Is Science Compatible with Mysticism?

[godnotgod]

I'm not sure I agree because I don't really know what you mean by "define", "figure", and "ground". A human discerning a figure is quite different from a figure having a definition.

Not really. In both cases, a reference is required to determine that a figure exists. That reference is ground, without which there is no figure.

What I can say is this: you could make the black space white instead, except for some thin black line; or, you could cut out the figure entirely, and have absolutely nothing surrounding it (including whatever is meant by "ground"). In either case, the figure could still be defined.

Again, in both cases, there is a field against which one is able to discern the existence of the figure. In the first case, the thin black line becomes the ground, and in the second, you are now looking at a three dimensional object in space, space being the new ground. Glad you mentioned this, since in the third dimension, space becomes essential to solid, just as ground is to figure in the second dimension.

Admittedly, it's hard to picture in one's mind a figure with no environment around it; but it is still a formal possibility.

It's actually impossible.

For example, mathematicians can define all sorts of spaces and figures without invoking the existence of anything outside of them. The points inside a sphere are strictly sufficient to define the space inside a sphere, and so on.

A sphere is defined by its surface, in space. The outside has already been invoked by recognition of its existence. Whatever the outside is, is the ground against which one knows it is a sphere. Spheres have insides, and if they have insides, they necessarily have outsides.

Or, to take an example from physics: various possible spacetimes with different "shapes" can be defined all by themselves (perhaps including the spacetime of our universe, whether it be open, closed, flat, etc.), it is not necessary to refer to anything else outside/around it in order to define it. So, using your terminology, it seems to me that in general "figure" defines figure, and "ground" is an optional decoration.

What defines it as being 'closed'? You just said there is an 'outside' to it.

Like I said:

"You can agree or disagree with my answer, but you asked for it and I gave it. I'm sorry if it wasn't the answer you were hoping for. I think I've been a good sport about this and it's time for you to be a good sport, too. Instead of twisting MY answer into yours, why don't you give YOUR answer, and make whatever point you wanted to make? It's your turn."​

Maybe I'm wrong but you insisted I answer and I answered. My turn is over, now it's your turn to reveal the point.

The point cannot be arrived at until you see the essential relationship between figure and ground. Not sure, but I suspect the problem you are having is that ground is passive, and you are used to not assigning it any importance. That is typical of Western culture. Eastern culture takes both background and foreground into account. Why would anyone discard one in favor of the other? They both occur simultaneously. In fact, they're the same reality.

Question: Only in the example given (the image I first posted), and without any manipulation, such as cutting out the figure with scissors, etc.: can the figure exist without the ground?

Now, this is a really, really simple question that does'nt require much, if any, thought.
dust1n not only got it, he saw (after a couple posts) that figure and ground are essential to each other.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

True, physicists are partly to blame and that's why I'm trying to do my part to clear up the confusion here.

Believe me, I sympathize. I can't say which one people are more interested in hearing about, but I'd guess that both physics (at least buzzword physics) and neuroscience (so long as it's some "astounding new study", especially if it involves brain imaging, which is reported inaccurately by countless media outlets) have this problem more than most sciences.

And neuroscience wins when it comes to bad research being the problem, not just bad reporting or a problem with the disconnect between researchers and

a lay audience

where

the context is lost and this can give [a] misleading impression

I hope you don't mind that I generalized your example (changing the definite article into an indefinite) make it fit my context. I know it's manipulative citing as it changes your original meaning, but I believe that you'd agree your specific example is far from the only one in which the communication breakdown occurs.

It's interdisciplinary ...The world is just too complicated to do it otherwise these days.

Preaching to the choir my friend:

One the one hand, the cognitive sciences include philosophers (of language, of mind, of science, of logic, etc.), linguists, even anthropologists. On the other, it includes engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, biologists, etc. Clearly, most biologists don't work in the cognitive sciences nor do most of the others listed. This is because it is an interdisciplinary field.

Before going into the study again, some context might help.

[snipped]

For example, if you just visit UC Berkely's Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, there is a nice little image showing how some fields intersect. If you click on the link "Research", you can see some diversity in the kinds of research done. This group is similar to the center I worked at (I still say things like "head of my lab" as I only left because I had to move for financial reasons, and am in denial about it, so please forgive the changes in tense). There was a social cognition lab that my lab partnered up with (all the labs actually do that, and in fact the main collaborator my lab had was a university in Italy). But there were also the labs of Stephen Pinker and Caramazza and those like them- old school mainstream cognitive psychologists.

Contrast that with the cognitive science work at MIT or at Johns Hopkins. If you go to the research page at MIT here, and click on the "cognitive science" link, you'll get a feel for what I'm talking about. You still have the "mainstream" centers like the "Brain and Cognitive science", but you also have the "Nonlinear Systems Laboratory" and the "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)". Go to Johns Hopkins and it's hard to find mainstream cognitive psychologists. In fact, if you go to the Applied Physics Lab site, it's hard to find out that they've actually done a lot of work in various ways, such as their "Research Program in Applied Neuroscience".
[snipped]
Every year since 1984 there is an annual Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) conference held, and for the past five years it has been held jointly with a number of other conferences. Basically, it's really all one thing
[snipped]

At that conference was a russian psychologist who studied preschool "gamers", a researcher from the U.S. Army Research Institute who works on unmanned vehicles, a group of Japanese researchers who studied the effect of brightness on distractions which result in car accidents, and another group who studied the relationship between internet anxiety and human behaviors. There were lots more, of course, but that sample is meant to give an idea on the kind of range of topics we're dealing with.

Basically, one can work in cognitive science and be a mathematical physicist or a sociologist.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The image is composed of figure and ground. Can you make out figure without ground?

'Figure and Ground' is just the accepted nomenclature for this kind of image, and says in 3 words what yours says in several. This particular image is one that is actually a demonstration of figure and ground.

Since you raised the flag, I need to stop here: does my reference to the image being 'figure and ground' cause a problem at this point?

It does. Because it seems you are using scientific terminology, as indicated by e.g.,

(You see, I am putting on my scientific hat now.)

but have divorced not only the terms from their historical context in Gestalt psychology (see e.g., here), but even more so in actual scientific use today. Figure/Ground distinctions feature prominently in e.g., cognitive linguistics (see e.g. here, here, and here), cognitive psychology (see e.g., here), cognitive neuropsychology (see e.g., here), and computer science/A.I. (see e.g., here).

However, you are using these terms, and even claiming them to be "accepted nomenclature" and to be using them scientifically, yet your conclusions tell another story:

Again, in both cases, there is a field against which one is able to discern the existence of the figure. In the first case, the thin black line becomes the ground, and in the second, you are now looking at a three dimensional object in space, space being the new ground. Glad you mentioned this, since in the third dimension, space becomes essential to solid, just as ground is to figure in the second dimension.

Not really. In both cases, a reference is required to determine that a figure exists. That reference is ground, without which there is no figure.

If you are unfamiliar with the phenomenon of 'figure and ground', I encourage you to look it up.

OK. So ground defines figure, therefore, it is dependent upon ground for it's existence, or manifestation. That is the first observation.

The second is that the figure is form, and ground, the formless.

The third is that the figure is temporal; and ground always present.

The fourth is that this is a two-dimensional representation of something that is three-dimensional, in this case, a human figure.

OK so far?

Not ok. Because when it comes to figure/ground, I don't need to "look it up", I already have. It's an essential part of several disciplines in the cognitive sciences, and I've been working with them for years. At no point have I come across scientific literature in which these technical terms have been used as you are using them. "Field" does have to do with lines. Actually, it goes back to extremely early work in optics like the Hermann Grid Illusion and how Mach bands were incorpoated into early work on receptive fields and trying to model the visual system with simple image gradiants or radiating lines. It was the early days of cognitive science when computer scientists, psychologists, and others who'd never worked together before collaborated.

To see more current work, see e.g., "Figure/Ground Assignment in Natural Images".

Computer vision work is filled with classification algorithms and statistical learning models for figure/ground assignment, but not so much with existential relationships between the two. You can have a figure without the ground. It's easy. You just have the figure. The whole point was trying to determine how classification in conceptual and visual processing works, or could work (in e.g., computational intelligence/A.I. research).

 

[Windwalker]

If I am reading this correctly, the idea being promoted flies right in the face of what others here have said about the mystic's ability to determine Penumbra's real name and the colour of her floor mat. By being presented with Penumbra, the mystic should be able to "divine" her real name and the colour of her rug.

No. Quoting all of that again which you refer to:

1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.
1.42. The argumentative condition is the confused mixing of the word, its right meaning, and knowledge. 1.43. When the memory is purified and the mind shines forth as the object alone, it is called non-argumentative.​

When you speak of the color of her floor mat, or her real name, these are "words", what the conceptual mind labels something as, and then mistakenly sees as the truth of that thing. That is the argumentative condition described above. That is exactly what the mystical experience moves beyond. That is the transparent crystal mind which sees beyond the facades of word descriptions and mental models of reality. That seeing beyond the argumentative condition is what omniscience means. It doesn't mean knowing all the words we call things. Red, or Brenda, are words we identify an object as, not what that object or form is itself, its essential nature. Omniscience doesn't mean the ultimate data-collection warehouse of descriptions!

Really, all that is happening is step outside being embedded in this created mental world of definitions. Mystical experience happens all the time to one degree or another throughout everyday for everyone. It may be that it is simply unnoticed. But when noticed, when time stands still, when the universe is rent open beyond all mental appearances to stand naked and pure - unmediated by mental objects - that knowledge is that clarity above in 1.41 as "becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known".

Take that last quote here and follow that with my new favorite quote from the Upanishads I've shared twice in this thread, "And the Illumined soul goes up and down these worlds, assuming whatever form it likes, eating whatever food it desires, chanting, Oh wonderful!, Oh wonderful!, Oh wonderful! " It expresses liberation from the constricted world of object descriptions, to see them beyond words, to experience them as they are and as we are. "Now we see through a glass dimly, but then Face to Face."

You're not going to see me in this thread arguing this scientists thoughts or that ones, and equating it with mystical experience. The reason is because it is arguing the world of words, definitions, against that which encompasses and transcends all definitions. You do not realize "crystal mind" through words. You realize that stepping beyond words.

Look at my second signature line below. I came up with that awhile ago in talking with a theologian. It's directly applicable here in the exact same way. I'll just say it another way now, "Science is the last-ditch attempt of our minds to understand God before we fail, and do." When one approaches science to understand ultimate Truth of reality, that is trying to understand God. All of these attempts are the last-ditch attempt of our minds to avoid abandoning all these projects and simply seeing.

 

[godnotgod]

It does. Because it seems you are using scientific terminology, as indicated by e.g.,

but have divorced not only the terms from their historical context in Gestalt psychology (see e.g., here), but even more so in actual scientific use today. Figure/Ground distinctions feature prominently in e.g., cognitive linguistics (see e.g. here, here, and here), cognitive psychology (see e.g., here), cognitive neuropsychology (see e.g., here), and computer science/A.I. (see e.g., here).

However, you are using these terms, and even claiming them to be "accepted nomenclature" and to be using them scientifically, yet your conclusions tell another story:




Not ok. Because when it comes to figure/ground, I don't need to "look it up", I already have. It's an essential part of several disciplines in the cognitive sciences, and I've been working with them for years. At no point have I come across scientific literature in which these technical terms have been used as you are using them. "Field" does have to do with lines. Actually, it goes back to extremely early work in optics like the Hermann Grid Illusion and how Mach bands were incorpoated into early work on receptive fields and trying to model the visual system with simple image gradiants or radiating lines. It was the early days of cognitive science when computer scientists, psychologists, and others who'd never worked together before collaborated.

To see more current work, see e.g., "Figure/Ground Assignment in Natural Images".

Computer vision work is filled with classification algorithms and statistical learning models for figure/ground assignment, but not so much with existential relationships between the two. You can have a figure without the ground. It's easy. You just have the figure. The whole point was trying to determine how classification in conceptual and visual processing works, or could work (in e.g., computational intelligence/A.I. research).

Sorry, but all that is getting away from the question.

But since this simple illustration is becoming such a problem, I will suspend my use of the phrase 'figure and ground' for the moment. Quite simply, the image in question is composed of a black, formless background, or field, against which a human figure is clearly seen.

In this example, is it possible for one to determine what the figure is without its corresponding background?

You can have a figure without the ground. It's easy. You just have the figure

That is just an arbitrary statement. How do you determine what the figure is?

footnote: As I now recall, the image I used was part of a Photoshop tutorial in which it was referred to as an example of 'figure and ground'. When I said that 'figure and ground' were 'accepted nomenclature', I was not necessarily using them as scientific terms. I am aware of their use in Gestalt psychology, and am not using them in that sense, but in a more popular sense. My reference to my 'putting on my scientific hat' did not have to do with 'figure/ground', but with the question: "What observations can be made about the image?"

For my purposes here, it is unimportant that 'figure and ground' is scientific terminology. So is the word 'theory' used differently in science than in the popular sense.

footnote 2: I never asked you to 'look it up', did I? That was directed to Mr. Sprinkles because he acted as if he didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about. dust1n was able to cut to the chase and provided a succinct answer without bother.

..and last, but not least: footnote 3: I had asked Mr. Sprinkles to view the image as if we were living in a pre-scientific era, and just using the image alone, and to tell me how he can determine the figure to be that of a human.

 

[godnotgod]

[youtube]-d4ugppcRUE[/youtube]
The Primacy of Consciousness - Peter Russell - Full Version - YouTube

"My point is that if consciousness is dependent upon nervous systems then you have to explain how subjective experience can arise out of insentient matter. The idea that consciousness itself (as opposed to the experiences that appear in consciousness) is generated by the brain is the outdated argument."
Peter Russell

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

In this example, is it possible for one to determine what the figure is without its corresponding background?

Yes. Take the background away. And if by "background" you mean "any visual input outside the figure's borders", then the problem isn't determing what the figure is. It's that you don't have a figure. It's possible to take your image and have and sketch the figure on a page, stone, or some other material. Here, whatever color, imprint, or other method capable of being perceived as a distinctive allows one to determine what the figure is. However, if you say that the stone, page, paper, wall, or whatever is used to make the figure is still background, then it is impossible to have a figure without a background, not impossible to determine the figure without the background.

Visual input is about distinctions and classification. Figure/ground (or foreground) is about the simplest. Much harder is the conceptual aspect of such such determinations. I don't determine that their is a figure because of any background, but because I have a dynamic concept of "figure" which I can relate to multiple and radically different visual inputs, such as a photograph or a stick-figure drawn by a child.

The kind of determinations you are talking about can be impossible with both figure and background. If I see a pile of pages on a floor (a background) written in English with numbers at the top corner and all in the same font of the same size, I will determine that these pages are meant to be some kind of collection (perhaps a chapter or the beginning of a novel or a research draft) which was dropped and was not stapled together. Someone who is illiterate, has never seen a printer, has never seen printed fonts or pagination, might determine that there are multiple "figures".

In other words, the concepts I have allow me to group this visual input collectively, just as I might look at a book and rather than see lots of sheets of paper, some binding material, various colors, etc., I see a "book". When I look at a figure, I don't see more or less linear extensions from more circular core with another circle atop it, but a "figure". I group visual stimuli based on conceptual categories I have, not just visual information.

That is just an arbitrary statement. How do you determine what the figure is?

Conceptually. In your picture, the only reason I can see a "figure" rather than a lot of darkeness and some oddly shaped white blob is because I have a concept of what a person or figure looks like that is broad enough for me to extend to novel visual input and to vastly distinct visual input. I can look at a statue, a photograph, a child's sketch, a cartoon character, your picture, and despite vast differences what enables me to determine what the figure is happens to be conceptual. If I've never seen an animal, it won't matter if you show me a rabbit, mouse, deer, snake, ant, etc., but having seen animals, you can show me dragons, unicorns, and other mythical animals and I can determine that they are animals because I have a concept of what that is.

footnote: As I now recall, the image I used was part of a Photoshop tutorial in which it was referred to as an example of 'figure and ground'. When I said that 'figure and ground' were 'accepted nomenclature', I was not necessarily using them as scientific terms. I am aware of their use in Gestalt psychology, and am not using them in that sense, but in a more popular sense. My reference to my 'putting on my scientific hat' did not have to do with 'figure/ground', but with the question: "What observations can be made about the image?"

For my purposes here, it is unimportant that 'figure and ground' is scientific terminology. So is the word 'theory' used differently in science than in the popular sense.

..and last, but not least: footnote 3: I had asked Mr. Sprinkles to view the image as if we were living in a pre-scientific era, and just using the image alone, and to tell me how he can determine the figure to be that of a human.

Plato would tell you it is because there is a "figure" which is the perfect figure from which all figures derive, and that it is only the similarity between the perfect figure and the one we see that allows us to determine its a figure.

 

[Willamena]

Which is exactly how I interpreted it. How odd.

The way I read your demand, though, you interpret Penumbra's name as a form other than "speculative to the Yogi." You interpret it as "real to the higher eye," a truth not rooted in understanding, which of course implies a "higher eye" other than the Yogi, at least one that is not "speculative to the Yogi" to the Yogi.

 

[atanu]

oh willa when will i will understand your will?

That's wrong english i suppose, the repeated red will?

 

[godnotgod]

However, if you say that the stone, page, paper, wall, or whatever is used to make the figure is still background, then it is impossible to have a figure without a background, not impossible to determine the figure without the background.

But if there is no figure without the background, you have nothing to compare your concept to. I would say background is essential in either case.

 

[YmirGF]

No. Quoting all of that again which you refer to:

1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.
1.42. The argumentative condition is the confused mixing of the word, its right meaning, and knowledge. 1.43. When the memory is purified and the mind shines forth as the object alone, it is called non-argumentative.​

When you speak of the color of her floor mat, or her real name, these are "words", what the conceptual mind labels something as, and then mistakenly sees as the truth of that thing. That is the argumentative condition described above. That is exactly what the mystical experience moves beyond. That is the transparent crystal mind which sees beyond the facades of word descriptions and mental models of reality. That seeing beyond the argumentative condition is what omniscience means. It doesn't mean knowing all the words we call things. Red, or Brenda, are words we identify an object as, not what that object or form is itself, its essential nature. Omniscience doesn't mean the ultimate data-collection warehouse of descriptions!

Ah, the irony of such certainty. Fascinating, to be sure. From my perspective, in making the giant leap of apprehending the true nature of a given form, making the short leap to physical descriptions of said form should be, in theory, child's play.

Really, all that is happening is step outside being embedded in this created mental world of definitions. Mystical experience happens all the time to one degree or another throughout everyday for everyone. It may be that it is simply unnoticed. But when noticed, when time stands still, when the universe is rent open beyond all mental appearances to stand naked and pure - unmediated by mental objects - that knowledge is that clarity above in 1.41 as "becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known".

And I agree 100% with this.

Take that last quote here and follow that with my new favorite quote from the Upanishads I've shared twice in this thread, "And the Illumined soul goes up and down these worlds, assuming whatever form it likes, eating whatever food it desires, chanting, Oh wonderful!, Oh wonderful!, Oh wonderful! " It expresses liberation from the constricted world of object descriptions, to see them beyond words, to experience them as they are and as we are. "Now we see through a glass dimly, but then Face to Face."

I get that, Windy, but it almost sounds like you are putting limitations on apprehending the nature of reality. To me, it almost sounds, well - pointless.

You're not going to see me in this thread arguing this scientists thoughts or that ones, and equating it with mystical experience. The reason is because it is arguing the world of words, definitions, against that which encompasses and transcends all definitions.

I understand that much and I am heartened that you do not sink to that sort of argumentation. I think that is also what I like about what you have to say.

You do not realize "crystal mind" through words. You realize that stepping beyond words.

I'd agree with one small caveat. "You realize that stepping beyond words" into the realm of the inner senses that allow for a whole new approach to the apprehension of reality.

Look at my second signature line below. I came up with that awhile ago in talking with a theologian. It's directly applicable here in the exact same way. I'll just say it another way now, "Science is the last-ditch attempt of our minds to understand God before we fail, and do." When one approaches science to understand ultimate Truth of reality, that is trying to understand God. All of these attempts are the last-ditch attempt of our minds to avoid abandoning all these projects and simply seeing.

I do like the sentiment expressed here. In some ways, we really are on the same page. However... I tend not to beat too hard on the drum of so-called "truth" as "truth" is relative to understanding. Secondly, I no longer have much use for amusing notions rooted in the human animal's primitive concepts of "god".

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

But if there is no figure without the background, you have nothing to compare your concept to. I would say background is essential in either case.

Background is a concept. Show me any image with a "figure" and "background" and only through concepts can the visual input allow me to differentiate.

For example, imagine I have never seen a vase or any kind of implement other than a bowl for holding liquid. I come across this image:

Having seen faces before, I instantly recognize that the faces are the "figures". And I cannot determine that the vase is. It isn't an optical illusion anymore, because although there are two possible "backgrounds", for me one is a depiction of a concept for which I have no conceptual representation. I cannot recognize it as a vase, as I have no concept such that I might look at the inner white shape and determine it is a shape of any object, figure, etc.

 

[Straw Dog]

This thread has had a number of insightful contributions. Its been useful to stand back and observe the discussions unfold for the most part, especially after realizing that I was either denying some aspect of reality or becoming entangled in one particular point-of-view. I forgot to pay attention.

There is a difference between perspective and awareness. A perspective codifies experience with symbols and beliefs. Awareness involves suspending all judgment to accept things as they are while concentrating to illuminate and appreciate individual forms as they arise. Whether one claims to hold a scientific or mystical perspective is seperate from how expansive their awareness is. Wisdom arises naturally more from mindfulness and concentration than it does from any properly codified experience.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

The point cannot be arrived at until you see the essential relationship between figure and ground.

No, you can state your point right now, you just don't want to state it until you are sure I will agree with it. Sorry, that's not how a debate works. It was not unreasonable for you to ask my opinion before revealing your point. But it is unreasonable for you to insist that we agree before revealing your point. Until you do so, please understand that this debate over the image necessarily appears pointless to me, and I won't waste more time on it.

 

[godnotgod]

Background is a concept. Show me any image with a "figure" and "background" and only through concepts can the visual input allow me to differentiate.

For example, imagine I have never seen a vase or any kind of implement other than a bowl for holding liquid. I come across this image:

Having seen faces before, I instantly recognize that the faces are the "figures". And I cannot determine that the vase is. It isn't an optical illusion anymore, because although there are two possible "backgrounds", for me one is a depiction of a concept for which I have no conceptual representation. I cannot recognize it as a vase, as I have no concept such that I might look at the inner white shape and determine it is a shape of any object, figure, etc.

Does it matter whether the background is concept or not, even when figure and background alternate, as in this example? Background is essential to discerning figure in either case.

In order to have formed a concept of any figure and retain it in memory for future reference, it initially would have been seen against a background.

As you said earlier: "...if you say that the stone, page, paper, wall, or whatever is used to make the figure is still background, then it is impossible to have a figure without a background.",

footnote: if no previous concept of 'vase' were present, can we say that, for that viewer, the white area is formless?

 

[godnotgod]

No, you can state your point right now, you just don't want to state it until you are sure I will agree with it. Sorry, that's not how a debate works. It was not unreasonable for you to ask my opinion before revealing your point. But it is unreasonable for you to insist that we agree before revealing your point. Until you do so, please understand that this debate over the image necessarily appears pointless to me, and I won't waste more time on it.

Sorry, but the point is dependent upon you're seeing that figure is dependent upon background. If you can't see that, there is no point in going further.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

What about boundary conditions? No shape or volume can be defined without delineating it in some way from the environment.

I'm done with godnotgod for the moment but I'll humor you: I think you are conflating the act of defining a shape or volume, with the act of viewing/drawing it from an outsider's perspective. The existence of an outside environment need not be assumed to do the former.

 

[dust1n]

Exactly. I was first trying to establish what is true of only one side of the observation for simplicity's sake, but you nailed it..

Cool. I'm not sure where it was going, but glad I could be nailing things.

 

[godnotgod]

I'm done with godnotgod for the moment but I'll humor you: I think you are conflating the act of defining a shape or volume, with the act of viewing/drawing it from an outsider's perspective. The existence of an outside environment need not be assumed to do the former.

Because background is passive, you would not think it necessary in either case, but it is there. You just don't take it into conscious consideration, as you are focused on the figure. But background must be there, even conceptually, for you to visualize figure. Can you mentally visualize/conceptualize any form without it being understood against background?

We can look at the question another way: Is space essential to solid? Is silence essential to sound?

 

[YmirGF]