http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/ weblog en-us Copyright 2007 Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:52:46 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The Emperor's New Mind, a book I discovered through the class book review assignment and which I expect to use in my culminating essay. It has been a great class, with a great group of classmates, and I look forward to running into you in writing if not in person. Goodbye, and success! (If you really know what you're doing, luck still helps but it's less necessary.)]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/final_project_and_farewell.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/final_project_and_farewell.html Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:52:46 -0500 I think the next topic I would like to read up on is the development of language. I know this has been studied extensively, from both the perspective of speech therapy and that of the function of the brain's speech centers, but I don't know whether it has been examined as an indication of the development of consciousness. I thought of this while listening to my 3 1/2 year old grandson chattering on about what "Yossi" wants and what "Yossi" is doing. It's not that he's lost the ability to use pronouns; he also chatters about what "I want" and what "I do." I think that when he refers to himself in the third person he is asserting his role as an actor in the world, that his "I" is not only a point of view from which he considers the rest of the world but is, simultaneously, a boy called Yossi who eats and plays and takes part in the community. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/developing_consciousness.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/developing_consciousness.html Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:59:00 -0500 When my then 4-year-old grandson had finished a year of nursery school with less than satisfactory results--the most serious behavior reported being that he would pick up one of the nursery chairs and hold it upside down over his head, which the teacher saw as a threat to hit someone with it; when we asked him about it at home, he said he was pretending it was a hat--his parents were called to a conference at which an outside "expert" recommended that he be sent to a specific school for "autistic" children, the majority of whom could be mainstreamed after a year. Aside from the stigma that would be ever after attached to the child, I could only think that, if the majority of these "autistic" children could be mainstreamed after a year in a special school, the majority were probably misdiagnosed. His parents refused, and found a more helpful preschool, and he is now in first grade in a yeshiva that provides various forms of therapy, including psychological and occupational, and will probably be ready for a mainstream yeshiva by third grade. His obvious problem is having trouble focusing and listening to instructions; an outside evaluation said he might be developing ADHD. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/response_to_chaya_gopins_entry.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/response_to_chaya_gopins_entry.html Sun, 02 Dec 2007 06:09:40 -0500 Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, is a powerful and disturbing science fiction novel about the social and emotional development of a group of clones being raised as a source of spare vital organs. There, I've used the "s" term, and those of you who never read science fiction because you know how much you dislike it--And how do you know that if you never read it?--can go on questioning whether science fiction can actually be literature or literature be science fiction. Of course you know what science fiction is, while hardly two of us who take the stuff seriously--as fans, readers, and writers--can agree on a definition. Besides the basic situation, and the way the clones are raised to accept their fate simply as what they were created for, the book contains discussions of individual and group memory, memories retained and suppressed, and the simultaneous knowing and ignoring of social facts. So reading it I was at once horrified by the underlying situation, admiring the author's craft, and caught up in the narrative of the characters' lives.]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/on_reading_never_let_me_go.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/12/on_reading_never_let_me_go.html Sun, 02 Dec 2007 05:42:44 -0500 In "A Cognitive Account of Aesthetics," Francis Steen presents an intriguing and plausible theory of the development of aesthetic appreciation as part of the process that allows human beings to have a well functioning perceptual system. He starts by denying the idea that aesthetics has its evolutionary justification as a means of identifying attractive habitats and potential mates. The absurdity of the first is easily seen in the aesthetic attractiveness of some terribly inhospitable landscapes, such as colorful rock formations in the desert. However, he goes on not only to insist on the aesthetic appetite serving as a goal in itself, which I find hard to dispute, but to give it a specific function in "calibrating the embedded brain's perceptual systems. Here I think he makes a good case, but from a philosophical rather than a physiological standpoint. In the early days of psychology, this would have been quite sufficient, but plausible as his arguments are I can't see them as unquestionably convincing; I would like to see more in the way of functioning brain scans to demonstrate just where there is activity during aesthetic experience and how it relates to later perceptual experiences. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/steens_theory_of_aesthetics.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/steens_theory_of_aesthetics.html Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:14:25 -0500 I am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter, enjoying it immensely, and hoping to post an entry on it when I'm finished. However, after reading some pages in the middle of the night, I found myself with an insight into reading interesting nonfiction that I'd like to share. As I went back to bed I thought about that reading session and realized that I had been reading the book rather the way I read a novel, assuming that I can track the main points of the plot without any special mental note-taking, and this was not the way I had read Damasio or Zunshine, whose books I read almost like math texts, trying to master the concepts before going on. And I think the way I am reading now is actually better, certainly more fun, but possibly more successful as well. I remembered way back to my undergrad course in literary criticism, when I was trying to completely understand and almost internalize the first essay in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, and failing. But philosophy isn't math, and even--or especially--the most profound ideas may leave room for disagreement, or mental dialog, even by a 20-year-old undergraduate. So getting the gist of an argument may be quite enough.]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/half_a_strange_loop.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/half_a_strange_loop.html Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:48:36 -0500 One of my husband's puns: Q: Why don't they charge for each individual item taken at a smorgasbord? A: Because there's no accounting for tastes. I've learned the hard way that things too small to be significant in themselves can add up. I suppose most dieters learn this, but I learned it when I was online, commenting on blogs, and my daughter-in-law asked me to come upstairs for something. I asked if I could have five minutes, hoping to finish the comment I was then in the middle of. She said fine. I could have saved it and logged off, or copied it out or simply tried to remember it and logged off, but because I wasn't rushed I finished it. And another. And another. And by then half an hour had gone by, but I hadn't felt it, because each individual item was too short to notice. So now when I don't want to stop in the middle of a very short task, I'll try to take a few seconds to determine where I will stop and try to keep it in mind when I get there. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/the_smorgasbord_paradigm.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/the_smorgasbord_paradigm.html Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:35:00 -0500 Wicked, and afterwards I had been thinking about musicals in general and how the plot requirements were different than for a book. In my dream I was watching a musical based on the general idea of "Thomas the Rhymer": a mortal man is captured by the fairy queen and forced to serve her until either (1) rescued by his own true love, or (2) all the people he had known have died of old age, while he is essentially unchanged. In the musical in my dream, the man is singing to his captor that he has given her his heart, as: "Not a gift but a loan, To hold in your keeping, For as long as I'm sleeping, Till I find my way home." As a member of the audience, I was carried away with sympathy for the man and also admiration for his spirit and determination not to give in entirely, but to remember who he is and know that he's held in a sleeping state, from which he will try, if at all possible, to escape. Then on waking I was struck by the fact that I had composed a verse of a musical in my sleep, and I wanted to resume the dream and see if I could come up wi]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/dream_as_source_of_fantasy_sto.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/dream_as_source_of_fantasy_sto.html Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:08:45 -0500 Many years ago (more than twelve, less than 26), I had an experience that led to an altered state of consciousness, as reported in a previous blog entry ("A Different State of Consciousness"). Ever since then I have been hoping to repeat the experience. Some aspects would be very difficult to recreate, such as the panhandler's request for a very specific amount of money (I think $13 and some change) for railroad fare to someplace in Connecticut where he had an acting job waiting, which I think opened me up to a state of intentional suspension of disbelief. However, the following activity, wandering through mostly unfamiliar streets while keeping as open as possible to whatever came seemed reproducible, and I hoped to achieve that. I had been warned, however, by friends who were more familiar with questions of different mental states, that such an attempt, if successful, could result in serious disorientation, such that I shouldn't attempt it alone, so I decided to ask a friend to accompany me as a "monitor." http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/doing_the_line_well_not_quite.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/doing_the_line_well_not_quite.html Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:54:02 -0500 For my final project, I plan to turn "To Be an Emulator" into a complete SF story, incorporating some of the suggestions from the class workshop. In it I hope to explore further the question of the extent to which a person can seem to emulate another's thoughts and feelings based on that other's visible behavior. I expect to have a complete draft by Wednesday, November 21, which I will then be able to print out, get copied, and bring to a genre workshop in New Jersey on Sunday, November 25, after which I will probably do at least one more revision before submitting it for publication. As I have generally advised others who ask me, I will submit it to the SF magazine where I would most like to see it (probably Fantasy & Science Fiction), followed by the next, etc., until I hope to see it accepted somewhere before the end of 2008. http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/final_project_proposal.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/final_project_proposal.html Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:31:00 -0500 Hominids is a science-fictional romance, in both meanings of the word: a tale of adventure and a love story. The main premise of the book is that there exists an alternate universe in which our kind of human became extinct, and Neanderthal man developed a technological civilization, though with different values and a very different culture. An accident involving a quantum computer sends a physicist from their world into ours, where it looks as if he will have to build a new life for himself among people not even of his own species. And here the love story develops, between Ponter, the Neanderthal physicist, and Mary, a homo sapiens geneticist who had been called in to verify his alien DNA. But his partner in his old life repeats the experiment, in order to re-establish contact with our world, and Ponter is able to return home. As this is the first book of a trilogy, the details of the inter-species romance--sex, living arrangements, and the reproductive possibilities--are left to be worked out in the later books. In addition to the awakening of love between Ponter and Mary, there is an unsolved rape, and a Neanderthal murder trial without a body, for a murder that never actually occurred.]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/hominids_review_updated.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/hominids_review_updated.html Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:47:46 -0500 www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=6360.It doesn't relate to the course, but you're all welcome to take a look. (P.S. They don't pay.)]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/a_book_review_but_not_for_the.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/a_book_review_but_not_for_the.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:55:47 -0500 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the obvious: How awful to be trapped like that, and how fortunate I am that I have an intact nervous system! (Especially since the 1991 brain hemorrhage my daughter keeps referring to as my "stroke.") And then there's the worry about how many people diagnosed as in a vegetative state are actually able to think but not communicate? And then my thoughts about people, like my father during the late stages of Parkinson's, who talk and listen but seem to "see" and react to people who aren't there more clearly than those who are, so their communication with their surroundings is obviously faulty.]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/on_reading_the_diving_bell_and.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/on_reading_the_diving_bell_and.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:28:49 -0500 Have you ever had a "memory" that was realistic to the tiniest detail, except for some content that was obviously impossible? I have, but I don't remember the specifics, so I'll make up an example: Having a talk with a close friend with whom I chat regularly, all reasonable, except we were discussing the results of a test that wasn't scheduled till next week. So I assumed it was simply a realistic dream. But how many other memories may I have, genuine memories not of actual experiences but of dreams? http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/false_memory_only_a_dream.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/11/false_memory_only_a_dream.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:20:59 -0500 believable lie, the love affair might possibly be better. But I'm more the otherworld type.... The first response I got was enormously supportive; the second, amusing. I think on results I should go rejoin my fairy lover under the hill for another 20 years.]]> http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/10/autobiographical_lies_from_cla.html http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0907N_1599/105/2007/10/autobiographical_lies_from_cla.html Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:35:43 -0500