The other day I was reading this Newsweek, and in this essay on WEIRD (W. E. I. R. D., I forget what the acronym stands for) the lady was saying that
<----->
>-----<
is seen differently in the West and in the East. She says in the West, undergraduates see the higher line as LONGER. I enjoyed her way of putting how things go in the East. "In the East they see the lower line (correctly) as the same length."
It struck me as Griceista.
For Grice, a line looks the lenghth it has? Not necessarily.
This in connection with J's remarks about Socrates on Meno -- and the way he liked to take the mickey out of his rather obtuse students (Socrates's).
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Yes. I ve seen that before. And consider the proverbial duck-rabbit, or the old hag/young beauty, Escher visual tricks. So...seeing is not always believing and WYSIWYG may not always hold, whether in terms of just everydayness, or ...epistemology. But it does hold-- mostly.
ReplyDeletePhilosophical types (and mathematicians of a certain type) generally avoid getting into perception, and vision, because... the neurology of vision, rods and cones, etc gets rather dee-eep quickly. But there can hardly be any doubt of ..something like a causal theory of perception, tho...I am bit skeptical that metaphysicians can really resolve the problem--they may clarify, point out interesting connections, claim a "picture theory," etc.--yet perception's sort of the Achilles heel of metaphysics (and dare we say theology).
Yes. Thanks for input. I will consider the line paradox in a different blog post.
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