Dear Filippo
Your thought experiment does have its answer, in a way, in the approach to perception known as the ecological approach by James Gibson - the theorist who gave us the concept of Affordances that was then borrowed by Norman.
The following quote illustrates, in brief, the difference that Gibson's approach would bring to these questions. It is taken from "Categorization of Affordances" by Jiajie Zhang, Department of Health Informatics University of Texas at Houston
http://acad88.sahs.uth.tmc.edu/courses/hi6301/affordance.html
"The Starting Point. For the conventional theory of perception, the starting point for perception is the retinal image. It is the stimulation of light on the retinal that provides information for visual perception. According to Gibson, however, the starting point is the ambient optic array. It is the structure in the light extended over space and time that provides direct information about the media, surfaces, substances, and events for an observer."
Hope this helps
keith russell
OZ newcastle
>>> Filippo Salustri <[log in to unmask]>
Here's a thought experiment:
There is a white room, bare and featureless but for a red block in the
middle of the room. A person is shown into the room and asked what he sees.
Does the person see (first):
a. one thing in another (wholes)
b. two differently coloured 'regions' (parts)
c. an engineer's apartment (:-))
And another thing.
Say you're looking at a block, half of which is red and the other half
of which is blue. We could say there's a red part and a blue part to
the block. What is it about the block that lets you say that? Two things:
1. the *difference* in colours (boundary)
2. the two 'parts' are connected (topology)
Without these two things, you'd have no idea what you were looking at.
Without seeing the boundary, you wouldn't know where one bit started and
the other ended - the same applies to the perceived boundaries between
the surfaces of the block and the visual background.
Without seeing the connectivity, you'd think there were two blocks and
not one.
So, for me, topology and parthood and much more closely connected than
most people think, and boundaries and topological connection are
actually perceived before (tho perhaps unconsciously) before parts and
wholes.
I've not read anything that'd contradict this, but I'm just an engineer.
I'd welcome a psychologist or neurologist to comment on how the brain
works in this regard.
Cheers.
Fil
Charles Burnette wrote:
> Dear Filippo, Keith, Michael, Eduardo et. al.
>
> I have been addressing the part-whole issue by
> recognizing that when thinking about parts or whole we
> are referring to objects and when thinking
> topologically we are thinking about the relations
> between or within objects (taken originally either as
> parts or wholes). Separate intentions (mind sets) are
> involved. The issue of hierarchy or organization is a
> matter of structure(relational thinking for its own
> sake)until one needs to focus on the elements in the
> relational structure or model(the features, properties
> or parts being related) at which time the mental focus
> switches to object description in which each part is
> treated as a whole. One can go further by saying that
> a whole is distinguished (thought about) by what is
> mentally apprehended or experienced holistically while
> the topological structure considered as a whole is
> meaningless (except as an abstract structure) until
> its parts are specified. I think we should look at the
> issue as more of a cognitive and informational one
> than as a material or logical one (and then apply our
> thoughts to each accordingly.) After all, the steel in
> the bicycle problem isn't the bicycles fault.
>
> Best
>
> Chuck
>
> Dr. Charles Burnette
> 234 South Third Street
> Philadelphia, PA 19106
> Tel: +215 629 1387
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD
> studies and
> related research in Design
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
> Of Filippo A. Salustri
> Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 10:51 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: parts, wholes, reflection, etc.
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> It's clear that there are many, many approaches to the
> part/whole thing.
> Besides the work mentioned by previous posts, there is
> also all work of
> people like Barry Smith, Tony Galton, AG Cohn,
> Eschenbach, Artale,
> Franconi, et al, Lesniewski (who invented
> 'mereology'), and so on.
>
> My acquaintance with the work in logic and AI assures
> me that no one has
> developed a sensible logic that covers 'parthood'
> without somehow
> disrupting topology - or vice versa.
>
> Also, the different researchers all tend to make
> certain limiting
> assumptions of their domains of interest. In the end,
> there's 2
> perspectives one has to choose from.
>
> 1. parthood is axiomatic; ie, you cannot explain why x
> is a part of y, you
> just state it as factual.
>
> 2. parthood is derived from some other
> fundamental/axiomatic characteristic
> (perhaps 'connection' - ie, topology)
>
> The difficult is that in conventional parlance, we
> tend to blend together a
> wild assortment of different kinds of parthood, but we
> do not do so to the
> point where the different kinds of parthood blend into
> an amorphous blob.
>
> This vagueness is further muddied by language
> artefacts. For example, one
> might say "The bicycle is partly steel" which suggests
> that "steel" is a
> part of "bicycle". Do we adopt a linguistic
> position - ie, we say it that
> way so we need a way to represent it that way? Or do
> we adopt a more
> semantically based position - ie, "The bicycle is
> partly steel" => "The
> bicycle has parts that are made of steel" ?
>
> As an engineer, the "semantic approach" works better
> for me. But as a
> designer, I'd also have to say that 'your mileage may
> vary'.
>
> Cheers.
> Fil
> --
> Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
> Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
> Ryerson University Tel:
> 416/979-5000 x7749
> 350 Victoria St. Fax:
> 416/979-5265
> Toronto, ON email:
> [log in to unmask]
> M5B 2K3 Canada
> http://deed.ryerson.ca/~fil/
>
--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deed.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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