On Oct 13, 2010, at 6:01 PM, William Conger wrote: > I'm quite sure the jury has come in with the verdict that seeing is a > constructive act, not the Cartesian reception image.
It's a matter of degree! Seeing is in many senses a "constructive act", but the construction seems to me more restricted in its possible range than, say, "interpreting" words. A given shade of red may have varying associations but the dominant factor in the viewer's consciousness is that color he is "seeing". When listening to words, the mind often seems to leap quickly beyond the words to the notional associations as distinguished from the initial job of recognizing what word it has just heard.
