If there is a better way to see a merely real zebra than to have the photons strike a surface, their patterns be stored, and transmitted to my brain, which cross-relates it to every fact about zebras, their behavior, habitat, physiology, and personality on my internal map of a zebra, then I don’t know it and can’t experience it, since that’s what happens when I am in fact actually there, as well as what happens when I look at a picture that someone who was actually there shares with me.
You probably get a much richer sensation of zebra-ness under some conditions (being there, touching the zebra, smelling the zebra, seeing it move) than just seeing a picture of one on flickr. Experiencing zebra-ness isn’t a binary value, and some types of exposures will tend to commandeer many more neurons than others.
If there is a better way to see a merely real zebra than to have the photons strike a surface, their patterns be stored, and transmitted to my brain, which cross-relates it to every fact about zebras, their behavior, habitat, physiology, and personality on my internal map of a zebra, then I don’t know it and can’t experience it, since that’s what happens when I am in fact actually there, as well as what happens when I look at a picture that someone who was actually there shares with me.
You probably get a much richer sensation of zebra-ness under some conditions (being there, touching the zebra, smelling the zebra, seeing it move) than just seeing a picture of one on flickr. Experiencing zebra-ness isn’t a binary value, and some types of exposures will tend to commandeer many more neurons than others.