[PL] Throwing Darts In The Dark

[John McCreery]

Dear Friends,

This message is cross-posted from another list with the enthusiastic
agreement of the author, who hopes that some of the experts here may have an
expert opinion to offer.

> X-Accept-Language: en
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Date:         Sat, 5 Feb 2000 22:30:51 -0800
> Reply-To: Philosophy and Literature <PHIL-LIT at LISTSERV.TAMU.EDU>
> Sender: Philosophy and Literature <PHIL-LIT at LISTSERV.TAMU.EDU>
> From: Mike Geary <mikeg at GALAXY-7.NET>
> Organization: @Home Network
> Subject:      [PL] Throwing Darts In The Dark
> To: PHIL-LIT at LISTSERV.TAMU.EDU
>
> This post is a query as opposed to my usual, personally gratifying,
> smart-ass comments.  Please bear with me if I seem clumsy in the
> attempt.  I'm not accustomed to asking what other people think.
>
> I have a niece who has been profoundly deaf since she was 6 months old
> -- from meningitis.  Audiologists say that she cannot hear any sound at
> all.  Not even a jet plane with her ear against the engine.  She
> is now in her senior year of college.  She signs Amslam like a bat out
> of hell, of course, and she reads lips and she can also vocalize a dozen
> words or so -- like 'hello', 'thank you', 'goodbye'; but, of course, the
> vocalizations are very poor approximations -- without feedback, speaking
> is like throwing darts in the dark.
>
> Three years ago, purely out of curiosity, I asked her if when she was
> dreaming of non-signing
> people, did they sign?  Expecting a yes answer, I was greatly surprised
> when she said that she never
> dreamed of anyone signing, that she "heard" in her dreams.  Not only did
> she hear speech but she also heard music in her dreams.  Music?!!!  I
> was so
> astonished by this that none of the thousand questions I now want to ask
> her came immediately to mind.
>
> I know next to nothing about the science of hearing.  But I have a
> layman's acquaintance with the physical-physiological requirements and
> some idea of the psychological events that attend hearing.  There must
> be physical sound waves impinging on the eardrum thereby exciting nerve
> transmission to the brain neurons specific to "hearing" for "hearing" to
> be possible.  But "hearing" as we think of it is not mere neuronal
> excitation, it is the psychological experience of sound with the
> concomitant decoding of sounds into signs that have meaning to us.  So
> there must be the psychological event wherein one recognizes the
> patterns of neuronal excitation as a specific sound and interprets that
> specific sound according to learned sound-signs.  Is this good layman's
> audiology and language theory or not?  I think it is and on that basis I
> posit the following exception: "hearing" is not limited to sound waves
> and auditory nerves.
>
> When my niece signs and reads signs she does not "see" language, as I
> assumed, she hears it the same as we "hear" what we read and write.  I
> say "we," I don't know about you, but when I read, I hear an inner voice
> saying words, and the same is true when I write.  I don't mouth the
> words but they are sounded in my head in both contexts.  For some reason
> I always assumed that she "saw" language.  I think Chomsky is more right
> than he ever dreamed of, not only is the aptitude for the deep structure
> of language hardwired, but that language is inherently an auditory
> experience such that every experience of language is "heard" even if
> there has never been an auditory model to base the hearing upon.  In
> other words, my niece not only speaks/hears a unique language, the
> language she speaks/hears is an ur-sound language. Is there such a
> thing?  I would not have believed it before talking with my niece.  What
> puzzles me is the music.  Does she hear Beethoven watching Nine Inch
> Nails?  I would like to believe so.
>
> Do the blind "see" what they feel?  Are "visual" images of the world in
> their minds or geographies of touch?
> I want to know.  I want to know if any deaf members of PHIL-LIT could
> substantiate or contradict my hypothesis that we "hear" signs.  I want
> to know if any blind members can give me any insight into what I call,
> for lack of knowledge, transference of stimuli.
>
> Mike Geary
> uncomfortably serious
> in Seattle
>

John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
Tel +81-45-314-9324
Fax +81-45-316-4409
email mccreery at gol.com

"Making Symbols is Our Business"