Well, it seems to me that we're saying that we need the concept of "real enough..." - that is, if we're making an artificial environment that should present certain stimulus qualities to perception, we need to know a) what those qualities might be (hence the discussion on direction, distance etc) for a defined application, and how 'veridicality' (for those stimulus qualities) might be managed. This is a different approach from the one where we might assume that, if we were to exactly replicate a set of signals to the appropriate organs of sensation, then we have inevitably replicated the perceptual experience as though for the original 'real' environment. This falls down in that, even if it were so that we actually could produce such signals, we still have the 'prior knowledge' that constitutes a very significant part of any momentary perception (Dreyfuss: "we're always already in a situation").
However, if all we're really after is 'willing suspension of disbelief' then the emphasis shifts away from sensory veridicality toward something else to do with 'narrative belief'. People have known this in theatre and film for ages. Dr Peter Lennox School of Technology University of Derby, UK tel: 01332 593155 e: [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Dobson Sent: 31 May 2012 13:31 To: Surround Sound discussion group Subject: Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question) On 31/05/2012 12:45, Peter Lennox wrote: > > sensation, inevitably a poor > copy of reality. Whilst philosophers are entirely comfortable with > such thought experiments, there is no obvious pragmatic way to > investigate such speculations. By definition, if an artificial > environment is detectable as such, then it is imperfectly executed > and the hypothetical position has not been matched. On the other > hand, if the artificial environment were perfectly rendered, there > would be no way to prove its artificiality." [ my thesis, some years > ago] > Sometimes language can make us think we are saying something more than we really are. Purely as a logical statement in a language all this is saying is: if two environments are indistinguishable, they are indistinguishable. We are simply replacing a condition with the same expression as an assertion, and then saying that proves the condition. "If 2==2, there is no way of distinguishing one integer from the other." Except perhaps if the person is told (or otherwise knows a priori, or if necessary is reminded) "this is the artificial environment". The only reason it seems to me that the "hypothesis" has any meaning is that (one presumes) the environment being represented is one that is captivating but variously impossible, inaccessible or unaffordable; in which case neither the condition nor the assertion is testable. Chances are, 99.9% of people using a flight simulator will ~never~ experience the real thing, so they really have no basis on which to evaluate its authenticity, beyond the ~sense~ that it is in some way convincing, and is in some to-be-defined cognitive sense transparent. So perhaps that hypothesis is really trying to propose that an artificial environment in which one ~forgets~ one is in an artificial environment, is equal to the real environment it imitates. The variable is then not the environment but the forgetting. It would appear that some are easily persuaded. But turning the somewhat capricious and probably non-algorithmic human capacity to forget where one is seems at best an unreliable basis for any sort of objective testable hypothesis. Richard Dobson _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound _____________________________________________________________________ The University of Derby has a published policy regarding email and reserves the right to monitor email traffic. If you believe this email was sent to you in error, please notify the sender and delete this email. Please direct any concerns to [email protected]. _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
