Reply to Ross Macleay Thursday, May 23, 2002 5:41 PM

Hello Ross,
Your comments follow what I think.  For example where you observe that
mathematics is very visual and exists only as written on the page as a tool.
That that may point to why a writing system was necessary to develop
mathematics.  I would like to extend you remark,

RM:
I am glad you raised the points about the  way computational technology has
been conducive to new mathematical thought. And I think animation may be one
way that we can think certain concepts that would otherwise be unlikely to
be thought. Animation enables the schematic character of diagrams, and in
addition, as cinema, movement. Cinema might still be learning how to signify
many temporal relations, but the one kind of temporal thing that it is
unsurpassed at is showing motion.

DS:
This is a critical point about the philosophical nature of movies.  In order
to use movies as a philosophical tool a movie has to perform as you note
above like a mathematical script function if we are to use movies in a
philosophical sense.  Critical to that is how to understand seeing motion
through movies.  And in that what does interactivity mean?

I wonder if you are technically right in saying that movies are unsurpassed
in showing motion?  The reason I ask this sort of question is in
understanding how seeing motion works.

The dorsal stream of vision is the motion seeing channel in the visual
system.  There are some broad realities about that channel.  It is color
blind. It reacts somewhere around 10 to 30 msecs faster than the ventral
channel.  The dorsal channel carries 3d information.  The dorsal channel has
very little short term memory component.  The lack of short term memory
implies that what we see in motion is very low impact upon conscious
awareness since short term memory is the defining notion of the
consciousness awareness stage.

These relatively abstract technical comments point at understanding
something about seeing motion.  First seeing motion is weighted toward
embodiment issues.  That is the sense of three d shows us how our body is in
relation to the external world.  The ventral channel is much more about
remembering what is out there, and far less concerned with our place in that
world.  That also implies that a statue is in effect a movie for us.
Because a statue is a three dimensional object we have to move around to
see, that is what the dorsal system is meant to see motion in.

Let's compare that to a movie.  How do you move around in a movie?  Because
the movie is a linear string of picture frames the way one moves around in
the screen is one single path through the frames.  If one is sitting at a
computer with a non-linear editor, or perhaps with a dvd disc that has
considerable taxonomic controls one can start to appreciate the power of a
sculpture in terms of portraying motion.

The point of this riff on my part is to indicate the terrain in which
interactivity is to be considered.  Seeing motion is color blind, about 3d,
and low short term memory content.  When we look at a movie what we see in
motion are those qualities of a sense of motion.  To use that in a
philosophical sense as you imply about mathematics one has to grasp those
elements and consciously use them to philosophize in the same sense that a
mathematician uses the vocabulary of symbols devised to express mathematical
concepts.
Thanks,
Doyle Saylor