Week 8--Making our Own Observations

The more I work on my experiment, which is about how music affects us, and the more I think about tacit knowledge in general, the more I realize how amazing our bodies are. We have these wonderful things that connect us to the world called senses and they can interpret different light waves as the oranges and purples of a sunset, which can in turn spark thoughts such as "I'm so happy to be here at Bryn Mawr looking at this gorgeous sunset." These senses interpret different waves as music, which can do things to our emotions and our bodies that we don't understand but make us feel good or sad or important or part of something. Then we also have language, which lets me share this with you. (And then the internet, which lets me share this with THE WORLD!)

 In short, our bodies are in cahoots with the world not only to make our lives rich with experience but also to enable us to share ideas effectively and thereby make our lives rich with others' experiences.

On Tuesday of last week th two sections of our class convened for the first time to discuss the wonders of the unconscious. Professor Grobstein conducted most of the class and led us through the nuances of the uncounscious by equating it to vision. We, as a group, tested the ability of our unconscious minds in collaboration with our eyes and discovered fantasic ability of the unconscious to create what we may be lacking with the help of our inherent tacit knowledge.

Then, we moved onto the example of the relationship between optical illusions and the unconscious mind by calling attention to how said "illusions" are not so much illusions as they are tools that can help us understand our unconscious perceptions of things. Paul punctuated this point by saying that "What you see is NEVER what's there. It's only a reasonable interpretation from your unconscious."

 The essence of that session resided in the knowledge that the unconscious underlies all that we see and that it is yet still revisable.

Thursday brought about a long and involved discussion about language in which we strived to determine why language exists, what makes a language, how it develops, and what are the aspects of it.

What was perhaps most vital to our studies thus far was our decision that language is an "infinitely generative set of rules in the unconscious" that allows us to better interact with our environment.

     Do we need words for things before you can conceive of them? I say, if not yes, that it is helpful. Only in articulating things with your consciousness do you learn. You only have a fuzzy idea of what a concept is until you have to explain it and justify yourself. This is why teachers learn so much, and in my experience I feel I only learn if I am held accountable for something by making and presenting my own account. And having a greater vocabulary means that you are better able to express yourself due to the subtle associations of each word. I found it interesting that language is an instinct. This means that grammar structures are similar and can be created by children even out of pidgin languages. It brings up questions for me about how the brain and computers work. I am starting to wonder how these things store information and how the brain can have built in a program for developing syntax. How can it be innate? How does the brain work? How is it organized? I’m curious now.

The Pinker made me wonder how languages came to be different among different groups of people. Just as children sometimes make up words that become incorporated into their families’ vocabulary, could people in a group have each made up their own words (out of what? Instinct?), which gradually became learned and shared by others, and a language developed out of the contributions of others and the instinct to create a grammar structure as well?

Language for me is either fluent or stuck. I can get bogged down in words and not be processing them. The words don’t come, yet I feel I can’t think any other way. The words don’t mean anything. Other times, like when I am bringing together ideas in writing, or when I am spontaneously drawing on my own thoughts and expressing myself, the words come fluently. Sometimes the words come in a certain arrangement. I think there is a link between the arrangement and the precise impression that the sentence strikes in me. Thus my brain and the flow of language to get the meaning out are linked. So I can see that language is an instinct. I think it’s kind of like a process that the brain does to allow thoughts to flow.

For my project, I will be investigating optical illusions and the eye’s blind spot. The blind spot is an area from which your brain gets no visual input, but your brain makes up something to go there. I hope to investigating questions such as How can your brain see things that aren’t there? How does it interpret a picture? How does seeing an ambiguous picture reveal how the brain operates all the time? This will perhaps eventually lead to questions of what the relationship of the external world and your brain is.  

If the brain is a government building, thought itself is one of those top-secret rooms. Words are the secretaries and messengers for that top-secret office, and they may not know what goes on in there, but whatever Thought wants the rest of us to know, Words have the responsibility of exposing.

But then again, sometimes the Thought Office doesn't want anybody else to know what's happening inside, and the Words wait outside the locked door waiting for a piece of paper to pop out of a mail slot or something like that.

To further the metaphor, one's native language comprises the Words that have access to the top-secret Thought Office. When you learn a foreign language, the Thought Office must go through all sorts of bureaucracy to convey any sort of information to the world, and that slows you down, as bureaucracy will.

Today I went to Spanish Table immediately after class and experienced what happens when these linguistic bureaucrats cross paths.  The very clumsy Hebrew words kept colliding with the Spanish ones, which were going about their own business (though still didn't quite know their way), and there was quite a mess.  So when you let untrained government workers run around loose, they run into things.

At first, I was simply lost for ideas in my experiment. My original paper was actually my ideas on what exactly the differences were between the conscious and the unconscious. But I think making a guideline of sorts for my expecting experiment was an important step for me. There are the usual distinctions in how the two (or more) parts of our mind work. We know it and we don't know it, simple as that, right? I feel that there is a part of us that overlaps these boundaries into a regioin that were unsure of.

Being so vacant for ideas for an experiment, the readings were certainly helpful. Why not use words? They are the building blocks for development, so why not allow words to guide me to the unconscious? The experiment that I want to conduct is a mixture between word association and generalization. I will put several item in front of people and they have to tell me what it is. Simple enough! Then I will ask them to say the first word that comes to their mind when they see another set of objects. The last part of the project I plan to ask them to describe the object to me in three words. In this way I will be getting the conscious forethought contrasted with the unconscious. I will also be studying how words are used in society by what words they tend to use to call and describe the objects.

I have decided that my research needs another round of experimentation before I can accurately state the topic of my paper. My experiment thus far has revolved around the presentation of dream imagery in the waking-life, and whether or not those metaphors would still be comprehensible. The next stage will probably test the metaphors that did particularly well against those that did poorly in some other fashion. I have been thinking of using both in an imagist poem and seeing which one is responded best to, and why. If I decide against it, I will instead be remaking my survey to approach my metaphors in a way that doesn’t just include a 50/50 choice.

I really enjoyed the Thought and Word reading. The evolution of words isn’t a new concept to me, but how it affects our speech was. I began to listen more closely to my own conversations, and heard that my roommate and I are always using “predicate conversations”.

I also thought about how I might translate this new knowledge into a study of foreign language. When I make flashcards, and go through them, I’ve been picturing objects in my head rather than just learning English translation. I’ve realized now that this has been helping me more than I thought…

I remember learning about Piaget's studies in psychology class and being fascinated with the whole process of language aquisition.  I especially find the it amazing that a person can be bilingual, trilingual etc. because of all the intricacies involved in language.

On the subject of the paper due very soon, I had taken notes on many varieties of unconscious behaavior, so I think that I will isolate my paper to cover different unconscious movements we have throughout the day.  I noticed in myself that there is a correlation between the amount of weird unconscious movement (e.g. leg twitching) and my level of involvement in an activity.  for example, I discovered that if I was engaged in an "active type" activity such as reading outloud or an art project, i was less likely to do any odd unconscious movements.  I'll probably have to interview and observe my friends a little bit as well in order to come up with more concrete conclusions. 

On a completely random note, word association if one of the most interesting unconscious type things ever.  A friend of mine decided that the word "pineapple" reminded her of "cheese". Hmmm.

Ooh I just loved this reading. The second one by Pinker- not the first so much (a little too dense for me I have to say).

 I feel that pinker has a valid point but I don't feel that he has entirely explained himself- at least not to my liking.

 I find his explanation on language aquisition a little too simplistic. He spoke about children CREATING language. I wouldn't disagree with him on this one- but I find it hard to believe that adults play no role in language learning. What about children that are raised by creatures OTHER than humans. I know this may be a tenuous argument since there are clearly not a large amount of wolf children out there- but one of the problems these children appear to face is that they have no language. Whatsoever. So, if children CREATE language- how is it that these 'wolf-children' never learned to speak?

I was also intrigued by Pinkers discussion on deaf children. I was wondering  - what does a deaf child 'hear' when they read? I know that unless I have heard a word pronounced outloud I will often misread it to myself. (I embarrassed myself particularly with the word 'grotesque'). Do deaf children even have a voice in their heads? If so what does it 'sound' like?

Also- Professor Grobstein. I thought about our meeting the other day and I think you're wrong. People DO want sadness- well maybe not in a conscious way. I think most people feel that extreme emotions are better than purgatorial ones. Without sadness no one would ever be happy.

 “I have forgotten the word I intended to say, and my thought, unembodied, returns to the realm of the shadows.”

As I read these articles, one particular thought kept popping into my head. In my French class currently, we have evening sessions with a TA where we do a lot of speaking, and repeating, and conjugating of verbs. During the sessions, my TA, Brittany, will often say a sentence (in French) and we have change something around and then repeat the sentence back to her. After class many people voiced the problems they were having with the exercise.  I said I personally was having trouble because it was hard balancing comprehending the sentence, changing the sentence, and then repeating it back to her. I asked her if she could simply write the original sentence on the board instead of just verbally saying it, but she insisted that the Professor wanted in to be done only verbally. I thought of this situation because it made me realize the immense connection between thought and language. The idea that when Brittany said something to me verbally, I had to think so much about the words I was looking for that I completely forgot what the actual sentence was, seemed like a great parallel to this article. I think it is especially interesting that I noticed this in a class where I am not fluent in the language and so, of course, it actually takes a lot of effort to think about what I am going to say. My first reaction after writing this past sentence was then to say I have no trouble speaking English and how it’s interesting that I do have trouble speaking French. But then it dawned upon me: how many times have I said, “I totally forgot what I was going to say” or "I'm having trouble finding the words"? Do I really just know what to say, or do I register it, perhaps in my unconscious, and so I am not aware that I am indeed registering it? What is it that makes me suddenly aware that I am at a loss for words? Has my unconscious, who’s been hard at work preparing my speeches for me, suddenly merged into my conscious brain, which then throws me off guard? Some food for thought…

So for my paper I have decided to settle down and work with body language.  I had originally thought of doing something else, but when it came down to actually writing a paper, I realized it would be easier to watch body language.  I was at a social this weekend and I was able to monitor peoples movements and their actions.  Ontop of the scocial I will also be monitoring my roommates, which they dont know about yet lol.  I already have quite a lot of information about my roommates and it is so interesting to actually write down and see on paper what they actually do that is so common to your/their every day life. 

On to the reading, I have the same experience as cartartian with the little words I used to use a a kid, as Piaget describes in the secon reading.   These moments in life immediatly popped into my head as I was reading.  When I was little I used to say "Psgetti" instead of spaghetti and "peat" instead of seat.  My dad said that my mom never corrected my grammer until one day in preschool for parent teacher conferences, my teahcer told my mom that she was concerned because I was saying certain words incorrectly.  My mom finally confessed that she knew I was saying them wroing but she didnt want to fix them becasue they sounded so cute.  I found it very interesting in the second reading that external speach and semantic work in opposite directions, which assumes that their development doesnt coincide, but eventhough this is true they are not interdependent.  The end of the second reading made me open my eyes to the way that we understand speach.  When talking with someone else, we listen and unconsciously take in the words they are saying and fit them to a story.  However, we never see it in this way; "that to understand someone elses speach, it is not suficient to understand his words-we must understand his thought.  But even that is not enough-we must also know its motivation."  You never think of these things when you are talking with someone, they all go on in the unconscious, which is astounding.  How can the unconscious be doing so much, yet we never notice it?