http://www.brainmysteries.com/
Language shapes a persons ability to perceive spatial orientation (8/31/2010)One way of understanding this is to imagine that you are traveling with a speaker of such a language and staying in a large chain-style hotel, with corridor upon corridor of identical-looking doors. Your friend is staying in the room opposite yours, and when you go into his room, you’ll see an exact replica of yours: the same bathroom door on the left, the same mirrored wardrobe on the right, the same main room with the same bed on the left, the same curtains drawn behind it, the same desk next to the wall on the right, the same television set on the left corner of the desk and the same telephone on the right. In short, you have seen the same room twice. But when your friend comes into your room, he will see something quite different from this, because everything is reversed north-side-south. In his room the bed was in the north, while in yours it is in the south; the
telephone that in his room was in the west is now in the east, and so on. So while you will see and remember the same room twice, a speaker of a geographic language will see and remember two different rooms.This implies that they are also storing more information to memory, and that non-geo languages have allowed people to compress spatial information. Does the bloat of this additional spatial information cause deficiencies in other areas of memory storage? At this time no one knows, but this area of research will undoutably change our understanding of consciousness itself.For those interested in this line of work, the author of the NYT article is Guy Deutscher, an honorary research fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. His new book, from which this article is adapted, is "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages," to be published this month by Metropolitan Books.
sekhar
--- On Wed, 1/9/10,
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com <
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
From:
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com <
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [C] [Wittrs] Digest Number 341
To:
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, 1 September, 2010, 2:12 PM
WittrsAMR
Messages In This Digest (2
Messages)
1.
Wittgenstein for Beginners...
From:
kirby urner
2.1.
Re: Understanding Dualism
From:
iro3isdx
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Messages
1.
Wittgenstein for Beginners...
Posted by: "kirby urner"
wittrsamr@freelists.org
Tue Aug 31, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)
In part I'm inspired by Logicomix, an interesting
collaboration, with the team including a computer
scientist and an artist who illustrated Tintin cartoons,
if I'm recalling correctly.[0]
Tintin was an important strip in my youth (although
I don't think I saw myself as Tintin per se -- I have
since met someone who reminds me a lot of
Captain Haddock (not sure of the captain's name
in the original French)).[1]
In Logicomix Wittgenstein is cast as at first a
darling of the Vienna Circle, frequented by logical
positivists, but only because misunderstood.
We're given to understand from Logicomix that the
LP camp got it wrong: LW wasn't saying ethics
and aesthetics are nonsense, if that means something
without value. It's what's in the world that's value
neutral (per Tractatus) and is also what philosophy
helps us get free from by reconnecting us to our
deeper selves (i.e. logic does not "stop" and/or "win"
over ethics).
The temptation to dispense with ethics is always
high in some branches of philosophy. If only one
could have the title of philosopher (like a doctor)
and not have to take ethical stands, what a relief
that would be. Ergo: "that stuff is all nonsense"
seems like a perfect out. But do philosophies that
dismiss ethics have much of a half-life?
In any case, Wittgenstein' s philo is not about
dismissing huge areas of ordinary language as
irrelevant. On the contrary, the esoteric private
languages are more likely to shake loose.
Computer languages come and go, for example.
A logic may be "brittle" (and so not long for this
world). LW is a kind of polemicist in some ways,
broadcasting about his differences with some
"influenza zone" (infected, rather than improved,
by its philosophy). And yet he's no stranger to
the world he decries, has many friends therein.
As to exactly who goes by "logical positivist" today,
I'm not quite sure. The machine intelligence vista
is mostly taken up with computer science, with
some fringe AI around the edges.
The artistry and aesthetics in computer work is
hardly a 2nd tier topic. It's *The Art* of Computer
Programming (Knuth) after all.[2] From my angle,
WIttgenstein' s philosophy, especially the later one,
seems as relevant as ever. "Meaning as use" is
a very rich concept in GUI and control panel
design. How does one monitor one's own energy
consumption? These are engineering questions,
but also involve grammar, language games, rules
of best fit. An aesthetic sense goes with the
territory in other words. Philosophy and art
conjoin through many interfaces.
Kirby
[0] re Logicomix:
http://coffeeshopsn et.blogspot. com/2010/ 05/buzz-about- shops.html
http://www.logicomi x.com/en/ index.php? option=com_ content&view= article&id= 76&Itemid= 59
*Annie Di Donna *studied graphic arts and painting in France and has worked
as animator on
many productions, among them *Babar* and *Tintin*
*
*
[1]
Tintin
http://www.flickr. com/photos/ 17157315@ N00/3696376738/
[2] HTML5 is just getting more swoopy by the day:
http://www.thewilde rnessdowntown. com/
http://controlroom. blogspot. com/search? q=HTML5
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2.1.
Re: Understanding Dualism
Posted by: "iro3isdx"
wittrsamr@freelists.org
Tue Aug 31, 2010 7:54 pm (PDT)
--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups. com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@.. .> wrote:
> responding to
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/Wittrs/ message/6250
> SWM:
> I was making the point that if you define consciousness as
> needing intentionality and intentionality as what's needed to have
> consciousness you haven't taken us to any new understanding of the
> issue or given us a conclusion that was not already evident. For
> the argument to be of use, we need to learn something we didn't
> explicitly know before.
I surely don't know what you think you are replying to. It seems that
you must have completely misunderstood my post.
> SWM:
> What "critical" elements are left out and can you say why these
> ARE critical?
I already gave details in a previous post - the one that you seem to
have completely misunderstood.
I guess I'll stop posting in this thread to avoid further confusing the
issues.
Regards,
Neil
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