Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!laura
From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Why do mirrors reverse left & right, not up & down?
Message-ID: <3509@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Feb-84 10:23:35 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3509
Posted: Fri Feb  3 10:23:35 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Feb-84 10:23:35 EST
References: <541@bbncca.ARPA>, <543@bbncca.ARPA>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 34

I am blind in one eye. I always (or at least since before I entered
school) have been this way. I have never been able to really feel
the difference between right and left. It would be damn useful, 
since everybody else uses it, but the best I can do is know that
my left hand is the one with the big scar on it, and the right one
is not. I can look at my hands very quickly and tell left from right,
so I don't run into all that much trouble in the world.

Growing up this was a real pain (I hadn't had the accident with the
knife yet). I have no real sense of how letters follow one from
another. Thus I can read english in right-to-left every bit as quickly
as from right-to-left. All I can see is a convention which everybody
follows. 

Did you know that it never occurred to me that mirrors reverse at all
until you mentioned it? If mirrors reverse, then I bet that this is
because all of you guys have binocular vision. It makes perfect
sense to me. But, before you all go out and decide to blind yourself
in one eye, I will suggest that it makes a difference that I was born
this way an grew up without left/right distinctions and also that in
a lot of ways being blind in one eye is a pain in the you know where.
Going to school not being able to tell left from right is not fun.
Depth perception is funny.

I can tell up from down real well. But gravity pulls one down. In
Australia it doesn't pull you up. Down is where I would go if I fell
right now, and up is the opposite direction. This doesn't require
binocular vision.

Problem solved? Or do you really want to discuss Epiphenomenalism?
-- 

Laura Creighton (NOTE NEW ADDRESS)
utzoo!laura