If Glass Is Invisible, How Do I Know It's There?

[Turtle]

In reply...

 

THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed - except eclogite for a reply that contained a completely unnecessary and inappropriate tone of aggression. A good discussion contains disagreements and that's good; however, when it is written as an attack I don't find that very helpful or civilised.

 

BELOVELIFE :smile: I was very happy to read and to ponder your reply, which I found very interesting. I did not mind at all that it was written prose style as this does cause the reader to give more consideration to the meaning and not to simply rush through someone's personal philosophical thought stream. I think that eclogite's snap at you was unnecessary. It only fills up a board and gets annoying when it's possible for people to post big images - and also when they keep pasting huge amounts of text from previous posts.

 

i can't help but fill up a little board in defense of eclogite as i find [and have found & found & found] belovelife's posts here and across our board completely devoid of coherent -let alone scientifc- thought. so ironic that eclogite is giving me the business in another thread for my "completely unnecessary and inappropriate tone of aggression". :doh: that said...

 

Getting back to the 'glass'...

 

I think the only reason I know there may be 'glass' there is because of the frame and this leads me to wonder/imagine that the frame is holding something. Perhaps this is why humans have always pondered that there feels to be some missing piece in the context of their lives or existence - it feels as though something should be there, or that it must be there, though we can't perceive it; and this is why most humans have always pondered that there is a mystery to life (life in some sense). What do you think?

 

you might find this following Abstract and similar cognitive studies interesting in light of your comment on "boundaries".

 

Spatiotemporal boundary formation: Boundary, form, and motion perception from transformations of surface elements

Continuous surface boundaries, object shape, and global motion can be perceived from information that is fragmentary in both space and time. The authors report investigations indicating that accretion and deletion of texture is only 1 member of a broader class of element transformations that produce boundaries, shape, and motion, through spatiotemporal boundary formation (SBF). The authors report 4 experiments exploring SBF. The first 3 examine the class of transformations producing SBF, indicating that local element changes in color, orientation, or location are all effective. A 4th experiment examines temporal constraints on SBF. Integration of local element changes to produce boundaries, form, and global motion appears to be confined to a 165-ms window. ...

Edited September 28, 2012 by Turtle

[belovelife]

 

Getting back to the 'glass'...

 

I think the only reason I know there may be 'glass' there is because of the frame and this leads me to wonder/imagine that the frame is holding something. Perhaps this is why humans have always pondered that there feels to be some missing piece in the context of their lives or existence - it feels as though something should be there, or that it must be there, though we can't perceive it; and this is why most humans have always pondered that there is a mystery to life (life in some sense). What do you think?

 

 

interesting, lets travel back in time phylisophically

 

 

now, we speak in grunts and yells, all of us, but we find when we hold a stick, :weather_hot:

it gives us power, and at the same time, when we throw a rock, it gives us power :weather_storm:

 

we now have less fear of traveling past our safe boundries

 

now, someone came up with the "idea" :hammer:

 

of putting the two together

 

at the time, we could pick up rocks, but the concept of breaking rocks apart wasn't there yet

rocks seemed this ultimate form of the world, a boundry in the imagination of man

it represented the concept of indestructable,

 

then one day, someone either threw one rock at another rock, or, while trying to capture food, hit the rock with the stick and the rock attached

either way, the rocks indestuctable status was removed for for the observer

 

so this person shattered the glass room surrounding their perception, and a step out of the box was taken

[Turtle]

 

you might find this following Abstract and similar cognitive studies interesting in light of your comment on "boundaries".

 

Spatiotemporal boundary formation: Boundary, form, and motion perception from transformations of surface elements

 

my bad ubjoy; it was blamski who used the term boundaries. nevertheless, your frame is a specific example of the general category of boundaries and studies such as i cited show we and per se brains have evolved elements of predisposition to focusing the attention on the boundries, where the term boundary has the widest possible application. fastlane/slow lane; frame/window; fragrant/putrid; dull/sharp ad infinitum. try the search phrase "Spatiotemporal boundary" for more i suspect.

[jab2]

Glass is acoustically hard, so, even if the outside world was very quiet, or you don't know to expect outside sounds (say, you've lived as long as you can remember in your enclosure), you'd be able to sense, at least vaguely, that you were inside some sort of enclosure from echos, assuming you can hear and make sounds.

Craig, very much so. Many years ago I was observing a blind person navigating the passage (think you Americans call it hallway) in a house. He was told his room is the second door left and the bathroom the first door right, and given a description of the rooms, and where the furniture, toilet, bath, etc are. I asked him how he manages that and he said, "I see by sound". He had me closed my eyes and showed me what he meant. For the untrained ear it is difficult, but once you know the principle, it is not that hard to navigate in the dark inside a structure with hard (reflecting) surfaces. He started by having me make click sounds as I move down the passage, but once you get the hang it is even possible to hear the "hole" of a doorway just by ambient noise. Later you start getting a sense of the topology of the rooms too.

[Eclogite]

THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed - except eclogite for a reply that contained a completely unnecessary and inappropriate tone of aggression. A good discussion contains disagreements and that's good; however, when it is written as an attack I don't find that very helpful or civilised.

I am sorry you found my reply unhelpful. As indicated I thought your approach to introducing the idea was rather convoluted and this ran the risk of creating the impression you were trying to manipulate your audience. Apparently I may not have been alone in concernsa bout your approach as my post received four "Likes" from other members.

 

I value the fact you are letting me know that my post seemed aggressive. I can't see the aggression myself, but what I do see is quite definite criticism of how you had introduced the topic. I did not criticise the topic or you, only your format. I hoped you would see that criticism as positive, just as I welcome yours. Moreover, I offered you an alternative way of introducing your subject - I don't understand how a genuine effort to suggest ways you can communicate more effectively with some of your audience constitutes aggression. I could quite have understood a counter argument where you explained what you saw as the benefits of an indirect approach. I would have welcomed that.

 

As to the topic itself, the sense of something "missing" is not, I think, a universal for all people, at all times. Would you agree with this? If so, might this reflect more on the internal character of the individual than on something "missing" from humanity at large. As such it would be determined by a mix of genetics, environment, experience and context.

 

This missing thing you speak of sounds like something spiritual, where I leave the definition of spiritual deliberately vague at this point. Is this where you are heading? If not, could you clarify what you think might be missing?