Excellent Primer on unexplained aspects of vision - Gomez-Marin, Sheldrake

Excellent Primer on unexplained aspects of vision authored by Alex Gomez-Marin & Rupert Sheldrake

https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/pap...eption.pdf

By the end of the paper, one realises these these unexplained visual issues can be extended into apparitions that are clearly from the past (Harry Martindale etc), and the typical hospital NDE Out-of-body experience.

I think Alex Gomez-Marin & Rupert Sheldrake are too late to the party with any attempt to mystify vision now that we have computer vision already in many areas significantly exceeding human capabilties. It seems clear that vision can be explained with a computational process.

If you apriori believe in scopaesthesia, which means you already accept the existence of psychic phenomenas then you can mystify everything you want.

It's definitely a stretch to explain the sense of being stared at via a computational process.

The matter of a priori belief is relevant to scientific studies - a disbelief may be an obstacle to actually conducting any study at all. Or refusing to even look at the results of such studies.

This is a very recent interview (12 Nov 2023) with Rupert Sheldrake, which appears to be about their paper:



(I haven't watched it yet)

It's definitely a stretch to explain the sense of being stared at via a computational process.

The matter of a priori belief is relevant to scientific studies - a disbelief may be an obstacle to actually conducting any study at all. Or refusing to even look at the results of such studies.

As I said, if we apriori accept scopaesthesia (the sense of being stared at) then speculation like this has it's place. But I really fail to see how to make a good objective study into the sense of being stared it. How would you define a blinded study in this subject?

I think Alex Gomez-Marin & Rupert Sheldrake are too late to the party with any attempt to mystify vision now that we have computer vision already in many areas significantly exceeding human capabilties. It seems clear that vision can be explained with a computational process.

If you apriori believe in scopaesthesia, which means you already accept the existence of psychic phenomenas then you can mystify everything you want.

Computer vision seems pretty poor if going by driverless cars...

More importantly I don't expect human vision to be akin to a program in  Turing machine. Those kinds of materialist religious beliefs is how we ended up dealing with the driverless car menace in the first place...

This is a very recent interview (12 Nov 2023) with Rupert Sheldrake, which appears to be about their paper:



(I haven't watched it yet)

By the halfway point they had completely gone off track, and I turned it off.

The paper is far better, concise and much clearer than Sheldrake rambling.

It seems clear that vision can be explained with a computational process.

Did you read the paper?

Yes alternatively their marketing department is on fire. We will soon learn if that’s the case (I’m broadly speaking about the AI business her)

The field has gone through multiple cycles of hype and winter, and given the limitations of machine "learning" I feel this is more hype.

Possibly an approved leak to make it seem like they are on the verge of an incredible breakthrough...

I think Alex Gomez-Marin & Rupert Sheldrake are too late to the party with any attempt to mystify vision now that we have computer vision already in many areas significantly exceeding human capabilties. It seems clear that vision can be explained with a computational process.

If you apriori believe in scopaesthesia, which means you already accept the existence of psychic phenomenas then you can mystify everything you want.

According to the abstract, the paper is about the paranormal phenomenon of apparently being able to sense being stared at without actually seeing the starer or getting any other sensory cue. That is a proper subject for parapsychological research. Sheldrake and Gomez-Marin don't seem to be trying to "mystify vision" and claim that vision isn't accomplished at least in part via the complex neurological mechanisms revealed by much research - they are just examining a purported psychic phenomenon related to physical vision in that it apparently is some form of telepathy experienced in a quasi visual form.

Of course the mechanics of vision are explained with a neurological computational process. That's not the point. Sheldrake and Gomez-Marin know that the mechanical neurological visual data processing behind it are necessary but not sufficient for visual perception. The neural vision data processing systems don't explain the resulting subjective visual perceptions, which involve the mystery of consciousness, and the mystery of how, apparently, a person can paranormally sense being stared at without any physical sensory cues.