Ahh the old how many FPS can the human eye see debate. I remember about 6 years ago fighting this argument. After a lot of research on the issue it comes down to this.

Games and FPS. Anything over the refresh rate of your monitor is a waste and if its not a factorial of the refresh rate then your likely if your perceptive enough to see flickers, tearing and stuff. Thus the 240hz 120hz 60hz HDTV debates in regards to source media 1:1 3:5 ratios blah blah blah.

TV, Movies and Motion Blur. That whole shake your hand in front of your eyes and its all broken up 9 fingers thing is full of crap, that's all a trick of the crappy lighting where your at. Go outside on a sunny day and do it again if you have doubts. This gets even more goofy when you play with motion blur. With the right blurring in place watching a screen that does 10fps will look just as good as 60fps. Motion blurring is another trick of the eye, but also a camera trick as well. If you watched a movie at 24 fps and there was not captured motion blur it would look like shuddering choppy crap. Even video games put motion blur type effects in to make things look smoother. There's already many links explaining how motion blur works in regards to detail and how the eyes work etc.

Real Life VS computer specs. You cant compare Apples to Macbooks equaly. Take a moment and do the following. Dont move your head at all, but just your eyes. Look at something close, look at something further away, then up, down, left, and right. Look at the detail of the things you see. The texture of things. If theres something moving watch it for a while. Now what resolution and fps is real life playing in? Light is not entering your eye at 24 pulses/frames per second, your not looking through eyes that have 1024x768 lines of resolution. Real life streams to your eye at a FPS/Resolution that no computer can reproduce.

Conclusion. Its all tricks.