Bob,
I think you've been blinded by science here :). You don't actually see -
and science hasn't, in all its history, seen - photons hitting receptors.
What you're talking about there is very sophisticated, and not at all
immediately-obvious/evident inferences made from scientific experiments,
about theoretical entities, i.e. photons.
There is no problem though seeing the entities and movements in a movie -
Ben, say, raising his hand, or shaking Steve's hand, or laughing or making
some other facial expression. Sure, we can argue and/or be confused about
the significance and classification of what exactly is going on. Is he
really laughing, and is it spontaneous, or slightly sarcastic etc? But there
can be little to no confusion about the exact movements Ben is making - how
his hand is grasping Steve's, say, how his lips have moved. We can agree
pretty scientifically there.
By contrast, if you and I read a verbal description of Ben and Steve's
exchange, we could form radically different pictures of what was going on,
including the simplest movements - and both our pictures could be far off
the truth visible in a movie.
Note the consequences of this philosophical position - if we are really
interested in understanding social exchanges like Ben and Steve's, (or
indeed the science and scientific experiments re photons), we should, if
possible, first look at movies, rather than verbal reports. (And clearly, in
law, a video of a conversation will be vastly preferable to a verbal
report/summary from a witness).
But it's only possible to put this philosophy into practice now- now that
the world is being flooded for the first time with personally editable
movies, a la Youtube, (where you can also find scientific videos)...
Bob:
2008/12/11 Mike Tintner <tint...@blueyonder.co.uk>:
But an image/movie can only be compared with a verbal statement in terms
of
what it *actually shows* - the *surface, visible action.* His actual,
observable dialogue and gestures and expressions - that and only that is
what a movie records with high fidelity..
But does the movie really record those things? What the movie
actually records is a particular pattern of photons hitting a receptor
over a period of time. Things such as gestures and expressions are
concepts which you're superimposing into the pattern of photons that
you're observing. To a large extent you're able to perform this
superposition because you yourself have similar and familiar dynmaics.
If you prefer you can consider the process of interpreting the movie
as a sort of error correction, similar to the way that error
correcting codes are able to fill in and restore missing or corrupted
information.
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agi
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