MEDIAN VISION and MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS
Consider these experiential properties of awareness and compare them with some known properties of median vision:
(1) WHOLENESS OF FIELD ... we do not experience several points of view' concurrently, but experience the world from a single vantage point. It is not common (or possible) to experience two or more sets of sensory impressions at once, or to believe that we are more than one person at the same time.
(2) MULTI-MODALITY.... In the sense that we can both hear, see, smell and feel simultaneously. We effortlessly make sense out of all the various types of data received from our special senses. Any candidate organ as prototype for this multi-sensory ability would itself have been multi-sensory and would have existed before these subsequent specialised sense-gatherers.
(3) NON-TRANSFERABILITY ...we do not experience the direct mental representations from any being other than ourselves. Likewise we cannot project our focus of attention or mental field outside our own sensory realm and thus experience mental events from the viewpoint of any other person or being. Likewise an ancient animal relying on median vision, would not have been able to exchange its physical median eye with that belonging to another animal.
(4) NO ON/OFF CONTROL... Although we may become oblivious through concussion, drugs or external means, we have no direct choice whether to think and perceive'. When asleep, we cannot decide to dream purely by self-volition. This is an inheritance from the median eye which cannot be shut off by muscular impulse or covered with an eyelid.
(5) LOCATION There is no identifiable place in our brain or head where awareness is "situated". Since our range of vision and hearing is limited in range and converges at a central 'focus' within our skull; our sensory experience is naturally concentrated about this pivotal location. The parietal gland occupies a suitably median position in the skull to approximate the experiential loci of perception. Galen put forward the notion that the pineal gland, because it lies unpaired and central within the brain. He suggests its function as a 'valve' regulating the flow of thought, filtering out masses of unwanted information. This is not quite the point I wish to make ... but rather suggest a possible role for the median eye as a 'range-finder' for subsequent sensory organs .... giving us a 'location' within the sensory world because of delineating the useful parameters. As Kuhlenbeck states, ".. consciousness is not located in the (world), but contrarily, that body as well as external world, are located in consciousness."
(6) INNER AND OUTER PERSPECTIVE Consciousness is not just a one-way process of looking out or of looking in, but combines both attributes. The direction of attention can change, for example when we cut our hand and feel pain, there is more awareness directed to this peripheral limb than under normal circumstances. I would argue that the median eye and pineal gland (E-2) system has this same capacity at once to monitor both the external environment and internal kinaesthetic events.
Copyright Steve Nichols (1979 - 2006)
