#extramission theory of vision

[martyr0l0gy]

My friend, I'm so glad you've enjoyed 'Inferno'! Do you plan on reading 'Purgatorio' or 'Paradisio'? Of Divina Comedia, 'Purgatorio' is my personal favourite, but I think that's due to my personal interest in the rise of Purgatory as a popular and later theologically canonised concept, as well as the conceptualisation of Purgatory as a real physical 'space'... It also plays a lot with darkness/light and medieval optics, which as we all know I'm a slag for... anyways, I digress!

I'm so flattered you want my opinion 😭 I've studied 'Inferno' at the high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate level, but I would still consider it out of my wheelhouse! It's, of course, an Italian text that many argue typifies the Renaissance, whereas I work primarily with late medieval Christianity in the British Isles, where the Renaissance (if you believe in such things... I am a conscientious objector) comes much later... but I shall do my best!

Firstly - I love your quote-grabs! I don't have my favourites to hand as I haven't read the piece in a few years, but I do have Thoughts on the ones you chose (I hope that's okay)!

●'Midway through the journey of life, I found myself within a forest Dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost' / 'Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars'- I love these two resonate with you! In undergrad I studied both Medieval History and English Literature, so for my literature course, I had to study the Romantics/Romanticism... My professor (who shall go unamed but reminded me of a seagull in the worst way.. those beady pale blue eyes *shivers*) argued that appreciation of the natural world as something beautiful was a new concept in the 18th century whereas previously the 'wilderness' was not beautiful or sublime, but terrifying and chaotic and overly a dangerous fact of life. I never agreed with his argument. We may not see the huge poems soliloquising about a single cliffside in our older texts, but I find it hard to imagine that a young person just like myself in all ways essential to 'humaness' never walked alongside the sea and felt awe in the ancient world, or watched a sunrise with their lover in the medieval, or always walked the same route through a woodland in the Renaissance because they liked the way the light filtered through the trees... But apart from that, I love the use of darkness and light here - the metaphor itself is obvious as the journey to awareness... but I LOVE thinking about this in conjunction with medieval theories of optics - intromission, extramission, and Bacon's synthesis of the two (perspectiva). I've spoken about this briefly in a previous dialogue with you, but essentially, medieval optics centred around the ability of light to reach the eye and carry knowledge of what is seen (colour, shape, etc) and from this knowledge make both specific conclusions about the item independently, as well as in context with all things one has seen before (e.g. when one sees a cat, we might understand this is a cat/animal/mammal not because of the immediate image/sensory experience of the cat and its traits, but because we have seen other cats/animals before and taken in other knowledge about these things... so on sight, our mind can correlate these similarities to name the specific object as part of a general group). So, for me, when Dante speaks of moving from the dark forest to the later light of the stars, he is also speaking of vision and knowledge and learning /because/ he has visually beheld hell, taken its lessons into his vision via light, and now can 'see' the world beyond hell more clearly/in a new way... he is 'rebeholding' the universe he thought he once knew.

●Re: the bond between body and soul!! I'm SO glad you dogeared this discussion, as it's actually something I study A LOT!! In the 13th century due to the canonisation of Purgatory , we begin getting a lot of discussion of the 'separate soul'... now in general philosophy this just refers to a theoretical premise that the soul and body are independent entities, however, in this context its specific to medieval Christian theological understanding of the body and soul... so the soul severed from the body after death but before rapture when all Christians bodies are to be resurrected/reunited with their souls for the second coming. This becomes particularly important with discussion of Purgatory because people become concerned with how they will continue to expiate sin after death without a physical body. To expiate sin one must suffer, but, if they are separate from their body how does one suffer? To resolve this, there's a renewed philosophical and theological interest in internal versus external sensation and where sin originates - the body or the soul. Ultimately, while the body can 'sense' pain, late medieval thinkers largely conclude that suffering/pain originates in the soul and is a symptom of the soul being made more perfect/resisting sin. However, the interest in discussion about the separate soul led to all sorts of interesting discussions such as 'what form of our body (if any) do we have in the afterlife?' - 'Are we how we were when we died? Are we our 'most perfect selves?' 'And if we come back together to completion, why do the saints retain the scars of their martyrdom? Why can we see the wounds of Christ' crucifixion?' 'And if we need our bodies in the second coming, should we really be separating the bodies saints and other holy figures up into relics which we display?' I find all of this fascinating and I'm glad you seem to as well 😊

Those were the main bits I wanted to chatter on! But you're NOT imagining the homoeroticism... it is.. VERY homoerotic... there's entire fanfiction dedicated to Dante's relationship with Virgil in 'Inferno'...

Just finished Dante’s Inferno! Happy to talk about it with anyone else who wants to!

Main Takeaways from the book (not in any particular order):

• “Midway through the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest Dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost” -Classic quote, but I love it! I empathize with it because it connects very well with a sense of wanderlust and knowing that you’re at a crossroads to your future (The everyday path being lost)

• “Thence we came forth to rebhold the stars”- Ending line that does the same as the first but emerging from that uncertainty and a perfect quote to use when you finish a task and see the results

• The bond between soul and body is indestructible and should never try to be severed (In Canto 13 those that commit suicide are turned into trees that bleed when harpies prune them, they tried to separate the bond and are punished for it)

• You cannot repent for sins that you have yet to commit (Very common criticism against Catholic Church in medieval times)

•There’s a lot of allegories in the inferno between the link of plants and animals, Dante mentions many times that many things are like seeds, especially the human soul (shown in the 13th canto). I’ve taken this as a message that Dante believes that the soul is the seed in the garden of god and that trying to intertwine this vegetative state with the feralness of an animal is reckless

• There’s SO MUCH homosexual tension between Virgil and Dante, I’m not the only one noticing right?

Happy to talk with any of y’all about anything, these are just my thoughts and I would be curious to debate with anyone. I’m also curious with what @martyr0l0gy thinks, I know you study medical architecture and this is not it but maybe you have some ideas that I’m sure I’d love to hear!

[sethshead]

Why are extramission beliefs so difficult to overcome by training? One answer lies in the explanation of the origins of this misunderstanding. Our account is based on the contributions of diSessa (1993), who claimed that underlying scientific misconceptions are primitive, phenomenological experiences (termed p-prims), and on Werner’s(1948, 1957) theory of development. One phenomenological experience, very much evident in vision, is an orienting response. Vision is generally thought of as directed outward, away from the self, toward specific objects. This outer-oriented, dynamic quality of seeing might be at the heart of the extramission bias, because it may be that when asked about vision, people may syncretically fuse their phenomenological, outer-directed experience of vision with their beliefs about the nature of the act of seeing (Werner’s, 1948, 1957, approach adds the notion of syncresis to diSessa’s, 1993, approach). Presumably these erroneous notions also coexist with scientifically acceptable ones, without people seeing the inconsistency. Evidence consistent with our interpretation has shown that extramission beliefs increase in conditions that are designed to stress the outer-directed quality of visual experiences (see Winer & Cottrell, 1996b; Winer, Cottrell, Karefilaki, & Gregg, 1996).

I am reminded of an apocryphal anecdote about Wittgenstein: He and some students were out taking a day stroll. One looked up at the sky and wondered aloud how foolish people once were to imagine all that above revolved around earth. Wittgenstein replied that, if one didn’t know otherwise, how could anyone tell?

In fact, there is an easy way to tell: Mercury and Venus have irregular orbits that only make sense in a heliocentric model. But that’s beside the point. Extramission is very poetic, very evocative of the inescapability of psychological projection. It is true as a metaphor of the human condition. It is consistent with all those corruptions of quantum physics about collapsing wave functions. Which is what makes it so dangerous that we can’t turn around and say that it is not physically true. Within my lifetime the arts and humanities have grown ever more hostile to thought not grounded in phenomenology. Holding that there is any actionable reality or salient rules outside of an individual’s perception will at best provoke eye-rolls of contempt for so plodding and pedestrian a thinker; more likely they will be associated with white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, scientism, or any number of other sins against the whole human race.

Among my peers and colleagues, doctrines, articles of faith, affiliations and associations can be wrong; statements of fact cannot be, since there are supposedly no objective, universal facts to begin with. The reader constructs the text, and life is a text. As a technique of literary analysis, this is limiting enough (after all, isn’t an interpretation enriched by seeing a work though another’s eyes, especially those contemporary to its authorship, with their awareness of the signifiers embedded throughout?). When we prioritize such an attitude towards the physical, natural world, we erode students’ capacity for real, critical thought. Far from the existence of facts requiring the passive consumption of facts, reinforcing the authority of traditional power structures, understanding the processes whereby those facts are establishes provides us a logical framework for absorbing information. Conversely, relying exclusively on one’s senses and intuition for conclusions renders one vulnerable to misinformation, to propaganda and manipulation by those reading to pander to how one wishes to imagine the world, rather than reveal how it truly is.

Yes, how could you guess I’d steer this ‘round to any number of Trumpian lies?

From Birtherism to “Stop the Steal,” the Trump cult is impervious to fact. Their allegations are very poetic expressions of their discontent, with Barack Obama’s perceived “Otherness” to the shock of defeat; BUT THEY ARE STILL WRONG! There are processes more pertinent than bias confirmation. Granted, I doubt many Trumpsters studied under my colleagues, but these ideals still define our cultural Zeitgeist. Whether grade schoolers teachers embracing the ethos that there is no such things as a wrong answer to anti-maskers choosing to believe they put no one at risk, we have been hit with an epidemic of extreme relativism and solipsism. In such an environment, adult, college-educated study respondents certain that we see by emitting light from our eyes and resistant to contradiction, is entirely predictable.

If our academic dogmas and philosophies do not allow us to dispel, absolutely, this error as a flat-out error, then of what use are we to the purpose of inquiry?

[ownerzero]

Our Eyes Emit Eye Beams, According To Extramission Theory

Superman’s laser vision, Cyclops’ optic blasts, and the basilisk’s killer gaze, all of these may be fictional powers where they emit light, heat, or some other type of energy through their eyes. But there was a theory that dates way back saying our eyes actually do emit “eye beams”. According to the extramission theory, which […]

The post Our Eyes Emit Eye Beams, According To Extramission Theory appeared first on AWorkstation.com.

source https://aworkstation.com/our-eyes-emit-eye-beams-according-to-extramission-theory/

[frankiebow]

My students think I'm pretty good at this "lethal gaze" thing @PublicDomainRev: "The Extremely Real Science behind the Basilisk’s Lethal Gaze" — According to the extramission theory of vision, our eyes send out beams of elemental fire that spread, nerve like, to create the visual field, via @JSTOR_Daily: https://buff.ly/2uGG22U https://buff.ly/2uFpZ5K #teacherproblems

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

22 Jan 2019: Food data + shopping data = health data

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading and please do send ideas, questions, corrections etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

[Image: Konrad Wachsmann]

Food data + shopping data = health data

Whole Foods has launched a digital product catalog which helps customers shop according to their dietary needs - they’ll be able to find items by dietary preference, see ingredient lists and nutritional information. You can imagine that dietary preferences from Whole Foods and body mass index data from clothing sizes shopped on Amazon could be very useful input data for the Amazon health business, particularly if they have plans for a long-term wellness service.

Elsewhere in health, Microsoft’s latest partnership with industry is with pharmacy giant Walgreens to provide Office365 and cloud services, but also “tests of ‘digital health corners’ within some Walgreens stores”. Industry/tech partnerships are often viewed through a defending-against-Amazon lens these days: Microsoft and Walgreens, Microsoft and Kroger, Ocado and grocers various - all partly presented as being someone’s answer to Amazon turning up in their market.

The weight of attention

A research paper suggests that “people automatically and unconsciously treat other people’s eyes as if beams of force-carrying energy emanate from them, gently pushing on objects in the world”. This is interesting because it reflects the extramissive theory of how vision worked, which dates back to the fifth century BC.

But do humans have a similar mental model for VR or machine vision? Do we feel the “weight” of all of the mobile phone cameras, surveillance and cctv, watchful self-driving cars and, more generally, the big tech cos collecting data from uncountable sensors and apps?

Web of intent

Google and Facebook are the dominant digital admedia cos these days. Everyone else seems to be struggling as G and FB attract more attention and ad dollars. More attention and data = better targeting. But the other company doing well is... Amazon! They’re growing fast because they’re arguably the only company closer to the point of purchase and to the consumer intent than G and FB are.

AI and apps replace faxes in NHS long term plan

The digital parts of the new long term plan for the NHS aim to give citizens new ways to access healthcare services, to speed up existing workflows inside the NHS, and to do a lot of things with data to connect everything together and reduce waste.

Adding a lot of technology will be a challenge because historic attempts to modernise the NHS have famously struggled. NHS still has widespread use of faxes and pagers, which both indicate the need for modernisation and perhaps hint that the journey will be tough. For instance, faxes are currently a key communication channel in many GP-to-pharmacy workflows. Can they all switch?

The plan lists ten practical priorities that “will drive NHS digital transformation” (p92 of this pdf). Eight of them mention or involve data (access to data, AI decision-making, predictive techniques, capturing data easily, protecting privacy, data in clinical research, securing data, interoperable data) so there will be some interesting tensions between access/sharing and privacy/trust.

TUCstarter

The Trades Union Congress tried a Kickstarter-like feature to solicit new union members in the visual effects industry. “28% of joiners chose the ‘join now’ option, with 72% choosing to ‘join if we hit the target’”. This suggests that the Kickstarter-style conditional commitment is a transferable mechanism of “social proof”, and a reassuring way to people to join a new thing.

Other news

M&S is trialling “90 lines of loose fruit and vegetables completely free of plastic packaging”.

France fines Google E50m under GDPR - the French data regulator said the Google’s data consent policies weren’t transparent or easy to access.

“Not using modern techniques like computer systems is a great mistake, but forgetting the computer simulates thinking is still greater.” - from 100+ Lessons Learned for Project Managers (at NASA, mid-1990s).

MPs use WhatsApp heavily, to communicate, plot and sometimes leak. It makes you wonder if there’s a WhatsApp clone with a Chatham House Rules switch, which anonymises the sender’s identity after a while, but not the content.)

A survey suggests that consumer safety concerns and industry concerns about liability are the biggest barriers to adoption of self-driving vehicles (pdf). But in both cases, industry is confident that self-driving will reduce accidents and consequently liability exposure.

Co-op Digital news

We are not our users: we should not tell them how to feel. “To create services that people want to use, we must make a deliberate effort to remove our emotional attachment to the things we’re creating and let our users decide how to experience them. By appreciating that we are not our users, and being considerate of their circumstances, we create services that are tactful, inclusive and respectful.”

Doing this is doubly hard because humans love projecting their hopes and fear onto services - and technology as a whole. Designers believe they’re making a service that is easy to use, but Jo Schofield reminds us that users may feel differently. And other stakeholders will bring their own emotions and perceptions to it: a front-line worker might wonder if a new system will lead to redundancies or whether The Management are using this system to track them. A manager might hope that this new service will fix all of the problems. So technology is an unreliable, wobbly mirror, and because of that it’s harder to see it clearly.

Events

Health team show & tell - Tue 22 Jan 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Food ecommerce show & tell - Tue 22 Jan 4.30pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Engineering community of practice meetup - Wed 23 Jan 1pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Web team show & tell - Wed 23 Jan 2.30pm at Federation House 5tfloor.

Line management drop-in clinic - Thu 24 Jan 1pm at Federation House.

Heads of practice community of practice meetup - Thu 24 Jan 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Startup tool-kit discussion group - Thu 24 Jan 5pm at Federation House.

Delivery community of practice meetup - Mon 28 Jan 1pm at Federation House.

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 29 Jan 2pm at Angel Square 12th floor.

Open:Data:Night - Tue 29 Jan 6.30pm at Federation House.

Digital Transformation meetup - Wed 30 Jan 5pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Line management drop-in clinic - Thu 31 Jan 1pm at Federation House.

Heads of practice community of practice meetup - Thu 31 Jan 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Universal Basic Income - Thu 31 Jan 6.45pm at Federation House.

Intro to Open Street Map - Sat 2 Feb 11am at Federation House.

More events at Federation House. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved and thoughtful readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s flunky @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog.