0HGNSww Face recognition http://youtu.be/e01yFVlDOBw Mechanobiology of brain function http://youtu.be/WIHbUGeg5UY Health implications of non-perceptually structured content and screen technology http://youtu.be/6gizIuLL9mg Typical and atypical perceptual structures, potential links to ASD and stroke related conditions http://youtu.be/Pss3UOoiuyQ Some deficiencies of pictorial space with respect to the structure of phenomenal field http://youtu.be/i2a5lVz6DBE Retinal Receptor Functions http://youtu.be/XzA7zirZK7s Our self-organizing mind, 1/f noise and a possible role for ipRGC receptor functions http://youtu.be/4xpk9f8M9vo What’s in an artificial stimulus? http://youtu.be/9ryFnuFCGys
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