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