Ierrellus

Imagine the possible mental interpretations of the following design:

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

1. Is this a line interrupted by spaces?
2. Is this a space interrupted by lines?

My question is to what extent memory or personality impose on anyone's answers to these questions. Are there other possible questions regarding the perceived nature of this design?

Ierrellus

WJ

Good post! I'll be curious to see how the intellectual rationalist/atheist answers your questions. (Which came first, lines or spaces.)


Take care,
Walrus

James Still

Just to be a total jerk they are a series of fragments rather than lines (since in geometry lines are infinite). But to the point it seems to me that the design is open to interpretation. There is no "correct" interpretation, only agreement in language. So if I say to you, "it is a series of fragments" and you understand my meaning then the correctness is established by our agreement.

Bill

I might add to what Jim said by noting that there are many well-known optical illusions that are based upon the principle of causing you to repeatedly reverse your base perspective, alternating between one equally-correct perspective and another. Several artists (most notably M. C. Escher) have used this idea to good effect.

Philosophically, if the entire universe contained only those 13 dashes, I'd be tempted to assert that there was only one correct answer: nothingness interrupted by a series of 13 dashes. But I'm not at all certain that observation would be valid because you don't give sufficient conditions in your propositional predicate for me to pick one view over the other.

And this serves to illustrate the key element to a perspective reversal: we lack the key information necessary to make a choice between one perspective and another. If that information is provided, the perspective reversal becomes far more difficult (if not impossible) to achieve.

== Bill

James Still

Yeah what he said!

phaedrus

Now why do you give only two options instead of asking an open-end question, something like - What is this?? The fact that you have given only two choices seems to indicate that you have a pre-concieved notion that there could be only two ways of looking at that particular image or whatever it is. But in the end you again ask " are there other possible questions?". Why have other possible questions? Just ask what people think that particular thing is.... There are few lines and space one after each other or lines and spaces are two different energy states of the same entity...etc etc

Anyhows to cut to the chase, yes the representation of that particular image to an individual depends on his/her cultural grounding (including lingo, eudcation, beliefs...etc etc) But given that most of us share some "common understanding" so that we can communicate easily, we could say there are "lines" and "spaces".

JP

Ierrellus

I love Escher!!!!!

Jim, please show me geometric proof of linear infinity.

The responses so far indicate that the questions were asked correctly. If both views of the design as indicated in the top two questions are true, our perspective of the design is dualistic. If there are further views, as indicated by the third question, our perspective includes relativism of personalized interpretations.


Ierrellus

phaedrus

Err, what else could there be? Dualistic????? Perspectivism and shared understanding are not mutually exclusive entities. D'oh

James Still

It is definitional rather than a result of deduction.

Ierrellus

phaedrus:

You're good! Consider the lowly photon, which can be viewed as a particle or a wave depending on who's looking and why. Each view of the photon yields verifiable and practical results in experiments. But it can't be both, or can it?

There is no unified definition of a photon, hence its pragmatic definitions are dual. Of course there is agreement on both sides of the issue, there is relativistic perspective on both sides of the issue , no argument there. But what is a photon?


Jim:

I cannot understand how you can accept a definition that includes infinity, which no one has ever measured or seen, and find it difficult to opine about a linear structure of a few pixels, which you can not only see, but can comprehend?

Ierrellus.

[ April 30, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>