Michael writes:
"Consider your field of vision. The extreme edges,
the periphery, of the retinal field respond *only* to movement. Then,
moving in from that is a region of shape response, but not color, and
then further in to the center is color vision. Have you noticed that
you cannot perceive the end of your visual field? You have no ability
to recognize and discern what is on the edges, or for that matter,
where the end of your vision is. To me, it seems that I cannot, pardon
the pun, "focus" my attention on that area."
That, happily and alas, has not been my experience.
Happily: When I was a bit younger (heh!) I played football a lot. In my
smallish town, where none of us was notably fast, I was the least slow, so
I used
to be the guy who usually ran with the ball. My peripheral vision was a
crucial
tool. If a tackler came from the side, I was able to "register/recognize"
him. It was important that I never turn my head toward him or even glance
that
way because he was not to know I'd noticed him, because I was about to
stop
abruptly, letting him fly by. As a car-driver I didn't have to turn my
head to
focus on it to register a car pulling up alongside.
When Bill Bradley was a star basketball player at Princeton, he was the
subject of a famous New Yorker profile, " A Sense of Where You Are", by
John
McPhee. Bradley had remarkable peripheral vision that, for example,
allowed him to
pass the ball to another team member without ever "looking at him".
Alas: Two years ago I underwent a carotid endarterectomy. It's a routine
procedure, but it was bungled, and it left me with no peripheral vision in
my
right eye. It's rather like a donut is now fixed around that eye. I see
nothing
until it's at about "two o'clock", and then I recognize it entirely
without ever
turning my head. I now bump into people on my right, and knock over
glasses.
I no longer drive.
Michael writes further:
"The point is that our conscious, interpreting, recognizing mind does
not attend to the visual periphery."
As I say, that simply isn't true of some of us.
"Later in your post, which I didn't excerpt at length here, you
describe the "'secondary' emotions that arise from what ... I'll call
the 'meaning' of awareness," referring to being frightened when you
see the oncoming car. Seeing the car leads you (extremely quickly) to
predict that it will hit you if you do not react, and that leads to
fright. That comment gives rise to a notion that, by extension,
squirrels generate a "meaning" when I open the door to my front porch
and they scurry rapidly away when they hear the door or see me. Do
squirrels' brains produce "meanings"? Or is this entirely what the
animal folks call instinctive behavior, a fixed reaction?. . . when you
[squirrel] hear the sound, then you run away.) They're all
threats."
No, on the contrary. Go walking in Central Park some time. The pigeons and
squirrels all but ignore you, in a way they don't out in the country.
They've
learned that human pedestrians in the Park aren't about to attack them.
Even
if you walk right at them, they simply move to the side; they don't fly
away.
They "recognize" pedestrians. If you run at them, they will fly away. And
if
you're walking with a dog, the birds and squirrels don't hang around.
"Can your mind afford to ignore or disregard the first "meaning" of the
stimulus, that the car is not a threat?" Yes, in fact we do it all the
time. I
don't get frightened every time a car passes me, even when it comes close.
"Is the sight of the car just an adrenaline trigger?"
No, not at all.
". . . or just an instinctual trigger?"
Humans evidently do have some instinctual triggers. If you're holding an
infant, and abruptly remove support, and it begins to fall, it immediately
begins
to cry. Not unlike the effect of some unexpected loud noises on some
adults.
Expected noises -- even when we don't know exactly when -- evoke no alarm.
"When the
visceral reactions of necessity or appetite take over, we don't think
reflexively."
I'm not sure what you're saying. Suppose you walk into the kitchen and
smell
something terrific cooking on the stove. Suddenly -- appetite!
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