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Re: [xmca] Victor Wooten: Music as a Language

I put the word, know, in parentheses to indicate that we don't know objectively, in an absolute way, but, in a subjective way. We experience "absolute" feelings. The sounds of words create feelings within our emotional bodies, while what we call our objective knowledge is never complete or provable. Feelings are accepted as givens, as uncontested facts. It is a fact that we have feelings: what they mean is open to debate. But while the endless debate goes on, we continue to have our feelings about whatever we have words with which to refer. Our only reliable, consensus sense of "knowing" results from the emotional-feeling effects upon us of the sounds of our spoken words. The feelings are facts, and universal: the search for objective meaning - whatever that is - is ongoing and subject to controversy. So the feelings from the sounds rule by default in the job of informing us of the meaning of things. We make decisions not based on absolute objective knowledge, but rather on what seems to work. Does what seems to work really work? Is our way of life sustainable? Is our sense of what seems to work dependent upon how we are affected by the sounds of our words? Remember, all we really have to go on to grasp the meaning of things is our feelings about them. The more we know about things, the more words we have to bring to bear on decisions involving them. The more words we have to bring to bear, the more feelings we have to consider. Those with larger vocabularies have more complex analytical capabilities. 

   Joseph Gilbert

On Aug 22, 2012, at 1:58 PM, Greg Thompson wrote:


Joseph,
music can't be the only way that we "know" what words mean - otherwise this email would be completely incomprehensible and Chomsky would have been out 
of a job long ago!
But you do point to a very important aspect of language that linguistic anthropologists refer to as "indexicality", and which most Enlightenment thinkers (following Kant, e.g., Chomsky) see as largely irrelevant to the 
meaning of language (what we might say is the polar opposite of your
position, Joseph). So you present an important corrective. We should be 
cautious, though, how far in the other direction we let the pendulum
swing...

sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
[I can still hear the music...]

-greg
On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>wrote:
The sound aspect of words is perceived as we perceive music. That is how we "know" what it means. Music is the universal language. The sounds of our words is the universal language. We are moved, literally, by the sounds of our voices. The sounds of all our vowels and consonants relate to emotions. Our world-view, shared by others within our language group, is established by our experience of this emotional affect of our spoken words coupled with their referential function. When we verbalize, we feel the sounds while thinking of the things. Therefore we associate the feelings of the sounds of our words with the things to which we refer with them. Of course, the feelings are associated with the sounds of the words, not directly with the things. If we did not associate the sounds with the things, we would not have a clue as to the meaning of our world. This misassociation creates our only consensus information as to the meaning of our world. We ORDer our 
world with our wORD.

                Joseph Gilbert

On Aug 21, 2012, at 8:30 PM, Greg Thompson wrote:
and I just remembered where I first heard this - on Radio Lab. Here is 
the

show, listen while you work...

http://www.radiolab.org/2007/sep/24/behaves-so-strangely/

-greg

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 9:13 PM, Greg Thompson <

greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>wrote:



Here is the psychologist's version of speech to song:
http://philomel.com/asa156th/mp3/Sound_Demo_1.mp3

for more, check out:
http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212
Be sure to listen through all of the demos (the first one is the longest 
one), and listen to them in order.

Enjoy...

EVERYBODY SING:

sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
sometimes behave so strangely
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 7:48 PM, Anton Yasnitsky <the_yasya@yahoo.com 
wrote:



Futhermore, language as music --


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBFZsm-dnBs


:)



________________________________
From: Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>;
"LLED7408-2012@listserv. uga. edu (LLED7408-2012@listserv.uga.edu)" < 
LLED7408-2012@listserv.uga.edu>; "dave.smags@live.com" <
dave.smags@live.com>; Jane Farrell <jefarrell@mac.com>; "
star_karashii@hotmail.com" <star_karashii@hotmail.com>; Anne

Smagorinsky

<annesmagorinsky@me.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 6:27:18 PM
Subject: [xmca] Victor Wooten: Music as a Language

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/victor-wooten-music-as-a-language

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--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson





--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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