Digital BW, The Print

Austin Franklin wrote:

 >Every sensor you have only senses "some" quality.  Because you only 
have the
 >data from that one sensor doesn't make that data abstract, it's still 
real.
 >Does someone who can't hear, not live in reality?  I believe your
 >application here is entirely wrong.  Because one only senses one aspect
 >(like IR, or UV or grayscale), such as a  particular spectrum, doesn't 
make
 >it "abstract".
 >
 >
It does not make the data or the phenomenon itself abstract..  BUT,
  representation of the data, be they graphs, paintings, tables, or
photos is abstract UNLESS that representation recreates the phenomenon.

 >By your interpretation, ever sense we have, vision, hearing, taste etc. is
 >an "abstraction", and in fact, there is no reality.
 >
OH boy.  There's fun coming now.. You are on a train headed right into
the philosophy of perception...  "Welcome to my lair said the spider to
the fly."

 > Fact is, we can only
 >sense what our sensors allow us to sense, that's it.  Every sensor has
 >limitations, and "expresses a quality apart from an object", period.  That
 >does not mean what it senses is an abstraction.
 >

No, what you sense is a manifestation of an object or phenomenon BUT
that manifestation is NOT the object..   Philosophers have understood
this since Plato... There is a difference between what  he called the
"essence" of an object and its "manifestations."  In fact, color has
both "manifestation" and "essence" in Platonic philosophy, BUT, we know
only the "manifestation" which can change under differing conditions.,
  Only the object itself  "knows" or "experiences" its own reality.

If you care to look at more recent philosophy, I suggest Kant or Hegel 
(or any of the great German metaphysicians) as they discuss the 
difference between the perceived and our perception (and/or memory) on 
the one hand, and reality itself on the other..  Kant
says we can never truly "know" something, and is 100% correct...  We
cannot know without going at the door that we won't fall into a
blackhole as we leave the house.  We can operate with the expectation
that will not happen, simply because the logical probability of it is
near nil.. Why?  In great part because we can only know our own version
of reality as mediated through our senses..  We cannot perceive the
future directly, we can only perceive what our senses, or extensions of
those senses,  allow us to perceive of the present OR of other mediated
records of the past.     So  in philosophy, we clear separate between
ontology, as "that which we know,"  and epistemology, in "how we know
what we know."

Reality really only exists in that space and time occupied by a
particular object.  Our perceptions of it are mediated and axiomatically
abstracted.  I would recommend checking out Kant's "Critique of Pure
Reason"..  You need to wrap your mind around the difference between
"noumena" [noumenal realm]  and "phenomena" [predominantly rational
realm].. (We'll skip the "emotional" realm for now)

 >  You're arguing what is
 >reality.  Is what you sense reality, at least from your prospective? 
If so,
 >then what ANY sensor senses IS reality, as far as that sensor's 
prospective.
 >It's when you manipulate that sensors data that you make it abstract.
 >
Not true, perception is mediated...

This is one of the major problems with REAL artificial intelligence..
  How does one create an intelligence that we will recognize as such?
  Part of the answer lies in making sure its perceptions of reality (its
mediated perceptions)  accord with our own closely, or can be made to
line up with our perceptions.  See the work of Turing and Fodor (who I
pummelled in errors in one of his theoretical models during his
colloquium presentation  some years back -- he made the mistake of
accepting something as axiomatic that was not, thereby loossening the
underpinnings of his theory and its accuracy -- but I digress) in this
vein...

 >
 >Data can be "corrected" to make it more usable to the processing 
system that
 >is processing it, namely in our case, our eye, and that doesn't make it
 >"abstract".  Just like you do tonal corrections to the data, because the
 >system that is sensing the scene REQUIRES tonal correction to convert from
 >it's sensing view to yours.
 >
Bingo!  You just illustrated the point in some sense..  The fact that
differing perceptions exist mean they only attempt to measure or
abstract reality, not actually reproduce it..  Temperature is a good
example.. Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin all are abstract
representations of the state of the thermal energy inherent to a
particular point in space..  None of them are inherently better or more
correct in the abstract, instead each has a "best use"..

Similarly let's consider an extreme instance...  You are sitting at a
baseball game on one side of you is a blind man, on the opposite a deaf
man..  The perceptions each of you have of the game - its mediated
reality will differ.  Therefore, reality as PERCEIVED IS different for
each of you. BUT,  reality itself remains the same...  Now consider our
photos, for a blind man/woman they do not accurately represent reality,
as sight and light are not phenomena he/she perceives..

There is also a line of philosophy and science that says our perception
of reality actually impacts upon it and changes it simply b/c we are
perceiving it..  Again, this goes back to Plato, but a more contemporary
example would be the Heisenberg uncertainty principle... I.e. that one
cannot know where an elementary particle is b/c any form of perception
we use imparts or subtracts  energy from the particle thereby moving it
from its position.  This is NOT Newtonian physics, the math says, you
cannot use knowledge of the energy imparted  or subtracted to actually
correct for that energy and predict where the particle WAS.

 > Of course, there comes a point where this
 >correction can cause distortion...at least from your prospective, the
 >original scene and your "representation" of the scene become divergent.
 >
 >
 >
They are always divergent...

Only the object of our perception can actually know its own reality..

 >
 >
 >>It gets better in B&W, which expresses a grayscale quality apart from
 >>most objects' full color reality.
 >>
 >>
 >
 >There is no "full color reality" by your argument.
 >
Correct

 >  And as I said, I
 >disagree with the whole premise you bring up, though I understand the
 >arguments on both sides intimately.  I've done a LOT of work in the 
area of
 >sensors and machine perception.  Reality is only what YOUR sensors 
allow you
 >to perceive.
 >
 >
 >
NO,NO, NO...  Reality exists, our mediated perception of it is what our
sensors allow us to know..  Reality can be ontology, what we know is
always governed by epistemology..  Of course that means that every
ontology  is predicated upon epistemological  limits...  In other words,
all our perceptions are NOT EVER absolute, but inherently subjective and
mediated..

 >
 >Photography CAN be abstract, but not all photography, by definition, IS
 >abstract IMO, in a practical sense use of the word.
 >
Photography works in two dimensions..  We live in four or more
  dimensions.. Reduction of multiple dimensions to fewer dimensions is
always axiomatically an abstracion...

Important to Dali and Picasso's art were attempts to portray four
dimensions in two or three...

Look at their use of the "hypercube" to do this..

 >  There is a level of
 >accurate representation.
 >
Accurate is a wholly subjective term.. Especially since one cannot know
reality, how do we know how much our perception TRULY differs from it..?
  We cannot...

Sorry, but on this level the nihilists and existentialist are correct..
  As we cannot KNOW reality, except that within our own bodies, and even
that is limited, all we can do is accept our perceptions and exist...

 > Technically, you can never accurately represent
 >anything physical, accurately...but there is a humanly acceptable level of
 >representation that is accepted as being accurate.
 >
What it is, is sufficiently good a description/representation of our
perceptions to allow us to predict  interactions and allow us to
relatively safely move about the universe..  That does not make it
accurate..

With nuclear weapons i can "miss" the target by miles and still
successfully destroy it.. But with a conventional bomb, a several mile
"circular error probable" (CEP)  is unacceptable.. Not because it is
more inaccurate in reality, BUT because for that purpose, in that place,
and that time,  it is not sufficiently accurate.  Once again, it becomes
subjective.

 >  There are also different
 >aspects of accurate...a photograph has many aspects to it...relative
 >dimensional accuracy, tonal accuracy...  It certainly is more accurate at
 >some aspects than others, that's for sure...and that's true with any 
sensing
 >system.
 >
 >I disagree with calling EVERY photograph abstract, and believe that 
when it
 >becomes "abstract" it then moves from photography to graphics art.
 >
 >
 >
Say that all you want, but you cannot make it so..

Like the cockroach/man in Kafka's "Metamorphosis"  reality is mediated
by your experience of it.  As does the protagonist of Kafka's "The
Trial" you can rail at the universe all you want, but you
cannot actually KNOW the Universe or its reality..

It's coldly sobering, but our consciousness axiomatically has a mediated
perception of reality.  We are all inherently inaccurate in our
understanding of reality, and we each exist ONLY within our own
consciousness we cannot really "know" another, we cannot actually
"experience" another consciousness,,,  In the end, we are each alone...
  Art: photography, sculpture, painting, music, writing are ways to
bridge the gulf between our respective consciousnesses..  They are
mediated representations of our own already mediate internal perceptions
of an external reality, and as such, axiomatically never an accurate
depiction of reality..

Keith