Theme 1, Research publications/Theory of science

The Journal I chose was Transactions on Applied Perception which has an impact factor of: 1.15

The article I chose to examine was an article about audio feedback in pen-gesture based interfaces, "Writing with music": Exploring the Use of Auditory Feedback in Gesture Interfaces . I chose to read it since I'm interested in the process of using gestures to generate sound, such as playing an acoustic instrument.

Brief summary of the paper "Writing with music": Exploring the Use of Auditory Feedback in Gesture Interfaces 

The paper presents an exploratory study on how to use audio feedback in pen-gesture interfaces. The question raised is if sound can be used as feedback to create pen-gestures that are 1) more memorable or learnable, 2) more accurately produced for reliable recognition, and 3) more fun, pleasant, or engaging to use(Andersen and Zhai, 2010). 

The paper relies on two experiments one that is entirely formal and one that could be said to be a mix of a formal and informal experiment. The first experiment focuses on measurable values on how pen-gestures are performed based on feedback of the types visual, audio, visual and audio and none, thus trying to measure the performance of the gestures. The second experiment uses the first experiment as an understudy to test wether different types of audio-feedback effect how the pen-gesture interface is experienced. 

The conclusions of the paper is that it might be so that the performance of pen-gestures can't be affected by any type of feedback(visual or audio) because of the feedback being to slow, and that its possible to influence peoples experience of a pen-gesture interaction through sound feedback.

The last conclusion also had a sub-conclusion stating that "overall, musical feedback is better received than continuous tones". This is in my opinion a conclusion that isn't really supported by the experiments, since what the experiments showed was that a specific type of musical feedback was better received, a certain song that varied in tempo, or a drumbeat that varied tempo. To me it seems that saying that this accounts for any feedback that has musicality is probably a false assumption. 

Answers to the questions on The problems of philosophy

What does Russel mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Sense data is the data that we aquire from our senses. They way it's used is to form our aquaintanse with objects of the real world. So our sense data of an object is not actually represntative of the real object

What is the meaning of the term"proposition"?

A proposiotion is a bearer of thruth or falsity. So propositions are really the contents of belief. So the statement “it is true that p” is true if the proposition “that p” has the property 'true'.

There's an argument for the existence of propositions called the Metaphysics 101 argument.

1. With respect to any belief, there is what is believed and the believing of it, and these are distinct.
2. What is believed is something that may be rejected, denied, disbelieved, etc. by multiple subjects, and is something that may be true or false.
3. There are beliefs.
4. So, there are propositions (i.e, sharable objects of the attitudes and bearers of truth-values).(McGratch 2012)

They way that I see this differing from other verbal expressions is in the act of believing. A verbal statement that does not include the act of believing can not be a proposition. So the most notable way to form such a verbal expression is to ask a question. The verbal expression “it is raining” is a proposition, but “is it raining?” is not a proposition.

What does the notion definite description mean?

A definite description is a description such that there's an object answering to that description. A phrase of the form 'a laptop' is not a definite description but 'the laptop that causes the sense-data I'm experiencing when typing this text' is a definite description of the laptop that I'm typing this text on. I'm am not aquantided with the laptop that I'm typing on, I'm only aquainted with the sense-data of it, however I know it to exist through knowledge of description.

What are the main points in chapter 13 and 14?

I see two main points in the book that Russell makes:

1. The greater parts of what we consider ourselves to know are really just probable opinion, since its derived from things that are not self evident to the highest degree. The only thing that we truly know(that is self evident to the highest degree) is that of which we are aquainted. Things known based on judgement has a degree of self evident. So most things that are considered known are probable opinion, and propable opinion becomes more certain the greater the body of induvidual probable opnion is.

2. Knowledge is limited to what we can learn from experience(sense data) and not to what we can acctually experience. So there can be knowledge of things that can not be experienced.

References

Andersen, Tue Haste  and Zhai, Shumin 2010."Writing with music": Exploring the Use of Auditory Feedback in Gesture Interfaces. AMC Transitions in Applied Perception 7, 3, Article 17

McGrath, Matthew, "Propositions", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/propositions/>.