🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C165r8.Kt1@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU>, sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner) writes:
|> In article <C15vK7.B0p@unx.sas.com>, sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) 
|> writes:
|> 
|> [...]
|> |> If I show you the photo and say "do you see *that*", *then* if you say "No"
|> |> it is proper to say it isn't there for you.  If you say "Yes", it certainly
|> |> *is* there for you! I can *then* ask you, "What do you see this *as*?" or
|> |> "What do you think this *is*?" or "Don't you think this is significant?".
|> |> There is still a difference among all of "reporting as significant",
|> |> "not reporting as significant", "not reporting at all", and "not seeing".
|> |> The last is something for which one might seek medical treatment.  If
|> |> I see the duck instead of the rabbit, or the rabbit instead of the duck,
|> |> my "perception" might be said to be skewed or deficient in some manner,
|> |> but if I don't see *anything* (no lines, no shades of light and dark)
|> |> I have another kind of problem altogether.
|> 
|> The question is, what is his state before the line on the photo is pointed out 
|> to him?  Sure, he is capable of seeing the line, but if he wasn't looking for 
|> it and therefore didn't notice it, did he see it?  

But a hypothesis concerning how perception is theory-laden seems rather
empty here.  There are *many* things that we don't see in this sense
every day -- or that we see and forget we have seen.  In addition, we
all have had the experience of explicitly looking for something, the
thing is where we are looking, and we *still* don't see it.  (This
happens all the time with my tools.  I have the hypothesis that they
actually *aren't* there until someone else looks for them, but my
wife dismisses this as absurd.)  I don't think these phenomena are
addressed by appeal to theories that we may or may not hold.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm