[Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] 11th & 12th fingers:Hands, eyes and tentacles

Fri Jan 15 09:35:30 UTC 2010

You are spot on with this, Mike! This is the experience of many blind people, both late and early, that I have had the pleasure of working with. It is a very under-researched / discussed area, however.

You may also be interested in seeing more recent research I have conducted on early / late blindness and computer programming. This is published on my own website under publications and art education (http://www.blindnessandarts.com), or the British Computer Association for the Blind's website under Articles (http://www.bcab.org.uk). One book chapter has been accepted and is forth coming on this topic and two papers are currently under-review. Apologies that this is rushed but I have a year 7 class at the moment.

Best wishes and cheers,

Simon

--- On Thu, 14/1/10, Mike Sivill <mike.sivill at viewplus.com> wrote:

From: Mike Sivill <mike.sivill at viewplus.com>
Subject: Re: [Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] 11th & 12th fingers:Hands, eyes and tentacles
To: "'Art Beyond Sight Theory and Research'" <art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research at nfbnet.org>
Date: Thursday, 14 January, 2010, 18:57

This is a very fascinating vein of discussion. I also don't hear a lot about
early  vs. late onset of blindness in relation to anything other than
Braille reading but from my experiences with both types of people there are
definitely huge differences in a lot of different areas including how one
identifies as a blind person. For me, most of the time when I talk with
someone blinded late in life, I get the feeling  they are impressed that I
am independent, can read Braille, etc, but they're simply not of my own
species. I also get the feeling from these people that no other way of
viewing things will ever be as good as sight to them. They have to do things
in ways that substitute for sight rather than approaching things entirely
from another sense. Interesting.
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research-bounces at nfbnet.org
[mailto:art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Simon Hayhoe
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 4:25 AM
To: Art Beyond Sight Theory and Research
Cc: John Kennedy; Oliver Sacks; John Hull
Subject: Re: [Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] 11th & 12th
fingers:Hands, eyes and tentacles

Hi Lisa,
Fascinating as always!!

I hate to make this debate even more Anglocentric (or in Robert and my case,
East-Midlands-Mainline-ocentric) but you should look at several pieces of
research in particular on this issue: 1) Lots of the stuff done by Charles
Spence suggests that what you perceive through one sense has a direct affect
on the way you perceive with the others - this would suggest that, although
there are discreet senses, there is a great deal more inter-play between
these senses in the brain than was previously thought possible 2) the
classic epistemological studies of Molyneux's question to Locke, most
particularly by Berkley Gregory and Sacks. These are of course the studies
of early / born totally blind individuals who have their congenital
cataracts removed. The finding is that there is an inter-play between touch
and sight - Robert's overlapping of the senses - although this has to be
learned, and is not innate - the people observed in all of these cases could
not
recognise by sight what they had previously touched, in Gregory's case with
dangerous consequences.

On a point made by Robert, I would like to respectfully disagree. I believe
the study of the evolution of the senses, and the evolutionary use of the
senses is not a cul-de-sac. Personally, I am very much on the culture side
of explaining how we learn to develop and use our senses - nurture rather
than nature. However, I feel that the evolutionists have taught us a great
deal in relation to the nature and structure of perceptions, and the nature
of brain's processing of such data. I would argue myself that Locke's
publication of Molyneux's question in An Essay on Human Understanding -
although this is in favour of the nurture argument - Descartes, Diderot,
Berkley - even Newton on the structure of optics - and all of the psychology
that has followed this case have all been interested in the idea of nature -
or God, as many believed - versus nurture. This has had profound influences
on our understanding of the brain and the development of modern science,
and thus cannot be dismissed so easily.

There is another aspect to this that has not been mentioned, however, that I
believe has a major affect on the interplay between touch and sight - and
the other senses - come to that, and even has parallels with an email debate
I took part in with the Society for Disability Studies this morning, and
that is the role of culture on the senses, and the use of the senses.
Following the theme of arguing for our own research here, there is a great
deal of evidence if you compare the cultural history to people's current
experience - I personally use a comparison of de Saussure's diachronic and
synchronic approach - there is significant evidence that people's cultural
experience is related to the way that they use and understand touch and
sight (see my research on British cultural history of blindness versus
today's cultural experience of students who have attended schools for the
blind). There is another aspect of this research too.

Another thing that has not been discussed at the moment is the early / late
blind cultural experience - something for greater cultural reasons has not
been the focus of philosophical discussions on this issue for several
hundred years, eventhough it is the most important aspect of
understanding blindness and the lived experience of the blind person.. Early
blind people will develop their own culture of perception. For me this
observation, even though it was not by any means the main focus of their
research, was the most interesting aspect of the studies of Gregory and
Sacks. As I have found with late blind people who find it very difficult
- to the point where it threatens their mental health -  to adapt to their
blindness, and the fact that they have to rely on touch where they
previously only thought of sight - see particularly John Hull's experience
of the problems he had coming to terms with total blindness and his
transition to a different
way of thinking about his perceptions - Gregory and Sacks found that the
early blind people given sight did not think of it as a blessing. Indeed
they became depressed and gravely ill as a result, and often sat in darkened
rooms in order to recreate their experiences of blindness. This perhaps
shows, more strongly than anything else, that there is a great deal more to
perception than simply touch, sight, smell, hearing, taste and
pro-prioception.

Best wishes and cheers, Lisa, and thankyou for giving me a reason to put off
marking some very boring year 9 exam papers this morning in a very chilly
classroom in Leicester.

Simon

--- On Tue, 12/1/10, Lisa Yayla <Lisa.Yayla at statped.no> wrote:

From: Lisa Yayla <Lisa.Yayla at statped.no>
Subject: Re: [Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] 11th & 12th fingers:
Hands, eyes and tentacles
To: "'Art Beyond Sight Theory and Research'"
<art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research at nfbnet.org>
Date: Tuesday, 12 January, 2010, 9:49

Dear Dr. Patterson,

Thank you so much for your answer. I have read your article The Human Touch
at TPM and really enjoyed it.
Your discussion about some of the ancient Greek philosophers towards touch
made me think that is what has 
built up the basis for galleries and museums to be so reticent in allowing
touch tours. That is art galleries/museums
have become the Temples of Vision where touch is the cardinal sin. 

Your physical discussion of touch was also really good. I wonder could you
say that touch is the only sense with muscles at its command? 

Will also be reading The Senses of Touch when it comes to the library.   

Sort of turning around how sighted people view blind I remember from an
article (think RNIB) where a sighted mother tells about her blind son that
when small he thought his mother had very long fingers because she could
find things far away (e.g. a ball that had rolled away).

Your website is full of information. I will be passing the address onto
others.  

Thank you very much.

Lisa

-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research-bounces at nfbnet.org
[mailto:art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research-bounces at nfbnet.org] På vegne av
Paterson, Mark
Sendt: 11. januar 2010 15:48
Til: art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research at nfbnet.org
Emne: [Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] 11th & 12th fingers: Hands,
eyes and tentacles

Lisa,

In addition to Robert Hopkins’ full and fascinating answer, the relationship
between vision and touch has interested me for a while. You might want to
look at my book published by Berg in 2007, The Senses of Touch: Haptics,
Affects and Technologies, as chapter two sets up the phenomenological
framework for considering this relationship, mostly based on Merleau-Ponty.
So it might help contextualise your reading of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology
of Perception. Some people find reading Merleau-Ponty difficult, but
actually I find his prose style to be both poetic and clear. You might not
need to read any secondary literature on this, but if you do, the book might
be useful.

As regards Rob’s last point, about sight evoking touch, Merleau-Ponty writes
about this in terms of “the tactile within the visible”. This I write about
in my book (also available on Google Books!) and in an easily-comprehensible
‘popular philosophy’ article for The Philosopher’s Monthly, available here:
http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=214.  Although there need not be any
argument relating to evolutionary theory, the cross-modal associations
between vision and touch have been the subject of much philosophical debate
throughout history, including the infamous Molyneux Question (which Rob has
written about, and which I have also written about in an article for the
British Journal of Visual Impairment and another journal, The Senses and
Society).

But your questions, Lisa, really prompted me to think in more animal-based
terms about something I’m currently writing, Seeing with the Hands: A
Philosophical History of Blindness, to be published by Reaktion next year.
Because your analogy with the tentacles and the eyes is really pretty
similar to René Descartes discussion in his 1637 book Optics (Dioptrique),
where he hypothesises about an unnamed blind man walking with a cane, and
makes an analogy between the cane and the eyes. Generalising about all
‘blind’ people he says “it is as if they see with their hands”. This is
quite striking, and opens up questions about the relative hierarchies of the
senses in western philosophy (Aristotle famously denigrated touch as the
lowest and most bestial of the senses), the ways that certain senses have
been considered as dealing with distance or proximity, and much else
besides.

But another thing also immediately sprang into mind: a few years ago I read
an article in The Guardian newspaper about the star-nosed mole, an amazing
creature that has virtually no light perception, but has a nose with haptic
(touch) elements so that it feels its way through earth and water with this,
smelling/palpating the environment in search of food. It even creates a
bubble in water in order to smell potential prey, and a few months ago the
BBC series Life (narrated by David Attenborough) had a small sequence
showing this remarkable animal in action. The newspaper article is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2001/may/31/neuroscience.onlinesupplement 

Didn’t mean to do all the shameless self-promotion, honestly(!) but your
questions and Rob’s responses resonated so well with what I’ve been working
on. Good luck with your own research!

Mark

ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø

Dr. Mark Paterson
School of Geography
University of Exeter
+44 (0)1392 723912

http://www.sensesoftouch.co.uk 
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