Confusion in Reflection

Reflection is an important trans-disciplinary topic that has often entailed some serious confusions. One variety of Reflection, which for current analytical purposes can be called 'Physical Reflection', or 'PR', describes a process that involves the following components--a source, e. g. a face; a reflecting surface, e. g. a mirror; an image, e. g. a face in the mirror; and an observer, e. g. someone looking at the mirror. In another variety, 'Experiential Reflection' ('ER'), a person is a reflecting surface, some environmental feature is a source, and some expression of the person is a reflected image, e. g. when the worry in someone's face reflects the stress that they are under, or when someone's writings reflect the influence of another. In contrast with both PR and ER, a third variety, 'Introspective Reflection', ('IR'), lacks a reflecting surface--it is constituted merely by one's bending back towards oneself. One locus of confusion is the object of IR, a confusion which is at least analogous to a common one in PR. Often, in PR, the source, the image, and the observer are taken to be simultaneous, so that the observer believes that the object of observation in the mirror is that act of observation itself. But, as rapid as light is, there is, nevertheless, an instantaneous time differential between source and image, and between image and observer. Hence, what an observer perceives in the mirror is actually their face at a previous moment. Similarly, there are Philosophers, e. g. Sartre, who presume the object of an act of IR to be an image of that act itself. But, the PR example shows that the object of an act of introspection is always some previous act, even a previous act of introspection. Misunderstanding Reflection in this way might be called 'reverse Narcissism'--whereas Narcissus takes an image to be a real object, Sartre et al. take a real object to be an image.