A Creative Genius for Vision Visual Intelligence Donald D. Hoffman Chapter One

The Genius of Vision Everything you see, you construct Our visual prowess is a genius that often goes unrecognized Yet, we construct scenes that contradict reality Is our vision or our hand erroneous? Can there be elements in the picture causing the problem?

More Evidence The “Magic Square” Brighter inside is a vision or photometer error? Ironically, the boundary increase makes the construction of the square difficult

More Evidence The Devil’s Triangle Vision can do more than fabricate a structure, as it goes against reality We build a triangle, even though this could be a structure photographed at a specific angle The Devil’s Triangle

“What you see” There are elegant principles being applied when constructing an image Phenomenal sense – The way things appear to us, objects we construct regardless of reality constraints Relational sense – what you interact with when you see, things must exist to be seen The phenomenal sense applies to our “visual genius” Visual experiences serve as user-friendly computer icon interface with those things we relationally see

Vision Comes Naturally Unlike the ability to walk or talk, humans can see upon birth It is also an ability that we share with animals alike Gold fish have four color receptors Honeybees see ultraviolet light Is our vision the correct vision?

A Child’s Visual Development One month – infants blink if something moves toward their eyes 3 months – infants use visual motion to construct boundaries of objects 4 months – use motion and stereovision to construct 3D shapes of objects 7 months – use shading, perspective, and interposition to construct depth and shape One year – visual geniuses that begin to learn the name of objects

Visual Construction in Nature Blackbird Nestlings For some species, their visual construction displays less genius But no different than humans, this leaves room for visual errors

Visual Construction in Nature View of Chickens and Ducks The Common Toad

Brief History Ptolemy (2nd century AD) – recognized in Optics is a dictate of logic Alhazen (965-1039) – visual properties due to unconscious inference Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) – visual inferences came God

A Brief History Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) – described vision as a process of unconscious inference David Marr (1946-1981) – compared visual construction to information processing in computers Ernst Hans Gombrich(1909) – unconscious and automatic processes are “projections”, while those that are more labored for are “inference” or “knowledge”

Fundamental Problem of Vision The image at the eye has countless interpretations How can we know that we all see the same thing? Innate rules which grant visual mastery and lead to consensus in the visual constructions despite ambiguity Everyone constructs the same vision (with or without the same interpretation) The rules, which work quickly and effectively are the key