```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link WHERE file.cday = date(this.file.name) SORT file.cday ASC ``` - This type involves deliberate focusing or voluntary selection of stimuli. When we consciously attend, we essentially form hypotheses about where or what precise signals will occur, thereby selectively sampling the world based on these precision expectations: - Example Explained Clearly: Imagine deliberately searching for a bird you suspect is hidden in a treetop. You deliberately focus (actively infer) on that region because you have a hypothesis that there will be reliable, precise sensory signals there (bird movements, shapes, sounds). Your brain anticipates high precision, thus increases the gain on any prediction errors from that region. This boosts the speed and effectiveness of detecting the bird when it moves. # Windsurf [[System Prompt]] ![[attachments/Screenshot [[2025-03-15]] at 13.39.25.png]] # 3.1 The Challenge for [[Psychedelic Aesthetics]] Drawing on Wollheim and Budd, Nanay develops [[the concept]] of **design-scene properties** to explain a central aspect of pictorial art appreciation. These properties emerge from [[the relationship between]] two elements: the physical marks on a surface ([[the design]]) and what those marks depict (the scene). When we look at a painting, we notice both the paint itself and what it represents. As Nanay explains: > "When we are admiring a Miró drawing and the way two simple curved lines somehow manage to depict an expressive human face, what we are attending to is exactly a design-scene property: the relational property partly determined by the shape property of the two-dimensional curved line on the canvas and partly determined by the three-dimensional depicted face." These properties differ from purely material physical properties (the chemical composition of paint) and purely representational properties (what the painting depicts). They require both elements to be understood. In Budd’s words, design-scene properties capture "the crucial characteristic of pictorial art, namely, the interrelationship between the marks on the surface and what is depicted in them." Examples clarify this. In Cézanne’s landscapes, we notice how individual brushstrokes create the impression of pine needles; in Turner's seascapes, we admire how translucent layers of paint capture mist over water. In both cases, we attend to the **relationship** between physical marks and depicted content. This poses a challenge for our proposal: design-scene properties depend on a viewer’s direct awareness of [[the design]]—the medium that creates the scene. But what if the "design" component is not perceptually available? In the case of psychedelics, the substance itself is not something we perceive in the way we perceive paint on a canvas. If the "design" lies in our own perceptual processes (instead of in external brushstrokes), then the transparency thesis—that we are only aware of the external objects of perception, not our internal processes—seems to block any possibility of attending to our own mind’s "brushstrokes." The physical basis of experience—neural activity—remains hidden from our introspection. If so, then there would be nothing like design-scene properties in psychedelic experiences because one half of the necessary relation—the "design"—would be out of reach. # 3.2 Design-Scene Properties in [[Predictive Processing]] ### 3.2 Design-Scene Properties in [[Predictive Processing]] Design-scene properties can be explored through the lens of [[predictive processing]]. Consider viewing a Cézanne painting of pine trees. A brief glance might register only the broad scene—trees on a hillside—without attention to how brushstrokes create this impression. Here, the paint marks function transparently, enabling perception of the scene without being consciously experienced as paint. When adopting an aesthetic stance, however, you might notice how Cézanne's choppy, angled strokes somehow capture the texture of pine needles. This more sophisticated perception involves experiencing both the physical medium and what it represents simultaneously. [[Predictive processing]] provides one way of understanding this experience as precision-weighting across hierarchical levels. On this proposal, in ordinary seeing, the brain allocates most precision to higher-level content—the quick recognition of "those are pine trees" effectively explains away lower-level details of brushstrokes. Lower-level prediction errors about brushstroke properties are assigned low precision and thus have minimal impact on perceptual inference. When adopting an aesthetic stance toward a painting, you engage in a distinctive form of volitional attention. As explained in Section 1, the brain normally minimises prediction error by either updating its predictions to match sensory input or by adjusting the precision weighting given to different signals. During ordinary perception of a painting, once your brain successfully predicts "these are pine trees," the lower-level details about brushstrokes would typically be explained away as mere vehicles for that higher-level content. But in aesthetic viewing, you deliberately alter this process. What makes aesthetic perception special, according to [[this approach]], is that you're simultaneously attending to two different aspects of the painting: First, you're attending to the physical medium itself—the individual brushstrokes, their texture, direction, and colour. In [[predictive processing]] terms, you're deliberately increasing the precision of lower-level prediction errors concerning these physical features. Rather than allowing these prediction errors to be fully explained away by higher-level predictions, you maintain their influence on your overall perception. Second, you're still maintaining your higher-level prediction that "this depicts pine trees." Without this representational content, the brushstrokes would be merely abstract marks. It's precisely because you simultaneously hold onto this higher-level prediction that you can appreciate how the physical medium manages to create that representational content. This dual attention creates a distinctive perceptual state where you're aware of both the depicted scene and the means by which it's depicted. Within the [[predictive processing]] framework outlined in Section 1, this could be understood as a deliberate balancing of prediction errors across different levels of the hierarchy. You're neither allowing your perceptual system to settle entirely on the most efficient explanation (perceiving only the pine trees), nor focusing exclusively on raw sensory data (seeing only paint marks). This proposed explanation highlights the brain's ability to selectively adjust precision weighting. As Letheby notes regarding psychedelics, prediction errors with high precision have greater influence on perception. When appreciating a painting aesthetically, you might deliberately increase the precision of certain prediction errors that would normally be explained away—specifically, those concerning the physical medium. This prevents these prediction errors from being completely minimised while still maintaining the higher-level predictions about what the painting represents. This balancing act could thereby enable the perception of design-scene properties—[[the relationship between]] the physical medium and what it represents. Through selective attention and precision weighting, [[predictive processing]] potentially explains how we perceive not just objects or scenes, but also how they are constructed in perception. Crucially, on this view, design-scene properties don't necessarily depend on the physical visibility of brushstrokes, but rather on a certain configuration of precision-weighting—a way of allocating attention that preserves awareness of perceptual construction. Importantly, there's nothing uniquely perceptual about this form of attention: precision-weighting is a general cognitive mechanism. What distinguishes aesthetic appreciation might not be perception per se, but rather the manner in which attention and prediction errors are managed. This shift from focusing on physical media to the underlying cognitive processes of attention and prediction may thus prove crucial for understanding design-scene aesthetics in psychedelic experiences.