Start with an apple. Take a bite. (If not sure how, here is a manual: http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-an-Apple It also includes a very three-dimensional picture of an apple.)
You will see the apple, smell it, taste it, but those sensory inputs will not exist in isolation. Rather, the brain will try to integration them into a single perceptual unity: an apple that you are eating right now. As another example, recall the beginning of "Word and Object" by W.V.O.Quine:
Right now when I am touching things, all kinds of things such as apples, trees, fences, umbrellas, even animals, I am surprised how well the input from the sense of touch corresponds to what I see. This feels quite weird, since I am used to a world without a clear correspondence between seeing and touching, to the point that I could sometimes see a woman, recognize her as pretty, yet had not even the slightest desire or interest in touching her, even if she asked for it. Right now I can look at some object at arm's length, close my eyes, and touch or take it with fairly high precision. Previously I could almost do it, but, say, if I wanted to put a cup on a table, I would have to pay a little bit of attention to actually put it on the surface of the table and not leave it slightly above or too close to the edge. It still worked, but I had to keep an eye as I was putting the cup with just a little bit of attention. If I was eating a watermelon above a plate, I had to make an extra check that the plate was actually below and not a little bit to the side.
If you read my post about "up, down, and other directions", it should be clear that my vestibular system was also disconnected from my vision. Now when I am walking, or dancing, or doing yoga, or even swaying left and right, I can see everything else move in the opposite direction, and I can sense the motion parallax: closer objects move farther across my field of view. I feel that this has great potential for integration with my vestibular system. I can almost feel this integration going on. Now even as I walk down the street, I sometimes feel dizzy from this movement. If I am watching a moving object, such as a car, which I am doing right now typing these words, I feel very dizzy, to the point that I feel I have to stop doing that. I feel slight motion sickness even watching people, even as I am sitting in a chair.
Interestingly enough, this does not affect the vestibular system. Thus, I am having all these sensations such as dizziness or motion sickness, yet I do not perceive them as sensory input to the vestibular system. I suspect that my vestibular system disconnected from my vision long ago, hence my former inability to feel that the trees were going directly up, and not diagonally. It was always easier for me to close my eyes in some balancing pose than for many other people, and it usually did not make much difference if I was looking at something stable or at something moving. After all, I had not been focusing my eyes, one or both, until a week ago, only accommodating. The difference is mental, but this difference is learned through focusing both eyes which produces binocular summation, and voilà! - the object becomes highlighted, and everything else blurs a little bit.
Now I can feel how my sense of vision is getting integrated with my sense of sound. I already wrote about feeling the volume in a church. Also, when I see passing cars, now I can feel how the different sounds from the car reflect the fact that the car is coming towards me, then moving away from me. As I see a screaming seagull, I can now feel how its screaming is in agreement with its direction of flight: towards me or away from me, and at which angle.
This is not to say that I had completely disregarded the visual input. Colors were often important for me, as were fog, or rain, or snow, as was wind and how the tree looked different when it was windy, and how it moved the fallen leaves on the ground.I loved watching ballroom dancing, largely for the bright colors and the sensation of colors in the air. I have always loved the impressionists, but particularly the paintings where I could feel movement or the atmosphere.
By the way, if you want to know what the world looks like without stereopsis, here is an example. I guess, this is why I have never liked this painting.
Children clearly spend a long time integrating their senses. I have gotten a toy car, and now I understand quite well that desire to open its doors to put it on the floor and move a bit back and forth. It's not that I don't know what will happen, but know it intellectually. Sensory integration gives a feeling of being connected with the environment and with ourselves.
You will see the apple, smell it, taste it, but those sensory inputs will not exist in isolation. Rather, the brain will try to integration them into a single perceptual unity: an apple that you are eating right now. As another example, recall the beginning of "Word and Object" by W.V.O.Quine:
This familiar desk manifests its presence by resisting my pressures and by deflecting light to my eyes. Physical things generally, however remote, become known to us only through the effects which they help to induce at our sensory surfaces. Yet our common-sense talk of physical things goes forward without benefit of explanations in more intimate sensory terms.If the senses contradict each other, the confusion is still resolved somehow, potentially ignoring some sensory input, as it happens when two misaligned eyes produce incompatible sensory input, and the input from one eye is ignored. Consciousness can also play a role. For example, when I am looking at apples right now, I do not quite feel that those big bright objects are the same apples as the apples that I saw without stereopsis. The trees in the street go up, their crowns hanging above me and their branches and leaves separated in space, do not feel like the same trees as the ones that I used to see without stereopsis. I am not tasting or smelling the stereoapples or climbing the stereotrees in order to establish correspondence. I simply understand that those must be the same trees and apples as before, for this is clearly the easiest way to reconstruct a coherent worldview.
Right now when I am touching things, all kinds of things such as apples, trees, fences, umbrellas, even animals, I am surprised how well the input from the sense of touch corresponds to what I see. This feels quite weird, since I am used to a world without a clear correspondence between seeing and touching, to the point that I could sometimes see a woman, recognize her as pretty, yet had not even the slightest desire or interest in touching her, even if she asked for it. Right now I can look at some object at arm's length, close my eyes, and touch or take it with fairly high precision. Previously I could almost do it, but, say, if I wanted to put a cup on a table, I would have to pay a little bit of attention to actually put it on the surface of the table and not leave it slightly above or too close to the edge. It still worked, but I had to keep an eye as I was putting the cup with just a little bit of attention. If I was eating a watermelon above a plate, I had to make an extra check that the plate was actually below and not a little bit to the side.
If you read my post about "up, down, and other directions", it should be clear that my vestibular system was also disconnected from my vision. Now when I am walking, or dancing, or doing yoga, or even swaying left and right, I can see everything else move in the opposite direction, and I can sense the motion parallax: closer objects move farther across my field of view. I feel that this has great potential for integration with my vestibular system. I can almost feel this integration going on. Now even as I walk down the street, I sometimes feel dizzy from this movement. If I am watching a moving object, such as a car, which I am doing right now typing these words, I feel very dizzy, to the point that I feel I have to stop doing that. I feel slight motion sickness even watching people, even as I am sitting in a chair.
Interestingly enough, this does not affect the vestibular system. Thus, I am having all these sensations such as dizziness or motion sickness, yet I do not perceive them as sensory input to the vestibular system. I suspect that my vestibular system disconnected from my vision long ago, hence my former inability to feel that the trees were going directly up, and not diagonally. It was always easier for me to close my eyes in some balancing pose than for many other people, and it usually did not make much difference if I was looking at something stable or at something moving. After all, I had not been focusing my eyes, one or both, until a week ago, only accommodating. The difference is mental, but this difference is learned through focusing both eyes which produces binocular summation, and voilà! - the object becomes highlighted, and everything else blurs a little bit.
Now I can feel how my sense of vision is getting integrated with my sense of sound. I already wrote about feeling the volume in a church. Also, when I see passing cars, now I can feel how the different sounds from the car reflect the fact that the car is coming towards me, then moving away from me. As I see a screaming seagull, I can now feel how its screaming is in agreement with its direction of flight: towards me or away from me, and at which angle.
This is not to say that I had completely disregarded the visual input. Colors were often important for me, as were fog, or rain, or snow, as was wind and how the tree looked different when it was windy, and how it moved the fallen leaves on the ground.I loved watching ballroom dancing, largely for the bright colors and the sensation of colors in the air. I have always loved the impressionists, but particularly the paintings where I could feel movement or the atmosphere.
By the way, if you want to know what the world looks like without stereopsis, here is an example. I guess, this is why I have never liked this painting.
Children clearly spend a long time integrating their senses. I have gotten a toy car, and now I understand quite well that desire to open its doors to put it on the floor and move a bit back and forth. It's not that I don't know what will happen, but know it intellectually. Sensory integration gives a feeling of being connected with the environment and with ourselves.
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