tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post243660523697633576..comments2024-03-28T13:23:50.623-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Amateur astronomy and the joy of seeingAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-30946862838930835562008-07-23T08:31:00.000-05:002008-07-23T08:31:00.000-05:00I think you're right, but I don't think that affec...I think you're right, but I don't think that affects my small point. You can justifiably trust in the details of the professional images, because your trust is grounded in reality. As you say, having actually looked into the matter helps.<BR/><BR/>Similarly, being able to manipulate electrons in the laboratory makes us more likely to think of them as actual parts of reality. Being unable to do that with strings makes us justifiably more doubtful in their case. Even if our theory of electrons was weaker than string theory, we would be more likely to think of it as an imperfect theory of electrons, rather than as evidence that electrons don't exist.<BR/><BR/>Admittedly we are more likely to suffer from illusions in real life, since the scientific method works to reduce the effects of such things. So the scientific knowledge of what you are looking at, that greyish spot, is very important. Not knowing what the greyish spot was would make a huge difference to your experience of seeing it. But what you get from seeing the spot directly is an additional sense of what it is that the information is about, something that cannot be captured by that information. (That is if the spot is not an illusion, of course.)<BR/><BR/>So I was wondering if the impact of that, when seeing something in the flesh, so to speak, was particularly important nowadays. In Plato's day seeing first hand would have given one more information, but nowadays it may be more a matter of locating the subject in the real world around one. (I just mention it in case it affects how we read Plato on seeing.) It is not that TV is full of illusions, but that we are unable, by how such media are, to discriminate by how we watch it. When looking at a spot one can rub one's eyes. When looking through a telescope, you can see if the spot moves with the telescope or not. And so on.<BR/><BR/>And we may be more likely nowadays to distrust a coherent, professional story that we cannot test, even when it is told to us by our side (unless we have chosen that side for good reasons). It is not that seeing a grey spot adds to the reliability of our information about it, but that it shows us something in reality that such information is about. It adds another dimension to the information, perhaps. (Maybe that is less important in astronomy than it is in other areas, e.g. economics and physics.)Martin Cookehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11425491938517935179noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-55003299645958102732008-07-22T09:34:00.000-05:002008-07-22T09:34:00.000-05:00I am not sure the illusion issue is the thing. I ...I am not sure the illusion issue is the thing. I am more confident that the radiant colorful images that Google search turns up are the Ring Nebula--especially given the fact that it turns up many of them, all of them of the same shape, and all of them ring-like--than of the fact that what I saw was the Ring Nebula. My evidence for the claim that what I saw was the Ring Nebula is that it was in the right part of the sky according to the AstroInfo program I was using on my Palm TX, and looked roughly right. So, just as in the case of pictures on the Internet, my knowledge relies on trust--trust in the folks who compiled the catalogs that went into AstroInfo, and the folks who compiled the catalogs that those folks drew on. (And then there is trust that AstroInfo is working correctly, but there the fact that it is an Open Source project, and I have actually looked at a significant part of its source code, given that I am one of the contributors, helps. But even there, there is trust, as I haven't looked at all the source code.)Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-35078255688988470992008-07-22T06:28:00.000-05:002008-07-22T06:28:00.000-05:00I wonder if the impact of seeing first hand (if th...I wonder if the impact of seeing first hand (if through glasses) is greater nowadays, than in Plato's day, because of our having photographs, TV and the internet, all of which allow visual illusions very easily. I think you do get more content from seeing the greyish spot, since you are there looking at the real object, and you know you are. You can directly locate the object in the world around you (so long as you are familiar with your telescope being just lenses or whatever). It is like going to see any celebrity, as a greyish spot behind a lot of backs of heads, when a much better view is had on the TV in one's living room. (I agree with your final remarks though.)Martin Cookehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11425491938517935179noreply@blogger.com