Reflections cont'd (3)

Diane Frances Lesley-Neuman Diane.Lesley-neuman at colorado.edu
Thu Mar 23 23:41:03 UTC 2006


Mark,
Why don't you spend a week or two reading Carol Fowler's carefully planned and
executed scientific research on the matter and report back to us?  Start with
her chapter in the latest edition of Handbook of Speech Perception (a little
pricey, sorry, it just came out) and work backward for about the last 25
years.  Also, take a few grad level proseminars in the psychology of
perception, memory and cognition regarding the relationship between experience
and mental images.  They do not even have to be graduate level:400-level
undergraduate courses will do.
  Also look at the research on Motor Theory, mirror neurons regarding how even
seeing others execute speech and motor actions inform our language articulation
and physical actions.  Any elementary sociological study on the effect of
television, any baseline study on memory will provide the evidence that you
need. Combine this with a refresher course in research methods, and then  see
if you will still be making the same claims in this space. That is not to say
that mental images as those in dreams cannot be creative, as language is
creative, but we have a creative capacity to build on our experiences.
  My apologies for losing my patience--but linguists who shoot from the hip
without reading for the background they need are one of my pet peeves.
--
Diane Lesley-Neuman, M. Ed.
Linguistics Department
Institute for Cognitive Science
University of Colorado at Boulder


Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark at polymathix.com>:

> Interesting response.
>
> Does that mean you're not going to try to rebut my point about direct
> realism being unfalsifiable? I don't blame you, since it's something that
> I consider unchanged since the days of Thomas Reid and David Hume. I
> believe that if people in the related fields of psychology,
> psycholinguistics, speech, hearing and cognitive science had gotten
> themselves up to speed on ideas that were tried and discarded for good
> reason in the 18th century, they wouldn't be wasting time and money trying
> to make them work today.
>
>
> -- Mark
>
> P.S. You are in fact preaching to the choir about low scientific standards
> in linguistics. I was harping on that over thirty years ago, and
> ultimately left linguistics for a while partly because of the lack of any
> signs of improvement.
>
> P.P.S. Undergraduates know exactly what you're talking about because
> they've been indoctrinated to your system of beliefs. That's not much of
> an argument either, is it?
>
>
> Mark P. Line
> Polymathix
> San Antonio, TX
>
>
>
> Diane Frances Lesley-Neuman wrote:
> > Mark,
> > People in the related fields of psychology, psycholinguistics, speech and
> > hearing do it all of the time. Even undergraduates in these fields manage
> > these research paradigms, execute projects and know exactly what I am
> > talking about. You simply are not familiar with the literature, and you
> > are calling things nonsense without reading anything, which is an easy
> > thing to get away with in linguistics, because of the low scientific
> > standards in our field.
> > Linguistics as a field can no longer afford the luxury of remaining
> > willfully ignorant of research that applies to their theories and their
> > professional practice, in order to maintain their autonomy in a war over
> > political turf.  Because this behavior causes us to lose ground
> > scientifically, and dictates funding priorities of university programs.
> > Eventually, linguistics programs will lose their standing and
> > credibility, be unfunded or so underfunded as to lose their autonomy,
> > because of their intellectually and scientifically backward behavior.
> > --
> > Diane Lesley-Neuman, M. Ed.
> > Linguistics Department
> > Institute for Cognitive Science
> > University of Colorado at Boulder
> >
> >
> > Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark at polymathix.com>:
> >
> >> Diane Frances Lesley-Neuman wrote:
> >> > You are calling upon concepts and images built and generated by
> >> > experience.
> >>
> >> That's a pretty hard claim to substantiate, isn't it?
> >>
> >> In any event, the point is that it doesn't make much sense that
> >> perception
> >> would evolve to work independently of all this magnificent ability to
> >> construct images of anything on the fly, and that an hypothesis that it
> >> has done so anyway would be unfalsifiable.
> >>
> >> -- Mark
> >>
> >> Mark P. Line
> >> Polymathix
> >> San Antonio, TX
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> > Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark at polymathix.com>:
> >> >
> >> >> Diane Frances Lesley-Neuman wrote:
> >> >> > "Reality makes language intelligible.""Language makes reality
> >> >> > intelligible."
> >> >> > How about Carol Fowler and Direct Realism?
> >> >>
> >> >> I can see images in my mind when I hallucinate, and there's no direct
> >> >> realism involved. I can see images in my mind when I imagine a scene
> >> >> with
> >> >> my eyes closed, and there's no direct realism involved. Why would I
> >> want
> >> >> to postulate that there's anything special, much less more direct or
> >> >> more
> >> >> realistic, about perception? If direct realists had any *evidence* of
> >> >> something special, they wouldn't have to postulate it.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> -- Mark
>
> Mark P. Line
> Polymathix
> San Antonio, TX
>



More information about the Funknet mailing list