From: b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu (Stephen Tice)
Subject: Re: Imagination vs. VR (was Re: More on MUDs etc.)
Date: 16 AUG 91 07:54:33    
Organization: The University of Texas at Arlington



In article <1991Aug15.224130.25826@milton.u.washington.edu>,
fortony@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Felix Sebastian Ortony) writes...

>I still maintain that the imagination engendered by literature
>exceeds the imagination engendered by VR, however, mostly because of the
>far-larger range of degrees of freedom available in language and belief
>about meaning. 

>From _Scientific American_, July 1991, pp. 33-34,
     "A Subtle Mind Contemplates Science," by Marguerite Holloway:

          [The Dalai Lama] also visited Cornell University,
          stopping by the computer laboratory of Donald P.
          Greenberg, where a Tibetan monk is working on a
          software program to render a mandala, a religious
          symbol, in three dimensions. 
          . . . . . .
          Hobson, whose own work centers on dreaming, was
          interested in the Tibetan view of dreaming as a
          second, lucid level of consciousness that some
          monks claim they can manipulate.

          [ref: J. Allan Hobson,
           a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School.]

Religious expression in VR, poetry in VR, =engineering= in VR --
the only limitation seems to be self imposed.

_          _         _        _       _      _     _    _   _  _ __

       Stephen T.          []   Resist mind inflation,   
(b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu)   []         a penny for your thoughts!



[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  I think it would be useful to have some discussion
here by those who have made issues such as these their principal philo-
sophical activity, not to mention their careers.  If anyone can persuade
Brenda Laurel, Sandy Stone, Mike Naimark, and others to join in, it
would be useful to the newsgroup.  Thanks. -- Bob Jacobson]