Alex;
Sorry if I misrepresent you, you mentioned that some think that the
> evolution of the throat allowed for evolution of intellectual
> abilities. I thought you were referencing something like the 'speech
> modules' within the motor theory of speech perception.
No, my claim is subtly different. I think our vocal features allowed for
ever more detailed communication which in turn led to a need for more
detailed symbol processing, etc. Below and elsewhere you talk about thoughts
as 3d shapes , I don't think we would be as good at processing 3d shapes if
we weren't fairly decent at physically moving in -and responding to- 3d
space. If we couldn't climb and look up, for example, I'd expect our
thoughts would be a lot more 2d, but that's obviously pure speculation.
No it was tying such theories to the vocal tract that I was objecting to.
>
Ah, I see. I didn't mean there was a physical "linguisic area" of the brain
that is literally linked to (and caused into being by) the vocal tract, but
I do mean to say that what we are relatively good at is strongly linked to
the physical possibilities of our body as well as the kind of situation we
run into (or at least ran into historically).
> Yes agreed but there is something funny going on here. Are symbols
> more or less abstract than a Mondriaan painting?
>
I think I'll be out in the garden mediating on this Koan :-).
So one possibility is that we think in symbols, and that the
> programming language code is a translation of mentalese to ChucK (or
> whatever), where mentalese is some internal human language to which we
> have no direct conscious access. The translation is never perfect,
> but can be successful to a high degree.
>
Yes, absolutely. I do think that for a while we were talking about two
different things. You were talking about the mental representation of
concepts while I was talking about concepts in a more "platonic" sense, as
though they actually existed. I think it's clear that quite a bit of
translating is going on. German refers to "reading" or "presenting" a poem
as "interpreting" it. Perhaps we should use a similar word in English for
things like Livecoding of transcribing previously existing feelings into a
poem. In a way the regular perspective seems almost biblical in that
creation is almost equated to "the word" becoming "flesh". On the other
hand; when we get a updated version of whatever formal language we write in
this may well change our thinking and the way we approach concepts.
>
> Another possibility is that you after learning the ChucK language, you
> think in it, and the code is a transcription of that process.
>
Yes, clearly. Aside from anything else that is going on learning ChucK
affected the way I think about sound and music. I consider that one of the
main benefits.
>
> A third possibility is that we think in terms of a geometry in a
> perceived world of movements in spaces, that symbols are just
> signposts within that world and language falls out of movements
> between learned arrangements of signposts. We can construct ChucK
> sourcecode using such movements which then generate music which we
> then perceive in terms of movements and shapes in spaces, which the
> arrangement of signposts somehow accords with. The concepts are
> natively the shapes in the spaces rather than the symbolic signposts
> though.
>
> I feel a bit stupid suggesting this wacky third possibility but I
> think there could be some truth in it. I've been tempted to start
> drawing ascii boxes to make my point clear but no-one ever replies to
> a post with ascii boxes in it.
>
Maybe not ascii boxes (though I personally would applaud them!) but I have
seen articles on synthesis that explain a given synth to work like
"oscillator(s) => filter => adsr => output". That is quite close to both
your boxes and to code that would compile in ChucK. I think there is
certainly something to your theory; right now I illustrate it in writing but
when we would be talking in person I might be drawing diagrams in the air.
These diagrams might make the subject matter of our conversation more clear
to both of us. However; I don't feel this need discount the linguistic
angle, both might be going on at the same time. I don't think either really
decreases the usefulness of refering to "concepts" in a more Platonic manner
either.
To the credit of your primary angle here; I wrote before about my own work
in live sequencing. I attribute most of the power of the system I use to
using a spatial (2d) analogy for the musical timeline and arranging controls
based on that principle. For me this made the material much easier to
manipulate in a way that is both intuitive and fast.
I might go as far as theorising your "3d mental concepts" relate well to the
3d aspects to muscle memory in execution.
Livecoding -outwardly- does seem primarily aimed at turning "Platonic
concepts" into sounds through linguistic means, ignoring this angle while I
certainly don't find my ideas spatially related to the location of keys on
the keyboard. This might be different if we'd come up with a language where
each key is linked to a single command. This may be a big hurdle to
livecoding as Evan pointed out when refering to "livecoding relative to
human experience"; emotially charged concepts like "home", "fighting",
"making love", even "posession" and "loss" all have strong spatial aspects
to them.
Perhaps this is at the core of the provocative aspects to the idea of
livecoding, though I don't see why this is much different from either love
letters or hate-mail. There may yet be a fundamental need for natural
languages to be ambiguous for them to be expressinve in these realms, likely
in combination with us having so much more experience in dealing with
natural languages. Still; that's all theorisingand I don't think there is a
clear reason *why* the loveletter is considered "romantic" as far as social
gestures go) while Livecoding is deemed "accedemic" (as compared to other
ways of performing).
>
> The way I think that I think about a concept like 1:5 is of spatial
> relationship rather than language. Different sized rulers lining up,
> different sized cogs etc.
>
Yes, this does seem quite natural.
>
> We don't yet have a conclusive single idea of what a concept is (how
> it is learned and represented) apart from "a mental representation of
> a class of things", but once we do I don't see why it can't be
> expressed in either a natural or formal language. It'll just be
> another human process to observe and describe.
>
I agree, but I have a issue with the cognitive science angle here. If we
take a "concept" to be it's mental representation, because we no longer
believe in a platonic realm where we actually find the concept of "1" as
well as things like "weight", we have to face that we are taking a concept
to be something like "a set of examples" while we believe we can express it
by giving one of those or defining the set formally in language. This seems
too circular to me to be meaningful, explanatory or predictive to me.
Language philosophy tends to run into problems once we start talking about
language, even when it may do ok when considering talk about anything else.
Similarly cognitive science seems to have a hard time with dealing with
thinking about thought. Words like "meaning" and "concept" are very
self-referential yet we don't really create a new language to talk about
English nor do we seem to need a extra area of the brain dedicated to
thinking about thought. We seem to be doing fine with circular definitions,
as long as we don't wonder what we are doing.
>
> > I am still maintaining
> > that I hold that descriptions of musical phenomena in code are often
> "more
> > conceptual" than any particular example of them in played or recorded
> music
> > though.
>
> Ok I agree, it could definitely be closer to a concept in terms of
> levels of abstraction, and may even simulate the concept very
> accurately.
>
Indeed. Well, I hold that to be true while admitting the Dungeons & Dragons
rulebooks do a exellent job at simulating dragons to extreme accuracy as
well.
>
> > As a side note; English has the expression "arguing semantics" which is
> > generally used to mean arguing about trivial matters. I still find that
> very
> > odd as I feel attempting to agree on semantics is quite fundamental to
> > agreeing in any spoken or written conversation.
>
> Yes!
>
I'm happy with that perspective, even when it doesn't ever seem to do much
good by the time people start pointing out one is "arguing semantics" :-).
Cheers,
Kas.
Received on Fri Jul 24 2009 - 17:17:17 BST