A revolution in thought

[Angakuk]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

It's humorous that people actually think they are in a position to judge this book yet no one can explain his discovery, not even in a rough draft.

The post in question was not about the book. It was about you. Apparently you are unable to make that distinction.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If no new people come forward, this thread will close because I am not going to continue being on the defensive, with nothing to show for it.

Promises, promises. You say that the thread will close, how do you propose that that will happen? You can't close it. None of the other participants can close it. Neither liv or vm, the only ones with the power to close it, are likely to do so. It could, of course, die from lack of interest. The most likely way for that happen is for you to quit posting in it. But you can't do that, can you?

Originally Posted by peacegirl

That's why his example was hypothetical, but you conveniently keep bringing this up as if it's the downfall of his credibility. It's not.

Even hypothetical examples need to make sense to be useful. Lessans obviously thought his example made sense, or he wouldn't have used it. Since he did use it you are now obligated to defend it (not just handwave it away as being "hypothetical") or admit that he dreadfully confused about the nature of light and sight.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

The post in question was not about the book. It was about you. Apparently you are unable to make that distinction.

And I've repeatedly said that I don't separate the two. People are judging me harshly because they don't believe there's anything valuable in the book. They are looking at me as a fundamentalist, which is where they get their entertainment value. I am not going to discuss me, or defend me. If people are so little interested in the actual discovery, then I'm not going to waste any more time in here.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

If no new people come forward, this thread will close because I am not going to continue being on the defensive, with nothing to show for it.

Originally Posted by Angakuk

Promises, promises. You say that the thread will close, how do you propose that that will happen? You can't close it. None of the other participants can close it. Neither liv or vm, the only ones with the power to close it, are likely to do so. It could, of course, die from lack of interest. The most likely way for that happen is for you to quit posting in it. But you can't do that, can you?

I can and will if we keep going around the same mountain over and over again. There has to be a point at which the actual discovery is discussed (his first discovery) with a sincerity to learn something. If not, it doesn't matter if there's one post, or a quarter million posts, it adds up to nothing.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

That's why his example was hypothetical, but you conveniently keep bringing this up as if it's the downfall of his credibility. It's not.

Originally Posted by Angakuk

Even hypothetical examples need to make sense to be useful. Lessans obviously thought his example made sense, or he wouldn't have used it. Since he did use it you are now obligated to defend it (not just handwave it away as being "hypothetical") or admit that he dreadfully confused about the nature of light and sight.

He thought it made sense, but it wasn't used in every one of his books, so obviously it wasn't that important. It was a hypothetical example. His point was made, even though it may have been misinterpreted. Regardless of whether he overlooked the fact that light has to impinge on the retina when he gave this example or not, doesn't take away from his claim that sight is efferent. All I can do is explain what I think he meant when he used this example, and I'm doing the best I can, so please stop hammering me.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Weyhey! And immediately we have a particularly fine example of unilaterally deciding something is unconfirmed.

Funny - not only do we know they CAN see, but we also know they seem to like seeing a human face best.

Let me respond by saying that it takes 3 months, according to the most recent testing available, that babies do not recognize human faces until 3 months old. How do you respond to that?

As babies grow, vision improves so that by 3 months they can recognize the outline of face as someone enters the room. Human faces are one of an infant's favorite things to look at, especially a parent's and his or her own. Install a baby-safe crib mirror at your infant's eye level and see how your baby watches himself or herself. You also may catch your baby gazing out a window or at a picture on the other side of the room.

The Senses and Your 1- to 3-Month-Old

All you are doing Vivisectus is taking any new theory that has come online and using it to confirm what you believe science has established as absolute proof. Have you forgotten that science doesn't work that way?

This first question asks about the focusing ability of infants, the optical part of vision. When you try to look at an object, special muscles inside your eye called the ciliary muscles automatically contract or relax the shape of the lens of your eye so that a clear image is projected onto the receiving surface—the retina—at the back of the eye. This is similar to adjusting the lens of a camera to get a clear photograph. Infants are born with the optical parts of their eyes fully capable of focusing objects at any distance, from the horizon to objects right in front of their nose. Yet many books about infant development still say that babies can only focus 7 to 10 inches from their face. While infants are able to focus at any distance, at first they do not have very good control of their ciliary muscles. This means that during the first 2 months of life they may not focus accurately. Sometimes they focus too close (in front of the object), sometimes too far (behind the object). After about 2 months of age infants begin to be able to focus clear images onto the retina. Yet their vision is still not clear! Something more is needed for clear vision.

Obviously this person doesn't realize that the ciliary muscles are not under voluntary control. There's still a lot of confusion in this area, so don't tell me that Lessans has no place in this discussion.

The reason their vision isn’t clear can be answered by the second question, which asks about babies' ability to see detail, or their visual acuity. Visual acuity is dependent on the optical components of the eye (like the lens), but more importantly it is dependent on the functioning of the retina and the brain. This means that even thought the optics of the eye are mature, infants still can’t see as well as adults because brain areas responsible for vision are still immature. To use the camera analogy, the reason that infants' vision is blurry is because of the "film", not the lens. The retina (the film of the eye), in addition to other visual parts of the brain, is incompletely developed in infants.

ScienceDirect - Vision Research : A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the human fovea during development

Doesn't it seem at all strange that only one part of the brain is immature, where other parts are working just fine; the ones that respond to the other senses? Why is that? Could it be that the brain needs other stimulation before it can do it's job of focusing? Why are you jumping all over me before there is any real conclusive proof, which is not beyond possibility?

[peacegirl]

I just plugged in: at what point can a newborn distinguish a human face from any other pattern?

I got nothing Vivisectus. Nothing at all. Help me here.

[peacegirl]

I added a very important point to the post with Vivisectus that says babies can recognized human faces by 3 months. I don't want people to miss my response.

[LadyShea]

From your own source link peacegirl (working against you again?). We have said this over and over again, why did you skip it in your post?

Newborns can only see blurry shapes because they are very nearsighted. Perfect vision is 20/20, and a newborn has 20/400 vision. This allows your baby to see your face from a nursing position, which is about 8 to 10 inches away.

Here is an article with numerous citations to previous studies. Remember how I said knowledge is built over time? Remember how TLR said you have to spend time to learn all this?

http://infantlab.fiu.edu/Articles/Bu...%20NEWBORN.pdf

Here are the references and citations used in JUST THIS ONE article:

Brown JL. 1964. States in newborn infants. Merrill Palmer Quarterly 10: 313–327.
Bushnell IWR. 1998. The origins of face perception. In The Development of Sensory, Motor
and Cognitive Capacities in Early Infancy, Simion F, Butterworth G (eds). Psychology
Press: Hove, East Sussex; 69–86.
Bushnell IWR, Sai F, Mullin JT. 1989. Neonatal recognition of the mother’s face. British
Journal of Developmental Psychology 7(1): 3–15.
Dailey MN, Cottrell GW. 1999. Neural Networks 12: 1053–1073.
Emde RN, Harmon RJ, Metcalf D. 1971. Stress and neonatal sleep. Psychosomatic Medicine
33: 491–497.
Field TM, Cohen D, Garcia R, Greenberg R. 1984. Mother-stranger face discrimination by
the newborn. Infant Behavior and Development 7(1): 19–25.
Freudigman KA, Thoman EB. 1993. Infant sleep during the 1st postnatal day—an
opportunity for assessment of vulnerability. Pediatrics 92(3): 373–379.
Hellbrugge T. 1960. The development of circadian rhythm in infants. Paper presented at
the Symposium on Quantitative Biology, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.
Hepper PG. 1991. An examination of fetal learning before and after birth. Irish Journal of
Psychology 12: 95–110.
Johnson MH, Horn G. 1988. Development of filial preferences in dark-reared chicks.
Animal Behaviour 36: 675–783.
Johnson MH, Morton J. 1991. Biology and Cognitive Development: The Case of Face Recognition.
Blackwell: Oxford.
Morton J, Johnson MH. 1991. Conspec and conlern: a two-process theory of infant face
recognition. Psychological Review 98: 164–181.
Pascalis O, de Schonen S, Morton J, Deruelle C, Fabre-Grenet M. 1995. Mother’s face
recognition by neonates: a replication and an extension. Infant Behavior and Development
18(1): 79–85.
Pascalis O, de Schonen S. 1994. Recognition memory in 3- to 4-day old human neonates.
Neuroreport 5(14): 1721–1724.
Querleu D, Lefebvre C, Renard X, Titran M, Morillion M, Cre`pin G. 1984. Perception
auditive et reativite´ du nouveau-ne´de moins de deux heures de vie a` la voix
maternelle. Journal de Gynecologie, Obstetrique et Biologie de la Reproduction 13: 125–134.
Sadeh A, Acebo C, Seifer R, Aytur S, Carskadon MA. 1995. Activity-based assessment of
sleep–wake patterns during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development 18:
329–337.
Seamon JG, Williams PC, Crowley MJ, Kim IJ, Langer SA, Orne PJ, Wishengrad DL. 1995.
The mere exposure effect is based in implicit memory: effects of stimulus type,
encoding conditions and number of exposures on recognition and affect judgements.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21(3): 711–721.
Slater A, Kirby R. 1998. Innate and learned perceptual abilities in the newborn infant.
Experimental Brain Research 123: 90–94.
Slater A. 1993. Visual perceptual abilities at birth: implications for face perception. In
Handbook of Research on Face Processing, de Boysson-Bardies B, de Schonen S, Jusczyk P,
MacNeilage P, Morton J (eds). North Holland: Oxford; 57–91.
Thoman EB, Whitney MP. 1989. Sleep states of infants monitored in the home—individual
differences, developmental trends, and origins of diurnal cyclicity. Infant Behavior
and Development 12(1): 59–75.
Tulving E, Shacter DL. 1990. Priming and human memory systems. Science 247: 301–306.
Walton GE, Bower NJ, Bower TG. 1992. Recognition of familiar faces by newborns. Infant
Behavior and Development 15(2): 265–269.
Walton GE, Bower TG. 1993. Newborns form ‘prototypes’ in less than 1 minute.
Psychological Science 4(3): 203–205.
Copyright ©

[LadyShea]

ScienceDirect - Infant Behavior and Development : Mother's face recognition by neonates: A replication and an extension

Previous experimenters have found that 4-day-old neonates look longer at their mother's face than at a stranger's face. We have replicated this finding under conditions where the infants are only provided with visual information on identity, with all the usual stimuli associated with the presence of the mother's face absent. The structure responsible for this cannot be equated with Conspec, the innate structure underlying face preference in neonates (Johnson & Morton, 1991). In a second experiment, we show that infants do not discriminate mother from stranger when both women are wearing head scarves. This indicates that, unlike older infants (de Schonen, Gil de Diaz, & Mathivet, 1986; de Schonen & Mathivet, 1990), neonates acquire a representation of their mother's face in which the hair line and outer contour have an integral part. This suggests that the system responsible for the neonates' performance is not the same as the one at work in older infants.

[LadyShea]

Doesn't it seem at all strange that only one part of the brain is immature, where other parts are working just fine

Only one part of the brain? So newborns can understand speech, grasp objects, walk, run, read, write, do math, consider the implications of E=MC squared? Most of the brain is immature in newborns.

Vision has many, many aspects, the visual cortex is enormous and complex, and completely unused in the womb.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by ceptimus

Most living things react to light in some way or other.

Plants grow towards the light, some plants turn their leaves through the day so that they face the sun to collect as much sunlight as possible.

Many 'simple' animals know whether it's light or dark - they have simple light detector cells somewhere on their bodies, even though they are nothing like what we would call 'eyes'.

Then there are animals that have their light receptor cells at the bottom of pits on their bodies - so they are able to detect which direction the light is coming from. And then there is a whole range of different animals, some with poor vision and some that have (in some respect) vision that is better than that of humans. Cats and dogs can see better at night than us; many hawks have very sharp distance vision; some birds and insects can see in the ultra-violet.

Does Lessans have anything to say about vision in animals other than humans?

He only gave this example of dogs because he was trying to demonstrate that if the image was being interpreted by the light, the dog would recognize his owner even if his other senses were not working. It was about facial recognition. I'm not disputing that certain species have sharp visual acuity or unusual characteristics that allow them to see things we don't.

Originally Posted by Ceptimus

Peacegirl, do you think all animals see efferently, or is it just some animals, or perhaps only human beings?

If sight is efferent, it's universally efferent. The fact that animals can detect light has no bearing on what the brain is doing in more evolved creatures.

Originally Posted by Ceptimus

Yeah, but there is a slippery slope argument here. You say that some animal species, A, that can just detect light ISN'T seeing efferently, and another one, B, that can see pretty well, is.

We can then choose a new animal species C with vision better than A but worse than B and ask you to decide again between B and C. There are so many species with differing amounts of vision that we can keep on doing this almost indefinitely.

Sooner or later we're going to get to the position where you claim that one animal, perhaps some kind of beetle, IS seeing efferently, and another almost identical beetle species, but with very slightly worse vision, ISN'T.

It's the same argument we can use on some religious believers who claim that people have souls but that (say) earthworms don't - you keep asking them about different animals 'in-between' until you can pin them down to perhaps two sorts of hedgehog, one with a soul and one without. This makes their initial claim seem fairly ridiculous, but of course they won't usually play along with the game anyway.

Efferent vision deals with the brain and how it functions. Not all creatures have a brain but they can detect light. For example, jellyfish and starfish don't have brains. And why couldn't some kind of beetle be said to see afferently, and another almost identical beetle species but with very slightly worse vision be said not to? Couldn't the same type of reasoning follow in either case? Finally, you cannot compare this to religious believers who claim that humans have souls and other animals on a lesser scale don't. For one, it hasn't even been established that souls actually exist. We know brains actually exist.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

You have an awfully strange notion of probability.

Pop quiz: What's more probable?

Option 1: Lessans was right, meaning that pretty-much everything we know about the physiology of sight is wrong, not to mention a great deal of the neural anatomy associated with the eye; in addition, pretty-much all of information theory is wrong; so is Relativity Theory.

Option 2: Lessans -- who clearly had no relevant knowledge of physics, neural or visual anatomy and physiology, nor information theory, and who did not conduct controlled experiments -- was wrong.

Take your time ...

A is the correct answer [in my opinion]. There is nothing about neural or visual anatomy that is wrong, according to Lessans. The only thing that is wrong is how the brain uses that anatomy. As far as Relativity Theory, the only thing that could be wrong, as far as I can tell, is the idea that there is no universal present because there is no objective time.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by But

OK.

Oh, of course it does. It has to. If you say that it is a necessary condition, you have to know why. Seymour's efferent vision has to explain it at least as well as current theory does if it is to be taken seriously. The standard theory explains why the light from each point on the object the eye is focusing on has to arrive at a corresponding point on the retina, and not be distorted into some other shape. Your / Seymour's theory has to explain that.

There is nothing different in the explanation he would be giving than the standard theory. Light from each point on the object the eye is focusing on has to arrive at a corresponding point on the retina. The only difference is how the brain is using that information.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

You expect perfection from cutting edge experimental technologies? Early organ transplants were 98% fatal, the idea was sound and they learned how and where to improve, were they not "true" transplants?

The concept is sound, blind people are seeing something.

Only time will tell if this type of technology will yield a normal functioning eye.

The most successful function-replacing artificial eye so far is actually an external miniature digital camera with a remote unidirectional electronic interface implanted on the retina, optic nerve, or other related locations inside the brain. The present state of the art yields only very partial functionality, such as recognizing levels of brightness, swatches of color, and/or basic geometric shapes, proving the concept's potential. While the living eye is indeed a camera, it is also much more than that.

Various researchers have demonstrated that the retina performs strategic image preprocessing for the brain. The problem of creating a 100% functional artificial electronic eye is even more complex than what is already obvious. Steadily increasing complexity of the artificial connection to the retina, optic nerve or related brain areas advances, combined with ongoing advances in computer science, is expected to dramatically improve the performance of this technology.

For the person whose damaged or diseased living eye retains some function, other options superior to the electronic eye may be available.

Artificial organ - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I just plugged in: at what point can a newborn distinguish a human face from any other pattern?

I got nothing Vivisectus. Nothing at all. Help me here.

From birth actually. It is one of the things they like looking at - it is comforting for them.

What is all that other stuff you posted about? Are you saying that because newborns see less well, this means what they experience is not sight?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

ScienceDirect - Infant Behavior and Development : Mother's face recognition by neonates: A replication and an extension

This is far from proof that there is actual recognition. This is similar to the dog experiment where the dog stares at his owner's picture a few seconds longer than a picture of a stranger and the conclusion is drawn that he recognizes his owner; or the father whose newborn baby sticks out his tongue when his father does, and this is the "proof" that the baby is imitating.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Only time will tell if this type of technology will yield a normal functioning eye.

The most successful function-replacing artificial eye so far is actually an external miniature digital camera with a remote unidirectional electronic interface implanted on the retina, optic nerve, or other related locations inside the brain. The present state of the art yields only very partial functionality, such as recognizing levels of brightness, swatches of color, and/or basic geometric shapes, proving the concept's potential. While the living eye is indeed a camera, it is also much more than that.

Various researchers have demonstrated that the retina performs strategic image preprocessing for the brain. The problem of creating a 100% functional artificial electronic eye is even more complex than what is already obvious. Steadily increasing complexity of the artificial connection to the retina, optic nerve or related brain areas advances, combined with ongoing advances in computer science, is expected to dramatically improve the performance of this technology.

For the person whose damaged or diseased living eye retains some function, other options superior to the electronic eye may be available.

Artificial organ - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moving the goalposts again. If the eye was efferent, then stimulating the retina would yield nothing at all, as that is not how it functions. It would be like trying to attach a hearing-aid to the receiving end of a telephone.

You suddenly decide that fully functional sight alone is sight. But this is nonsense - nor does it make any difference to the discussion. Sight information can be generated by stimulating the optic nerve as if it is afferent. This should not happen if Lessans was correct. Newborns can see - not well, but they certainly can see. This should also not be the case if lessans was correct.

The same goes for cameras - they should work differently, but they don't, and you have yet to explain why that is.

[LadyShea]

What part of "body of knowledge built over time" is escaping your grasp? No one study or link or paragraph will ever be "proof", peacegirl anymore than a single block or brick makes a wall. I am not claiming to offer "proof". Science doesn't claim to offer "proof"...note the use of "indicates" and "suggests".

It's a piece of evidence, a single brick in the ever growing wall of scientific knowledge

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Only one part of the brain? So newborns can understand speech, grasp objects, walk, run, read, write, do math, consider the implications of E=MC squared? Most of the brain is immature in newborns.

Vision has many, many aspects, the visual cortex is enormous and complex, and completely unused in the womb.

I meant that all the other senses are in full working order. The brain of an infant can perceive sound, touch, taste, and smell. Why can't it perceive sight? I'm sure you will say it's due to immature eye muscles, but that is not the entire story. This article also states that color vision is almost non-existent.

Early Development of the Eye

Given these and other methods, opthamalogical researchers can study the limitations of the infant’s eye, and what changes occur in the years after birth.

At birth, the eye is far from perfect, and vision is hazy at best. In general, a newborn can recognize motion, and can see only large or close object, that are high-contrast. An immediate reason for this is the immaturity of the photoreceptors: the foveal cones in a baby’s eye are spaced out four times as much (in each direction) as in an adult eye. Furthermore, the collecting area of infant foveal cones is about 25% less, as well. Therefore the infant’s fovea collects about 350 times less light than an adult. Likewise, the rods of the eye, while fairly developed, have about one-tenth of the sensitivity of the adult set of rods, so scotopic vision is also very limited.

Color vision at birth is also pretty much nonexistent. Newborns can only react to luminance, and can’t yet distinguish between colors and grayscale.

In the first few months after birth, the muscles that control eye pointing are still developing, so the eyes tend to wander, or even cross.

It should be noted that the visual cortex of the brain itself is also immature at this time. The brain’s dendrites are still growing, which limits contrast sensitivity and color recognition, even if the eye were providing ideal information to the brain. Continual visual stimuli and time will develop the neural connections, as the months progress.

Infant Eye Development

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What part of "body of knowledge built over time" is escaping your grasp? No one study or link or paragraph will ever be "proof", peacegirl anymore than a single block or brick makes a wall. I am not claiming to offer "proof". Science doesn't claim to offer "proof"...note the use of "indicates" and "suggests".

It's a piece of evidence, a single brick in the ever growing wall of scientific knowledge

There is no body of knowledge that has been built over time regarding the afferent model of sight that cannot be disputed. And science does prove certain things over time. We know the earth is not flat, which is proven.

[LadyShea]

The brain of an infant can perceive sound, touch, taste, and smell. Why can't it perceive sight?

It can perceive sight. Infants can see. They can't see very well is all. Why is that difficult for you to understand? Why is it "perfect vision or nothing"?

From your link:

Clearly as a child grows from birth, the body is still immature, and the eyes and brain have also not yet fully developed. But it may be asked how a child’s visual system develops, and what factors limit vision as he ages.

The answer is complex, of course, and depends upon the many components in the human visual system. In fact, even today there is debate about whether the undeveloped optics and photoreceptors of the eye, or the undeveloped neural pathways of the brain, are the primary cause of imperfect vision in the first years of life. But it is clear that both the physiological and the neural systems are immature after birth, and take years to develop fully. The brain’s growth and the development of intelligent perception is still a largely unknown field, but the growth of the eye is a little better understood;

Also note he explains the methodology used with infants (which is also used with non-human animals dogs) that you find so suspicious

An age-old difficulty in the field of infant vision science is of course the question of how to take useful data, given that the human subjects can’t talk, follow instructions, or even be at all cooperative. Fortunately a variety of methods have been developed to get around this problem.

As early as six months, the experimenter can take advantage of a visual reflex of babies: when presented with an interesting high-contrast object, a baby will usually turn his attention to look at it. Therefore the method of forced-choice preferential looking (FPL) has been developed. A typical experiment may present a baby with two patterns: one a bar pattern with a certain contrast and spatial frequency, and the other an equivalent solid gray. The baby will often turn to look at the more-interesting high-contrast pattern, and so using statistics it can be deduced to what extent a baby can see contrast and detail, that is, a CSF measurement.

[LadyShea]

[quote=peacegirl;987319]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What part of "body of knowledge built over time" is escaping your grasp? No one study or link or paragraph will ever be "proof", peacegirl anymore than a single block or brick makes a wall. I am not claiming to offer "proof". Science doesn't claim to offer "proof"...note the use of "indicates" and "suggests".

It's a piece of evidence, a single brick in the ever growing wall of scientific knowledge

There is no body of knowledge that has been built over time regarding the afferent model of sight that cannot be disputed.

What aspects are disputable and what is the basis for any dispute, other than your emotionally laden "Lessans must have been right"?

And science does prove certain things over time. We know the earth is not flat, which is proven.

It has been proven to your satisfaction as well as mine, and to the satisfaction of all scientists and most people. But there are people who insist it is flat to this day.

That the Earth is billions of years old has been proven myriad ways, yet there are still people who insist it is less than 10K years old.

That vision works "afferently" (shorthand use) has been proven to my satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of those here, and to the satisfaction of all scientists and to most people. You are like the flat Earthers or Biblical creationists, insisting that vision works some other way no matter how much evidence there is against you.


And you wonder why we compare you to fundamentalists?

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What part of "body of knowledge built over time" is escaping your grasp? No one study or link or paragraph will ever be "proof", peacegirl anymore than a single block or brick makes a wall. I am not claiming to offer "proof". Science doesn't claim to offer "proof"...note the use of "indicates" and "suggests".

It's a piece of evidence, a single brick in the ever growing wall of scientific knowledge

There is no body of knowledge that has been built over time regarding the afferent model of sight that cannot be disputed.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What aspects are disputable and what is the basis for any dispute, other than your emotionally laden "Lessans must have been right"?

Just that the single blocks of evidence are not adding up to a fully functioning wall.

And science does prove certain things over time. We know the earth is not flat, which is proven.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

It has been proven to your satisfaction as well as mine, and to the satisfaction of all scientists and most people. But there are people who insist it is flat to this day.

Then I would call them deluded.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

That the Earth is billions of years old has been proven myriad ways, yet there are still people who insist it is less than 10K years old.

I would call them deluded as well, but I do question whether Darwin got it completely right (e.g., how mutations become new characteristics), but that's a discussion for another time.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

That vision works "afferently" (shorthand use) has been proven to my satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of those here, and to the satisfaction of all scientists and to most people. You are like the flat Earthers or Biblical creationists, insisting that vision works some other way no matter how much evidence there is against you.


And you wonder why we compare you to fundamentalists?

I can see why you would think of me this way, but that doesn't make it true. The majority can be wrong.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Obviously this person doesn't realize that the ciliary muscles are not under voluntary control. There's still a lot of confusion in this area, so don't tell me that Lessans has no place in this discussion.

You are an idiot. Or a liar. Or both.


As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, you can easily demonstrate that your ciliary muscles are under voluntary control. It takes 5 seconds' time.

Pick an object and focus on it. Now either contract or relax your ciliarly muscles so that your focal point shifts, either to a point nearer yourself or farther away. It's easy; go ahead and give it a try.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I would call them deluded as well, but I do question whether Darwin got it completely right (e.g., how mutations become new characteristics), but that's a discussion for another time.

I've gotta hand it to you. It's hard to believe that anyone could demonstrate a total lack of understanding of modern evolutionary theory with a single sentence, but you've managed to do it. Bravo!

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

From your own source link peacegirl (working against you again?). We have said this over and over again, why did you skip it in your post?

Here is an article with numerous citations to previous studies. Remember how I said knowledge is built over time? Remember how TLR said you have to spend time to learn all this?

http://infantlab.fiu.edu/Articles/Bu...%20NEWBORN.pdf

Here are the references and citations used in JUST THIS ONE article:

Brown JL. 1964. States in newborn infants. Merrill Palmer Quarterly 10: 313–327.
Bushnell IWR. 1998. The origins of face perception. In The Development of Sensory, Motor
and Cognitive Capacities in Early Infancy, Simion F, Butterworth G (eds). Psychology
Press: Hove, East Sussex; 69–86.
Bushnell IWR, Sai F, Mullin JT. 1989. Neonatal recognition of the mother’s face. British
Journal of Developmental Psychology 7(1): 3–15.
Dailey MN, Cottrell GW. 1999. Neural Networks 12: 1053–1073.
Emde RN, Harmon RJ, Metcalf D. 1971. Stress and neonatal sleep. Psychosomatic Medicine
33: 491–497.
Field TM, Cohen D, Garcia R, Greenberg R. 1984. Mother-stranger face discrimination by
the newborn. Infant Behavior and Development 7(1): 19–25.
Freudigman KA, Thoman EB. 1993. Infant sleep during the 1st postnatal day—an
opportunity for assessment of vulnerability. Pediatrics 92(3): 373–379.
Hellbrugge T. 1960. The development of circadian rhythm in infants. Paper presented at
the Symposium on Quantitative Biology, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.
Hepper PG. 1991. An examination of fetal learning before and after birth. Irish Journal of
Psychology 12: 95–110.
Johnson MH, Horn G. 1988. Development of filial preferences in dark-reared chicks.
Animal Behaviour 36: 675–783.
Johnson MH, Morton J. 1991. Biology and Cognitive Development: The Case of Face Recognition.
Blackwell: Oxford.
Morton J, Johnson MH. 1991. Conspec and conlern: a two-process theory of infant face
recognition. Psychological Review 98: 164–181.
Pascalis O, de Schonen S, Morton J, Deruelle C, Fabre-Grenet M. 1995. Mother’s face
recognition by neonates: a replication and an extension. Infant Behavior and Development
18(1): 79–85.
Pascalis O, de Schonen S. 1994. Recognition memory in 3- to 4-day old human neonates.
Neuroreport 5(14): 1721–1724.
Querleu D, Lefebvre C, Renard X, Titran M, Morillion M, Cre`pin G. 1984. Perception
auditive et reativite´ du nouveau-ne´de moins de deux heures de vie a` la voix
maternelle. Journal de Gynecologie, Obstetrique et Biologie de la Reproduction 13: 125–134.
Sadeh A, Acebo C, Seifer R, Aytur S, Carskadon MA. 1995. Activity-based assessment of
sleep–wake patterns during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development 18:
329–337.
Seamon JG, Williams PC, Crowley MJ, Kim IJ, Langer SA, Orne PJ, Wishengrad DL. 1995.
The mere exposure effect is based in implicit memory: effects of stimulus type,
encoding conditions and number of exposures on recognition and affect judgements.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21(3): 711–721.
Slater A, Kirby R. 1998. Innate and learned perceptual abilities in the newborn infant.
Experimental Brain Research 123: 90–94.
Slater A. 1993. Visual perceptual abilities at birth: implications for face perception. In
Handbook of Research on Face Processing, de Boysson-Bardies B, de Schonen S, Jusczyk P,
MacNeilage P, Morton J (eds). North Holland: Oxford; 57–91.
Thoman EB, Whitney MP. 1989. Sleep states of infants monitored in the home—individual
differences, developmental trends, and origins of diurnal cyclicity. Infant Behavior
and Development 12(1): 59–75.
Tulving E, Shacter DL. 1990. Priming and human memory systems. Science 247: 301–306.
Walton GE, Bower NJ, Bower TG. 1992. Recognition of familiar faces by newborns. Infant
Behavior and Development 15(2): 265–269.
Walton GE, Bower TG. 1993. Newborns form ‘prototypes’ in less than 1 minute.
Psychological Science 4(3): 203–205.
Copyright ©

There is a lot of speculation as to what these different studies even amount to. Some say there is imprinting involved in facial recognition and others say it takes learning, so I'm not about to accept the results of studies that are not clear even among the scientists themselves. Most of the studies are only replicated a few times. That's not enough to deduce that babies can recognize their mothers an hour after birth, let alone see 20/20 close up.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There is nothing different in the explanation he would be giving than the standard theory. Light from each point on the object the eye is focusing on has to arrive at a corresponding point on the retina. The only difference is how the brain is using that information.

According to you and Lessans, the brain doesn't use that information at all. According to you, the visual system carefully measures and records the specific distrubution, intensity, and wavelengths of the light present at the retina, with that information being sent to the brain via the optic nerve. The brain then completely disregards all of this dated information and instead simply "looks out" to see a real time image which is not dependent upon or determined by this carefully collected dated information at all.

And you still can't explain how you think cameras can form real-time images from the light which has taken time to reach the camera.

When are you going to admit to yourself that you are motivated only by an unwavering faith in Lessans rather than any kind of evidence, and that this is wholly inadequate to either rationally convince others or to meet their evidence-based objections?