What is an Illusion Too?

Robert Ausbourne
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
Publilius Syrus - 100 BC
The Greek philosopher Aristotle named five human senses some 2,000 years ago; sight,
hearing, touch, smell, and taste. We have doubled the number since, by adding a sense of
balance, of time, of temperature, of pain and a kinesthetic sense. The list is likely to
continue to grow, and a sense of humor may still be found.
In any case, we can ignore the other senses and concentrate on the sense of sight, since this
discussion is about optical illusions; an optical phenomenon that results in a false or
deceptive visual impression.
The definition seems clear enough, lets see what we have. First of all, it is fitting that the
sense of sight should be first on the list. Surly it is the crowning glory of all human senses.
In fact, sight is more like an intellect. Nearly half of our brain's energy is devoted to its
work. The visual cortex, located near the back of the brain, at the end of the Eye Way
Hwy., is Command central. In this vast sea of living gray our brains decide what we will
see.
What we see is an amazing multi-functional, mult-tiered, stereoscopic, 3D steady-cam
view, in living color which runs full-time, every minute of our lives. The broadcast is live
from Command center. We percieve the broadcast as being in front of our eyes, but it really
lives somewhere behind them. Take a glance around the room; tilt your head one way, and
then the other. The steady-cam screen remains rock-steady, not a jiggle, not a quiver. To
run the steady-cam system each of us uses the equivalent processing power of all the super
computers in the world combined.
We, our conscious selves are totally blind. Our eyes, having no will of their own, and
despite being of a complex nature, are just organs. They follow our directions, collect data
and percieve nothing. The movie of life that we see is broadcast from Command center. The
show we see is grand, and we are left to make of it what we can. One lingering glance at a
spring marigold tells us that the system works beautifully.
The visual cortex crunches raw data streaming in along the Eye Way Hwy., and has access
to everything else in the human mainframe. We don't talk to the cortex; we listen. Pictures
percolate into our consciousness about one 10th of a second after we view a scene. The tiny
delay is important to how and what we see. The movie of life endeavors to accurately depict
what is beyond our eyes, but the view is richly marinated in our every thought, our deepest
emotions, all our memories, knowledge, quirks, and foibles.
New research has shown that the brain compensates for the one 10th of a second delay in
our steady-cam view by looking into the future! It doesn't do us any good to see everything
one 10th of second late; we need to see stuff now. What if a chucked rock is speeding
towards your head? You need to duck in time to prevent a nasty knock on the noggin. The

brain calculates the path of the rock and shows you where the rock will be in the next 10th
of a second. It does this constantly, for every fluttering leaf and tennis serve we
see. Despite the built-in delay between sight and perception we always view moving
objects in the current now.
Ah ha, I hear you thinking, I know where this is going. The visual cortex is very
complex, prone to visual errors, and sometimes deceptive. Thats what creates optical
illusions.
The visual cortex never lies, and is incapable of deception. Suppose you look at a tree and
the visual cortex reports, Thats a candy cane. If the cortex tells you to do so; you will see
a candy cane. This behavior is considered delusional. You and your sense of sight would
soon end up in a rubber room taking pills from a plastic cup. While we can, and often do lie
to ourselves and to others, a healthy visual cortex, operating within normal parameters
prevents delusions by never lying.
The truthful and loyal visual cortex shows us a true movie of life based on a personal
reality; which is made up of an enormous pile of everything we know, feel and
remember. Even so, much of reality is shared experience. So much so that a group of us can
sit in a room, each in a different location, each with a different point-of-view; and quickly
create an accurate 3D map of the room which is both personal and common to all; a truly
formidable collective talent. Take that, 3D Space Monsters!
We tackle and solve thousands of visual paradoxes every day, such as This room is really
square ; this wall is not really darker, only in shadow; this border stops one color and
begins another; this line is straight and ends here; those telephone poles aren't getting
smaller, some are farther away. The list is endless. We puzzle our way through so many
optical illusions, so often that we ignore them aswell, as being normal. A blizzard of
spatial problems buffets our brains always; a price we pay for living in a 3D universe.
So what is an optical illusion? An optical illusion is an error issued by Command Central.
Actually, it is less like an error, and more like an innocent assumption. While it cannot lie,
the cortex can assume like a champion. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it
probably is a duck. What the cortex assumes; we see. Assumptive illusions probably
happen more often than we realize, and are often ignored. It is easy enough to trick
ourselves; scientists do it all the time.
We trick our senses for good and noble purpose; scientific research. Because optical
illusions are come by honestly they pose no threat to us or our sanity, and they help us to
understand, and illustrate how the brain works. Optical illusions are similar to the many
visual paradoxes we see and solve everyday of our lives. They are new visual puzzles to
solve.
With dazzling colors, powerful textures, light and shadows, influential shapes and strange
patterns we attempt to fathom the workings of the old cabeza. Illusions are designed to
present Command center with inventive paradoxes in order to force a different assumption

than the one expected. "If I put a bold circle next to a line, will you assume the line is
bent?" By gosh, it works. That is an optical illusion!
There is an excellent assumptive distortion illusion here on the web site; The Hering to
Wundt Illusion. Before you run off to check it out; keep in mind what is happening. The
moveable red lines are never really bent. We have no choice but to see them as bent
because the visual cortex has been coaxed into assuming they are bent. No amount of Zenlike concentration will straighten the red lines within these illusions.
One current and most popular explanation of why illusions work centers around the fact
that the brain has evolved to work best when we are viewing the world in 3D. However,
almost all optical illusions are presented in 2D; in other words, on paper or on a screen. The
brain, expecting 3D is treated to a healthy dose of 2D artwork, and thus becomes prone to
assumptive errors.
Not all optical illusions are based on errors. We've become extremely good at inventing
them. Some illusions can tickle a single, tiny bundle of specialized neurons. Other
illusions can be used to demonstrate a single process or characteristic of sight, such as selfvisualization of our natural blind spots, or help us to visualize how photochemical receptors
work. Optical Illusions are research tools. They can also be more fun than a barrel of
monkeys.
There are also plenty of free-range, natural illusions, such as camouflage, mirages, and
afterimages. Rock formations or mountains that look like familiar objects, clouds that look
like angels and wallpaper-pattern faces are all considered optical illusions. Still more
illusions are born in the artists studio, such as impossible objects, and ambiguous figures.

Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory;

a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine
more than minority of them - never become conscious of them all.
How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)