The brain is a two-dimensional surface? Hmm…I’m pretty sure mine is 3D–perhaps I misunderstood what you’re getting at. In reality, a two-dimensional object only exists theoretically, since everything that exists has width, however infinitely thin.
Sorry, but the “fourward”, “quatward” or “inverting” motion all of you are describing is not the same thing as “imagining” a hyperdimensional behavior. All you are really describing is the particular behavior of an object moving in a higher dimension which would be observable in our third (+time) dimension. To say the ball “flips” or the particles invert or the hypersphere grows and shrinks is simply to state that facet of its movement observable to you in your dimension, it is not truly descriptive of what is happening on the higher dimension. One can only think and speak in “3D” metaphors when dealing with these things. Imagine a theoretical 2-D paperdoll trying to describe an object with height–impossible for him to do except at that point which the object intersects his world.
Trust me on this, this inability doesn’t mean you are unimaginative! It means you’re not crazy.
I don’t have time for a complete dissertation on the workings of the brain, however suffice it to say that the basic structure is such that the surface of the brain is where the neurons are mapped (BTW, the word “cortex” means “surface” in Latin). No it’s not an infinitely thin surface, but it’s a reasonable facsimile. The inner core of the brain, the 3-dimensional part [wink], is the connective “wiring”, plus blood vessels, etc… Your senses and memories are mapped onto the surface of the cerebral cortex in a surprisingly regular fashion. As stated previously, images received at the visual cortex are rendered in two dimensions and this seems to be the way the brain typically recalls these images. Of course, when your brain processes any of this surface information, it is done through the (3-dimensional) neural network…
My real point, however, was to contest your assertion that since the brain is a three dimensional organ, we are incapable of perceiving things in greater than three dimensions. This is simply one dimensional thinking.
You’re still not speaking in 2-D, JB. Just because activity is directed side ot side and not up and down does not mean the elements of that activity have no 3-dimensional position in the spacial matrix. in fact, “Surface,” the word you use to describe a location of activity, by definition connotates a specific 3-D location. The surface is the description of the level of “depth” into the brain that activity is taking place. Therefore, neural mapping takes place at a specific place in the 3D matrix of space. The point is, three-dimensional space is state in which our brains are selected are evolved to function. That doesn’t mean we can’t describe what the effects of higher dimensions would be–on a 3D OBJECT, that is!–but we can’t describe what’s actually happening in that higher dimension. The mental images, much less the language, just won’t come. In fact, we are so “programmed” into 3D, it is pretty difficult for most (perhaps all?) to honestly “picture” 2D or 1D. Sure, we can say, “a line with no height” or “a point with no length or height,” but be honest–your brain is still picturing a point/line that has 3D properties.
Not even Einstein could visualize singularity without relying wholly upon 3D characteristics.
At one point in your counter argument, you completely lost me…
This just sounds like jibberish to me, but I’m sure it’s just the grammar that has me confused…
And you wrote:
Again the grammer has me tripping a bit, but I think the argument you’re trying to make is that we tend to try and visualize things in three dimensions because of natural mechanics in the brain… since we don’t yet know how the conscious mind works, I can’t argue too strongly. However, I submit this alternate theory that we tend to visualize things in three dimensions because that’s what we’ve trained our brains to do. This might explain why AuraSeer, I, and others feel that we can visualize extra dimensions - we’ve retrained our brains.
Honestly… no. At least not in the context of an ideal point or an ideal line (or an ideal plane, for that matter). I’ve retrained my brain not to try and visualize or attach non existent dimensions.
Einstein could not visualize a universe that was expanding… hence he invented the cosmological constant. * The man clearly lacked vision…*
I, on the other hand, would not try to visualize a singularity for the same reason that I would not try to visualize an infinitely large object.
ps
Just kidding with that Einstein crack… the man clearly had more vision in his little pinky than I’ll ever have in my meager brain.
JoeyBlades,
Hey, if you still say you can honestly think in 4D (or 1D or 2D), I’d be a schmuck to keep arguing with you. I just wish you could teach it to me!
The image hitting our eyes is definitely as 2D as a photograph. Our brain takes two 2D images (offset from each other by the distance between our eyes) and constructs a 3D visual world.
If the brain can be trained to create a 3D illusion from two 2D pictures; it can be trained to create 4D illusions that are as reasonable a facsimilie of a 4D world as is the 3D illusion.
But Moriah, the image read by our eyes, though a 2D image, is of a 3D object. Our brains, themselves 3D objects, have simply learned to convert the image into a mental interpretation of reality (3D). There is no metaphorical interpretation required by the brain to render this image to us, we simply see what is actually there and able to be proven with methods of measurement. The 4D behavioral characteristics of an object in front of us, however, cannot be experienced with any of our (5) senses or methods of measurement.
Let me give an example: Someone could tell me there is a man standing outside in the street, and the same man is simultaneously standing beside me in my room. I could “visualize” this using metaphors–that is, simply imagining him on the street AND in my room. but this is in effect really just imagining two identical beings. I’m not REALLY able to imagine just one man in two places. I get close, but my mind reverts to a metaphor it is confortable with–two beings in two places at the same time.
Not precisely. Your brain/vision cannot differentiate between 2D and 3D. There are cues (shading, perspective, binocular vision, etc.) that enable your brain to attach special 3D meaning to what it is registering, but it’s still just a translation. As evidenced by a number of different kinds of optical illusions, the brain can be fooled into registering something as three dimensional when in actuallity, the object does not (or sometimes could not) exist in three dimensions.
I have found the banter between Zooey and Blades to be a highly interesting read, but I think it might be a futile discussion. No one, I suppose can disprove to Joey or Aura etc… that they are in fact seeing these extra dimensions but my question is this:
How can you assume to “SEE” or “Visualize” these dimensions when they (in all reality) may be unrelated to VISION (or visualization) as we know it. You are automatically nullifying the very thing you are saying you can percieve by simply saying you are “seeing it” in you mind. My point is, to assume you can retrain your mind’s eye by using the five sensual tools to see extra dimensions is naive. What if sight stops at the third dimension, what if we are confined to the dimensions that we know of because of our sight? Something to consider is that Zooey is correct in saying that you are assuming the manner of these extra dimensions by using
the 3+T that we operate in.
Very good question and it really points to an inadequacy of language. When I try to grasp the whole “picture” of 5 dimensions, it’s really not an image, per se. I can’t exactly describe it, but it’s not like remembering a face, where there seems to be some sort of image recall going on. So words like “see”, “visualize”, “picture”, etc. don’t precisely capture the concept. On the other hand, sort of contrary to what I told Zooey previously, I do sometimes find it useful to try and actually visualize, in a piecewise manner, some portions of a function in 5 dimensions. The way my mind does this is sort of like adding a new independent time-like dimension. Basically, I freeze time and then do a sort of “fly-by” where pseudo-time maps to the 4th spacial dimension… I know that sounds sort of metaphysical, but it’s really just conceptual.
Actually, my argument is that sight and image memory stops at 2 dimensions. The fact that we can perceive and register 4 dimensions is due to mapping functions performed by the mind. If you accept this, then it’s not a great leap to assume that some people’s minds can map to more dimensions.
Actually, I agree with this, in part, but there are other conceptual ‘modes’ of brain operation where there’s simply no direct mapping to 3+T.
For purposes of visualization, change-over-time is one quality that can represent an object’s properties in a “higher” dimension (i.e., neither length, width, nor height). Color is another; some contour maps are color-coded, which is how they represent a three-dimensional object (the Earth) on a two-dimensional surface.