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

Fri Jan 15 18:06:58 UTC 2010

Mike, you are right again!

I read the original question very quickly and realise that I have only partly answered it and not very well at that. If a person has been sighted and touched a diagram(s) before, they should be able to understand visual concepts after becoming blind from the same diagram - theoretically. However, as you very correctly point out, this is completely subjective and depends on the person and their personal experiences. Also it depends what is on the diagram! I have interviewed a large number of late blind artists and programmers who tell me that they can visualise what they are touching if they have seen similar / the same articles before. Thus personal historical experience and imagination are very important to this interpretation of diagrams.

Best wishes everyone and have a great weekend.

Simon

--- On Fri, 15/1/10, 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: Friday, 15 January, 2010, 16:57

My personal experience regarding this question:
"And if you turned that around does a sighted person who has lost his/her
sight have an easier time identifying 2-d tactile representations of
objects?"
I know one guy blinded as a senior who has a lot more difficulty
interpreting 2d tactile images than I do, blind from early childhood. But I
also know a lot of people in my situation who have more trouble then he
does. It's my unscientific amateur opinion that interpreting 2d tactiles
carries with it a lot of consciously learned associations.
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: Friday, January 15, 2010 4:32 AM
To: Art Beyond Sight Theory and Research
Subject: Re: [Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] 11th & 12th
fingers:Hands, eyes and tentacles

Sorry, Lisa, last time at the moment, I promise. Your question:

"And if you turned that around does a sighted person who has lost his/her
sight have an easier time identifying 2-d tactile representations of
objects?"

Sighted people have an easier time understanding as they have used touch and
sight together before, blind people have not. I think also in the case of
the clock, again SB had to touch it before understanding the time.

Finally, the pictures also remind me of children's drawings - again see
Viktor Lowenfeld - as they were un-tutored. It is arguable that we may have
to learn all conventions of converting 2D to 3D - see drawings from cultures
with no background of perspective drawings, such as Native American art -
and this is what SB lacked, and Esref, remarkably, has taught himself.

Best wishes and cheers,

Simon

--- On Fri, 15/1/10, Simon Hayhoe <simon_hayhoe at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

From: Simon Hayhoe <simon_hayhoe at yahoo.co.uk>
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: Friday, 15 January, 2010, 12:19

Sorry about the double emailing. In the library now, and watching out for
VIth form and 11's on private study.

As I was saying, to prove the nature point you need to prove immediate
recognition - as in I see what I have only touched before, recognise it and
thus prove nature is God, or God is nature if that is what you want to
believe - or that blind people have an inherent understanding of concepts
that they have never seen without ever learning them - which is the main
thrust of SOME of the research into Esref's art work, and a very different
debate altogether!

Perhaps to understand this whole debate you should read the evolution of the
argument before delving into Gregory - I am sorry to thrust more paper at
you, Lisa. Shameless self promotion aside, you could start with my chapter
in Art Beyond Sight - which was an earlier draft of my history on this
subject - and perhaps also read the first few chapters of God, Money and
Politics, in which I describe a great deal more about the debate, its
history and its importance. Perhaps also see Isaac Newton's letter to Locke
- deliberately withheld from Essay Concerning Human Understanding - on God
and visions to gain a greater idea about the religious history of the time
(http://www.blindnessandarts.com/papers/NewtonLetterToLocke.htm). I only
hope that Dan Brown isn't reading!

I hope this is not overload!

Best wishes and cheers, and again many thanks for all of this!

Simon

--- On Fri, 15/1/10, Simon Hayhoe <simon_hayhoe at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

From: Simon Hayhoe <simon_hayhoe at yahoo.co.uk>
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: Friday, 15 January, 2010, 11:54

Hi Lisa,
Thankyou for this. You observe correctly in one sense, and that is that I
should have added the word "immediately", which was the thrust of Molyneux's
question to this, and is the basis of the debate at the time of whether
sense was innate, or God given - and hence blind people could not find God
as a result. Broadly speaking Catholics were very pro nature, and  many
protestants were therefore for very pro-nurture - the history of the
question, not admittedly the reason for Gregory's study - is vital here:
"Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to
distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the
same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the
cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table,
and the blind man be made to see: quaere, whether by his sight, before he
touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which
the cube?"

If you look at SB's case study he made "rapid progress", i.e. he learnt very
quickly, but he did not make immediate associations before he touched them.
In this case, if he had made immediate associations, it would prove the
nature argument. However, in many cases he made only rapid progress and in a
small number of instances little or no progress at all - particularly
reading, which Gregory dimisses as a crisis of confidence, but not why this
would have affected reading and not the other things.

Some instances that are made in SBs case should be re-read, however, Lisa.
It is vital to understand the nature of the learning of sight. The two most
interesting instances were when SB saw from a high window for the first
time. This led him to lean out and almost fall several flights, as he did
not have any understanding of depth perception, and also his need to feel
objects he had previously touched at Bristol Museum when the glass cases
were removed. In this case, he only recognised them after touching, not when
he saw them. This he described as cross-modal transfer, and is a concept of
Robert's description of the over-lapping senses. Gregory described this to
me as the sense data from one perception being able to interpreted through
the sense data of another - I hope I am not miss-quoting this, as it was 15+
years ago.

Perhaps to understand Gregory's need to argue and conclude as he did, you
need also to read the studies which Gregory was trying to argue against, and
particularly disprove. In one way Gregory was pro-Revesz, who was anti-Von
Senden's belief that blind people could not understand any artistic concepts
at all - so proved wrong ever since, that he has become merely a footnote in
history now - in another anti-Revesz, who argued that blind people could
understand artistic objects on a very superficial level, but had no creative
ability - which was later disproved initially by Lowenfeld, the great art
educator, who discussed visual and haptic types - and in yet another
anti-Hebb, who believed that the senses could only ever be understood as
discrete and nothing else, full stop, ad infinitum! Sorry, library duty,
will have to finish later...

--- On Fri, 15/1/10, 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: Friday, 15 January, 2010, 10:49

Hi Simon,

I am not sure I completely understood.  You wrote 
" although this has to be learned, and is not innate - the people observed
in all of these cases could not
recognize by sight what they had previously touched,"

In R. Gregory's paper Recovery from Early Blindness  Gregory wrote that
almost immediately after the operation 
S.B could read the title of a magazine (capital letters) and tell the time
from the clock on the wall. The capital letters because he had the
experience from tactile capital letters and the clock on the wall because of
his own tactile wrist watch. This to me points in the opposite direction of 
what Locke said.

Because of object invariance would one be limited in being able to recognize
objects? And does object invariance have to do with understanding an object
from a sort of 2-dimensional representation because doesn't this has to do
with recognizing different "sides" of objects? If that is so would increased
experience with handling objects, models increase an individual's  ability
to recognize objects after having sight restored? 

And if you turned that around does a sighted person who has lost his/her
sight have an easier time identifying 2-d tactile representations of
objects?

If a person blind from birth handled a model of the Eifel Tower do you think
that that person would recognize the Eifel Tower if he/she saw it or saw a
picture of it? I guess this is sort of Molyneux's questioned rephrased but
in lieu of Gregory's experience ...

There is also something that has always struck me and that is the pictures
S.B drew. They look so much like pictures one gets when one uses the drawing
technique called "Blind Drawing". In it one without looking at the paper and
just at an object follow the contour of the object with the eye and drawing
while not taking the pencil from the paper. A similar result is gotten if
one follows the contours of an object with a finger of one hand and draws
with the other. Aren't the eye and finger are looking for the same type of
information to understand what an object is. Contours being  something that
defines an object

Could one say that nature waits for nurture?

Hope you can understand this email tangled with questions.

Best,
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
Simon Hayhoe
Sendt: 14. januar 2010 13:25
Til: Art Beyond Sight Theory and Research
Kopi: John Kennedy; Oliver Sacks; John Hull
Emne: 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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