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[//Ian freakin' Power//] - So I'm sorry I haven't posted here more often, but I promise I'll make up for it by posting THREE things at once! The problem is I'm not sure if any of them REALLY relate to what we're talking about... judge for yourselves. VIZ.:

I. I had a thought in our last seminar about an idea I had a few years back. I realized that human beings always do whatever they think it is best for them to do all the time. Now I mean, one might know that eating an eclair is not as good for one in the long run as eating a salad or something, but a person that does that believes that their current pleasure from the eclair will outweigh, in the long run, whatever physical benefit the salad might have. A person may dread going to visit her demented mother in the nursing home every week, and view it as a waste of time, and not helping anyone, but she still goes because she feels some sort of guilt-complex looming that would hurt her emotionally in the future if she were to not go. And so on. SO: -Is this true? I feel like I might be coming from a pretty narrow-minded perspective, like, e.g., people with mental disorders may not operate like this. -Does this have anything to do with beliefs/desires like we were talking about last week? Does this affect the folk psychology stance?

II. Sunday I read this AARRGGHH it just lost all my changes WTFFFFFFFFF sigh better just plug through it again [|article] in the NYT magazine. The last two paragraphs particularly intrigued me. Does the rock want? Is it conscious, but its "brain" doesn't really need to be advanced, like, at all, to do what it needs to do?

III. Last night I was reading Calvin and Hobbes, and came across [|this comic]. Now, I have been reading this book for nigh unto 12 years and have never really looked at that middle (third) panel for what it is: four faces at once. My brain always just processed it as movement without taking into account the two-dimensionality of it, and also the lack of time. Is this "chunking"? It also brought my mind to [|this example] and [|this example] (last and second-last panels, respectively), while reading which I always **had** noticed the deficiency of the medium. What are the differences? It doesn't seem to number, there are as many of susie's arm as of calvin's face, and too many faces would not have the same effect either. Or is that because more IS better for implying movement, but not beyond a magical number you may have heard of? Any thoughts?

[//Aaron//] In response to your query about Calvin and Hobbes, I would first point you to my response to Batya's post on conceptualizations of time in terms of motion. I would add, however, that one of the things that makes it possible for us to experience 4-5 representations of Calvin's face eating the cereal box as motion is our ability (perhaps it's even a necessity) to conceptualize the movements of figures in the visual field in terms of movements we ourselves make. Studies have shown that part of the way we experience the stimuli (visual or otherwise) is by subconsciously simulating the actions necessary for us to produce such stimuli ourselves. Thus, to view Calvin's head in a particular state (in this case a position) is to experience ourselves in that same state. And as we experience each separate head position, so we feel a movement between those positions (those states). This is important, because it means that on some level we experience the cartoon //as// movement, rather than simply //as a representation of// movement.

In summary, I think there are at least three different ways we transform the multi-headed stationary Calvin into a single "unified" Calvin that moves across the page: 1) by perceptual processes of the particular image in the visual domain that produce in us an experience of visual continuity (like those in the Gestalt ideas you mentioned), 2) by perceptual processes in the physical domain where we experience the image as movement within our own body (perhaps linked to the saccades of the eye while looking at the image, perhaps not), and 3) by experiencing 1 and 2 in terms of other experiences we've had in those domains. Perhaps the reason that the latter two examples weren't as experientially "convincing" for you is that, while they activated the necessary cues in the second two categories, they didn't in the first. However, the fact that you can recognize the movement in these examples, in spite of them not being sufficient for you to experience them in the same way as the first example, is evidence (I think) in support of the idea that these three processes are not linear. That is, we don't proceed to the physical and associative processes only after we've perceived the "pure" visual stimulus. Rather, these processes occur in tandem with, and in some respects in support of, one another.

You can easily imagine extensions of this to the aural domain. Think, for example, of sitting at home listening to a recording of your favorite string quartet. A melody in the first violin moves to the second violin, is passed to the viola, and finally comes to rest in the cello. There are many interesting things to talk about here, but the thing I'd like to focus on is the perceived left-to-right movement of the actual sound (rather than, say, the "downward" movement of the melodic register). What we have in the "acoustic fact" are merely two vibrating surfaces (the speakers), spaced a good distance apart. To be sure, the speakers never actually move. One simply gets louder while the other gets quieter (this is a simplification, but the stationary aspect remains the same). But what we experience is the source of the sound (in this case, the melody) moving continuously from one location to another. It's true, we probably experience this in terms of the good aural continuation of the sound. But in addition, we also (to one degree or another) experience the state changes in the sound as state changes (and by the extensions discussed above, motion) in our own body. And then, we also experience all of this in relation to all the other times that we have seen and heard (or in some cases played in) a string quartet, and indeed all the other times that we have experienced the movement of sound-making objects, or even movement in general! This doesn't mean that we consciously remember and think about such associations, but that these past experiences are hard-wired into the way we conceptualize the new experience. We experience the recording (fundamentally) //through// our past experience of music, sounds, and sound-making objects, which is what motivates us to hear the "movement" of the sound.