They've done experiments where people are shown out-of-focus images. As the images are slowly brought into focus, the subjects are asked to guess what the image is as soon as they can. People who make wrong guesses early have a very hard time correcting them--the image must be in almost perfect focus before they manage to see what it really is. A slightly fuzzy image that you ordinarily would easily recognize as a train may look like a shark to you if you guessed it to be a shark when it was just a blob of color.
What is happening? The eye is only half of the seeing process. The eye doesn't send the image to the brain; the brain imagines the image and then begins a dialog with the eye until the two of them reach agreement. The image was never in the eye; it was always in the brain. The eye verifies the image, it does not generate it.
I remember clearly how televised football looked to me when I first started watching it. (I know because I remember how I described it to someone at the time.) On a pass play, a clump of people would form, and then an arm holding the football would rise out of the center of the clump and throw. Now, after decades of football-watching, I see all the individual battles between the rushers and blockers as they surround the quarterback. Has my eye improved? No, my eyes are worse than they were when I first started watching. But my ability to imagine football games has improved, and so I see more.
The same thing happens at more conceptual levels. Can you imagine an honest lawyer? If not, I guarantee you will never meet one. Can you imagine that someone could love you just the way you are? If you can't, you will be unable to notice when someone does.
When trying to convince other people, it always helps to know whether they can imagine what you're trying to tell them. If they can, then you only have to show them evidence. If they can't, evidence is useless--they won't see it as evidence of anything. Those arguments that go in circles forever are of the second type: Neither party can imagine the world that the other plainly sees. Consequently, everything the other party says is irrelevant. It is just noise, supporting no point of view at all.
More tips for the Reasonable Mystic
Douglas Muder (dougdeb@gurus.com)
June, 1998