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Friday, Nov 25th, 2011
Human Language - Human Consciousness

When apes experience human-rearing and are exposed to a human language they begin to display the human patterns of self-awareness and self-reflection by 6 months of age. An obvious index of self-awareness is the use of a mirror to view the self as the self is being intentionally altered (or immediately after it has been altered). Many apes explore their image by seeking out a mirror to look at their teeth, their tongue, their ears, their eyes and other portions of their body that could be observed only in a reflected image. Linguistically competent apes expand this awareness by beginning earlier and by elaborating. They paint their faces, put on wigs, shawls and monster masks, and rush to the mirror to see how the look. They try to blow bubbles with bubble gum while using mirrors to watch their cheeks. They practice displays by adding fur capes as they swagger in front the mirror. They seek out live video images to see things that even a mirror would not reveal. Only a live camera image can reveal their epiglottis and allow them to learn to vibrate it in real time (Menzel, Savage-Rumbaugh, and Lawson, 1985; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986).


Their concern with understanding the appearance of the self from the perspective of another arises from the bifurcated, or dualistic, view of the self, whose roots lie in the I/Me distinctions embedded in the structure of the human language which they are acquiring. The doer/viewer duality of consciousness enables the youngster to think about what it is doing, the appearance of its action, and/or how the action will be perceived by others — all at the same time. When this dualistic process begins to operate, there emerges, within a single brain and body, the capacity to consciously separate the imaged self into that of the doer of one’s actions and the viewer of those same actions (Bates, 1990). The viewer begins to sometimes hold an action by the doer in abeyance, or sometimes even to reflect upon the past actions of the self as doer with a certain amount of chagrin and dismay. This is the formative basis of mental time travel and the mental construction of alternative world views (Suddendorf and Corballis, 2009).

via Sue Savage-Rumbaugh: Human Language—Human Consciousness

h/t @ Lapidarium notes

∞11:38 am, by jamreilly47 notes Comments
[sue savage-rumbaugh] [language] [consciousness] [human] [apes]

Monday, Apr 04th, 2011
High Res


Alleviating social and cultural difficulties requires better communication. And the problem that faces us is, how do we improve our communication? It will not do to set out posthaste to “solve the problem” of inadequate communication. The most pressing task is rather to start inquiring immediately about how that problem presents itself to us. (Reddy, 1979) The conduit metaphor operates whenever people speak or write as if they “insert” their mental contents (feelings, meanings, thoughts, concepts, etc.) into “containers” (words, phrases, sentences, etc.) whose contents are then “extracted” by listeners and readers. Thus, language is viewed as a “conduit” conveying mental content between people. The conduit-metaphor paradigm states that communication failure needs explanation, because success should be automatic. Conversely, the toolmakers paradigm states that partial miscommunication is inherent and can only be fixed by continuous effort and extensive verbal interaction. (via wikiP)  the conduit metaphor is leading us down a technological and social blind alley. That blind alley is mass communications systems coupled with mass neglect of the internal, human systems responsible for nine-tenths of the work in communicating. We think we are “capturing ideas in words,” and funneling them out to the greatest public in the history of the world. But if there are no ideas “within” this endless flood of words, then all we are doing is replaying the myth of Babel—centering it, this time, around a broadcasting tower. via Michael J. Reddy -  The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language About Language (1979) Image: Tower of Babel by Marten van Valckenborch (c.1600) via wikiM

Alleviating social and cultural difficulties requires better communication. And the problem that faces us is, how do we improve our communication? It will not do to set out posthaste to “solve the problem” of inadequate communication. The most pressing task is rather to start inquiring immediately about how that problem presents itself to us. (Reddy, 1979)

The conduit metaphor operates whenever people speak or write as if they “insert” their mental contents (feelings, meanings, thoughts, concepts, etc.) into “containers” (words, phrases, sentences, etc.) whose contents are then “extracted” by listeners and readers. Thus, language is viewed as a “conduit” conveying mental content between people.

The conduit-metaphor paradigm states that communication failure needs explanation, because success should be automatic. Conversely, the toolmakers paradigm states that partial miscommunication is inherent and can only be fixed by continuous effort and extensive verbal interaction. (via wikiP)

 the conduit metaphor is leading us down a technological and social blind alley. That blind alley is mass communications systems coupled with mass neglect of the internal, human systems responsible for nine-tenths of the work in communicating. We think we are “capturing ideas in words,” and funneling them out to the greatest public in the history of the world. But if there are no ideas “within” this endless flood of words, then all we are doing is replaying the myth of Babel—centering it, this time, around a broadcasting tower.

via Michael J. Reddy -  The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language About Language (1979)

Image: Tower of Babel by Marten van Valckenborch (c.1600) via wikiM

∞08:26 pm, by jamreilly5 notes Comments
[conduit metaphor] [language] [meaning] [michael reddy] [understanding]

Friday, Jul 30th, 2010

The distinctions between inside and outside, and between virtual and non-virtual realities, that an observer may make do not apply to the operations of the nervous system. The distinctions between perception and illusion, or between virtual and non-virtual realities, pertain to the operation of the observer as a languaging being.

Our being as human beings occurs in languaging, in the flow of our being in conversations. A human being is a dynamic manner of being in language, not a body, not an entity that has an existence that can be imagined independent of language and can then use language as an instrument for communication.

If we attend to what we do and to what happens with us when we participate in a conversation, we see that we live (dance) together in a flow of recursive coordinations of languaging and emotioning.

- Humberto Maturano.

via Scribd: The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and their Implications for Human existence


∞10:16 am, by jamreilly14 notes Comments
[maturano] [language] [emotion] [virtual] [reality]

Friday, Jul 23rd, 2010
High Res


“English color words may be especially difficult to learn, because in English we throw in a curve ball: we like to use color words “prenominally” meaning before nouns. So, we’ll often say things like “the red balloon,” instead of using the postnominal construction, “the balloon is red.” Why does this matter? It has to do with how attention works. In conversation, people have to track what’s being talked about, and they often do this visually. This is particularly so if they’re trying to make sense of whatever it is someone is going on about. Indeed, should I start blathering about “the old mumpsimus in the corner” you’re apt to begin discretely looking around for the mystery person or object. Kids do the exact same thing, only more avidly, because they have much, much more to learn about. That means that when you stick the noun before the color word, you can successfully narrow their focus to whatever it is you’re talking about before you hit them with the color. Say “the balloon is red,” for example, and you will have helped to narrow “red-ness” to being an attribute of the balloon, and not some general property of the world at large.” more via SciAm: Why Johnny Can’t Name His Colors Image: Red Balloon by Paul Klee (1922)

“English color words may be especially difficult to learn, because in English we throw in a curve ball: we like to use color words “prenominally” meaning before nouns. So, we’ll often say things like “the red balloon,” instead of using the postnominal construction, “the balloon is red.”

Why does this matter? It has to do with how attention works. In conversation, people have to track what’s being talked about, and they often do this visually. This is particularly so if they’re trying to make sense of whatever it is someone is going on about. Indeed, should I start blathering about “the old mumpsimus in the corner” you’re apt to begin discretely looking around for the mystery person or object.

Kids do the exact same thing, only more avidly, because they have much, much more to learn about. That means that when you stick the noun before the color word, you can successfully narrow their focus to whatever it is you’re talking about before you hit them with the color. Say “the balloon is red,” for example, and you will have helped to narrow “red-ness” to being an attribute of the balloon, and not some general property of the world at large.”

more via SciAm: Why Johnny Can’t Name His Colors

Image: Red Balloon by Paul Klee (1922)

∞09:23 am, by jamreilly1 note Comments
[colour] [language] [learning] [klee]

Wednesday, Apr 28th, 2010
The Sound of Neurons

 ”They emit electrical signals of around 40 hertz, which sound like a buzzing, irritating noise played back as audio files. I used some specialist software to distinguish the signal within the noise - and to produce sound from within each peak that is closer to the frequency of a human voice and therefore more revealing to the ear.

Listening to the results reprocessed at around 300 Hz, the audio files have the hypnotic quality of sea birds calling. There is a sense that each spike is modulated subtly within itself, and it sounds as if there are discrete signals in which one neuron in some sense “addresses” another. Could we be eavesdropping on the language of the brain?”

via The Secrets of Intelligence Could Lie Within A Single Cell

(New Scientist)

∞10:33 am, by jamreilly17 notes Comments
[cell] [intelligence] [neuro] [language]

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