In Brain Performs Near Optimal Visual Search, we read of some interesting research on the power of visual search techniques used by human beings:
In the wild, mammals survive because they can see and evade predators lurking in the shadowy bushes.
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This ability to recognize target objects surrounded by distracters is one of the remarkable functions of our nervous system.
“Visual search is an important task for the brain. Surprisingly, even in a complex task like detecting an object in a scene with distracters, we find that people’s performance is near optimal. That means that the brain manages to do the best possible job given the available information,” said Dr. Wei Ji Ma, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. A report on research by him and colleagues from other institutions appears online in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
This is an interesting line of research which can tell us a lot about our highly visual selves but also perhaps providing clues to search techniques better than any currently used by, for example, robots searching for a clue to life on the service of Mars or for a recorder box from an airplane on the bottom of the ocean.
What strikes me is the additional evidence for something I’ve written about before, the way in which perception can involve as much effort by the brain as does our abstract thinking. See Knowing Truth in a World Where We Perceive What is Useful for a discussion of how we see colors as being the same under different lighting conditions though the object is actually radiating a different set of light-waves. We see a red ball as the same shade of red whether it’s in the sun or shade. In fact, that red ball is not sending out a set of ‘red’ light-waves in either of those cases. The brain is working hard to maintain that particular ‘redness’ in our conscious vision of the ball; we could even say the brain is carrying out calculations roughly similar to some very difficult calculations, fast-Fourier transformations and the like, which are involved in modern computing. I suspect we’ll find the brain might well using still more exotic and powerful techniques, perhaps even some equivalent to the forms of quantum computing currently being researched.
We can draw evidence drawn from these lines of research to support the Thomistic conclusion that we are active organisms responding to our environments. We’re not passive receivers of some canned images or smells. We do a lot of ‘thinking’ to see our environments and a lot of ‘remembering’ to smell those environments. The world isn’t transparent to our eyes and ears and noses and tongues and fingertips but rather is the result of a collaborative effort in which the human animal works with its environments, responding and then — in a manner of speaking — making its own ‘proposals’ in the form of various forms of physical activity.
We should also be willing to see clearly that another form of responsiveness is operating, that of family lines of organisms responding to their environments while competing for resources necessary for successful reproduction. In opposition to some reductionistic views of evolutionary processes, this research indicates that the individual organisms can respond in ways that are “optimal,” and that indicates the selection of individuals for producing the next generation works pretty darned well however often superior organisms might be killed by accident and however often we might wonder at someone managing to survive without killing his dense self trying to shave let alone figuring out how he fathered 10 children. Evolution doesn’t work in the way of an engineer designing a machine but it can produce optimizations which are more impressive than any yet produced by human workers.
As a Christian of Thomistic inclinations, I’d even say we should do our darnedest to push our responsiveness, to open ourselves to Creation from its most concrete to its most abstract realms, because Creation is the manifested thoughts of God in His freely-chosen role as Creator and it’s those thoughts to which we are responding. By being responsive, by reaching out into God’s world and seeking to understand it and properly use it, we’re preparing ourselves to share God’s life. If we choose a passive life, we’re preparing ourselves for the permanent grave.