Wednesday, September 07, 2005

seeing with our feet and hands: quantum mechanics for you

Can we see without moving around with our legs (the things responsible for allowing us to change our viewpoint with respect to a stationary object)? Can we see without our hands (which allow us to manipulate objects as to change our viewpoint)?

In the context of a computational theory of vision, can we truly expect an algorithm to understand what objects are if we keep feeding it images, never letting it explore the world? I've been mentally preparing myself for Alva Noe's book (see last post) by tring to think about what he is about to tell me. Can we have perception without action?

Then again, what do I know? I know that vision research has been stagnating for the past few decades. Why would I care what a philosopher at Berkeley has to say? Why not read vision papers? The answer not clear, but the expression that comes to mind is Kuhn's "paradigm shift." Something tells me that physics and philosophy are going to be a big parts of my future research. Unfortunately (fortunately perhaps) I will be forced to interact with the mainstream vision community.

Adieu

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