a little more McLuhan (& maybe Pynchon)

[Paul Mackin]

On 8/30/2011 12:31 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Not equipped nor interested in arguing, ala the fools in The Recognitions, all these 'truths".
>
> Will just say, I see WORDS, however i got there via grammar.....
Just guessing but . . . .

I kind of doubt whether one "sees" or "hears" words is fundamental to 
the cognitive process.  It might be largely a matter of habit and 
possibly could be trained away if such seemed desirable.  Being acutely 
conscious of the symbol manipulation going on inside one's head could be 
advantageous sometimes, in that one will be more instantaneously 
prepared for a written of verbal response.  It's like keeping your foot 
perpetually poised over the car's brake pedal so as to always be super 
prepared to stop if need be.  Seeing and hearing words as you read 
conceivably might reduce your reading speed.  I'm guessing that seeing 
or hearing is not essential to memory storage. Being TOO consciously 
aware of the words would be an inefficiency.

The really knotty problem for cognitive scientists, robot designer, and 
neurologists is how symbols are connected to what they stand for in the 
world.  It's called "the symbol grounding problem."

Post-structuralists don't have to worry about such things.  Symbols just 
relate to other symbols.

P



> And McLuhan sees positives and negatives in his vision of our human senses in history.
> He just says he sees patterns and results within a certain vision.
>
> Remember, he speaks of all the (positive) results of The Electric Age. (I'm quoted on light, for example)
>
> 'Global village" was a new thought and was a largely positive result in the world.
>
>   
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: alice wellintown<alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l<pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Cc:
> Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 11:34 AM
> Subject: Re: a little more McLuhan (&  maybe Pynchon)
>
> I think McLuhan would say that, even on a gray scale, black&  white
>> are qualitatively different......like literate vs. pre-literate even on a gray scale
> He would say this.
>
>
>> And young 'uns learn most languages as abstract marks on a page. English say.....
> This is false. First, humans don't learn language but are born with
> language. Second, McLuhan's poor understanding of language allows him
> to expand the qualitative differences, grey or black or whatever, to
> an absurd and foolish conclusion about the impact of writing and
> reading on human culture and the human mind. Again, this is the stuff
> that makes Plato or McLuhan or Pynchon fun to read, makes the wise
> poets and priests, philosopher kings, but much of what they lecture on
> is utter nonsense.
>
>> The literate vs. pre-literate distinction is in anthropologists' work and is still used to the present....
> Like all technologies, printing brought positives and negatives.
> Surely there are things that pre-literate cultures have kept or
> developed that literate cultures have lost or neglected. We would all
> be better runners if we hadn't abandoned the cave and invented the
> wheel. But the health that would come with our endurance would not
> give us longer or better lives. We would die quite young.
>
>
>> No one has (yet) answered whether they think mostly in words....for example,
>> I watch TV....I SEE the words they are speaking...mostly...not every, I'm sure....
> We think in grammar mot words.
>
>> What would it be like if I didn't? My grandson, not yet three hears lots of words,
>> speaks well within his limits yet..............cannot read yet....................
> He thinks in grammar too. His lexicon is still small but he knows more
> language than all the books in the world.
>
>> What is that like psychically? Is that part of the reason his speech finds more
>> visual analogies, it seems?....I would say Yes......................
> We take short cuts he can't yet take because he doesn't have them at hand.
>
>