Could Visual Reorientation Illusions be 4d Related?

[Hugh]

From what I understand, when extra spatial dimensions are allowed for, there is more room to fit in all of the equations that explain the forces of physics. The problem is, we seem to only experience 3 spatial dimensions, so where is there any indication that there are more than 3?

I'm wondering if Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs) that people experience, could somehow be related to the existence of a fourth, or even a higher number of spatial dimensions.

VRIs are 90 or 180 degree instant rotations of one's visual orientation. It's as if the whole universe is "turned around" instantly. You may have heard of someone getting lost because they got turned around in their orientation. The fact that the flips are always orthogonal makes me think it may have to do with a higher dimension.

Some people can mentally produce VRIs at will. Astronauts find that they can learn to produce VRIs about any axis, but here on Earth we're limited to flips about the vertical axis due to the perception of gravity. Other people only have VRIs happen to them, and because they cause disorientation, they are a nuisance. Others have never experienced a VRI.

There are several pages I've found that discuss the VRI for those who want to read more about them:

From section 7.2 at Representation of Spatial Orientation by the Intrinsic Dynamics of the Head Direction Cell Ensemble: A Theory , Kechen Zhang writes:

"We seldom notice the existence of our sense of direction until it goes wrong. Disorientation often occurs after people ride passively in a vehicle, unaware of a slow turn. An important property revealed by the disorientation experiences is that without the help of familiar landmarks, one can hardly reset the internal direction at will, despite one's conscious knowledge of the error based on other cues, e.g., the expected position of the sun. Another phenomenon is less frequent but more dramatic. In approaching a place with salient landmarks that was seen initially with an incorrect sense of direction, the currently correct sense of direction can suddenly flip back to the wrong orientation again when landmarks are recognized, in what can feel like a sudden vertiginous rotation of the whole world (Jonsson, 1993, and the references therein)."

From page 4 of Human Visual Orientation in Weightlessness , Charles M. Oman says:

"Actually, it is possible to have a VRI right here on Earth, as when you leave an underground subway station labyrinth, and upon seeing a familiar visual landmark, realize that e.g. you are facing east, not west. On Earth, gravity constrains our body orientation, and provides an omnipresent "down" cue, so we normally only experience VRIs about a vertical axis."

Ann Druffel's article: East is West and North is South, talks about VRIs as being subjective direction flips. Although she explains the experience of the flip quite well, her explanation of why they occur is different from my own. I find that they can happen anywhere, at anytime, and can be consciously produced.

Aale de Winkel made an interesting point in the "Flaw in Flatland" thread from this Tetraspace forum on Dec. 4, 2003 when he said: "I doubt very much that tetra-vision would be the same as x-ray-vision.
Tetronians will not be able to see within a trionian body, they see the lightrays reflecting of a body just in a direction more then we trionians do!"

When one experiences a VRI, you do see light from the same object coming from what you perceive as another orthogonal direction.

If the universe does actually have 4 spatial dimensions, then we would be 4d too. How we would see that space is something I've been interested in. There have been threads on this forum discussing what 2d Fred would see. I don't think a 2d being could actually see anything because it looks along an infinitely thin plane "edge on". A 1d line cannot be seen, so a 2d being would see zero dimensions, even though it could move in 2 dimensions.

Could our visual perceptions of our universe be limited as well? Think about how a 360 degree turn in 2d and in 3d brings one back to the original starting position. In 4d, wouldn't it be the same? If we did a 360 degree turn in 4d space, wouldn't we come back to the starting position? Wouldn't we only see a 3d boundary sphere around us if we were in a 4d hypersphere, or a 3d boundary cube around us in a 4d hypercube?

Another thing to think about is how we would see higher dimensional matter. When you look at a regular garden hose from a long distance away, you only see a long 2d rectangle (if it's straight). The dimension perpendicular to the long direction (the depth) is not really seen. But, an ant crawling on the hose, would easily see that curled up dimension. If we were able to see the smallest component of 4d matter, we'd only see a tiny dot, not the curled up higher dimensions. Add more of those tiny components together, and we still only see a bigger dot. As you continue to add more, you still only see a visual compilation of the 2d surface of it. Fill the space all around you with those components, and you end up seeing a sphere around you. Now, if you are made up of the same tiny 4d components, how would that change your ability to see the 4d space around you?

In a 4d hypercube, aren't there shared 2d planes? Could one see the same 2d plane of vision from a different 90 or 180 degree direction? This is where I think that the VRI might fit in.

Edit by iNVERTED: Fixed your links. Make sure to use BBCode next time.

Thanks iNVERTED

[houserichichi]

I won't lie, I can't exactly tell the difference between your VRIs and plain old confusion. Care to help me distinguish between the two? (Welcome to the dark side, Hugh)

[Hugh]

Thanks House

The VRI is a distinct perceptual event. You know that your bearings are in a certain direction, then they are instantly rotated exactly 90 or 180 degrees.

Picture yourself sitting in a room, knowing that you are facing north, in a certain direction. Now, instantly, the room, you, and the universe, are for example, rotated 90 degrees clockwise, to your right. You are now facing a direction which was formerly your right, or east, but is in actuality still north because everything has rotated around with you. What was formerly your north is now your west. With a 180 degree flip, north becomes south and east becomes west.

Keep in mind that you haven't moved at all, you're just looking in another orthogonal direction relative to your original one. (I'm wondering if this is just looking at the same 2d plane of vision, from another orthogonal direction, in higher dimensional space.)

For those who are used to this, here on the ground, you end up being able to see 4 different possible views of your familiar surroundings, each with its own distinct, orientational viewpoint. The more you become familiar with each view, the more you are able to flip between them.

A great place that I've found to do the flip easily, is in a movie theater. Anyone can try this, its fun to do. One has a general direction sense of seeing a theater screen in each of the four cardinal directions. All you have to do is, the next time you're at a movie, imagine that you're at another theater that is rotated 90 or 180 degrees from the one you're in. It helps if the lights are low. The flip may take a while to visualize but it will likely occur if you relax and let it happen. When it flips, you'll know it. There is no confusion about the fact that you're now looking at everything from a totally new orthogonal direction. It may flip quickly back to normal, or stay where you want it to. I'll never forget the 1st time that I realized that I had the power to make it happen.

Now, if the theater stays in the new position, you're going to be surprised when you leave it because when you come out, everything else will be flipped around too! Usually, it all flips back to the "normal" view on its own, and you get your normal bearings back within a short time.

So, that's a bit more of an explanation about experiencing VRIs, I'd like to know if anyone can explain if it can possibly be 4d related.

[thigle]

hugh, i'll just take some guesses at some of your questions, however, wiser guys here might tear my geometrical intuitions to pieces...

you wrote "Think about how a 360 degree turn in 2d and in 3d brings one back to the original starting position. In 4d, wouldn't it be the same?"
>in 4d rotations, 2 out of 4 coordinates change while other two stay constant. thus in 4d you rotate about plane, not axis. a plane in projective 4-space (which seems to bo experiential space of your question) is nonorientable and multiply connected (projective spaces of dimension 2n for n= some integer, are nonorientable. you get reversed by going around such space once. could be that the continuous loop of such trajectory is topologicaly shrinked to point, thus 'going around' produces turning around where one's at, with reversing the orientation. lower analogy would be going around the middle of mobius band once and coming back to point of departure with left/right reversal ?

as to how would we see 4dimensional 'matter'... we can see subtle matter by subtle perception: when the grain of our vision becomes fine enough, the structure of the visual field gets 'kaleidoscopically pixelized'. when the smallest perceptible difference gets under planck scale, one might see curled 4dimensional texture. however, seeing 4dimensionaly requires 4dimensional "field" of view, not only 4d object(matter), as well as 4 dimensional mind.

here is a quote frm robert bruce's article on astral vision (for some people, astral is understood as plane of imagination, which is supposedly 4d, vertical intuition (5d) and, pointlike inspiration(6d).) it might be completely disrespected by some, but i think it bears an iteresting relation to your VRI phenomenon. however, in this case, the field of view is twice as usual: the whole sphere (instead of halfphere) of vision.

robert bruce: projection, part1:

Astral Vision
In the physical body we have 220 degrees of vision, i.e. we can only see in front of us, but not behind, above and below at the same time. In the Astral body we have MORE than 360 degrees of vision and can see on all sides at once. This is Spherical vision. During projection, habit forces us to focus our attention in one direction only, where we feel the forward part of our vision is. The view behind, above, below, left and right is still there, and seen all at once, but it can not be assimilated by the brain, all at once. This goes against the brains lifelong habit of frontal vision. Spherical vision is like being one huge multi faceted eye that can see in all directions, up, down, left, right, front, back, but all at once!
In the astral body you do not have any physical organs, i.e., eyes. You are a non-physical point of consciousness floating in space. You are also unaffected by gravity and other laws of physics. In this state there are no ups or downs, backs or fronts, left or rights. It is only lifelong habit that tries to force this perspective on you during projection.
It is important to understand spherical vision, if you are to operate competently in the astral. This is especially so when you project, in real time, close to the physical dimension. Spherical vision will often cause you to think you are in a mirror image dimension, or a reversed copy of reality. This means your house, for example, will appear to be reversed, back to front. This is caused by you losing your original natural viewpoint during projection.
At some point during the projection you have become disoriented and taken a different viewpoint from normal, i.e., you have rotated or turned upside down or inside without thinking. This reverses your natural left right, up down viewpoint. This tricks the subconscious mind into reversing the place you are in so your conscious mind can function properly.
As you don't have a physical body in the astral, if you want to look behind yourself you don't have to turn around, or move at all. You just change your viewpoint to the rear. This, when done without moving, causes the mirror image effect, in a way its like looking in a mirror to see behind.
The diagram below illustrates this reversal of viewpoint without turning, note left and right do not change:
Right | Right
|
(A) <<<--------|-------->>> (B)
|
Left | Left

i.e. If viewpoint (A) becomes viewpoint (B) without turning, then Left and Right are not reversed. This causes the subconscious mind to use its creative power to correct the view by reversing it, or parts of it. This is easier and causes fewer problems for the conscious mind than if it had to try and accept a reversal of left and right.
A similar effect can be had by lying down and looking above your head, or standing on your head and trying to pick the left and right sides of things. This causes a slight confusion in your sense of left and right, i.e., you have to consciously calculate which is left and right from your reversed position. This slight confusion is all that is needed to trick the subconscious mind into creating something easier to accept.
Your brain is unable to assimilate this reversal and thus gives you a new perspective according to what it feels is left and right at the time. Once you consciously notice this anomaly it is too late to reverse it. The brain cannot accept a conscious change of left and right.
If you understand spherical vision though, and happen to get reversed sometime during a projection, it is no longer a problem. You can take it into account and function normally, rather than thinking you are wasting your time in some strange mirror dimension, i.e., if you had plans to do something in the astral you still can. All you have to do is, take your left right coordinates from the building or structure around you, and ignore your own sense of left and right completely.
Everything you see while you are in the astral dimension is directly perceived by the mind. It is a simple matter for the subconscious mind to twist or reverse, all, or even part of, your conscious perception of reality during a projection.
Note: This reversal of viewpoint can happen many times during any one real time projection.

you wrote: "For those who are used to this, here on the ground, you end up being able to see 4 different possible views of your familiar surroundings, each with its own distinct, orientational viewpoint. The more you become familiar with each view, the more you are able to flip between them."
>aale de winkel also notes, (in the same thread you mention): "I think that when I (as a trionian) would somehow find myself in Tetronia (ie some tetronian world) I would be able to easily change my trionian viewpoint from {x,y,z} {x,y,w} {x,z,w} and {y,z,w} and must somehow mentally make the connection that those views represent the same object. "
check out escher's prints with 4-fold VRI's, some good are in bruno ernst: the magic mirror of m.c.escher.
if i knew how to post pictures here, i have a possible 4-field picture, like the blueprint for this 4-fold view. or i can e-mail you perhaps ? you might fill in the orientations as you feel them for each one of these 4, thus having them all in one gestalt.

[Hugh]

Thanks thigle , any ideas are appreciated. As you say, there are "wiser guys here" that could take a look at any geometrical explanations, and offer their own opinions of them.

You mention a 4d rotation taking place about a plane, which ends up in "you getting reversed". I know this sounds weird, but if we get reversed, and the universe around us gets reversed along with us, could that just end up with us seeing everything around us relatively the same, but from another orthogonal direction?

Something to remember about the VRI is that one doesn't move, just the viewpoint moves. Nothing physically gets rotated, only the viewing direction. If we are actually 4d, there would be parts of our eyes and vision that would be able to look in the other directions, but because we can only visualize in one orientational direction at a glance, we might have to "flip the view around" in order to see it from the other directions.

If we're 4d, and looking at a 3d "slice" of a 4d object in front of us, if we don't move, and it doesn't move, could we still see the light rays reflecting off the object from another direction just by accessing that part of our brain's vision center?

With regards to seeing the possible curled up higher dimensions, it would require us to be able to clearly see the smallest particle of matter itself, which we currently can't do with present technology. So, as with the hose analogy, the smaller in our view something gets, the less dimensions of it are we able to see. We may be looking at 4d matter with only a limited 2d plane vision. As I think about it though, is it only 2d plane vision? Let's say you set up 7 blocks in front of you, spaced at various different distances away. The blocks don't all lie within the same 2d plane, yet, even with one eye, you can see all of them at the same time. We see at least 3d don't we even with one eye? Your quote in the "Fred should not see anything" thread says "in 4d, we perceive 3d. We are thus at least 4-dimensional, just thinking about the eye sense. It is erroneous to think that because organ of sight is [apparently] 3d, the seer, the act of seeing is 3d too. For perception (not just visual) for sight of nD object, structure of the perceiver is surely n+1 dimensional."

The Robert Bruce astral vision quote does contain very similar aspects to the VRI experience. I'd say the parts about seeing things flipped around sounds like VRIs. How interesting to hear another explanation of them! Thanks.

When mirror dimensions are mentioned, it reminds me of an experience with mirrors that I have found to demonstrate VRIs. If you take a mirror, and hold it vertically at a 90 degree angle to a wall mirror, you will see at the intersection, the 180 degree flipped around view of the viewpoint you are currently seeing. The writing you see in that double mirror image will appear correctly, as do any photos. If you do a 180 degree VRI flip into it, you then see where you just were in the double mirror reflection from the "other side" . You see things from the other direction! I remember showing my parents this as a child and saying "You see that other room over there, I can go into it!" Of course you physically don't go into the other room, you just see things from that direction. To see the 90 degree flipped other two directions, just hold the mirror at a 45 degree angle away from the wall mirror, either on your right or left respectively, and look at the double reflection shown. It's always easier for me to do a 180 degree flip than a 90, and fun to experience it with the double mirrors.

I've seen Aale's other quote about changing a trionian viewpoint within tetronia, interesting isn't it? I've thought that if we have a 3d "cube" viewpoint, a 90 degree flip would be to an adjacent cube within the hypercube and a 180 degree flip would be to the opposite one.

I checked out some 4-fold escher print images, they're fascinating.

If the universe has more than 3 spatial dimensions, then what it would consist of is not only the 3d "slice" views we see of it, but all of the 4d (or higher) space in between each rotated view. This is where I think that the missing or dark mass of the universe is to be found and accounted for. Any thoughts?

[jinydu]

You seem to have a fun idea, Hugh, and you've certainly posted a lot on it. But the obvious problem is Occam's Razor: Whenever you have several possible explanations for a phenomenon, you should take the simplest one (i.e. the one that relies on the fewest unproven assumptions). For instance, whenever I open my closet I never see a monster there. The reason for this may be that the monster magically turns invisible every time I'm about to open the closet; but a simpler explanation is that there simply is no monster.

Let's face it; there are much simpler ways to explain visual illusions.

[thigle]

jinidu: i personaly don't think occam's edge is as sharp and usable as it often is presented to be. there are domains where it doesn't apply. you can't cut space with it. instead of simpler explanations, simetimes more complex evocations are necessary. it's not always a matter of reduction.

hugh: actually, you can visualize all-around at-once. a simple blueprint for this can be get from watching the implicit polar coordinates of a few 360deg fish-eye photos, or paintings. check for exemple: Fernando Casas & his polar perspective drawings from 79-82, & his 77-81 flat sphere perspective works. google for his homepage. his "measure of all things", "essay on self-elimination" & "rothko chapel" are all totalFOVs(=2xhalfsphere of vision, glued & flattened to plane) . it's not ideal, but gives a feeling of how it is to orient in all-around view given at once. you can adjust it topologicaly to your needs.

however, i don't know how do VRI's connect to 4d, and if at all. it seems to me, that VRI's are produced, in your case, by conscious re-orientation of reference frame. mind sees through eyes. mind can see without eyes. the mind is luminous, actually. light-manifestations can happens in different implicit coordinate bases, each differently oriented, thus each reorienting the manifold's position. it seems that the VRI's you're creating are reorientations of 3d-manifold by fliping between abiding in different referential frames.

this reminds me of the following:
1. distinct surround & around (as in wendy's polygloss, check it out)
reversed 'around' seems where you're at with VRI's: the same scene, seen from other position, all positions on a circle (with the scene at centre and point of observation as position at the periphery of the circle.)
each viewing direction (axis of sight) is marked by a vector ('arrow', 'ray') from periphery to centre(so together, this 'reversed planar radiality' should be called 'tensor' (a group of vectors?).
now you can have any number of greatcircles on a sphere, each being a possible rotational flip-device for your VRI: rotating viewpoint by pi/2 on the circle, around the scene, produces your flip & rotating the whole circle rotates the flipping plane itself.

2. as for the more interesting part: represent all sights equidistant of a scene in 3d by the group of vectors from the surface of a sphere (surround surface) towards the centre. now concentric shells(spheres) with scene at their common centre represent different families of rotations with same magnitudes of rotations for all points on any single sphere. you can represent each 'sight-vector' (=arrow from a point on surface of a sphere towards the scene) by a quaternion. quaternions are the natural algebra of 4-space. setting base at the scene, quats - quadruples of values, are taken to specify a point on the sphere by 3values(xyz) and the last value is the magnitude of rotation. thus each quaternion gives a rotation about an arbitrary axis & by a value.

3. now more for the 4d connection: the group of all the rotations for 4d is bi-glomohedric prism - a terix in 6d. (see wendy's answer in "glomar (glomic ?) rotation & spins of spins in general" thread in Q&A forum).
the mindscape is beyond any dimensionality, however, it accomodates many. one of these [dimensional modes] is always present when a conscious reorientation is effected, as the underlying frame for such an operation. as the natural group of rotations of 3-space is [represented as] 4-d manifold in 6d, or in other words, one 6d point is a group of all possible rotations for a given 3-object (or change of viewpoint, which amounts to the same), mindscape coordination is effected via 4d operations in 6space by quaternion multiplications. this is responsible for the flips, analogously to the mobius-flip exemple. analogously, going through mirror in 4d (or through infinity in projective one) we would get back reversed, because each plane in projective 4-space is non-orientable? (the previous phrase might be geometricaly incorrect. wise guys???)
indeed, there are some, who claim consciousness to be multidimensional in nature & being related to reflection spaces, clifford algebras,etc. (for exemple, although quite technical, google for ex. mishlove's "roots of consciousness" appendix: "paul-sirag_consciousness:a hyperspace view".
there are some though, who claim consciousness is not an object of sciences at all. still others would go as far as to deny themSelves.

ps. also check dick termes & his termespheres (via google, of course), a guy who spaced out on drawing omnipolar views on spheres. you can think of VRI as flips, but also as 'rolls'. imagine a ball, touching a plane(or another ball). now either ball rolls on plane, or plane on ball - they roll simultaneously, according to how you look at it, and possibly irrelevant. i would somehow like to connect stereographic projection with this all, explicitly, but i don't know presently conceptually enough to think it clearly, nor is my experience in it so wel stabilized to allow me bringing back well-formed & coherent concepts.

[Hugh]

Jinydu, there are likely simpler explanations for the VRI than bringing in another spatial dimension. One could just say that there are groups of head direction cells that fire to reorient one's direction sense when it gets disoriented. When I've experienced the VRI though, I truly feel that I'm looking at another "dimension" of space. If you've never experienced it, I can understand one being skeptical of its existence or of its possible importance.

There are mysteries of the universe though, that we are seeking an explanation for.

About 90 percent of the mass of the universe is "missing". Is it possible that we don't realize that we only are seeing a 3d "slice" of its whole at any time?

Recent measurements have shown that the universe might have the shape of a poincare dodecahedron. How would this affect our observation of the space within it?

Why can't we unite the fundamental forces and get a theory of everything? Michio Kaku has suggested that by bringing in more spatial dimensions, there is "more room" to accomodate for them.

Maybe Occam's Razor might someday show that the existence of higher dimensions is the simplest answer to many of the mysteries of science that we face today. I'm wondering if the experience of VRIs can help in any way.

Thigle I wish I could intelligently comment on each individual point you've made but frankly, some of them are over my head. I'm reading through your comments and visiting the sites you've mentioned though.

Those termespheres are cool - I learned about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 point projections too! I really appreciate the time you've spent in your responses. I'll continue to look into them. Thank you.

[jinydu]

Well, clearly, a subjective feeling that you're "seeing another spatial dimension" obviously doesn't prove that there is another such dimension. As you are probably well-aware, the brain is an imperfect organ that can sometimes malfunction (e.g. schizophrenia).

As for the astronomical observations (although I have to admit that I've never heard about the "poincare dodecahedron) you've mentioned, I tend to take a "wait-and-see" approach. So far, as far as I know, no known theory explains all of those phenomena. Even after such a theory is developed, its predictions must be tested experimentally. Thus, I think that realistically, you can either 1) train yourself in physics and mathematics until you're expert enough to work on such a theory yourself, or 2) wait until someone else comes up with something. Other than that, all you have is speculation.

Also, I wouldn't say that Occam's Razor always excludes extra dimensions, only that in the case of VRI, invoking extra dimensions sounds a bit like invoking little green men to explain why the refrigerator light turns on when I open the door. After all, the neuron explanation seems far more "down-to-earth".

[thigle]

>jin: subjective feeling doesn't prove. that's mind which is proving bu conceptualizing itslef. you are probably well aware, that neurological, neurophysical, neuro-whatever explanations don't explain the phenomenon of consciousness (or mind) at all. anyway, just curious, what neuron explanation do you mean? i don't get it

as for this episteme which you seem to got ever-present in your epistemic flow(sorry, I can't resist :wink: ):
the subjective as well as objective are both concepts ! as such, they are both 'subjective' ! made by self-aware psychophysical dynamics, falsely considering itself as something essential. this grasping activity of the mind is what makes subjectivity AS WELL as the so-called objectivity possible. objective science is reductive science, it is a cultural construct, already dying out by metamorphing into integral state.
check out for exemple Metod Saniga, and his ENDOPHYSICS of time. (btw, world scientific published book called ENDOPHYSICS not so lately). this guy is academically well trained astrophysicist. however, coming to terms with limits of the 'official' astrophysics picture, he realized that there is no way out. just in. so he jumped right into, and started to look into all the subjective. he run through all the archives of SUBJECTIVE experiences of people in different altered states of consciousness, hunting for all the SUBJECTIVE descriptions of altered perceptions of space & time. after getting HUNDREDS of subjective reports on distorted time/space perception, what reductionist would call ''objective traits' have started to pop up. finally, he was able to formulate theory of endotime, which is able to encompass not only astrophysics time but also various time-experiences of subjective nature across the planetary community. he is no mad scientist, nor subjectively speculating. if your mind needs 'proofs', i think his workshop on nature of ENDOtime (understand as INNER aka subjective time), organized for NATO & attended by astrophysicists worldwide is quite persuasive.

it's not a matter of experientially testable vs. subjective speculation. it's a matter of opening on both sides to benefit from both approaches. you think feynmann was drumming to find out objective truth ? truth just objective is very little of the truth. no testable theory is ever made without speculation in its history.

actually, you have to dwell in quite large context, or abide in vast mind-space, to be able to be aware of subjective & objective as being one-taste. it's like phenomenological reduction, opening up creative possibilities, while retaining your hard-won conceptual brightness. reifying these seemingly opposites (ob & sub) is simply a way for some afraid people to keep the field(domain) of their exploration reduced to what they can handle by intellect, as that's all they've got at least some control of. however, Selfs being out of conceptual reach, it is simply crossed out. hegemony of patriarchal logos.

btw, in some other thread we've been talking about the history of this so-called 'science', which think it's the only right. i didn't finish it there, and it relates a bit here, so...

(this goes for evolution of western world-view):
before this era (which is just flipping) and which used to be called metaphysical, another one shaped the general human pattern of experiencing: mythopoietic. one has to realize, that before what might be called "debate over transcendental principle" no symbolization as we know it was present, i.e. people were not able to make a distinction of the kind we do today. to explain, the 'backgrounds for experiencing' were these fourfolds (you can cosider these as ontological mandalas for given eras):

_mythopietic era [ heaven:earth // mortal:immortal(gods). ]
_metaphysical era [ infinite:finite // physus:logos ]

how come? philosophers started to haggle over 'transcendental principle'. in other words they started to think that some principle, trans.cending all else, is guiding/ordering the things. before, the things were symbols of themselves. suddently, things/events became symbols of something other: the transcendent. trans.cendence - stepping through or beyond, or however you translate it. first they said (Empedocles): all is driven by fire. then water. then...
you right, finally, they (or rather Anaximander) realized that no finite element or principle will do. he summed up the haggle over transcendetal principle into: "all that is finite('peiron') is driven(or given order) by infinite('aperion'). apeiron is a.peiron - no.bounds.
and then, by some history which we skip here due to spacetime restrictions, the peiron (=the bounded, finite...) took over, or was overfocused, and bifurcated into PHYSUS and LOGOS.

capito? no logos, no physus before the turn of the eras. all the 'science' some are so fond of is just refinement of the distinction, of division, made not so long ago. and note, it builds only on the peiron - that which has border.
however, that is already getting over (in its strict form) and another science is already here. one where life is included in the space of spirit. now that might seem odd & out of physics domain, but wait few years. or check out for exemple: _Detela: Self-organization of Quantum States

i am inter(n)ested in speculation at least as much as in theorizing.

>hugh_please also check wendy's last answer in 'vectors, tensors, spinors, twistors' thread in relativity forum, it clarifiescorrects my misunderstandings regarding the biglomohedric prism & pyramid (the phase space connection: each point on these surfaces represent a phase-space state - a mode of rotation, for.ex)

[jinydu]

I must admit, thigle, that your language is rather "flowery" if you know what I mean; it is definitely rather hard to read. For one thing, it has a lot of words that are not used very often, and which I doubt are really necessary for you to get your point across. But I'll pick out some of the points that I think I did understand.

First of all, I'm far more interested in theorizing than speculating, since speculations are rarely accurate. Even with things that I would call speculation, I still follow a precise structure (for example, see the extra time derivatives thread; and I'll admit now that that wasn't serious scientific speculation). In any case, I doubt that you've understood the way that real scientists actually speculate. The impression I have is that you think a scientist thinks of an idea like "What if everything is relative?" and then goes on to vaguely daydream about it the rest of the day. In reality, it looks something more like this:



Gauss is thinking about electric fields.
"What if I regard an electric field vector not as just a static vector that tells me the direction of acceleration, but rather as a flow?"
"Well then, since field lines point away from a positive charge and towards a negative charge, it makes sense to think of a positive charge as a sink and a negative charge as a drain."
etc.
"So this means that the total flow (I'll call it flux from now on) through a closed surface depends only on the charge inside, and not on the distribution of the charge."
...pulls out a sheet of paper, does some sketches and calculations...
"I see then. The integral of the electric field over a surface must always be proportional to the charge inside."
"Now, let's see what further conclusions I can derive from this and/or how I can devise an experiment to test my hypothesis."
...does some further calculations, etc...



You claim that neurology and other related scientific fields cannot explain consciousness. But do you have any evidence to back this up, other than a generalized rant against hard science? I can prove on paper that rational numbers are insufficient to express the square root of two. I can prove by experiment that traditional Newtonian mechanics cannot deal with speeds that close to the speed of light. Can you do the same with neurology and consciousness? I think not.

[Hugh]

Thigle, I read Wendy's reply in the other section, thank you. Again, I'm still in the learning process about explanations that deep.

Jinydu, this is the Theories section of a higher spatial dimensional forum. I thought it might be a good place for some thoughts about how possible higher dimensional space might actually be perceived and experienced. There might be people here with the higher math and physics skills that can use some of those thoughts in the development of their own theory.

If I may ask you (and anyone else that might want to answer), if we, and the universe, were actually 4-spatial dimensional, but we could only see with limited 2 X 2d vision giving us an "at-a-glance" 3-spatial dimensional sense (like now), what do you think we would see and experience differently than we do now? Thanks.

[thigle]

sorry for my languague, jin. i am not native english speaker, and i learned my english mainly through reading (mostly sf & fantasy books in my teens). also, sometimes, i need to diffuse to focus. you're surely right i might be more conscise in my expressions. i will do my best in this regard from now on. the "floweriness" i keep though.

for theorizing/speculating: speculations are not supposed to be accurate. they serve as field openers, as sight-seein flights over conceptual terrains. theories are coherent concepts built upon data which come from facticity and rest on paradigms, epistemes and ontologies of theorist. speculation is more free from intentionality, it has diffuse focus.
i think you might like Blum's book 'Theorizing'

what you think i think of real scientists speculating, is not accurate. nor is the gauss's exemple. too specific for speculation. maybe how hamilton was pondering 4d algebra for 8 years would be a better exemple. or the story of non-linear dynamics: ask Ralph Abraham, one of its fathers... (or read his/mcKenna/sheldrake's "trialogues at the edge of the unthinkable" or "trialogues at the edge of the west"). speculations are not better or worse than theories, nor are they more/less valuable.

as for neurology & other related fields and the consciousness question. evidence to back that up ?! man ! the whole state of this knowledge-field is evidence ! just check neurological conferences, journals, books... no other topic is as open as consciousness. this is THE question of neurology (and more&more closely related cognitive sciences) today ! so please...

at least, you might start here:

_Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness (Bradford Books. MIT Press)
_Varela: Embodied Mind ( for overview of oh-so-many approaches to consciousness in cognitive sciences )
_Consciousness In Four Dimensions: Biological Relativity and the Origins of Thought (Hardcover) by Richard M., Ph.D. Pico(this one is on BiologicalRelativity !)
_and very importantly: the whole "Advances in Consciousness Research" from John Benjamins Publishing Co, currently containing more than 60 titles. none of these explains what is consciousness, though.
_Mari Jibu and Kunio Yasue: ACR3, Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness, an introduction; (Notre Dame Seishin University, Okayama)
_BenGoertzel on the net
...

to sum up, don't make yourself funny, consciousness was not yet explained. not at all ! and surely not by neurology, ask any serious neurologist. (a 'scientist' you might call him). understand this:
consciousness is not simply explainable, it is the medium of explanation.
therefore, many of the approaches ( and especially the neurological one) cannot succeed a priori because their space of exploration doesn't contain wholly that which they're trying to describe & understand. their ontologies doesn't allow any being of that which they're looking for in its own form, as it is.
although, there are sets which are members of themselves. (btw, check this out once, too: B.Russel: Theory of Higher Logical Types.)

actually, i LIKE what you call hard science, and i respect its achievements very deeply. however, hard is not enough. neurology just achieves correlations of certain observable [reduced] states with chemical/electromagnetic/quantum activities in regions of brain. not very persuasive.

mechanics is not organics. if you think your mind is mechanic, then let you have it. but computational mechanisms of mind... well, i am not the only compassionate one.

hugh: in reply to your question: nothing .?
but... any sense is a triality:
sense-field(or sense-objects) / sense organ / sense-consciousness
for physical eye-sight, that gives: visual-field(world) / eye / sight-consciousness
so 'seeing' 4d-world from one of its 3-spaces by physical eyes, obeying 3d optics, with 3d world as object and 3-space habituated sight-consciousness, it seems just 3d. there's no question.
however, dwelling in experience-as-such, therefore not conceptualizing space of experience with 3d constructs, one dwells in state before dimensionality comes to existence. so one has everpresent direct access to multi-dimensionality, possibility to actually perceive >3d. perceive, not see by eyes.
freeing sight-consciousness from dependency upon physical input, learning to 'see' multidimensionally, and then integrating ordinary 3d cartesian experience into this newly-found multidimensional mind... well, try it.

[Hugh]

Thigle said:

so 'seeing' 4d-world from one of its 3-spaces by physical eyes, obeying 3d optics, with 3d world as object and 3-space habituated sight-consciousness, it seems just 3d. there's no question.

At-a-glance, yes I would agree. A 3d slice of a 4d hypercube is a cube. As you say though, how this multi-dimensionality would get integrated into our ordinary 3d experience is the question.

[jinydu]

For the language issue, thigle, just a hint: the word "ontology" is one that almost nobody (except experts in philosophy) knows...

Recall that there are two main meanings of theory-

Everyday meaning: Educated guess, hunch, etc.

Scientific meaning: A precise, logical framework that accurately describes a wide variety of natural phenomena and has stood up to rigorous logical scrutiny and experimental testing.

As for the question of neurology and consciousness, I still don't think you've demonstrated that neurology (let alone all of natural science) is insufficient. Just because a field is open, just because a lot of questions have not been answered, doesn't mean that they will never be answered. What you need to show that neurology is insufficient is some observable phenomena that contradicts some claim for neurology (e.g. neurology predicts a, but this experiment and/or observation yielded b).

If you wanted to show that consciousness is inconsistent with all natural science, you would have an even more difficult task at hand. You would have to show that some consciousness phenomenon contradicts an assumption that all possible scientific theories have in common.

[thigle]

jin, i love talking to you. just a hint: the word ontology is not so difficult, for inter(n)ested ecstatic cognition. actually (and i write 'actually' because of ontological reasons), i don't consider myself an expert in philosophy. still, ontological difference, ontic & ontological, these are essential to free ex.istence of a practicing buddhist. play with languague, let your mind blossom. if you want, i can explain ontological understanding to you. if not, it's not worth trying, as it is not easy.

you should know at least, that etymologicaly, 'onto' means 'Being', & logical is 'unfolding of nature in logos', coflowing with unfolding physus. the logos you can understand as roughly as 'order'. now this 'onto.logy' is 'the order of Being'. Being of what?, you might ask. Being of beings. level of 'beings'('things',...) is the ontic level of what all beings got in common. level of Being of beings is the ontological level. stating ontological difference (i.e. difference between ontic/ontological ) is a way to make the ontological - Being object of our languaguing.
i am ontological speculantioso. (=speculative virtuoso)

nowsounds flowery? hope not. for more on fundamental ontologies & similar stuff, go to, for ex., Kent Palmer's website.

*

there is third main meaning of theory, and no recall is needed: 'theoria' comes from 'to see', Theoria is Vision itself. this third meaning is nondual - therefore beyond limits of everyday/scientific meanings, which correspond to 'relative' & 'absolute' truths in for ex. mahayana buddhism.

*

as to the consciousness issue: you didn't ponder what i put in italics, i.e.
consciousness is not the explained, it is the medium allowing explaining (and not only that).

i didn't try to demonstrate what you say ('...neurology(let alone all of natural science) is insufficient). i tried to show that certain ontologies are not fruitful in certain areas of inquiry. for ex., mechanical paradigm is not applicable to realms beyond mechanic. mechanic is the realm of destiny: its sword is not double-edged and cuts just oneway - entropic 'edge' is sharper than space. you don't accept even the possibility of negative entropy even though Prigogine got Nobel Prize for his work on it. but that is the other sword-edge!: syntropy -which is aspect of autopoiesis, which is life. life is self-enacting systems, not just self-producing, and not just chemical. life is wholeness of syntropy (negative entropy) and entropy(positive syntropy), in autopoietic hyper-dance. in-formation drives energy appearing also as matter(or chemistry, on the scale where you zoomed at).
so info and energy differ, interdependently. like matter and life. your brain, just as your hearth, dies. then it is just a heap of meat without any self-enacting capacity. same state as before you animated the matter by embodying your experiential stream within it. but this surely must sound to you like pure speculation.

neurology stands on ontological foundations of which it is not (at least academicaly) aware, which locate phenomenon of consciousnes as causally determined by matter a priori. neurology predicts that it will find structures within matter-structure (on any scale down to chemical/quantum/under plank's scale/beyond(mad-scientists underground)), that are responsible for consciousness. matter giving rise to consciousness. it wasn't and suddently it pops up into existence. it isn't and out of the blue, here it is. dead matter becomes conscious matter. just like that. so stupid and painful that instead of practicing a little methodical concentration and abstraction to refine minds, and realize reality, almost whole civilization of a planet gets trapped in false premises, imposing unnecessary limits on itself. the very structuring of matter is a matter of consciousness.

and let's be aware of not mingling mind, consciousness & self concepts.

never wanted to "show that consciousness is inconsistent with all natural science" ! the natural science a is result of a refinement of a certain form of consciousness ! and set of "all possible scientific theories" exceeds "all natural science". you seem to equate "all natural science" with "all possible science", even though there's just containment of the former in the latter, and of the latter in impossible. that's more than blunt. and "some consciousness phenomenon contradicts...". again: phenomena of consciousness are objects of consciousness. consciousness is the subject.

let's distinct what we see and how we see.

[jinydu]

Unfortunately, your post still sounds just as "flowery" (as opposed to "plain"), but if you're not a native English speaker, and don't know how everyday English speech sounds like, there's probably not much that can be done about it (short of living in an English-speaking country). Also, I'm not saying that words like "ontology" and phrases like "coflowing with unfolding physus" are difficult; I'm just saying that they are obscure. If you walk down a street in an English speaking country, I can virtually guarantee that you will not hear things like that; and attempting to use them in everyday conversations will only give you strange looks.

As for the part about consciousness, your English is still rather hard to understand. But from what I can gather, you seem to be saying that (at least some) neurologists think that it will eventually be possible to pin down consciousness to purely physical phenomena. Then, for some apparently philosophical reasons you say that this approach is impossible and misguided.

My best guess is that you think of consciousness as being outside of purely physical explanations. But again, you haven't given any hard evidence for why this should be the case. So neurologists haven't been able to accomplish it yet; that doesn't mean they'll never manage to do so.

[Batman3]

Are we talking about 4d conciousness? A 4d man would have 3 eyes to see 4dimensionally with. Just as we have 2 eyes to see in 3d. Perhaps we ought to have a third eye to observe in the verticle direction, but we don't. The 3 eyes would placed on the front of the 3d face just as our's are placed on the front of our 2d face. 2 eyes on one side and the third on a direction into a 4th dimenion(not verticle, not forwards/bacwards,not left/right but andwards. Andwards would be the opposite of obwards, which would be in air on the far side of the first two eyes from the third, andward eye..
He would see trees' trunks and branches with bark as solid cylinders but with bark all throughout them. The nearer branches would appear to pass through the farther braches without disappearing, covering the farther branches with their bark, since the farther branches would be farther away.
A 4d sunset would have a solid hemispherical yellow sun sinking into a planar horizon, surrounded by orange and white clouds and an orange and blue sky. Beneath the planar horizon would be a space(i.e. a 4d plane) of grass, the grass getting taller as it approaches the 4d camera. The snapshot photograph would be cubical instead of square as in 3d since the camera would be 4d.
A river would just be a flattened cylinder extending right to left. There might be something strange about its canyon structure. In any case it would not be able to stop armies or set up political boundaries as rivers do in 3d. This would have political consequences of some sort. Any ideas?
4d mountain ranges might hinder armies crossing if they were 2d in their profile as 3d mountains are 1d in profile. They might be only 1d as our mountains are 0d. Also there might be 0d mountains. But only the mountains with 2d profiles would have political consequences. Deserts and oceans might also have historical conseqences. What is the fractal dimension of 4d shorelines?
What would be the tectonics of 4d plate motion and faults in planetary crusts? Would 4d grass and leaves be different in shape than in 3d to take advantage of 4d solarlight? The 4d clouds would have different shapes ad natures. What about 4d-snowflakes? Or 4d-rain for that matter?
A 4d-man's leg would bend into the forward direction as he walked even as his feet would stick that way. We can imagine his leg moving up andforward while his left/right and andward/obward diection would closed to movement in those directions by a circular barrier. He also wouldhave a solid, squished, h.spherical kneecap. He could move 1 or 2 legs at a time, or spin as in the RAMA books by ArthurC. Clarke

[Hugh]

Batman3 wrote:

A 4d man would have 3 eyes to see 4dimensionally with.

Hi Batman3,

Do you think a 4d man would visualize 4 dimensions all at once? Would a 2d being have a 2d visual awareness? Wouldn't a 4d man only see 3 dimensions all at once, like we do? (By this I mean an "at-a-glance" 3d spatial sense of awareness.)

[thigle]

4d being need not have 3 physical eyes. 4d being can function well with 2 physical eyes.

we are not 3dimensional, only our physical plane of existence is. where we are anchored at, through habituating patterning of our minds. but our minds (roughly synonymous with consciousness in the context of this thread) are free to wander, without ANY dimensional limits.

we don't see 3 dimensions because of our eyes being 3d. actually, our vision is 2 times curved 2d - each retina is in shape of a 'bowl' at the inner side of eye-wall, so the outer 'image' of the world is projected through eye-lens on the curved projection 'surface' of the retina. let's skip describing the process of color-chemicals in the retina reacting to these stimuli to transform/free e-m implulses towards the brain. after some 'travelling', these 'energy' packets meet the 'inner light', which one can interpret as soul, or the light of consciousness, or as 'in.formation'. information meeting energy gives sense - a meaning.
thus a boy, blind from birth, was first given sight by surgery first in 1910. howevever, he could not understand his visual input ! he saw 'something' (some changing light-patterns over his newly acquired visual field, but he could not make sense of what is what, not even after years of training. he still used to walk at his home with lights off in the night.

it's only from the intertwining of 2 lights, one of nature, one of soul, that MEANINGFUL vision comes.

no hope to understand vision (let alone 4 or more dimensional) as purely passive process of light-reception, automatically (mechanicaly) decoded and coded back for meaning. that's just one aspect of what is 'seeing'. it might be partly sufficient for 'looking', though.

and although the interpretative processes are ordinarily unnoticed, (just as we can breath air & yet not be aware of it as dynamic volume but rather as 'nothing' we see), the milieu of consciousness cannot be overestimated in this case. the microgenesis of processing/comunucation of these 2 lights in awareness, are taking place constantly. visual illusions, are some of the most ready-at-hand experiments anyone can perform to get in touch with this internal dynamic character of vision.

there is no phenomena without consciousness. this duality is co-dependently arising.

so the questioning/thinking of 4d vision, in purely 3d domains of inquiry, is like trying to embed klein bottle in 3-space without singularity.

3rd 'eye' can be understood as the pineal gland. this gland is our endocrine factory for production of dimethyltryptamine, one of the most powerfull 'hallucinogens' known on this planet. (btw, many SouthAmerican nations consume DMT from plant-sources). pineal gets a bit 'covered' by minerals(calcium mainly) at around the begining of teenage, at least for urban children. that's when we all usually loose what psychologists call 'eidetic imagery': the ability to hold 'essential' images in one's mind, so vivid as to appear possesing the same ontological status as 'ordinary' reality. do you remember the time when closing your eyes didn't bring eyelids darkness, but the outer scene continued to unfold before your inner sight, calm to observe but reactive to mind-movement? this eidetic imagery is partly propelled by pineal gland and its endocrine production of dimethyltryptamine. this eidetic imagery is active in parts of our lifetime before social 'enculturalisation' takes place, programming conscious state where pure Vision is cast into obllivion.
(btw1, DMT was found to be present in increased amounts in visionary states, as well as in people having lucid dreaming experience: an experience of being lucid in the dreamscape, i.e. being aware that one is dreaming while having a direct ability to alter the dreaming space/time & narrative and one's own thiught, perception & action while staying asleep and continuing in the dreaming activity).

(btw2, DMT is illegal. so we should all be arrested because of possesion of illegal substance of Class I, the most 'DANGEROUS' shit . and more you success with 4d Vision, more of it you've got ! so all the members of this forum are, by their very interest in matters 4d, aiming at increasing their own production of illegal substance ! )

all i am trying to say by above off-road thinking is that there is no need to caress that old cartesian paradigm of flat euclidean space as the space of ALL of our [potential] experience and existence.

[wendy]

The purpose of two eyes is to create depth by parallax.

Animals that catch other animals to eat (eg owls, eagles, falcons, cats), typically have their eyes facing the same direction, to assist parallax. This reduces the range of view, but allows greater parsing of depth.

Animals that are usually eaten or don't usually warry about being eaten, (cattle, ducks, sheep), typically have an eye on each side of the head. This increases the field of view at the expense of binocular vision.

The thing about adding eyes to this mess is that it does not enhance either binocular vision, nor field of view. What it does do is provide greater confusion and more to break down.

For example, i wear glasses. When i got an unduely strong pair, i was running into things, because the percieved distance was deeper than the actual distance. I also have an astigmatism, which means that one eye moves the image somewhat. For the most part, the brain can overcome the astigmatism, but it does not do well with changing the percieved distances.

W

[Hugh]

Hi Wendy. We've talked on another forum about how we would see 4d matter, but I don't think we ever discussed how we would see it if we were 4d ourselves, with limited vision. The difference would be that if we were 4d, we could turn and see at least a 3d slice of any 4d object around us. Nothing 4d could totally hide on us. (I'm thinking of a 3d being, being able to stay "above" the plane of existence of a 2d being, out of sight, for example.) We would have full range of motion in 4d, and could turn to look in any direction within it, but we would only see 3 dimensions of it at any glance.

What do you think of the string theories that have the number of dimensions higher than 3 as being "curled up" or too small to see? Does the far away garden hose analogy make sense?

Another thing that I was thinking was that all higher spatial dimensions than our "plane of vision" (wherever we aim it) are perpendicular to it. What are the ramifications to that with regards to our seeing them?

[wendy]

There is a model of space that supposes 11 dimensions, many of which are very short.

The situation is like that of paper. Paper is a 3d thing, but its effective dimension is two. All the 11-d thing says is that we're on a terix in 11d, the thickness being of the order of the planckian distance.

[Hugh]

Wendy wrote:

All the 11-d thing says is that we're on a terix in 11d, the thickness being of the order of the planckian distance.

Could it be that it is our view of the higher dimensions that is on the order of the planckian distance? We see any higher dimensions than our plane of vision from each eye as "edge on"; a 1d line of them, which is according to PWrong, epsilon in thickness (in the view of a flatlander thread). Wouldn't this correspond to the Planck length? It would be imperceptable to us from any particular single looking direction.

[wendy]

No, when you see 4d, you see 4d. You don't see a thin slice of it.

The current 11d model of physics has little to do with what we see in four, five, six dimensions.

In fact, little is to be gained by bringing the physics use of dimensions into the discussion at all. They use lots of different usages, none of which would correspond to 3d as the ordinary horochorix we live in.

W

[Hugh]

Why I'm bringing the physics into it may be shown by this quote from Michio Kaku;

"To see how higher dimensions helps to unify the laws of nature, physicists use the mathematical device called “field theory.” For example, the magnetic field of a bar magnet resembles a spider's web which fills up all of space. To describe the magnetic field, we introduce the field, a series of numbers defined at each point in space which describes the intensity and direction of the force at that point. James Clerk Maxwell, in the last century, proved that the electro-magnetic force can be described by four numbers at each point in four dimensional space-time (labeled by A _ 1, A _ 2 , A _ 3 , A _ 4 ). These four numbers, in turn, obey a set of equations (called Maxwell's field equations).

For the gravitational force, Einstein showed that the field requires a total of 10 numbers at each point in four dimensions. These 10 numbers can be assembled into the array shown in fig. 3. (Since g _ 12 = g _ 21 , only 10 of the 16 numbers contained within the array are independent.) The gravitational field, in turn, obey Einstein's field equations. The key idea of Theodore Kaluza in the 1920s was to write down a five dimensional theory of gravity. In five dimensions, the gravitational field has 15 independent numbers, which can be arranged in a five dimensional array (see fig.4). Kaluza then re-defined the 5th column and row of the gravitation al field to be the electromagnetic field of Maxwell. The truly miraculous feature of this construction is that the five dimensional theory of gravity reduces down precisely to Einstein's original theory of gravity plus Maxwell's theory of light. In other words, by adding the fifth dimension, we have trivially unified light with gravity. In other words, light is now viewed as vibrations in the fifth dimension. In five dimensions, there is “enough room” to unify both gravity and light.

This trick is easily extended. For example, if we generalize the theory to N dimensions, then the N dimensional gravitational field can be split-up into the following pieces (see fig. 5). Now, out pops a generalization of the electromagnetic field, called the “Yang-Mills field,” which is known to describe the nuclear forces. The nuclear forces, therefore, may be viewed as vibrations of higher dimensional space. Simply put, by adding more dimensions, we are able to describe more forces. Similarly, by adding higher dimensions and further embellishing this approach (with something called “supersymmetry), we can explain the entire particle “zoo” that has been discovered over the past thirty years, with bizarre names like quarks, neutrinos, muons, gluons, etc. Although the mathematics required to extend the idea of Kaluza has reached truly breathtaking heights, startling even professional mathematicians, the basic idea behind unification remains surprisingly simple: the forces of nature can be viewed as vibrations in higher dimensional space."

Would you agree that the viewing plane from each eye consists of two perpendicular axes? We look out from each eye along a third axis, which is perpendicular to both the original two.

Now, wouldn't all possible higher spatial axes, also be perpendicular to our viewing plane axes as well?

What could we see of each of those dimensions, if we look at them "edge on"?

[wendy]

The reason we have two eyes is that that's the destiny of biology.

Humans, and other animals that hunt, have two eyes in line. This aids for parallax. Animals with eyes falling in the same plane have remarkable perception of depth.

Animals that for most of their vision-field, have only one eye do not have a perception of depth, but have a much wider field of view. Some animals can easily see something like 270 degrees of view.

Likewise, a cat has vertical slits, while a horse has horizontal slits, more in keeping with their respective range of living.

The five-dimensional thing that you're talking about is a tensor: a kind of vector that the intensity depends on both position and orientation. One can make any kind of field into a tensor, and there are 'tensor symmetries', much used in Physics. The grand unification schemes call down to an assymetric implementation of such a tensor, with each assorted item being interpreted as part of a tensor.

It apparently works, but it's all new stuff for me.

[Hugh]

Wendy wrote:

It apparently works, but it's all new stuff for me.

It seems that the math and physics do work out when we account for the existence of higher spatial dimensions. The question is, if they do actually exist, why wouldn't we readily notice them? I've been trying to find a line of reasoning that would answer this.

1. We see a 2d extending plane of vision from each eye.
2. Each plane of vision consists of two orthogonal axes (up/down, right/left, for example if looking straight ahead).
3. From each eye, we look along a third axis, which is orthogonal to both the plane of vision axes (forward/backward, for the above example).
4. We don't see that third dimension of depth, from each individual eye, because we look along that axis itself, and it is orthogonal to the viewing plane axes.
5. All possible existing higher spatial dimensional axes, are also orthogonal to the viewing plane axes, in whatever direction we point them.
6. So we can't see the higher dimensional "depth" along any of the higher dimensional axes because we look along those axes themselves - they're ALL perpendicular to our viewing plane axes.

We look at the higher dimensions "edge on" so that's why we can't see them in any one glance.

7. Each higher dimensional axis would be orthogonal to our original viewing directional axis, as well as our viewing plane axes.

8. Here's where I think that the VRI fits in. It would be possible, in that higher dimensional space (and if we're higher dimensional too), to look in two different perpendicular directions, in two glances, and see the same 2d plane of vision from each eye, but from different orthogonal directions.

[wendy]

Of VRI, the thing you see is still our own drab 3d world, from a different angle.

I would not have taken that as a sign of 4d, but a sign that the soul is trying to escape the body, and what you are seeing is the soul's and body's prospective on the same thing: ie astral travel.

Of course, the soul trying to escape the body is probably (as i found out), more to do with a chemical imbalance in the body, so i would tend, seriously, to regard VRI as more a symtom that something is wrong. Not majorly wrong, but wrong.

W

[Hugh]

Of VRI, the thing you see is still our own drab 3d world, from a different angle.

Well, our world might not be as drab as we think it looks. It might actually be quite different than we think we perceive it. We can't understand the physics of it completely as only being 3d, but if it has higher dimensions then it all makes sense.

Of course, the soul trying to escape the body is probably (as i found out), more to do with a chemical imbalance in the body, so i would tend, seriously, to regard VRI as more a symtom that something is wrong. Not majorly wrong, but wrong.

If it has to do with a chemical imbalance, then why do healthy astronauts in space experience VRIs very frequently?

Rather than the VRI being an indication that something that is "wrong", I think it is an indication that something is possible. Being able to "see our world from a different angle" certainly sounds like higher dimensions of it and ourselves are involved.