The Three Dimensions of Embodied Space

May 11th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The sense of three-dimensionality that comes with binocular vision and so called ‘depth perception’ is usually assumed to be co-existant with the three dimensions of cartesian space. That is, when we perceive the world in 3D, those dimensions are the dimensions of height, width, and depth, all at right angles to each other, which demarcate the cartesian grid. However, it is proposed here that the three dimension of visual, embodied, space are in fact not co-existant with these dimensions at all. It will be shown that that the dimensions of perception are in fact:

1. A line drawn between the eyes
2. A line drawn between the left eye and the object at the focal point
3. A line drawn between the right eye and the object at the focal point

The three lines, forming a triangle of perception linking the viewer to the object, demarcate the three dimensions of embodied space. This presentation will discuss the implications of this revisioning of space in terms of an understanding of consciousness.

Posted in Dimension, Seeing, Space | 1 Comment »

Spurious Flapdoodle?

May 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I’ve been re-reading some of my recent posts, and I can’t help wondering what the status of some of these papers might be. the one I posted yesterday on the 3 dimensions of Cartesian space, when I look back on it, seems completely spurious, but I know that when I heard the paper itself it was very compelling and well supported academically. If I get the opportunity I’ll try to track down the presenter and get a copy of the full paper.

Posted in Dimension, Flapdoodle, Space, Story | No Comments »

Tri-ocularity and Enlightenment

May 14th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The difference between looking with one eye and looking with two is a difference we call ‘depth perception’ (the difference that makes a difference). This difference is so dramatic, so markedly different from single eye vision because it corresponds to a literal widening of the location of the perceiver far beyond what might be imagined. The space between the left eye and the right is only around 2 inches, and yet the impact on vision is profound. Monocular vision positions the viewer precisely at a particular point in relation to a 2 dimensional field of view, the opening of the second eye extends that location across an area of 3 dimensional space. The second eye effectively transforms consciousness from a point phenomenon (literally a point of view) to a regional phenomenon. This begs the question, what would be the consequences of the opening of another eye, separated more widely in space from the other two? Inevitably the location of the self in space would become more widely distributed as the region occupied by the eyes, and inferred by the triple parallax, extended. With enough eyes, widely enough separated, the location of the self in space would become co-existent with the space itself. At that point we would be everywhere.

Posted in Dimension, Seeing, Space | No Comments »

Visual Worlds

December 11th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The evidence of the senses is sometimes contradictory, giving either different impressions of an aspect of the world according to which sensory mode we access it, or different impressions via the same mode when accessed at different times or in different ways. For example, when we are stationary and our eyes are not moving (more that the usual saccading), the visual world presents itself as a two dimensional perspectival painting, with the vanishing point corresponding with whatever our eyes happen to be focussing on. When we are moving forward, however, the optical flow transforms this image into a tunnel that we are moving through. The sides of this world tunnel slide behind us and objects in the distance become part of the ‘walls’ as we approach. If we stand in one place and look around us, the world changes again, becoming a three dimensional diorama with ourselves located at the centre; the sky like an inverted bowl over our heads.

Posted in Dimension, Seeing, Sense | No Comments »

Why Up is Good

March 17th, 2008 Fred McVittie

The superior access to knowledge that is implied by the use of height metaphors may also contribute toward the forming of a well-established metaphor which associates height with the abstract concept of ‘value’ or ‘goodness’. This is usually expressed within the conventional syntax of Conceptual Metaphor Theory as UP IS GOOD. Like all such metaphorical mappings this draws upon routine embodied sensorimotor experiences to structure and articulate what would otherwise be inconceivable; values such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are easily experienced in the particular but as general terms they make no impact on the senses, and can therefore only be conceptualised through the use of an organizing metaphor.

Evidence for the existence of the UP IS GOOD metaphorical mapping can be found in the extensive use of terms relating height to positive value or quality; we speak of ‘high value’, ‘high quality’, and ‘high performance’, and positive progress is usually considered as movement in an upward direction. When we wish to cite the ultimate authority we might refer to a ‘higher power’, or in more Earthly terms to someone who is at the top of their field, the top of their game, or the height of their success. We indicate value in commerce by saying that sales are up, production is up, employment is up, and profits are up, and we show this elevation on graphs and charts. We reach for the stars, climb the career ladder, move up the league, reach the top of the charts, and if we are churlish we might look down on those who are not at our level. In all of these instances the metaphorical correspondence between height and positive value is clear. In all cases UP IS GOOD. This consistency, in which positivity in many different areas is expressed using the same organizing metaphor, is strong evidence for its being grounded in a single experience or a small set of related experiences, ultimately originating in a common feature of our embodiment and the affordances it offers in relation to the environment in which it is embedded. Further evidence of the coherence and non-arbitrary nature of such an embodied metaphor is the fact that there is a complementary set of organizing metaphors which relate lack of height to negative value, expressible in the standard syntax as DOWN IS BAD. This is revealed in the badness of being ‘down in the dumps’, ‘beneath contempt’, ‘low on the totem pole’, a member of the ‘lower classes’ or possibly even the ‘underclass’, or ‘under the weather’. This correspondence in the relationships GOOD IS UP and DOWN IS BAD is a clear illustration of the non-arbitrary nature of these conceptual metaphors. The dimension of height, together with possible movement in this dimension, is an ‘image schema’ which structures a wide range of value-related concepts.

The most often cited origin for this schema refers to the common experience of acquiring and using material resources. In accumulating some kind of valuable resource, firewood for example, it is an obviousness that the more of this resource we accumulate the higher the pile will be. It follows from this completely embodied and indeed ancient fact of life that the pile of firewood which is high will have more value that one which is more lowly. Similarly, the height of a pile of fish, fruit, dead rabbits, projectile-sized rocks, gold, or any other substance which confers health, survival, or status, is a direct measure of the value of that pile. In terms of value, when it comes to the height of a pile of desirable material stuff, UP IS GOOD. This unambiguous and intuitive fact provides the concrete source from which we can structure, organise, and conceptualise the relative values of non-concrete entities such as ‘performance’, ‘esteem’, ‘profits’, ‘social status’, or ‘mood’. We may not be able to literally pile our achievements up and compare them to the pile of the guy next door, but when we use height-related terms to carry out such an evaluation that is, metaphorically, what we are doing.

Posted in Dimension, Feeling, Metaphor, Schema, Space, Up | No Comments »

Knowing is Seeing: The ‘Height’ Entailment

March 21st, 2008 Fred McVittie

Applied to the general schema of knowledge and more specifically to the well-established metaphor KNOWING IS SEEING, the dimension of height has a very clear application, and to explore this it might be useful to remind ourselves of the benefits that seeing from a height brings to the primate in the treetop and the lookout in the crow’s nest. Height, in the physical world, allows one to see further and to see more. It offers the ability to see over obstructions to what lies beyond and extends one’s gaze further into the distance, effectively pushing back the horizon and opening up new vistas. Looking from a high place also lets one take in more of the landscape at a glance, uniting the fragments of this piece of land, this lake, these trees, into a singular vision. Height shows patterns that would be invisible close to; the river deltas and the regularity of the coastline. From a position that is sufficiently elevated one can see all the way to the edge of the world in all directions, taking in the entire disc of the world and finding oneself at the centre of that disc.

It can easily be demonstrated that this height dimension is brought into the overall knowledge metaphor as a useful entailment by recognizing its usage within language. It is no accident that Isaac Newton famously remarked that ‘If I have seen further than other men it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants’; there is an intuitively self-evident recognition implicit in this remark that the kind of sweeping breadth of vision which Newton brought to science was only possible through his being elevated to a height from which such vision becomes possible. Here the KNOWING IS SEEING metaphor is transparently employed such that seeing more, and seeing further, infers greater access to knowledge and ownership of larger swathes of that knowledge. There is a strong sense here of recognizing patterns and seeing beyond obstacles, glancing over the horizon of 15th century natural philosophy into the newly revealed regions of early science. The coherence of this metaphor, and the ease with which we accept its terms, is partly produced by the familiarity we have of the part played by height in the overall act of seeing, and the deployment of this play as an important entailment in the KNOWING IS SEEING metaphor.

Posted in Dimension, Knowledge, Metaphor, Seeing, Up | No Comments »

Why Up Feels Good

March 21st, 2008 Fred McVittie

Returning to the theme of height as an entailment of the metaphor KNOWING IS SEEING, I would like to offer an alternative to this explanation of the origin of the GOOD IS UP metaphor which has particular relevance to our overall understanding. In addition to the ‘high’ value implicit in a pile of desirable goods that achieves such height there is also the possible value conferred by placing oneself in a high place. It is a routine experience available to all of us that standing on high ground allows one to see further than standing on low ground, and there is undoubtedly a certain pleasure associated with this kind of elevated looking. To offer a view out across an expanse of land or sea; to look at distant mountains and clear to the horizon is every house-buyer and estate agent’s dream. Everyone wants a room with a view and our coastlines are dotted with pay-per-view telescopes to further service those desires. Presumably, for our ancestors vying for survival on the plains of West Africa, having the sense to find high ground, or the topmost branch of a tree, would grant enormous survival advantages. Up there one can see the approach of predators and the gathering clouds of an approaching storm. The wildebeest are visible from up here whereas to those less fortunate primates on the ground they may as well not exist at all. In such circumstances, nature would be remiss if it did not reward those of our forebears who rose to the occasion by making being-at-the-top feel good. It seems quite likely that the lingering liking we all have for the house on the hill, the cliff-top hotel, the sea-view and the top bunk is a remnant of those times when, for purely practical reasons, UP IS GOOD. It also seems reasonable to imagine that, if we needed a dimension to measure relative values of abstract concepts, then the height dimension would serve very well. Being able to see farther than other men not only confers a literal survival advantage, experienced aesthetically as pleasure, but the metaphorical elevation of oneself such that one might look out over an extended field of knowledge mirrors this embodied and experienced sense. Desire for the acquisition of knowledge, the ‘cognitive imperative’ as Newberg and D’Aquili call it, drives us up the tree. It is the great human survival trick, the equivalent of the bower bird’s nest and the beaver’s dam, and the gaining of knowledge is regarded as a high (sic) value activity. From this it follows that those metaphorical positions occupied by individuals who have access to enhanced knowledge would similarly be regarded as high value. In this analysis UP IS GOOD because, as an entailment of the KNOWING IS SEEING metaphor, UP is the place where the really valuable seeing, and hence valuable knowing, takes place.

Posted in Dimension, Evolution, Feeling, Metaphor, Sense, Up | No Comments »

Barthes Multi-dimensional Space

April 30th, 2008 Fred McVittie

In ‘Death of the Author’ Roland Barthes refers to a text not as ‘a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.’ The dimensionality that Barthes is referring to here is, presumably, the tissue or fabric of language (and quotations) which make up the text. In making mention of the concept of ‘dimension’ he invokes the idea of a space, in this case a space of connection, deferral, and difference. Within the terms of the metaphor of this blog however, it might be more useful to talk about the ‘three-dimensional space of writing’. In this imaginary space there is horizontal extension away from the body and there is vertical extension. The objects of knowledge which are created by some of the writing are positioned at some distance in the horizontal plane, whilst some are positioned closer. Distant objects are most clearly delineated and bounded, separate from contamination by the body of the subject. Closer objects of knowledge fall within the reach and grasp of the hand, and are given affordance and malleability by their proximity. Objects inside the body cease to be objects at all, and acquire the properties of subjecthood.

The vertical dimension offers a vantage point from which a greater span of space might be panoptically available, and this elevated position offers the possibility of overview unavailable from ground level. The higher ground also suggests a more rarified, convergent, ’spiritual’ view, from which the irrelevant details disappear in favour of the grand plan.

Posted in Barthes, Roland, Dimension, Knowledge, Space, Up | 1 Comment »