Month: February 2005

Don’t Blink Or You’ll Miss Jorn

Robot Wisdom has fresh posts 22nd Feb 2005 !!!

What prompted the return ? Hunter S Thomson’s demise ? International Blog Action Day ? This amazing space-pic of Central Park ? Who knows, but it’s the usual mix and sources. Welcome back Jorn – after more than a year off-line.

Actually, the clue must be in his first new link, to “Rigorous Intuition” … what must be the ultimate conspiracy theory blog – everything from state sponsored terrorism to JFK theories – all the more scary for being well written by Canadian Jeff Wells. Perspicuous Jorn calls it. Unlike cock-up, conspiracy requires competence, I find. Makes Michael Moore look tame. Great collection of links to other writers too, but you have been warned – go there at your peril.

(Notice several other blogs spotted Jorn’s reposting within minutes, took me a day to spot it, though I did stumble into it first hand, it has to be said.)

Amazon UK excels itself.

Just in time for a little light reading on the long flight Amazon UK delivered this morning two books I ordered only on Saturday morning – ordinary letter post delivery too.

Susan Blackmore’s “Consciousness – An Introduction”, plus Bennett & Hacker’s “Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience”. The former from the author of “Meme Machine”, the latter got rave UK reviews – has an intriguing reversed title in the current climate of neuroscience claims for theories of consciousness – hope it’s not too heavy going.

Today’s the day …

Off to Oz this evening UK time, to Melbourne initially, then Perth. No idea when I’ll next get a connection – hopefully in one of the hotels.

Actually tomorrow is the “Free Mojtaba and Arash Day“. Don’t know enough about the circumstances of the individual Iranian bloggers to comment, but I guess I support blogging in principle, so happy to lend a voice.

What I don’t need is a “Bloggers Bill of Rights” or a “Committee to Protect Bloggers”. Free speech is always done in the context of prevailing governmental and business organisations – bloggers deserve no special priviledges.

The Sound of the Rain, Man !

Link from Christian Hauk to a Grauniad article, in response to my previous post about the blind guy hearing in colour.

(BTW, you need to link all your non-blog stuff to your new blog site, Christian)

I’ve been following a thread of many posts based on reading about what neurological and psychological abnormalities tell us about the reality of normal perception and consciousness. This Richard Johnson article about an autistic / epileptic savant adds to that thread. Unlike Kim Peak, the original Rain Man, Daniel Tammet can explain how he (believes he) executes his mental feats. Very interesting.

What’s it like to educate Archie – III

Rather than a bat, how about a ventriloquist’s dummy ? Steve Jones in todays UK Daily Telegraph writes on the opposite effect to the seeing through hearing post earlier. Using “Educating Archie”, successful ventiloquism on the radio, he is discussing the importance of visual clues in voice communication. Hearing through seeing. (See also all the Sacks posts earlier on perception abnormailities.)

Actually I believe the Archie example is more subtle and important than that. Archie worked because people already had “visual” schemata of a ventriloquist with his dummy, and could surely relate the audible timing, tone, body movement noise to the visual image in their heads – and believe Archie was a dummy. There’s more to spoken communication than sound, AND there’s more to audible communication than words – ask a bat.

What’s a Language Anyway ?

Interesting story from Sheffield University study [via BBC] about people who can manipulate and apperently understand the semantics of mathematical (arithmetic)expressions but not other simple natural (english) language expressions.

Unless you have an axe to grind, not sure that actually says language comes after mathematics. Both cases are linguistic, just different languages ?

Consciousness and Pirsig

Following a search hit I find a source that links many of mine ….

Pirsig and VUB/Heilighen, (Einstein Meets Magritte) with Josephson (explaining the paranormal with open minded science) with Dennett, Searle and Chalmers (PoM / Consciousness) in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

A paper in the 1995 JCS reviewing the 1995 Einstein Meets Magritte conference.

Both a bit pricey ? Let me think about this.

(Almost looks like the 1995 “Einstein Meets Magritte” conference intiative was a direct pre-cursor to the later multi-disciplined “Science of Consciousness” conferences. – I had just assumed some coincidence of content, but I think not. Interestingly the title of the 2004 JCS article here, about the Tucson conferences, was “Ten Years On”, and this JCS editorial talks about working on the Tucson agenda in 1993. Interesting read. – Oh well, so much for causality.)

Talking of Magritte, he seems to link several other threads of mine too. Foucault’s review of “Ceci n’est pas un pipe” (This is not a pipe) by Magritte, Oliver Sacks front cover “Ceci est ma femme” (The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat) in the style of Magritte. “Le Grand Guerre” on the cover of Searle’s “Mind – A Brief Introduction”

And talking of Searle, I’m now almost finished. After my impatient initial view, I have to say this is 100% common sense and pragmatic view of consciousness and mind.

Sorry to keep going on about it but there really is some great convergence here for the taking, if people are prepared to synthesise debate constructively, rather than analyse arguments destructively. Careful with that razor Occam, or that knife Aristotle, or that axe Eugene.

(PS also picked-up a search hit linking Donald Schon with Positivism. Come back to that later.)


Absenteeism, Turnover and Stress.

I remember as an MBA student studying absenteeism, turnover and stress – the fundamental difference between people being ill and being off-sick – being ill in any minor or major way is a medical issue, being off-sick from paid employment is a matter of individual choice. And vice versa, being ill may be significantly related to the stress of choosing to go to work. In both cases, look for the (human) reason, not the symptoms.

I recalled this when I heard a story on BBC Radio 4’s Home Truths this week about a schoolboy feigning illness to avoid a day at school that held some specific fear of trouble, and the ploy getting out of hand as the individual found himself being prepped for surgery in hospital after playing parents and doctors along with his symptoms.

Actually the recollection became a flood when I saw Michael Jackson’s latest stunt.

What’s it Like to be a Bat – II

Man hears in colour, or “sees” with the sound of music. [report via BBC]. Another variation on the Neuroscience explanations of consciousness – see earlier blogs on Sacks, Zeman and others.

I stand corrected that it is not quite what Nagel’s bat was about. He was being general about the concept of “being like” something as an indication of being conscious, but surely the point of choosing a bat, rather than a giraffe, is because a bat perceives its world, even spatial geometry, topology, motion and texture (colour) through sound. Psychlogically, it surely sees a picture of the world illuminated with sound, in pretty much the identical way that we see the world by the light of … light.

BTW,
Q. What’s it like to swim if you’re a giraffe ?
A. Problematic, unstable, fatal in fact once out of standing depth. Imagine if your buoyant thorax was so far from your dense head. Bit tricky keeping head above water I think you’ll find.

Skype Gets Even Better

Now with Skype – both Voice and Text free over IP
(see sidebar)

We recently had
SkypeOut to call any phone line from within Skype, not just on-line Skype users

We now have
SMS to Skype from any SMS device (for the cost of a UK SMS call)
(And with SkypeOut, a return call from your PC is one click away)

And soon
Skype to SMS is on its way, and
Phone to Skype is in the pipeline

Thanks to Robin Good for the link and instructions.