Doug, Please strip the double header to 'Live-Hounds', Thanks

[JROSSI@AAMRL.AF.MIL]

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Date: Fri, 15 Dec 89 10:27 EDT
From: JROSSI@AAMRL.AF.MIL
Subject: RE Re Is Doug's chair really red (or whatever)
To: live-hounds@gaffa.mit.EDU
X-VMS-To: IN%"<live-hounds@gaffa.mit.edu>"


Nope, I admit it, I admit it, I admit it.. Satisfied?

Getting people's opinions and determining a majority does not fact make.
True, most people will probably agree that the Mona Lisa is a "good"
painting.  So what?  This does not inherantly make the Mona Lisa a good
painting it just means that some majority of some sample of people think
that the Mona Lisa is a good painting.  Any time some asthetic evaluation
is involved in a judgement, the judgement, no matter how popular, can not
be considered fact (i.e., just some large majority opinion).  Looking
at Doug's chair (sic), we use our eyes as an instrument of detection.
In fact, our physiology allows our eyes to act as pretty specific photo-
meters (of course I am talking about normal color vision).  When we get
a lot of these very specific devices together (independent observation)
and they all agree that the color (i.e., hue) of the fabric on Doug's
chair is red, than, we can consider that it is a fact that Doug's chair
is indeed red.  Now, we can also cloud this assertion by invoking mass
hysteria, mass drug induced halucination or some other mechanism in which
all the people are mislead by their perceptions.  However, in the case
of Doug's chair we have an independent system which can be used to
coroborate the factness of red.  We can use any number of photo spectral
analyzers to independently verify the nature of the radiations from
Doug's chair.  That is, we can easily demonstrate that, indeed, the light
reflected from Doug's chair is mostly made up of wavelengths in the
700-750 nM range (i.e., red, by definition).  Now back to the Mona Lisa
(which I, being a Philistine (SP?), do not appreciate as being all that
great).. How do you independently verify that the painting is good?
Answer.. You can't.  The differnce is in the nature of the observation.
In the case of the color of Doug's chair, we are asking for agreement
on a presumably physical phenomenon (i.e., constituent wavelengths of
the light reflections).  In the case of the Mona Lisa (or anything
else which involves subjective evaluation criteria) we are looking for
agreement which is based on a lot of experiential factors which make up
the learning history of the observer.  You're right, however, in your
explanation of why we would probably get agreement on the 'goodness' of
the Mona Lisa.  We arrive at it the old fashion way... We learned it!

John
JROSSI@aamrl.af.mil