Hi Dick

i think the answer is yes...my interpretation at this stage is that we have
three (greatly simplified) areas or components

attention direction (sometimes substituted for consciousness)
pattern recognition (a whole lot of literature concerning visual cognition)
pattern selection (a whole lot of literature concerning visual choice)

each component has a mix of innate behaviours and adaptave behaviours and
this mix is extremely generative... so saying yes does not propose that
there is a differnce between looking and seeing as things in opposition...
but rather proposes a formulation of mutually adaptive layered systems that
simultaneously absorb information(look)and generate information(see) ... 

in doing so correspondence seeking (looking) and correspondence matching
(seeing) merge and re-emerge from each other... our attention is drawn to
/and we learn to direct our attention to objects as a temporal flow within
a temporal flow... therein lies the top level of correspondence

i believe the nut of your question lies in how we define information  and
action... i don't think that definitions apply well in vision because of a
lack of language correspondence...but they become valuable in a different
way... across systems that are mutually adaptive (correspondence
systems)action in one context becomes information in another, and
information in one context becomes action in another, and so on...
therefore definitions are context dependent and become descriptors of the
components of correspondence in each context and can then be used to
describe relations between contexts. So the patterns of changing
'definition' of action/information across a system describe the system well
not an a priori definition...we can then propose definition pattern X...to
represent our definition of looking/seeing


this sounds very convoluted and i am only beginning to learn how to
represent it in design terms but i think it is most facinating that what is
visually apparent (and the subject of much literature)if we study design
ideas over time may correspond to the micro level as a neural/cognitive
ordering process

i am obviously a bit of a zealot concerning this at the moment... a
colleague here sees this as attributing the status of artifact to all human
products ... which is seen as a problem in relation to his socio-cultural
inferences ... but in these relations of correspondence i think i see one
of those crossroads and an empty field of possibilities for a design science

Norm


 At 08:12  11/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>norm,
>
>do you think there is a difference between looking and seeing?  i wonder
>if seeing comes from a different source than looking.
>
>dick 
>
>
[log in to unmask]
Norman Sheehan
Senior Research Officer
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit
University of Queensland
Brisbane Old 4072 Australia


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