Multiple realities

There are as many realities as there are perceivers.

Painting medium

The medium of painting is not paint but light.

The function of the artist

The function of the artist seems to consist in entertaining the rich.

Create your own reality

"Though quantum mechanics seems to deny the existence of a physical reality independent of its conscious observation, if our observation creates everything, including ourselves, we are dealing with a concept that is logically self-referential — and mind boggling."
(The Quantum Enigma, Rosenblum and Kuttner, Duckworth & Co., 2007).

The vexed question of whether the world exists independently of the conscious mind seems to have settled by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. It seems there is no collapse of potential without observation. It is the act of observation that brings reality into existence — causing an infinite array of possibilities to take up one state or another

There is even the suggestion that new realities can be created by different acts of observation. This may seem far-fetched, but perhaps is not so far from the truth. For we know that we each experience reality differently, each of us has a unique take on the world. And given that different people at different times will see the world in vastly different ways, even ways that are completely incompatible, we could say that there is a valid sense in which we each create our own reality; we each observe a distinct set of probabilities collapsing.

The location of truths

The mistake perhaps is to imagine truth is sought from outside the mind, as though it were to be discovered externally — an independent property. But what we are really discovering are truths about the mind. We project truths into the world, just as we project our perceptions into the world.

Art and the fractured unity of consciousness

(Abstract submitted to Consciousness Reframed 2008)

Much recent scientific discussion of consciousness takes the view that it is unified, i.e. our perceptions, memories, thoughts and beliefs come together in a singular phenomenal experience. This has led many researchers to seek a singular neural correlate of consciousness in the human brain, or some other mechanism to account for this unity. At the same time it is frequently assumed this unified experience is essentially rational — that the perceptions, thoughts and beliefs of which we are aware must be logically coherent in order for our mental life to make sense.

In this paper I will question both of these views. Using an example of my experience when studying a painting, I will argue that my perceptions and beliefs are as much fragmentary and contradictory as they are unified and rational, consisting of quite distinct percepts and often incompatible thoughts. I will suggest that this multiplicity and inconsistency contribute in some way to the peculiar vibratory sense of lived experience, and that the conscious mind might be better characterised as a ‘fractured unity’ — to use a contradictory term.

I envisage two main objections: First, it could be argued that although our minds may contain numerous percepts, thoughts and beliefs it is their co-occurrence that creates a unity, without which our experience would be incoherent. Second, that we cannot entertain contradictory thoughts while retaining a rational mind because this would conflict with the basic rules of logic.

In countering these objections I will suggest that the concept of unity as normally defined is at best ambiguous, perhaps even itself contradictory. Moreover, despite intensive searches as yet no evidence has been found of a unifying mechanism for consciousness in the brain.

I will also point out that the European philosophic tradition is ideologically biased towards the search for singular explanations of phenomena and against contradictions. This is less so in other traditions, such as those of India and China, where there is greater willingness to accept the explanatory potential of diverse and conflicting propositions. Learning from these traditions may help us to build a more universal model of mind and arrive at a deeper understanding of consciousness.

Finally, I will show that many works of art are particularly rich in fragmentary associations and conceptual contradictions, and so may offer profound insights into the nature of human mind.

Nested views of reality

Disputes about mind and world etc. can be avoided if we adopt the following stance:

[1] Common realism, in which there is a world of material objects that we partially perceive through our senses, is fine as a daily utilitarian view of being. It has widespread support and is perfectly applicable in most daily situations, including most scientific investigations. However, it is insufficient where one is seeking a more refined or high-resolution view of reality, in the same way low-resolution images are fine for day-to-day snapshots but inadequate for close scrutiny.

[2] A more subtle and finely grained view recognises that common realism is insufficient to account for the ubiquity of mind in forming our view of reality. The fact that everything we know, and can ever know, is through the mind — idealism in one form or other — is acknowledged, and that external objects, while they may well exist and give cause for sensation, cannot be known ‘in themselves’. In other words, we know the appearance, but not the essence of the world. The common realist view [1] is nested within this idealist view [2].

[3] I would propose a further level of resolution, within which idealism [2] is nested: That the mind is ubiquitous, and identical with reality. There neither is or is not anything outside the mind; prior to or beyond minds things neither do or do not exist. What is real is mind, and what is mind is real. This view approaches the limits of our capacity for conception.

Part of the whole

The world is unlike the mind that perceives it.
— Mind and world are distinct.
The world as we perceive it is the mind.
— Mind and world are the same.
Rationally, we are able to accept each separate premise and outcome as valid, yet we cannot hold both simultaneously.

The world can feel itself, and think about itself. When we reflect upon the world it is the world reflecting upon itself.

We are at once part of and the whole of the world.

The ants on the cake

Why is it that people presented with a common world arrive at such drastically different worldviews? Like ants studying a cake: some will see it as hard and icy, some as soft and crumbly, and others as sticky and creamy, although they are looking at the same cake.

(See the story about the blind men and the elephant)

Mind, matter, objects

Can we conceive a situation in which mind exists without matter, or where matter exists without mind?

For Descartes the mind was indivisible and the extended world was divisible, whereas if anything it is the other way round.

The objects of the world partake in the mind that begets them. It’s not that the mind represents an apple that is external to it, but that the mind is the apple, just as the apple is the mind (at least in part). The apple is no less real for this.

The plane and the stone

To address the jibe about the idealist philosopher forced to chose whether the parachute they are given when ejected from a plane exists or not: Doubting existence in this case is not taken to mean that objects lack being, form or capacity for behaviour, but that these qualities correlates with our mental view of the world. To a flea that clings to the harness, no doubt the parachute has no existence, even though it will be brought to earth just as safely as the philosopher.

I don’t doubt that kicking a stone will hurt the toe, despite what we now know: that the stone is almost entirely made of empty space and that the atoms of the toe and the stone never actually make contact. This demonstrates, as much as anything could, that the stone, the toe and the pain are products of our mental processing, and therefore entirely real.

The mind is real

It would be just as valid, and possibly more so, to invert the standard realist-idealist formulation and say: It is in the mind that experience is most real, while the hypothetical world beyond is imaginary.

It is in the conceptual domain where all the qualities usually associated with ‘realness’ reside: solidity, resistance, tactility, behavioural consistency, causal relations, verifiability, and the like. These are properties of our perceptual activity, our memory and learned experience, our capacity to make associations, to see construct patterns, to organise what our senses detect. It is we who give the world its realness.

Rather than asking how it is that the material world can give rise to the conscious mind, we should ask how the conscious mind gives rise to the material world.

The universe discrete and continuous

Is space-time discrete or continuous? Opinion among experts seems to be divided or uncertain. It could be either, both (or neither!).

Prior to the capacity to experience time and space is the capacity to experience distinction and continuum, simultaneously.

Even if reality turns out to be discrete, each discrete part will form a continuum of its own. Reality will always be both.

The dispute about whether the universe is really discrete or continuous reflects the limits of our capacity for conceptualisation. It is really a dispute about the nature of our own minds.

When describing the universe at its deepest levels we tend to use the same kinds of approach that we use when looking at nature at our the human level; we tend to pitch ourselves as external observers, looking at the universe as though it were a rock on a table or lizard in a jar, and make observations or measurements about it from the outside looking in. But this is not a position we can take with respect to the cosmos. Not only are we inside it, we are synonymous with it on the grounds that it is formed in our own mental image.

Thought and matter

Thought is not immaterial, any more than matter is solid.

True contradictions

Accepting that contradictions can be true does not mean accepting that all contradictions are true.

Matter, mind and energy

The material world (objects, things, actions) and the mental world (thoughts, ideas, wishes) are unified in that they are both processes of energetic formation and transformation. On this level, at least, they are indistinguishable. This is consistent with scientific materialism.

The world is your mind

Look at an object or listen to a sound: that object or sound is your mind. The world is your mind.

This is not crude idealism. No claim is made about the status of one domain over another; the world is no less real than it appears to a materialist. The proposal is that material reality and mental experience are the same thing, not two sides of a coin or two expressions of a deeper underlying reality. They are co-existent and identical.

They form, as it were, a fractured unity.

At the present point in time

Just as there can never exist an actual point in space (see this entry) — only an imaginary one — so I can't see how we can have a present point in time. There can be no immediate moment of any duration; if it is infinitely short then it has no span, and presumably doesn't occur. If it has some duration, however short, then it spans more than a single point and so cannot be a precise moment.

For similar reasons a unit of time — say a second — cannot have an absolute start or end; it is indeterminate in length, or it could even be said it has no length at all, though it has an unspecified duration.

Marx's assumption

Karl Marx remarked that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it.’ This assumes an essential distinction between the world and the ways it can be represented.

Where's the matter?

It might be asked, 'what then happens to matter, if everything is mental?"

Matter, like any other kind of object, must be brought into being by the mind, since mind precedes existence. It does not follow from this, though, that matter is not 'real' just because it depends for its existence on the operation of the mind.

If we take it that the mind is real, and that what we experience of the world with our minds is real (after all we could not have experiences of the world without a mind) then the materials we confront within that world are clearly also real.

Where confusion might occur is in those distinctions we make between objects of imagination and those of corporeality (such as between forests conjured up in our dreams and physical forests). A dreamt forest feels just as real as a physical forest during the dream, but we cease to regard it as such when we wake up. Likewise, we might vividly imagine unicorns, without committing ourselves to the belief that they exist outside of our imagination.

The distinction between the imaginary and the corporeal is a valid and useful one (and indeed necessary if we are to socially integrate), but it is also a product of the self-same mental processes that allow us to distinguish between, say, a memory and a fantasy (although not infallibly), or between yesterday and now.

In other words, although the distinction between the 'real physical' world and the 'imaginary mental' world is habitual, valid and necessary it does not point to some deeper underlying bifurcation within the universe. Rather it is but one of the many distinctions we make as part of our moment to moment operation, a conventional way of organising our beliefs and behaviours — one that is so conventional that we find it very hard to think of ourselves and the world without it.

The known universe is the extent of the mind

This galaxy, located in the constellation Pegasus, is 4 billion light years from Earth. UCLA, Department of Physics and Astronomy: T. Glassman & J. Larkin.

The release comes when we no longer think of the mind as isolated within the frame of our body, when we recognise it extends into the world; when the distinction between ourselves and the world is overcome, and the experiences we have of the 'out there' do actually occur 'out there', as well as 'in here'.

Then it is less hard to see how our minds, our imaginations, reach out into deepest space to 'create' distant galaxies, as we find some means of conceiving them using the 'extended senses' of space probes and telescopes. Such galactic entities literally 'come into being' as they are discovered, being oblivious prior to that point.

We still need to imagine them, reconstruct them in our own minds from the blurry data our astronomical devices send back. They remain objects that are sensed and conceived like any other, no matter how old or distant. But in being imagined they become our minds. The known universe is the extent of the mind.

It's not that there's nothing, but neither is there something.

It is not even sufficient to say that what lies beyond perception is the 'unknown' since this implies there is something 'there', albeit something we can know nothing about. In the absence of a mind, the function of which is to impose discrete boundaries on a boundless ***, categories such as 'knowability' and 'unknowability' can have no purchase. It's not that there's nothing, but neither is there something.

Unfamiliarity and validity

We habitually take existence to be such a fundamental condition, in fact the fundamental condition, so that we cannot accept its negation. To say planets and stars 'did not exist' prior to human minds is taken to mean, in some vulgar sense, that they evaporate or vanish when we don't think about them, or that they suddenly sprang out of the void at the point in history when human minds were first 'switched on'.

In other words, we try to apply our daily experiential criteria to that which is before or beyond it. This is akin to the way we have trouble applying criteria of macro-level behaviours to the quantum level, or conceiving relativistic space-time distortions in relation to the standard domestic environment. But in each case the fact that it is difficult (some say impossible) to conceive these behaviours in familiar terms cannot be used as grounds for denying their validity.

Different kinds of minds

To other kinds of minds the laws of physics might appear entirely different, because to them the cosmos would appear entirely different. Our notion of existence might be entirely absent to them, as might the notions of 'appearance', 'reality', or even 'mind'.

We should not be so conceited as to believe that the way brains, bodies and behaviours have evolved on Earth are the only ways in which minds, intelligences and consciousnesses might emerge. Laws that we take to be universal may be limited in application to our level of perception and capacity for thought. To the man who spends his whole life upside down the action of gravity appears inverted.

Mind precedes existence

Despite the scientific credibility of the claim that all that exists of the world is what we can perceive, we remain unsatisfied. There is an irresistible sense of an independent world made of solid things that truly exist, obey physical laws, and have integral properties that are reflected in our sensations. To deny their existence seems like folly.

Furthermore, to deny we can know anything more about them than our perceptual apparatus permits — that they are forever immune to being known 'in themselves' — seems to ignore the vast progress made by science in recent centuries in probing, understanding and controlling natural phenomena at ever deeper levels. Our abstract descriptions of the world (e.g. e=mc2) are empirically verifiable, which suggests that they way we represent reality in our minds is an accurate depiction of how it really is 'out there', and we continue to find out ever more about the brain, the sub-atomic world, the cosmos, which we can investigate at levels of resolution barely imaginable to those working in, say, the 18th century.

Does all this not mean we are digging behind perceptual appearances into the hidden realm of the 'things-in-themselves', the obscure levels of reality we may not be able to sense with our own apparatus, but which we can divine through powerful calculations or sophisticated measuring devices? Does this not show these things exist in a world of their own, whether we perceive them or not?

What is disputed is not that any of these objects exist, but that they do not exist in the way they are apparent to us without our particular mental processes.

Mind precedes existence.

Schopenhauer and the thing in itself

"Thing in itself signifies that which exists independently of our perception, that which actually is." Schopenhauer

The error here (mainly attributable to Kant) is to bestow qualities onto the 'thing in itself' that do not apply, i.e. the quality of 'thingness' and 'selfness'. Nothing exists, or does not exist, independently of our perception. 'Things' do not count without minds, nor do 'selves' — in the sense of self-contained, discreet objects — count.

The best that can be said (possibly) is that prior to or beyond the scope of perception lies a teeming cosmos of fluctuating energy that with the right biological apparatus can be rendered as discrete 'things' (perhaps Schopenhauer's 'will'). Even saying this is not sufficient, but may be as close as we can get with ideas, which in themselves are products of this process.

The practical questions are: how does the perceptual apparatus convert this teeming cosmos (which is not a 'mind-independent' thing, and neither does nor does not exist) into the things we perceive as existing, and how do we then become aware of them?

Artists' reputations

Artists must make a reputation for their work before it can make a reputation for them.

Studying painting

Students of painting need to learn to see their work not as they would like it to appear, but as it appears to others.

The mind in action

All distinctions seem to be contingent on the mind, including that which distinguishes the mind itself.

Objects actually exist in the mind, although they appear to exist in the world. However, there is no conflict here since the world is the mind in action.

Access to minds

If we cannot have access to our own minds then we can at least observe the minds of others, which in effect then become part of our own minds — to which we cannot have access.

Painting and the mind

Using the mind to try and understand the mind is like trying to paint painting.

The contradictory nature of consciousness

We perceive the world as simultaneously fragmented and unified, full of parts and wholes, differences and associations. To be conscious is to experience neither unity nor fragmentation alone, but the co-presence of these opposing qualities.

Peoples' faults

In general, a person’s strength is also their weakness.

Inhumanity

Nothing characterises humans more than inhumanity. We can never accuse animals of behaving as badly as humans.

Descartes' certainty

Descartes holds that to think is to be certain of one’s existence. But do we still exist if we stop thinking?

Reputation through print

It’s not being published or even read that counts, but being quoted.

Locating consciousness

Trying to locate consciousness is like looking for a needle in a needle-stack .

What is mind?

It would only make sense to ask ‘what is mind?’ if there were something that was not.

Funniness

Something is funny when the unexpected coincides with the expected.

Confirming what we believe

If we want support for our opinions we should read those with whom we disagree.

Ideas

Great ideas are free. It’s waiting around for them that’s expensive.

On mis-management

Good wood rots in wet ground.

Keeping secrets

Some people can’t conceal the fact that they know a secret.

The impossibility of knowing our own mind

It is impossible to know our own mind in the same way it is impossible for a camera to photograph itself. Of course, the camera can always be pointed at a mirror, and in essence that's what we do to establish our own sense of self.

But what is seen in the mirror is remote and inverted — an external rather than internal view. The camera cannot turn upon itself and photograph itself from its own point of view, and we cannot think about what we are thinking about, except to render our thoughts as remote and temporally displaced.

Humanism vs. posthumanism

Humanists regard humans as distinct beings, in an antagonistic relationship with their surroundings. Posthumanists, on the other hand, regard humans as embodied in an extended technological world.

Un-desire

Indifference towards what you desire will significantly increase your chances of getting it.

Aim high...

...lie low

Self-deprecation

Self-deprecation sucks in vanity to make room for flattery.

Thinking beyond the mind

It is impossible to think of that which cannot be thought, except to think of it as that which cannot be thought.

What is not part of the mind? Nothing that can be thought.

Jokes and the irrational

So I said to the Gym instructor, "Can you teach me to do the splits?" He said, "How flexible are you?" I said,"I can't make Tuesdays."
Tommy Cooper

Jokes (like puns and double entendres) frequently exploit the dual meanings of words, in this case two senses of the word 'flexible', but do so in such a way that we have to hold both senses at once. It is the simultaneous appreciation of two conflicting ideas bound together by a single word that gives rise to the psychic discharge we experience as funny.

Jokes are a cardinal case of irrational conception: we conceive two conflicting, incompatible states of mind at once, without one canceling out the other. If this were to happen, or if the meanings were to occur sequentially, then the psychic disturbance would not happen. For example, if the joke was rendered as:

So I said to the Gym instructor, "Can you teach me to do the splits?"
He said, "How flexible are your limbs?"
I said,"My work schedule is not flexible and I can't make Tuesdays."

...little humour is evident, because the two meaning of flexible are not made to co-exist but to follow sequentially. Rationality (if not conversational convention) at this level is preserved.

Jokes are not funny when explained, probably because explanations neutralise the conflict by drawing the sense back into the realms of the rational.

Jokes seem to provide evidence that normal conscious states can accommodate distinct and irrational thoughts, and so resists the widely-held assumption that consciousness is unitary and rational.

See Koestler's 'bisocation' or 'double-minded' theory. He defined humour as: 'the perceiving of a situation or idea in two self-consistent but mutually incompatible frames of reference or associative contexts."

"D'you know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.'"
Tommy Cooper

Conceptual dissonance

Cotán, Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber, 1602

Art frequently exploits the conceptual dissonance between what is present and what is absent. The degree of similarity between the painted surface and what it depicts is proportional to the degree of dissonance.

The excitatory potential of vivid representations (trompe l’oeil, etc.) lies not in the fact we see something that could really be there, but that we see something that is there and not there at the same time.

Perceptual dissonance

Art frequently exploits the perceptual dissonance between what is seen and what is recognised. The degree of disparity between the form and what it suggests determines the degree of dissonance.

State Art

After Mark Wallinger, State Britain, 2007

"Mark Wallinger was shortlisted for State Britain at Tate Britain, a direct representation of the banners and paraphernalia of Brian Haw's protest in Parliament Square. The jury commended its immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance. The work combines a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths."
Extract from Tate press release, 3rd December 2007

If one of the purposes of art is to present the world back to us in surprising or extraordinary ways then too often in practice it amounts trying to find surprising and extraordinary ways to present art back to us. But the strategies and moves in this game are becoming increasingly circular, and so less effective.

The objection is not that the form of the art deviates too far from what is expected, but that it deviates too little.

By drawing a visible and embarrassing totem of political dissent into the arms of state patronage, Wallinger has conspired to more effectively neutralise this oppositional act than those who sought to impose a crude ban on the protest in the first place.

Hanging art(ists)

Hanging a painting is like hooking an artist's mind to the wall.

The trouble with unified theories

The goal of much contemporary research in physics is to discover a 'grand unifying theory' of the structure of the universe, which unites theories about the behaviour of particles at very small scales (quantum physics) with the behaviour of objects at large levels (classical physics).

But why is such a 'GUT' sought? Why is it believed it is 'there' to be discovered?

I once heard Ravi Ravindra talk about the comparison between western and some asiatic approaches to science. Western culture is largely monotheistic: one God, whereas some asiatic religions are polytheistic: many Gods. He noted that western scientists tended to seek singular solutions to problems: the singularity and big bang, the grand unified theory of the universe, a unifying theory of consciousness. Scientists brought up in the Hindu tradition, however, were more likely to accept multiple solutions to problems.

Why can there not be many overlapping and co-existent theories of reality that apply in different contexts or to different aspects of phenomena?

The trouble with dimensions

We are used to thinking about reality as a 3-dimensional space, perhaps with an added 4th dimension of time. But is this realistic?

3-dimensional space is commonly assumed to be composed from lower-dimensional spaces, consisting of 0, 1 and 2 dimensions. So a 0-dimensional space is a singular point that does not extend in any direction. Extend this point along one axis as you get a 1-dimensional space — a line. Extend this line at right angles to its length and you create a 2-dimensional space — a plane. Extend this plane at right angles to its surface and you get a 3-dimensional space — a cube. The process can continue, by extending the cube across all of its surfaces you get a 4-dimensional space — a tesseract.

While all this is mathematically consistent, how does is relate to reality, i.e. the world beyond our mathematical conception? In the first place, there can be no real (non-imaginary) 0-dimensional space. If the point has any existence at all (other than as an imaginary proposition) then it will have some spatial dimension — however small. The same would be true of the line and plane, which, however thin, would still have to have some depth and width, and therefore would really be 3-dimensional.

So there are no 'real', substantial objects that exist solely in 0, 1 or 2 dimensions. It would seem obvious, though, that substantial things really do exist in 3-dimensional space, but is this so? If the 0, 1, or 2 dimensions are useful conceptual conventions but ultimately insubstantial why should the 3rd-dimension be any different? Could it be that the 3rd dimension has only conceptual existence too? I would argue yes, that what we take to be the 'realness' of 3-dimensional space is just as conceptual as 0, 1 or 2-dimensional space, which is to say it does not really exist outside of our conception.

To look at it in one way: in order to establish 3-dimensional space you need axes in fixed relation to one another. You need a 1-dimensional x-axis, a 1-dimensional y-axis and a 1-dimensional z-axis (using the standard notation). Since none of these 1-dimensional axes have any substantial existence outside conception (as already shown) then we can say 3 insubstantial things added together cannot produce something substantial: three zeros make zero.

To look at it another way: a line cannot be extruded from a point with no extension; a plane cannot be extruded from a line with no extension; a cube cannot be extruded from a plane with no extension, and so on.

To look at it another way: The traditional 3-axes of space require a fixed viewing position. Each moves away from a fixed origin, and in fixed relation to the observer. In order to see a cube in the way we are used to we adopt a particular viewing position which looks at it from one angle, the spatial co-ordinates being fixed in relation to that. But this singular viewing position is a very limited view of the cube, which in fact can potentially be viewed from all angles at once, including all internal as well as external viewpoints. When considered from all its potential viewpoints simultaneously the standard axes no longer apply since there is no fixed viewing position to which they relate. When viewed from all directions at once there is no 'up', 'down', 'forward' or 'back'.

Consequently I would argue that 3-dimensional space is just as much an ideal conception of reality conceived from a single viewpoint as the lower dimensions. It has no more substance than these.

Brought into being by the mind

Stars and gases are ideas, just as existence is an idea, and ideas are an idea; they are all products of human conception (itself an idea) and as such only come into being with the evolution of the human mind.

Arriving at the truth

It is usually possible to arrive at the truth by inverting what is most widely held to be true (including this proposition).

Starting a painting

It's often said a painting is never really finished, but it's just as true to say it's never really started.

Painting unknown

Still from What is A Picture? (16 mm film, 1986)

The Impressionists wanted to paint what they saw, not what they knew. The Cubists wanted to paint what they knew, not what they saw. I want to paint what we know we don't know.

Art and wrongness

Cézanne, Bathers at Rest, 1875.
Great art needs sufficient wrongness — what Picasso called Cézanne's "anxiety."

Another kind of consciousness

One can imagine another kind of consciousness that perceives the world not as made of bounded material objects but of continuous, variegated flows of energy.

Video of paintings

Video of the paintings in the 'Three Painters' exhibition at Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff, UK, 17th November to 11th December 2007.

3-in-1

Triptych (Eke, Crusifixus, The Spirit of Modernism), 2005-7. Oil on canvas.

The paintings should be landscape, still-life and figure composition at the same time.

Artist's statement

Aphoria, 2005, Oil on canvas.

Extract from my artist's statement for the "Three Painters" exhibition at Howard Gardens gallery, CSAD, Cardiff, November 17th to December 11th 2007.

...Pepperell’s paintings form part of a wider philosophical challenge to a western metaphysics that has dominated our thinking on key philosophical problems but which he argues is now subject to fundamental revision because of new ideas emerging in the sciences and humanities. For example, we have to abandon the notion that anything has a beginning, or end; we have to recognise there are no objects in the world; we must discard the division between the mind and world (while simultaneously acknowledging it); we must accept that it is in the mind where all qualities and properties exist while also recognising that the mind is in the world.

By adopting some of the primary visual languages of western metaphysics (baroque, romantic and rococo painting) to generate images that are both visceral and spiritual, and in which objects are both present and absent, he asks the viewer to perceive the world as essentially contradictory and indeterminate. This is in opposition to the dominant western tradition, sustained by the ethos of empiricist science, which holds that reality is rational and deterministic.

Despite his scepticism about the scientific ethos, Pepperell’s work has recently been the subject of a number of scientific investigations by laboratories in vision and brain research at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany. Samples of Pepperell’s paintings were tested against a sample of art historical works, and audience responses to certain perceptual tasks were measured. A number of significant findings emerged, which have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Comparison in fragmented perception

The qualities we are aware of in the perceptual field - in objects we experience - arise from our simultaneous cognizance of conflicting attributes (e.g. smallness/largeness, redness/blueness, forward/back, loudness/quietness). We are aware (to some extent semi-consciously/sub-consciously) of the multiple perceptual attributes as distinct cognitive moments, as separate strands of perception that do not get merged into a singularity, but bump and clash with each other to generate the vibrant diversity of our conscious experience.

Self-awareness is paradoxical

Paradoxes and contradictions of self-reference should not be seen as logical dead-ends, or failures of argument. On the contrary, they constitute the very essence of self-aware mind, and the point beyond which we cannot go.

Thought as contradiction

We cannot have thought without contradiction, just as we cannot impose a boundary without creating a paradox.

Representations

Magritte, The Treason of Images, 1928

Once matter is arranged so as to evoke something other than itself, when it is turned into a representation, it turns into what it represents. A picture of a pipe is clearly a pipe, although seen as pipe and picture at the same time.

I don't have conscious experiences

• My consciousness consists in and extends to that which I am conscious of. If I am conscious of a door then that door forms part of the totality of my conscious experience; it is to some extent ‘consciousness’.

• When I look at an object it is not just that I become conscious of it — it becomes my consciousness.

• I cannot have an experience, since that implies there is some agent separate from the experience having the having. I can only be an experience.

The fragments of mind

Apollo at the gardens of Versailles

• In our minds, we arbitrarily divide the world into fragments and then feel we have discovered something when we find they can be connected.

• Helmholtz (1878) argued all physical qualities — colour, texture, smell, shape, etc. — belong not to objects in the world but to our perceptual faculties. It is we who mistakenly assign such qualities to the objects ‘in themselves’. This applies even to the quality of ‘objecthood’.

• In one sense, objects do not have any existence independent of perception. In another sense, objects (insofar as the word has any sense) clearly do exist, since we encounter them on a daily basis.

Deep reality

Deep Reality, 2007, Oil on canvas on board

Deep reality might be described as a conception of reality that acknowledges the absence of individual or bounded entities. Instead, reality is understood as an essentially unbroken continuum, albeit one that appears as uneven, fluctuating and variegated.

Objects, as they appear to us, are better understood as indefinitely extending relationships of perceptual attributes, clumps of seemingly localised properties with infinitely distributed parts, most of which we are habitually oblivious to.

Seeing the world 'as it is'

Blooming, buzzing confusion, 2007, Oil on panel

It may be that young infants, and those who have sight restored after having been born blind, 'see' the world in a way that is more faithful to its true state of being than those who see it as being full of objects.

To the those without the capacity to see objects (as far as we know this is the case in very young children and post-operative cataract patients, or those diagnosed with visual agnosia) the world must seem, as William James termed it, like a "blooming, buzzing, confusion", i.e. rich, variegated, mobile, but ultimately devoid of recognisable 'things'.

But of course, this is much closer to what the world is really like. It does not contain discrete, separate things, even though we might strongly believe it does. In fact it contains nothing our senses would lead us believe is there: no colours, sounds, textures, shapes, smells, hot or cold values, etc. All these appear only as a consequence of our sensory apprehension of the world.

Because we know this (it is uncontroversial scientific knowledge, as has been so for more than a century) we have to accept the consequences for our understanding of reality.

Looking but not seeing

Occasionally we look for something that is right in front of us, yet at first we don't see it. This demonstrates how dominant the 'cognitive' aspect of vision is; how to see something is not merely to look at it — to absorb the light from it — but to recognise it. That is, to map the visual data onto some conceptual model that accords with the object we seek.

I was looking for the toothpaste on the bathroom sink. It took me some moments to see it, although it was in my visual field all the time. It was not my visual system that was deficient, but my conceptual attention.

This example might be used to show that objects do not exist in the world until they are conceptualised. Unconceived objects are invisible.

(A similar incident occurred when looking for the soap. I scanned the room, including the area where the soap was, but had already moved on when I realised where the soap was. It took a fraction of a second to conceptualise what I had seen)

(A further incident: I was looking for a tape measure that I believed to be green. I knew where it was but couldn't see it. It turned out the measure was actually yellow. Although I had looked at it several times I had not seen it because it didn't look like I expected it to look.)

Watching, not looking, at art

We spend so little time looking at works of art. Historically, audiences would spend long periods of time looking at paintings, almost in the way we now watch cinema or TV.

Contemporary art does not encourage us to look for long periods.

Strong art gradually reveals itself through extended scrutiny — we need to watch it.

The Projecting Eye

Some archaic theories of vision propose that the eye rather than being a receptor of images is an organ of projection — beaming images into the world. We are apt to dismiss this as naive since it seems to us obvious that light travels from objects into the eye and not the reverse. Yet if what we see is actually inside our eyes why do images appear to be outside us in the world beyond? Is it not the case that the appearance of the world is precisely a projection, not by the eye as such but by the combination of eye, brain and body in motion? In fact, what we see is not 'out there' at all, but occurring behind our eyes in the visual regions at the back of the brain. Nothing we see is 'out there'.

The Spirit of Modernism

Mondrian, Evolution Triptych, 1911

There are artists of a certain generation who proclaim their allegiance to Modernism, yet seem to follow only its appearance and not its spirit.

Modernism, in spirit, is essentially an occult movement (see Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich, and other major figures who professed ideas associated with theosophy and mysticism). Those who perpetuate only the formal appearance of Modernism without seeking to develop its transcendental significance are little more than mannerists. Great art must make a contribution to the development of human ideas; poor art simply reproduces what is familiar.

Two opposing functions of mind

The mind operates in two opposing but complementary ways:

1. it makes distinctions, separating things from each other;

2. it makes associations, connecting things to each other.

These operations seem to occur simultaneously, despite being contradictory. They seem to account for much of our perceptual, cognitive and emotional experience.

Upside down

...and kcab ot tnorf.

The forms of the letters, or the shapes of the words, are entirely unlike those we are used to. Yet they pose little problem for the reader.

Between the Transcendent and the Bestial

Salvador Dali, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937

The human condition is suspended between the bestial and the transcendent. Dali depicts a dog snuffling in dirt, while above are shown the highest aspirations of humanity: intellect (in the form of a chess board), and beauty (in the form of a statue). Above that an almost angelic figure. The whole picture represents what we can glimpse but never understand. It is a visual signifier of the ethereal.

Zero equals infinity

• Zero is infinite, because nothing has no boundaries. Nothing has no limits.

• Zero is the sum of all positive and negative numbers. Therefore, zero is the equivalent of all numbers.

The challenge to the foundations of western metaphysics...

The Universe has no beginning (Oil on panel, 2o07)

The basic ideas upon which western metaphysics has rested for hundreds of years are subject to fundamental revision. For example:

1. We abandon the notion that anything has a beginning, or end.
2. We recognise there are no objects in the world.
3. We transcend the division between the mind and world (while simultaneously acknowledging it).
4. We acknowledge that it is in the mind where all qualities and properties exist while also recognising that the mind is the world.

I'm adopting one of the primary visual languages of western metaphysics (baroque, romantic and rococo painting) to generate images that are both bestial and transcendent. My paintings should visually manifest the challenge to western metaphysics.

Humans are not machines...

...machines are human.

Why do people look?

Why do people sit down?

Where are objects?

Where is the man in this image?

• Objects as such do not exist. That is, what we take to be discrete, localised objects actually extend indefinitely (both macro- and microscopically) in time and space. Objects are boundless (and largely empty).

• The boundaries (and qualities) we perceive in the world are products of our mental processing. In other words, they are not mind independent.

• Yet the mind is also a product and constituent of that same boundless environment. The physical mind is itself unbounded (being an object in the world) whilst at the same time being the generator of perceptual boundaries (which are no more substantial in the mind that they are in the world).

The Extent of Objects

The forces (light, gravity, heat, pressure, etc.) that act upon an object are also constituents of the object.

Paradoxes of Motion and Space

Zeno's famous paradoxes of motion and space purport to show that motion is impossible (the arrow never moves) and that reality is not plural (space cannot be divided). In all discussions I have read on these puzzles a similar supposition is made: that points in space and instants in time exist.

Take the case of Achilles catching up with the tortoise. It is supposed that the gap between Achilles and the tortoise can never be closed because once Achilles has reached the point the from where the tortoise started it has moved on. But there is no starting point, halfway point, or point where the tortoise has moved to. Spatial points are approximations, convenient fictions imposed on the continuous fabric of reality by human minds.

In the case of the arrow which is at rest at each instant—there is no single moment of time. Again, the concept of 'instants' in time is a convenient fiction.

(see in this regard the work of Peter Lynds http://www.peterlynds.net.nz/)

Art, Perception and Indeterminacy

Paralysis. Oil on panel, 2005

This article considers the phenomenon of visual indeterminacy, which occurs when the sensory data gathered from the visual system cannot be integrated with semantic knowledge. A number of examples are given, including from the author's own art work, and some results presented from a scientific study based on them.

The implications for the operation of the mind and, in particular, the nature of aesthetic experience are addressed, and the distinction between the perception of visual forms and their cognitive interpretation is discussed. Arguments about the nature of aesthetic experience are then considered from some historical sources and interpreted in light of the distinctions between perception-cognition and form-content.

The paper concludes by summarizing the links between aesthetic experience, the operation of visual perception, and visual indeterminacy.

Read full article at Contemporary Aesthetics...

The Crucial Question

• Do you regard the perceiving mind as distinct from the world it perceives (trees, buildings, hats, etc.)?

• It is evident that the mind and world are not identical since we can imagine things that do not exist in the world (moons made of cheese).

• But if we accept that the mind and world are distinct, precisely at what point can they be separated?

• If you can’t identify at which point they become separated then you may be forced to conclude that they are continuous, effectively united.

• As we give this question more thought we are driven into accepting that the mind is both distinct from and continuous with the world it perceives.

• This in itself does not explain the relationship between the mind and world, but it is the best description we have of it, and if we want ultimately to arrive at an explanation it is preferable to have a better description to work with that a worse one.

• This is not a metaphysical question, or a least not exclusively so. It is a basic, practical problem that requires, and is amenable to, conventional scientific methods of investigation. The conventional scientific method, however, must embrace paradoxes, contradictions and ambiguities as essential components in our descriptions of reality, rather than logical flaws to be eradicated.

• There is a pragmatic imperative to arrive at a useful solution because all other problems relating to mind, consciousness, and reality supervene on this foundational question. Depending on which view you take you will make radically different assumptions and arrive at radically different conclusions.

• The world contains no boundaries other than those imposed on it by the mind.

• The mind cannot be separated from the world — they are identical with one another. So the boundaries apparent to the mind, which is part of the world, are also part of the world.

Painting and writing

Painting: A series of problems to be overcome.
Writing: You get better, but it doesn't get any easier.

World without mind

To doubt the existence of a world that is independent of the mind misses the point. Of course the mind brings the world into being, just as the world brings the mind into being: the case for a clear distinction between mind and world seems dubious. But it makes no sense to wonder about whether the world exists or does not exist without being perceived by a mind. 'It' neither does nor does not exist: categories such as 'existence' don't apply.

Variation and generation

Each new human is a variation of other humans, each new song is a variation on other songs, and each new painting a variation on other paintings.

Self supporting theory

It's risky to build one theory on the back of another (as aesthetic philosophers tend to do with Kant). For all its restrictions at least science demands we should test our ideas (even if in doing so we sometimes test for the outcome our theories lead us to expect). What philosophers can do is point out how complex phenomena are, which in many cases is far beyond the capacity of science to investigate. What science can do is show that what we might naturally assume to be the case is very often not; it forces us to reassess our intuitions.

How to stay ahead

It's tempting to measure one's progress against whatever is currently receiving attention. Just as our perception of reality is delayed by several hundred milliseconds (because of the time it takes the nervous system to process sensory signals) so what appears to be most contemporary is in fact already out of date. Better to look deep into the past and speculate far into the future, paying little attention to the present. You have to work very hard to remain interesting and unfashionable.

Paintings that look like photographs

• It is still impressive to see a painting that looks like a photographic depiction. But what is impressive? Imagine a machine that converted high-resolution photographs into oil paintings with great accuracy. How would we regard the resulting image — with more or less reverence than if the same image were produced by human hand? Most likely less because, it would be argued, it requires less skill and labour to produce the image by machine than by hand.

• (This argument would overlook the skill and labour embodied in the machine, which is still human skill and labour, albeit extended through mechanical means.)

• Comparing a two images of photographic precision — one generated mechanically and one by human artist — we would revere the one produced by the artist more than the one produced by the mechanical process. Why? because the human-generated one appears to contain more skill and labour. Thus what impresses us is the implicit skill and labour in the hand-crafted image, although both are visually identical.

• The quality that causes us to be impressed — the implicit human skill — is absent in the mechanically-generated, though visually identical, picture. This demonstrates the continuity between mind and world: we experience the world as ideas.

Between reality and representation

• All cognate (visual) experience is attended by memory. To sit on a beach and experience clouds, sand, water, rocks, is in each case to recognise these things and in so doing to draw upon memory resources, cognitive resources, that allow us to know where we are and what we are looking at.

• In this sense, looking directly at beach scene is no different from looking at a picture of the beach, insofar as each presents us with a set of visual cues that invoke associated memories, thus allowing recognition to occur.

• The enactivists argue the memory is 'out there', in the external world. The mistake here is to assume there is an external world.

• It would be wrong to suggest that memories are merely fixed units of information storage, which we simply 'call up' on cue. Memories are also being dynamically generated, 'on the fly' — our perceptual models are continually updated, adapting to new sets of cues.

Visual cues

• Presented with visual cues the mind constructs meaningful objects. The visual cues may bear little optical resemblance to the objects they depict, yet still decisively invoke those objects.

• In this sense, the process of identifying objects in the world is the same as identifying objects in a depiction: each presents a set of visual cues that the mind categorises as objects. We can be just as unsure or mistaken about how to interpret visual cues from the world as from pictures.

• The primary difference between seeing object in an image and in reality is that in reality we recognise objects more or less directly, that is without seeing anything else at the same time, whereas in pictures we recognise the object depicted, the medium of depiction (paint, ink wood), the vehicle of depiction (piece of paper, oil-covered canvas) — as well as other things: a Picasso collage, a cubist artwork, an modernist composition, etc.. In other words, recognition in depiction is multifold.

Artistic style influences perception

• Looking at a summer landscape on a cloudy day, seeing cows grazing and trees clumped in fields, after having looked at Constable oil sketches of the same subject, I was immediately struck by the way the landscape looked like the sketches.

• It is perhaps the case that each object or scene we recognise is an accretion or compound of numerous perceptions. When we recognise an image of a cow it is because we reference the accumulated experience of all the cows we've seen, likewise with a picture of a beach .

• It is perhaps the case that the most recent or frequent visual experience comes to predominate in our memory. So for example, if we spend a lot of time looking at Constable's images of summer landscapes of the British countryside then they come to 'stand in' for such a scene; they dominate the memory image. So when we come to look at the scene, say through a train window, we recognise objects (trees, clouds, cows) while referring to the most recent or frequent impressions.

• In a sense, the 'real' scene is just as much a representation as the oil sketch. Each is an image in which recognise particular entities, drawing on memories accrued over countless perceptual moments. The most recent or frequent experience determines the 'shape' of the memory that is brought into play when recognition occurs. I recognise the 'real' landscape at the same time as the Constable landscape - one is overlayed on the other.

Multifoldness in representation

• The visual system is a mandatory object recognition system. The visual field must be categorised into objects, this happens largely involuntarily and normally highly comprehensively.

• Although it is not known exactly how object recognition operates in the visual system, a great deal is known. It often occurs by 'perceptual grouping', that is, putting visual cues together to form clumps or groups that take on the value of object-ness.

• Normally all the visual data received by the system is categorised, assigned meaning based on memory, our vast accumulated experience since birth. It is fast and efficient, using a minimum of information to create a seemingly rich and accurate impression of the world (although easily prone to errors).

• All objects in the visual field must be classified. Once classified we make assumptions about them based on a massive storehouse of knowledge and experience (likely weight, texture, taste, volume, etc.). This is knowledge brought to bear from memory coupled to minimal visual data.

• When coming into the National Gallery, I recognise the gallery space, that I see a painting on a wall in a frame, that it is made of paint, that it is a cathedral and that it is a Monet. All these things I recognise (pretty much) simultaneously, one might take slightly more precedence over the other in terms of conceptual dominance, but none completely effaces the other. They all exist together.

• Thus the experience of looking at the painting might be termed 'multifold' (as opposed to 'twofold') since the object and environment are recognised at the same time the referential content is.

• One could say that the peculiar nature of pictorial representations is that one recognises at least two things at once (simultaneously). The material from which the picture is made and what it represents. If we are presented with sufficient visual cues then we have no choice but to recognise an object being represented. Yet we do not cease to recognise the substrate (except on very special occasions, i.e. Gijsbreachts and Gavin Turk).

• The peculiar nature of pictorial representations is that we recognise several things occuring coterminously, or coincidentally. When we see a fruit on a branch we recognise it as fruit in a straightforward way. When we see a representation of fruit on a branch we recognise the fruit, but also the medium of its representation — at the same time. We may also recognise the style, or the artist, or the significance of the picture, thus multiplying the richness of the aesthetic experience.