Does the mind's eye exist ?

[studiot]

Most of us have two eyes, or do we ?

When we 'see' we have two organs that receive light and construct an electrochemical model on each of two retinas.

However this facility is of little use until that model is transferred up the optical nerve to the brain when a new model is constructed from the incoming information, and also may include information from other sense organs and our memory.

If we close our eyes we can still construct models in our brain. In fact some close their eyes to 'concentrate' or 'think hard'.

So the subject for discussion is, "Does the mind's eye exist and if so in what sense ?"

[Genady]

Since the post is in the Anatomy, Physiology and Neuroscience forum, I guess the question is about an existence of the mind's eye as an identifiable anatomical, physiological or neural entity. In that sense, I think it doesn't exist. On one hand, the signals coming from eyes spread to different parts of brain very fast. On the other hand, different parts of brain are activated when we visualize and this set depends on the visualization content.

[StringJunky]

 

Quote

Visual perception: Where is the mind's eye?

Abstract
The finding that mental imagery is associated with activity in primary visual cortex has important implications for sensory processing in the brain.

Can you easily form mental pictures from the descriptions of scenery that are so frequently met with in novels and books of travel? More than 100 years ago Francis Galton [1] sent out a list of questions, including this one, to gather statistics on the character of mental imagery. Many people reported vivid mental imagery, but not the scientists on his list. “To my astonishment”, Galton reported, “I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied protested that mental imagery was unknown to them”. This response, which Galton attributed to a “mental deficiency”, might more kindly be attributed to excessive scrupulosity. Scientists like to be exact in their usage, and, judging by one of the responses Galton prints, these eminent fellows may have considered that examining a visual mental image was not the same as inspecting a painting: a mental image has a more sketchy character, and should be thought of more as a symbolic description.

Whatever the explanation for Galton's curious postbag from his colleagues, the question of whether visual imagery is pictorial or symbolic is one that has long interested philosophers and scientists, and has given rise to what is called the ‘imagery debate’ [2], [3]. With the advent of brain scanning techniques, it has become possible to sharpen some of the questions underlying this debate; in particular, one can ask whether the parts of the brain active in visual imagery are those that represent visual events in a ‘pictorial’ manner. Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982202005286

The author was a Cambridge mathematician.  I think memory plays a strong part in supplying mind's eye data for visual construction.

Edited April 6, 2022 by StringJunky

[dimreepr]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

So the subject for discussion is, "Does the mind's eye exist and if so in what sense ?"

I don't know, does your's talk to you?

[iNow]

IMO, the answer here will be similar to the answer "where / what is the seat of consciousness?" While photons come in through the retina and stimulate receptor cells, and while those receptor cells send impulses back to the occipital lobe via the optic nerves, the actual concept of "sight" is extraordinarily complex once those signals arrive.

There's a bit of a "Fourier analysis" happening unconsciously where the different signal strengths and locations are first sorted and that gives a baseline of data for interpretation, and it's this interpretation part after signals arrive where things get interesting.

The parts of our brain associated with memory are sort of queried first... "Have I seen this before? Do I have an existing category bucket into which I can fit this?" The process of recognition saves energy from other brain areas.

If we don't recognize it, we then engage the narration and creative parts of our brain... "I've seen something similar to this, but this is clearly different. Could it be X, could it by Y, or is this entirely different and may it's Z?" This all happens faster than the blink of an eye, until a signal is sent to our higher cortical areas and we become aware of it.

This awareness is then "colored" by our mental state... are we tired? are we sad? are we angry? are we blissful? Those deeper underlying feelings all shade what we see in the conscious parts of our mind... and it's this conscious part of the mind that one might equate with a "mind's eye."

It's just not a single place like a gas station on the corner of two streets. It's instead a town, or a neighborhood, a rhetorical symphony where no single instrument or note makes the music, but all together matter for the end experience being explored. 

[Eise]

42 minutes ago, iNow said:

It's just not a single place like a gas station on the corner of two streets. It's instead a town, or a neighborhood, a rhetorical symphony where no single instrument or note makes the music, but all together matter for the end experience being explored. 

I like that. Just to add: there is also no single time. 

And to the topic in general:

I recently read somewhere this interesting bonmot: the brain is hallucinating constantly, the senses filter out which hallucination fits best for our survival.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, Eise said:

I recently read somewhere this interesting bonmot: the brain is hallucinating constantly, the senses filter out which hallucination fits best for our survival.

That is neat and describes what happens during sensory deprivation, to some degree.

[studiot]

Thank you all for your replies so far.

Clearly a 'many thoughts interpretation' of my OP.

 

I was unsure where to place this question, Philosophy, Biology, Psychology, Medicine, but finally ended up in human anatomy for no special reason as they all have a claim, so please don't feel limited by any classification.

I particularly liked iNow pointing out that whatever the eye sees is drawn from more than just the received light. +1

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Thank you all for your replies so far.

Clearly a 'many thoughts interpretation' of my OP.

 

I was unsure where to place this question, Philosophy, Biology, Psychology, Medicine, but finally ended up in human anatomy for no special reason as they all have a claim, so please don't feel limited by any classification.

I particularly liked iNow pointing out that whatever the eye sees is drawn from more than just the received light. +1

That's what Galton was alluding to in my quote, although in the understanding of his time.

Quote

...these eminent fellows may have considered that examining a visual mental image was not the same as inspecting a painting: a mental image has a more sketchy character, and should be thought of more as a symbolic description.

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by StringJunky

[joigus]

On 4/6/2022 at 3:18 PM, iNow said:

IMO, the answer here will be similar to the answer "where / what is the seat of consciousness?" While photons come in through the retina and stimulate receptor cells, and while those receptor cells send impulses back to the occipital lobe via the optic nerves, the actual concept of "sight" is extraordinarily complex once those signals arrive.

There's a bit of a "Fourier analysis" happening unconsciously where the different signal strengths and locations are first sorted and that gives a baseline of data for interpretation, and it's this interpretation part after signals arrive where things get interesting.

The parts of our brain associated with memory are sort of queried first... "Have I seen this before? Do I have an existing category bucket into which I can fit this?" The process of recognition saves energy from other brain areas.

If we don't recognize it, we then engage the narration and creative parts of our brain... "I've seen something similar to this, but this is clearly different. Could it be X, could it by Y, or is this entirely different and may it's Z?" This all happens faster than the blink of an eye, until a signal is sent to our higher cortical areas and we become aware of it.

This awareness is then "colored" by our mental state... are we tired? are we sad? are we angry? are we blissful? Those deeper underlying feelings all shade what we see in the conscious parts of our mind... and it's this conscious part of the mind that one might equate with a "mind's eye."

It's just not a single place like a gas station on the corner of two streets. It's instead a town, or a neighborhood, a rhetorical symphony where no single instrument or note makes the music, but all together matter for the end experience being explored. 

Nice account. I suppose after the "Have I seen this before?" come a series of cross-talk events back and forth involving prefrontal cortex / hippocampus, and other parts of the brain? For example, the cortex asks back to the visual cortex "Does it have such and such feature?"?

[iNow]

1 hour ago, joigus said:

Nice account. I suppose after the "Have I seen this before?" come a series of cross-talk events back and forth involving prefrontal cortex / hippocampus, and other parts of the brain? For example, the cortex asks back to the visual cortex "Does it have such and such feature?"?

Well, it's not a single query then end program, if that's what you're asking? It's a dynamic pattern recognition search, with fuzzy matches and the whole 9-yards

 

[joigus]

39 minutes ago, iNow said:

Well, it's not a single query then end program, if that's what you're asking? It's a dynamic pattern recognition search, with fuzzy matches and the whole 9-yards

 

That's pretty much what I meant, and I think you actually subtly implied it with your sequence "and then..., and then..." @Eise seems to have understood that as well:

On 4/6/2022 at 4:06 PM, Eise said:

Just to add: there is also no single time. 

 

It's an ongoing process, the way I picture it. And I suppose it would be pretty difficult to pin down the very moment when that "cognitive event" ends, if there is such a thing.

[Peterkin]

On 4/6/2022 at 6:47 AM, studiot said:

"Does the mind's eye exist and if so in what sense ?"

I would guess, in the same sense as the images on our computer screen: as an interpretation of captured visual images that has been deconstructed to form a data stream and then reconstructed as pixels. So the ,mind's eye' doesn't actually exist (as a physical entity); rather, it 'happens': it's a metaphor for a process that takes place within a neural network. 

[Eise]

11 hours ago, joigus said:

It's an ongoing process, the way I picture it. And I suppose it would be pretty difficult to pin down the very moment when that "cognitive event" ends, if there is such a thing.

There have been done several experiments that show that 'experienced time' must not agree with 'real time'. E.g. with brain surgery they have done experiments where the brain area that reacts on touch of the fingers and the fingers themselves were triggered at the same time. Which order would you expect, was reported by the conscious subject? Yes, the tickling of the fingers was reported to have occurred before the tickling of the corresponding brain area.

[studiot]

So would those would reckon that the mind's eye does not exist also reckon that imagination does not exist ?

[StringJunky]

27 minutes ago, studiot said:

So would those would reckon that the mind's eye does not exist also reckon that imagination does not exist ?

The mind's eye only exists in the subjective sense, since it seems to be a composite phenomenon, emerging from data transmitted by several/many  areas of the central nervous system.

[studiot]

21 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

The mind's eye only exists in the subjective sense, since it seems to be a composite phenomenon, emerging from data transmitted by several/many  areas of the central nervous system.

Thank you for the response, I don't see how it follows from my question.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

So would those would reckon that the mind's eye does not exist also reckon that imagination does not exist ?

Yes, in the same way. It's not a thing that is, but a process that happens.

Concepts like colour and weight are non-physical attributes of physical entities (more correctly, products of an interaction between physical entities: a surface and light; a mass and gravity); what the entities do with these attributes is action or process, and how those actions manifest is in events and/or products. So, the brain exists inside a human being who exists and some of the activities that take place in the brain - the deconstruction, juxtaposition, comparison and reconstruction of input data - can be collectively described as imagination, which feeds processed ideas and images into a more focused brain function called creativity, which further refines those reconfigured ideas and images into a new product of invention.   

Edited April 8, 2022 by Peterkin
clarity

[StringJunky]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Thank you for the response, I don't see how it follows from my question.

It's a process handled by many components, not a physical thing, like Peterkin says.