RE: "Visibility"

[Kevin McLauchlan <KMcLauchlan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lynda,

I disagree, as follows:

The Concise Oxford and Websters give substantially 
the same two definitions, but I have to read them 
differently than you do.

The first definition, "the state of being visible" 
or "that can be seen by the eye" is not contested.

The second, which I summarize from the sources as:
"range or extent or possibility of vision, as 
determined by atmospheric conditions", is where we 
disagree.

Note that both definitions are remote from the 
viewer. Neither one REQUIRES a viewer. Neither 
comes back, as it were, and lives in my eyeball 
or brain (or yours). 

The second definition says only that objects 
which meet the first definition [by virtue of 
emitting or reflecting/refracting visible light, 
we presume] are surrounded by conditions that 
allow a potential viewer to see such objects, 
to greater or lesser extent.  The viewer, and 
the act of seeing (receiving light and processing 
it into signals in/for the brain) are not present 
in an object's status of being seeable, nor in 
the atmosphere's status of carrying the light 
from the object.

The foregoing applies to the macro level, at 
any rate. I don't wish to risk discussion of 
quantum effects and cats in boxes...

Having said that, isn't this more appropriate to 
techwr-l?

Having asked that... anybody know of good lists 
that discuss this kind of thing without burying 
definitional discussions in highfalutin jargon?


Kevin McLauchlan
kmclauchlan@chrysalis-its.com    (aka  kevinmcl@netrover.com)
Techy writer, duffer skydiver, full-time unrepentant chocoholic


-----Original Message-----
From: Lynda Simons [mailto:lynda.simons@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 1999 3:42 PM
To: Free Framers; Framers List
Subject: Re: "Visibility"


[snip]

If you only ever use words literally rather than metaphorically then you
will have no problem with the word "visibility". However, most of us speak
metaphorically most of the time: for example, we say things like, "Perhaps I
should shed some light here. You all seem a little foggy about this
project." This is why "visibility" is ambiguous. It can have two almost
opposite meanings depending on whether you are using the word literally to
mean "able to be seen", or metaphorically in the weather sense, "the
possibility of vision as determined by the conditions of light and
atmosphere" (Canadian Oxford Dictionary). It was certainly being used in
both senses in the environment I was referring to. Sometimes which meaning
was intended was clear from the context and both meanings were used.

signed

Errant interpreter sans shame!

==============================
Lynda Simons

[snip]

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