- seCtIon one: tHe PRoBLem
over the centre of a radiating pattern – like a bicycle wheel with
the centre left out – the pattern is completed and the lines are
seen to converge to a point (Activity 3.1).In one demonstration, Ramachandran uses a group of yellow
doughnut shapes, with the central hole in one of them coin-
ciding with the blind spot. A complete yellow circle appears
and pops out from the surrounding doughnuts. From this he
concludes that filling-in cannot be just a question of ignoring
the gaps, because in that case the circle would not pop out. (A
similar logic applies to experiments showing that synaesthesia
involves visual rather than imaginative experience, which we
come to in Chapter 6.) This finding shows, he says, that ‘your
brain “filled-in” your blind spot with yellow qualia’ (Ramachan-
dran and Blakeslee, 1998, p. 237). But what exactly are yellow
qualia? Are they the same as Koch’s ‘properties’ that the brain
‘paints in’? Are they a form of Dennett’s fanciful ‘figment’, a
non-existent kind of pigment used to paint in the blank space
‘in here’ (1991, e.g. pp. 346, 353)? If not, what is going on?PRoFILe 3.1
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
(b. 1951)
Usually known as Rama, V. S.
Ramachandran is a flamboy-
ant neuroscientist and lecturer.
Born in Tamil Nadu, he trained
as a doctor in India, did a PhD
at Trinity College, Cambridge,
and then worked on visualperception and neurology. He is Director of the Center
for Brain and Cognition, and Professor of Psychology and
FIGURE 3.5 • Perhaps you clearly saw lots of identical portraits of Dan Dennett, and just one with horns and a scar. But in three
seconds you could not have looked directly at each one. Did you fill in the rest? Do you need to?