IGS Discussion Forums: Learning GS Topics: Exploring aspects of E-Prime
Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 12:26 am Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

See: E-Prime: The Spirit and the Letter.

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - 12:26 am Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Milton,

Hakiu poetry?
That was not what was written
in your other post.

Do not think "hakiu";
when you hear contradictions,
think instead "koan".

A Sufi probverb,
one cannot tell someone what
they will not yet hear.


Ralph

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - 01:50 pm Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Milton,

While I was in the Navy, I came up through the ranks. When I became an officer, I didn't quite fit because of my prior enlisted experience; and I also no longer "fit" with the enlisted men - a "stranger" to both ends of this spectrum.

My pilosophy professors had a terrible time trying to mould me after I had already expeienced much of life, including general semantics. I didn't fit here either.

Your "It's not worth a 'judgement,' nor is any other phenomena. I observe and let it be. It can't be explained by the mind." brings to my mind Zen "no-mind" or "just sitting".

I've been known to say, "Make like a duck. Let the water run off your back, dump the crap, waggle your tail, and waddle on to your next interest."

Regards,
Ralph

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Monday, July 30, 2007 - 10:40 am Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Hi Michael,

You might find my E-Prime: The Spirit and the Letter of possible interest. I presume you have already read it - or a "trashed by the editor" version.

With respect to Action terminates thought, you might find my Think-Feel and Know-Act of possible interest.

I did like Heinlin's "Starship Troopers" (in both media).

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - 01:05 am Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

I surmise and claim that languaging begins with the imperative. We dominate and command with the imperative form. Submissives reverse the down-stroke of command to produce the up-stroke of the question.

Some studies have show birds "growl" and "whine", and I claim this binary frequency distinction forms the basics of the avoid and approach behavior, as well as a fundamental binary distinction for language. We growl in domination and whine in submission, and these become commands and questions - the imperative and the interrogative. How does the dominant respond to the submissive question? With a softer command (to self) that becomes the basis of the declarative.

Long, long ago...
Command: Give food!
Question: Give food?
Permissive: Give food.

Behind every question to nature lies the potential dominator waiting to exercise a command to satisfy some desire.

Commands instruct how to call something - give names.
Questions ask for the issuance of a command, and the questioned responds with a softer command.

[This] "Spear"!
Later;
What ["this"]?
and.
[This] "Spear".

In naming, the permissive becomes the declarative.

Now-a-days, with "refined" grammar, we say, "This is a spear."

Get pointed rock!
Get long stick!
Split stick end!
Insert rock!
Make rock-pointed-stick!
This spear.
Make spear!
Spear has rock.
Spear has stick.
What spear?
Spear rock-pointed-stick.

I surmise and assert that, prior to the use of a cupola, language identity and identification arise implicitly in the "soft" command response to a submissive question of a dominant.

The making of a two-part tool informs metaphorically "predication".

Notice that many languages have case endings that indicate the fuction and when used as such obviate the need for a cupola. Russian can serve as an example. My wife, a native Russian speaker, still struggles with, and occasionally forgets to include, the mandatory English cupola that Russian frequently does without. (Russian also does without "articles").

Russian: Kot doma. <-> English: The cat is home.

"Identification" takes place in the brain, and no amount of language manipulation can prevent it, as, in the natural order of abstraction, the identification takes place neurologically - prior to verbal levels. We can apply a venier of concealing language structure at verbal levels, but that will hide rather than eliminate the identification.

I can say more, but I won't here now.

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - 07:53 am Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Bob Pula, long term Institute instructor and sometime director of the institute expressed a concern that became a significant worry for him. "What would the happen if a person became totally non-identifying?" Bob began to see non-identification in an informed light that suggested to him, and I understand it, achieving complete non-identification would result it the loss of any ability to understand or communicate. Carry the Zen "no-mind" or "just sitting" state notion to its extreme - no talking, no responding to the environment, no "thoughts", no "semantic reactions", and you just might get some picture of achieving a state of complete non-identification.

Our brains process stimuli by abstracting characteristics; in subsquent abstractings the neural ciruits that represented an abstraction re-activate, allowing us to "recognize" the current abstraction as a repetition of the prior circumstances, and in doing so neurologically "identify" the current abstraction as the prior abstraction, thus allowing us to either repeat what we did before, in case we experienced reward or benefit, or try something different, in case we experienced pain, loss, or a lack of reward. Because we believe, in our model, that the current stimulus (event2) differed from the previous stimulus (event1), our neurological process that activate (again) constitute "identification" of the current and prior object and project that perception or cognition onto the events. In simple cases we recognizes our common objects, and more generally we recognize "classes" of objects, such as "apples" and associations, such as "good to eat".

If we cannot perform such simple identifications, we cannot learn; we cannot communicate, and we cannot respond effectively to our environment. In short, "identification" forms the basis of map-making that allows us and lower animals to navigate, learn, and survive.

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - 08:45 am Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Vilmart,
We have to take responsibility for our judgement; we judge something as "good" or "bad", depending upon what subsequently happens to us. This happens at neurological and unconscious levels with respect to survival evolution as well as at sub-conscious culturally programmed levels and at cognitive conscious rational (and irrational) evaluation using both valid and invalid (unsane) logic. We can teach about validity and logic for the conscious part. We can teach consciousness of abstracting and organismic self-awareness to assist with the subconscious part, and we can conduct scientific studies to extract correlations that "inform" or hypothetically "map" or model the evolutionary part.

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - 07:11 am Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Regarding Nora's post of http://snipurl.com/1p06c, I just posted an item in Research related to [general semantics] that shows that when one is looking for some thing or characteristic, the visual system gets "primed" to more quickly recognize what is searched for. The cited NY Times article seems corroborative in that an exposure to something apparently neutral holds subconscious semantic reactions that "prime" subsequent cognitive operations. I immediately correlated these effects with Jeff Hawkins's On Intelligence and especially Donald Loritz's How the Brain Evolved Language [Adaptive Resonance - 74-78]. Like when singing to the piano with the loud pedal depressed the piano sings on when one stops, input that stimulates neural activity "spreads" through neural connections previously activated together. Entering part of a stimulus results in the brain responding whith the "whole" or "a greater" pattern in which the responding neurons to the stimulus takes part.

It seems to me that, because of ubiquitous general activity and associations, any preceeding activity, such as those associated with "cold coffee" or "hot coffee" (including associations with "cold", "hot", and "coffee") will have different associated activations, and those will contribute to the subsequent answers given in any questioning. Back-tracing in learning can go back quite a ways, retracing the nurological activity, before the backtrace dissipates, and a reward event strengthens the connections in the backtrace. ("Learning" is never turned "off".)

E-prime has as a goal the "elimination" of "identity" in language use, and I have said that "identification" takes place prior to verbalization. See my The Neurological Basis of Identity for an illustration related to general sematics terms. The process illustrated in that article can be instantiated at virtually any level of abstraction prior to verbalization.

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - 09:08 pm Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

I read about birds who store upwards of 20,000 seeds each year, and unerringly return to get the seeds later. In that source I read that some of the birds have been observed noticing that other birds watched them hiding the seeds, and that some of these birds later came back and moved the seed that it had been observed hiding, moved it to another location.

The report hypthosized that the bird must be able to cognize that the other bird "understood" what this bird was doing, and more over the hiding bird had to attribute to the watching bird a motive of stealing the seed, not just now, but that the bird would plan to steal the seed at a future date when the bird doing the hiding was no longer around. Now that's a LOT of high level abstracting going on. It's way past simple identification. The bird has to know that it is being watched, that the other bird "knows" what it is doing, that both the other bird and itself have the capacity to plan ahead in time, as well as to attribute a territoriality transgression motive to the other bird, as well as more.

"That guy is going to come back and steal my seed. I'll come back later, when he isn't watching, and move the seed. Then my seed will be safe for me later." A time-binding amount of time later ... "Ok, he's not around to watch me. I'll move the seed now. Then it will be safe for me later."

The birds obviousy don't have English, but the structures alluded to in the preceeding must be differentiated and capable of action in the birds observed.

That's a lot of abstracting going on.
The bird has a map of seed locations.
The bird has a meta-map of other birds spying on his map.
The bird has consciousness of the other birds consciousness of seed maps.
The bird has some consciousness that the other bird can take its stored seed.
The bird has consciousness of this consciousness enought to devise and carry out a plan to prevent the theft.

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Thursday, August 2, 2007 - 12:30 pm Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Michael,
(delayed post)
Don't let one person's disinclination to take advantage of the time-binding record (aka "read too much") dissuade you from being as verbose as you deem useful, as there are other readers here that think "verbosity", in many cases, helps reduce ambiguity in communication.

On another matter, I'm pleased to note your ability to relate verbal and neurological brain structure.