3 ms·
You already know exactly what their conception of the world is like. When you look at the world you don’t see two images, you just perceive the presence of thin
by erikpukinskis 9y ago
You already know exactly what their conception of the world is like. When you look at the world you don’t see two images, you just perceive the presence of things.
The thing that would make scallop reality different than yours is not the many eyes, it’s the different body. Because you have fingers and lips you will perceive a fish differently than a creature with tentacles and gills would perceive it. We can only perceive that which we can relate to our own bodily experience.
(Although as humans our layering of cultural references on those bodily sensations can sometimes lead to the illusion that our perceptions are abstract.)
- alanbernstein 9y agoThe 360 degree field of vision seems like a significant difference to me as well.
- mattbierner 9y agoI'm not so sure. Just as language influences how we think and how understand the world, don't our senses mediate our understanding of reality? Say there were a hyper-intelligent, speaking scallop. I agree that we could build a shared language with the scallop for properties as "presence" or "absence", but the scallop's internal conception of presence and what presence looks like may be completely incomprehensible to us. Could that scallop then ever teach a human what presence is without showing it to them? (similar idea to knowledge argument) More practically, two points I find interesting about scallop vision: - 360 vision from multiple small eyes. How are these inputs combined in the scallop's brain? - Scallop eyes seem to be optimized for seeing contrast and detecting motion. What would seeing using an array of low resolution, light/darkness sensors be like?