...is a very vague thing--entirely subjective in its nature--and therefore rather difficult to measure. You know that interaction has changed, but I don't, unless you tell me so. And, even then, all I have is anecdotal evidence. If I have nothing else, then that may suffice as a basis for me to later tell someone else, "MattDBA's interaction with the painting changed from one week to the next."
But, you see, I do have something else--something objectively measureable--to which I can correlate that change. I can measure you, and the change in you. Well, theoretically, at least. CAT scans, PQCT scans, PET scans, MRI scans, and the like, of your brain upon first beholding the painting and then upon beholding it a week later, along with measurements of the levels of neurotransmitters and their metabolites in your blood stream and in your CNS at the times of both events, would--presumably--reveal differing activities in your brain and nervous system which would correlate well with your reported differences in experience.
I like measurements; they give me objective data instead of subjective experiences. I can point to the differences in the two sets of measurements and say, "see here; you have changed, and thus your experience has changed." And I can show anybody who asks, precisely where and what the changes are. I can correlate those changes across many, many people who report similar changes in their subjective experiences of the painting. (Then I can get into a chicken-and-egg argument about whether the physiological changes result from a change in the experience, or whether the change in the experience is the result of the physiological changes. Meh. But, at the least, with objective data from measurements, I can pinpoint actual, observable changes, and that is something considerably more substantive than a reported subjective change in experience.) |
