David Peat

The End of Representation 95this scene in case anything of significance changes. This visual datathat finally reaches the brain helps to create a hypothesis about theworld outside. In turn, the brain now directs the eye to move and collectnew data that will help to confirm that hypothesis or resolve visualambiguities.Seeing within the MindVision therefore involves a constant movement between the generationand resolution of doubt. But this means that a great deal of whatwe “see” must already be present in the brain in the form of assumptionsbased on what we have already learned about the world and theway it works. Indeed, what we see is not so much what lies in front ofus but what has been created out of memory and the visual strategiesof the brain. If we begin to make out a person’s face against a backgroundthen we immediately expect to see two eyes, a nose, and amouth. If the person is wearing a mask we receive a visual shock indicatingthat something is badly wrong. As we walk out the door in themorning we unconsciously notice the position of the sun in the sky,and our brain is alerted to pick out shadows falling in particular directionsand to distinguish them from oil stains on the road or patches ofdark soil. In short, a large part of what we see is what we expect to see.This explains why we “see” faces and figures in a flickering campfire,or in moving clouds. This is why Leonardo da Vinci advised artiststo discover their motifs by staring at patches on a blank wall. A fireprovides a constant flickering change in visual information that neverintegrates into anything solid and thereby allows the brain to engage ina play of hypotheses. Conversely, the wall does not present us with verymuch in the way of visual clues, and so the brain begins to make moreand more hypotheses and desperately searches for confirmation. Acrack in the wall looks a little like the profile of a nose and suddenly awhole face appears, or a leaping horse, or a dancing figure. In cases likethese the brain’s visual strategies are projecting images from within themind out onto the world. We can also observe some of the strategies ofthe visual system at work when we are in a high fever. During delirium,