[Xmca-l] Re: From Thinking to Speech

Wed Apr 24 18:34:02 PDT 2019

Yes, as ever a riveting story, David.

Neuroscience achievements seem to be (1) cataloguing the 
effects of pathology, (2) observing which regions of the 
brain which are active in various circumstances (both of 
which are like studying human psychology with a radio 
telescope from space) and (3) observing and intervening in 
the nerves providing input and output to the brain. And yet 
they remain convinced that as soon as they get the next 
imaging device they will be able to see thoughts. One of 
these people should be kidnapped and forced to read Vygotsky 
for a week before being released. .... not that I really 
believe that would have any effect.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 25/04/2019 7:33 am, Peter Feigenbaum [Staff] wrote:
> David,
>
> Please accept my sincere condolences on the passing of 
> your mother. And thanks so much for sharing the enriching 
> highlights of your mother's scientific and literary 
> history and contributions, as well as your own attempt to 
> get the Guardian to publish her obituary - and a more 
> truthful account of the Ada Lovelace story. What a 
> fascinating patchwork of stories! (Shame on the Guardian!)
>
> I'm also pleased that you found a brilliant way to weave 
> in the news story from the BBC website that appeared today 
> about the brain implants that can 'read' the articulatory 
> signals that lead to speech production. I became very 
> excited when I saw that piece this morning. It didn't 
> occur to me that it served as a verification of LSV's 
> proposal about the layers that 'thinking' passes through 
> on its way to becoming 'speaking'.
>
> Bravo!
>
> It's always a treat to hear from you.
>
> Best wishes,
> Peter
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 4:42 PM David Kellogg 
> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     In the early 1970s, my late mother, who had been one
>     of the very first programmers of a computer that has a
>     compiling language (the ORDVAC at the Naval Research
>     Laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland), begain to hear of
>     Ada Lovelace, sole legitimate daughter of Lord Byron,
>     and supposedly the first programmer of Charles
>     Babbage's "analytical engine" back in the 1840s. There
>     had already been one biography of Ada and the defense
>     department was interested in naming its programming
>     language after her, but my mother thought this would
>     be a good chance to do right by an early female
>     pioneer in a notoriously male field. So she got a
>     contract to write a scientific biography of Ada for
>     MIT Press ("Ada, a Life and a Legacy", 1986).
>
>     But research can baffle your book proposal. My mother
>     soon discovered that Ada struggled with some of the
>     most basic concepts in algebra, and that Babbage, who
>     was obviously ghost-writing her papers, was using the
>     Byron name to make claims he would never be able to
>     sustain (e.g. that the "analytical engine" could do
>     algebra the way computers do today). She tood a deep
>     breath, published anyway, and died almost completely
>     ignored three and a half decades later: Ada Lovelace
>     is still lauded as the world's first computer
>     programmers, and when I sent an obituary of my mother
>     to the Guardian (attached), they rewrote it to
>     downplay my mother's own contribution and play up the
>     contribution of Ada. When I objected they agreed to
>     publish nothing instead, so I am circulating this
>     obituary on xmca partly because I have no other way to
>     publicly commemorate her scientific work.
>
>     One of the many, but more minor, reasons I have for
>     admiring the work of Alex Kozulin is that he has
>     always drawn our attention to the many, minor and not
>     so minor, ways in which Vygotsky's work really WAS
>     confirmed by subsequent research even though it formed
>     no part of it because of the geopolitical isolation of
>     the USSR. For example, in "Vygotsky's Psychology: A
>     Biography of Ideas", Kozulin shows how Vygotsky not
>     only foresaw the outcome of the ape language debate
>     but predicted how it would be resolved. He also
>     shows how the dispute with Piaget over egocentric
>     speech was resolved decisively in Vygotsky's favor.
>
>     Here's another, minor, example. In Chapter Seven of
>     Thinking and Speech LSV made the apparently
>     unverifiable claims that feeling (the
>     affective-volitional impulse to speak), thinking, and
>     inner speech are separable "planes" of verbal thought.
>     He made these claims partly on the basis
>     of introspection and partly on the basis of
>     ontogenetic data, but also on the basis of verbal art
>     (Uspensky, Stanislavsky, and of course that wonderful
>     passage of Anna Karenina where Constantin and Kitty
>     seem to share inner speech through the children's game
>     of "Secretary"). The far flung nature of his argument
>     made it easy to ignore. But if Vygotsky is correct,
>     then there is no ready-made "thought" which can be
>     picked up by brain scans and synthesized into speech:
>     the only way we could synthesize fully developed
>     speech in speech impaired individuals would be to
>     intercept the actual signals sent to the articulators.
>
>     Take a look at this.
>
>     https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48037592
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bbc.com_news_health-2D48037592&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=mi0Dd6Y83ft2vUinCqIKA4fSXVfJ2TnOpAn6WUCq82A&s=X6QZB1LH_qIC7VSANCbNa74QiX-j15WUR11SUWAQG4k&e=>
>
>     Sometimes the research DOES support the proposal. But
>     sometimes it does take a while.
>
>     David Kellogg
>     Sangmyung University
>
>     New Article:
>     Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without
>     SELF: Vygotsky’s
>     pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s
>     construalism in understanding narratives by
>     Korean children, Language and Education, DOI:
>     10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>     To link to this article:
>     https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__doi.org_10.1080_09500782.2019.1582663&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=mi0Dd6Y83ft2vUinCqIKA4fSXVfJ2TnOpAn6WUCq82A&s=VGO7AnHyIx0sE1T4DAcrbEwdbrG8kTtxIqgYkNfX7bM&e=>
>
>     Some e-prints available at:
>     https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.tandfonline.com_eprint_KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK_full-3Ftarget-3D10.1080_09500782.2019.1582663&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=mi0Dd6Y83ft2vUinCqIKA4fSXVfJ2TnOpAn6WUCq82A&s=AVOd55hUm3avn8GZEKPCNpshyHPB9jGQriQT2-UkLvA&e=>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
> Director,
> Office of Institutional Research 
> <https://www.fordham.edu/info/24303/institutional_research>
> Fordham University
> Thebaud Hall-202
> Bronx, NY 10458
>
> Phone: (718) 817-2243
> Fax: (718) 817-3817
> email: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu 
> <mailto:pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>
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