The human visual system has been historically and contemporarily characterized as a hierarchical process, with the retina positioned as an initial passive relay subject to extensive top-down modulation. This paper proposes an alternate perspective – the retinal firewall principle – that fundamentally reconsiders the retina as the primary originator of visual processing via its unique encapsulated architecture. This paper will argue that the retina operates as an autonomous encoder, entirely isolated from external control by the lack of any direct feedback connections. Once signals have exited the retina, subsequent areas can only indirectly influence transmission, but not intrude on the foundational algorithms of feature extraction themselves. This firewall delineation challenges mainstream notions of retinal function, recasting our understanding of visual information flow and origins. The paper lays out the anatomical and temporal factors engendering retinal isolation, provides an ordinal taxonomy of control modalities, describes experimental paradigms to interrogate encapsulated encodings, and explores implications for philosophy of mind. Validation of the firewall principle may require updating entrenched perspectives on visual processing hierarchies and the primacy of retinal feature extraction.
The Retinal Firewall: Unencumbered Encoding in Early Vision
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