Embodied Vision

Merleau-Ponty argues that the 3rd dimension is not seen but calculated in the mind... Here are a few interesting quotations from 'Eye and Mind'....

'The fact that things overlap or are hidden does not enter into their definition, and expresses only my incomprehensible solidarity with one of them - my body.'

'There is no vision without thought... Vision is a conditioned thought; it is born as "occasioned" by what happens in the body; it is "incited" to think by the body.'

I have been coming to the conclusion that if it is thought that defines our world, the world outside our body can only be conceived of as a product of our own thought. Nothing is separate from our each unique view of the outside as our minds codify the sense data from our sense organs into our very own programmed language that is supposedly different in everyone. In other words, everything we know and sense is just an extension of ourselves. Degressing slightly, going from this theory, is this the reason that babies and young children cannot form (narrative) memories.... They are still learning how to place sense data into an ordered structure, the mind still learning how to successfully programme sensed information into anything meaningful and so with the lack of structure memories cannot now be placed into anything meaningful to us now, considering we probably think in code as to our surroundings.

Anyway, when exploring perception and a further reality beyond what we can sense (we know its there, science tells us!) this is something to consider, when visualising information in infra-red or ultraviolet (like the recent visualisations of the galaxy) the way we see plays an important part in how we address material characters. How will we learn from placing extra information about the world on top of our own senses? how can we get past how our mind has tailored the programming of sense data into a normal unextended vision of the world? will it affect our sense of identity?