The fact that human beings and animals can successfully survive on a
daily basis makes it a pretty good bet that our senses and the
representations of the world the brain constructs from them has some
meaningful relation to what's actually going on in nature. The human
ability to extent this concepts using imagination, symbolic thinking,
and extrapolation to future effects lets us make predictions about the
future and extends our ability to manipulate our environment to our own
ends. This same ability also allows us to deceive ourselves and others.
All photographs are in some way "removed" from the natural object, at
least by a limited spatial perspective and a frozen slice of time. This
issue is always the more complex one of intent to deceive. When NASA
and ESA enhance these photos from Titan and Saturn, their goal is to
extract more information not to create false images. The very same
photographic techniques can be used to make more clear what was going on
in the real world or to confuse and mislead. The only real test is to
compare the perceptions of a group of actual observers and a group who
have simply seen the photos. The extent to which they perceive the
event in a similar way is some indication of how "good" the photo was as
a news device. Notice I did say a group; even observers on the seen
rarely agree completely on the "facts". To say that you can never gauge
anything about the world since we have not absolute picture of reality
is just a cop out IMHO. It just means there are no simple tests.
