A Creative
Genius for
Vision
Visual Intelligence
Donald D. Hoffman
Chapter One
The Genius of Vision
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Everything you see, you
construct
Our visual prowess is a
genius that often goes
unrecognized
Yet, we construct
scenes that contradict
reality
Is our vision or our hand
erroneous?
Can there be elements
in the picture causing
the problem?
More Evidence
The “Magic Square”
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Brighter inside is
a vision or
photometer
error?
Ironically, the
boundary
increase makes
the construction
of the square
difficult
More Evidence
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Vision can do more
than fabricate a
structure, as it goes
against reality
We build a triangle,
even though this
could be a structure
photographed at a
specific angle
The Devil’s Triangle
“What you see”
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There are elegant principles being applied when
constructing an image
Phenomenal sense – The way things appear to us,
objects we construct regardless of reality
constraints
Relational sense – what you interact with when
you see, things must exist to be seen
The phenomenal sense applies to our “visual
genius”
Visual experiences serve as user-friendly computer
icon interface with those things we relationally see
Vision Comes Naturally
 Unlike
the ability to walk or talk, humans
can see upon birth
 It is also an ability that we share with
animals alike
 Gold fish have four color receptors
 Honeybees see ultraviolet light
 Is our vision the correct vision?
A Child’s Visual Development
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One month – infants blink if something moves
toward their eyes
3 months – infants use visual motion to
construct boundaries of objects
4 months – use motion and stereovision to
construct 3D shapes of objects
7 months – use shading, perspective, and
interposition to construct depth and shape
One year – visual geniuses that begin to learn
the name of objects
Visual Construction in Nature
 For
some species,
their visual
construction
displays less
genius
 But no different
than humans, this
leaves room for
visual errors
Blackbird Nestlings
Visual Construction in Nature
View of Chickens
and Ducks
The Common Toad
Brief History
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Ptolemy (2nd century
AD) – recognized in
Optics is a dictate of
logic
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Alhazen (965-1039) –
visual properties due to
unconscious inference
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Nicolas Malebranche
(1638-1715) – visual
inferences came God
A Brief History
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Hermann von Helmholtz (18211894) – described vision as a
process of unconscious inference
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David Marr (1946-1981) –
compared visual construction to
information processing in
computers
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Ernst Hans Gombrich(1909) –
unconscious and automatic
processes are “projections”, while
those that are more labored for
are “inference” or “knowledge”
Fundamental Problem of
Vision
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The image at the eye has countless
interpretations
How can we know that we all see the same
thing?
Innate rules which grant visual mastery and
lead to consensus in the visual constructions
despite ambiguity
Everyone constructs the same vision (with or
without the same interpretation)
The rules, which work quickly and effectively
are the key