To See and Be Seen

Everybody likes to be seen and perceived and understood. That is one of the great joys and delights of social interaction. But even when nobody sees you, you are still there. You still exist. You still are.

Even though I cannot see Bow, I'm pretty sure he is still there underneath the blanket

Object permanence is one of the first lessons babies learn about the nature of reality. They learn it by playing peek-a-boo. Much later, about the time of the first hide and go seek games, they also learn that if they can see someone else, that does not necessarily mean that this someone else can see them. Seeing isn't necessarily reciprocal.

Now I can see Bow. But can he see me?

Another lesson that is even more subtle is that seeing things affects what you know, but being seen does not necessarily affect what someone else knows. If he did not know you were seeing him, then he has no new knowledge.

Peekaboo! I see you!

Trying to gauge another person's state of mind involves guessing what they know and what they do not know, based on the sorts of information that are available to them, and also by trying to model their mental process. It can be very difficult, because not everybody perceives what he sees the same way. Someone can see you, but not notice. Someone can hear you, but not understand what you said. Even very intelligent adult human beings can make terrible miscalculations, just based on a false belief that to exist is to be perceived or that seeing necessarily means knowing.

Daniel J. Povinelli wrote a whole book about what young chimpanzees know about seeing. The problem is that what a researcher knows about what a chimpanzee knows is not necessarily a straightforward fact. The smart chimpanzee may not choose to let the researcher in on all its knowledge. Do you know what I know? How can you be sure?

Yesterday, I reviewed the movie  Cloud Atlas. I took issue with the statement by the character Sonmi:

"To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other."

Being is one thing. Being perceived is something else. To conflate them is to be a social metaphysician, a person who believes that social reality is the only reality. People may misperceive you. You may misperceive yourself. But who you are is a fact, not open to social mediation.

People perceive different things in the same situation. Sometimes I will reminisce with someone about something that happened long ago, and it will turn out that they never knew a fact that was obvious and significant to me. Then they will say, "I must not have been in the room when that happened." Well, maybe. Or maybe they were in the room, but they were not mentally present. Maybe they saw, but did not perceive, heard, but did not understand. Maybe their attention was centered on another sight which was significant to them, and not to me.

People do not remember what they see. They remember what they perceived and how they interpreted the data. This is one of the reasons that we don't tend to remember what happened in our early infancy. It is not because we did not see, but it was hard to come to many conclusions with so little data to go on. We cannot remember what we did not perceive. It takes time for someone's mind to turn a sight into a perception, an event into a memory.

That is why it can happen that you might meet someone on a particular day, but they will not meet you until much later, when they finally perceive you for the first time. That is the topic of my children's book, When Sword Met Bow. 

When we bring a baby home for the first time, whether he is a human or a chimpanzee, he does not know enough about life to know us or meet us in any meaningful way. We may meet him on that day, but it may take a while before his cognitive development is enough to meet us back. That is because seeing is not perceiving, and the relations between sentient beings are not necessarily reciprocal.

Seeing is not knowing. And just because you know somebody you must not assume that they know you. And before any seeing or knowing can even begin to happen, things have to actually exist.

Reality is primary. Social reality is secondary. And while psychological visibility -- the feeling you get when somebody really understands you -- is a great delight, people continue to exist even when no one sees them. It's that very basic concept of object permanence that you learned when you started playing peekaboo!

Reviving the Old Touchscreen: Seeking Out Disabled Volunteers

When I told Lawrence yesterday what Bow had said, that he did not want the man who cannot read, because using the computer is hard, Lawrence jumped in and said that Bow had already told him that! So Bow has communicated with each of us independently on this issue.

I've been thinking a lot about what it would mean to have someone who cannot read working with Bow. This is actually the same principle that applies in our bilingual proofs: that Bow knows something the person with him does not. It is a way to dispel the notion that there is cuing, and to lay to rest the accusation of "Clever Hans" once and for all.

In order to get to work with Bow, the man who cannot read will have to meet all the other criteria for being a caretaker. He will need to pass medical tests. He will have to have recommendation letters. Since he served in the military, I will want a letter from his commanding officer. Hopefully, the letter will mention both his abilities and his disabilities, so that I can have documentation to prove that this man cannot read.

Of course, he has to be really motivated to be able to work with Bow. One can't build up all one's hopes on a single candidate for a volunteer position. It occurred to me yesterday that if it doesn't work out with this particular volunteer, we might seek out blind candidates. A person who cannot see would be the same as an illiterate, as far as pointing at the glass is concerned. Bow would have to use the touchscreen to communicate.

However, blindness is a kind of physical disability, and I'm concerned for the safety of a potential blind volunteer. Would a blind volunteer be able to stand up to Bow, if he can't see the visual cues for aggression?

This is all taking on an ironic turn, as just recently I have been rebuked by a potential applicant on the matter of being unfair to the disabled. The person was very interested in the position, so I sent a Medical Report form to be filled out by a physician. The Medical Report Form has three parts: physical check up, lab tests against communicable diseases, and a medical history. The form also asks about prescription medicines taken. The potential applicant told me I was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I wrote back to say that the law does not apply, as this is not a job. There is no salary. It is a volunteer opportunity.

My feeling about it, though, was that I'm really not being unfair. Working with Bow is dangerous. You have to be physically fit and mentally alert, or he may injure you. It's for the volunteers' safety, as well as Bow's, that we want to know about their physical condition.

Do I have a bias against the disabled? No, I don't. I'm only interested in what each person can contribute, and I think I give everyone a chance. At this juncture, quite unexpectedly, I am beginning to see that certain kinds of disability, such as dyslexia or blindness, might actually serve as an advantage in getting Bow to use his touchscreen.

Yesterday, Tracey, the computer guy, revived the older touchscreen that was donated to us. It now has an operating system and has Bow's program loaded. We have two touchscreens and all we need now is a really good motivation for Bow to use them!