Rebuttal re S@...'est si bon, oui?

[Guest guest]

[1]Yes, " pluriloquy " would have avoided the barbarism here, but it

would also have been less mellifluous and homologous

with " soliloquy. " And, just as they say that the nicety of the

distinction between echt and ersatz gothic (collegiate pseudogothic)

will fade with the centuries, so the distinction between pure

latinate or hellenine coinages and philistine hybrids has just about

vanished from memory (along with the study of the two classical

tongues themselves). Evolutionary advance though language itself may

have been, when it comes to form rather than content, it's

aesthetically downhill all the way, with ignorance and error always

triumphing -- or at least so it is bound to sound to earlier

passengers, during theirbrief portion of our voyage down the entropic

slope.

 

[2]

....this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the minds of

those who learn to use it; they will not exercise their memories,

but, trusting in external, foreign marks, they will not bring things

to remembrance from within themselves. You have discovered a remedy

not for memory, but for reminding. You offer your students the

appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. They will be hearers of many

things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be

omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome

company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

[Plato, " Phaedrus " 275a-b, on the discovery of writing, as quoted in

Odlyzko 1997]

 

 

There may be some validity to the concern that too-early reliance on

computers for information-retrieval by children may weaken their

internal memory-retrieval powers, just as too-early reliance on

calculators for arithmetic operations may weaken their calculational

and even conceptual powers. The cure for this is of course not to let

children use or rely on these nonbiological resources too early in

development. By the same token, it will probably become a part of

early educational strategy to suppress hyperlink-hopping (or what has

come to be called " zapping " in French) to allow the capacity and

motivation to read and understand sustained sequential text and

reasoning to develop first. This will be as natural as teaching

children to listen when spoken to, rather than constantly

interrupting after the first few words -- or to walk for themselves,

rather than always being carried or chauffeured. No risk of losing

one's ambulatory ability because of reliance on rapid transport in

adult life (though no doubt a degree of " use it or lose it " applies

to all biological functions, throughout the life-cycle).

 

 

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Stevan Harnad

Centre de Neuroscience de la Cognition (CNC)

Universite du Quebec a Montreal

CP 8888 Succursale Centre-Ville

Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 3P8

harnad

http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/

 

Kravchenko's Reply to Harnad (1 reply)

Alexander Kravchenko, Mar 19, 2003 5:57 UT

There Is No Way Back (1 reply)

Alexander Kravchenko, Mar 16, 2003 23:37 UT

Is there such a thing as THE speed of thought?

Christophe Heintz

Mar 7, 2003 11:34 UT

 

I would like to argue against Harnad statement that there is one

unique biological speed of thought. I believe on the contrary that

thoughts can evolve at different speeds depending on the situation,

the content of the thought, and also maybe on the representational

means it uses. There is a continuous range of speeds of thought, with

some clusters here and there. Harnad just pick up one of these

clusters. Here are a few examples to make my point:

1. We have a range of really speedy preverbal thoughts that allow us,

for instance, to drive without having an accident every minute.

2. The above point is addressed by Harnad: he says that `it is the

speed of interactive thought […] that is pertinent here'. But this

restriction won't work either. Think about basketball players. They

do interact and communicate with their team colleagues when playing.

They just give a few signs, e.g. the direction of the eye, to

tell `Hey! Be prepared, I am going to throw the ball to you'. They

just don't have the time to make a sentence. Here, interactive

thought goes a lot faster than the speed of speech. In fact, it often

happens that we use some mimics or groans in order to communicate our

thoughts faster than we could by making a sentence.

 

About thoughts that are slower than the speed of speech:

 

3. I prefer to read Mathematics…At my own pace, rather than to hear a

course or a conference. I think mathematics is an essentially written

intellectual activity. One of the major reasons is that mathematical

thinking is slow (at least for most of us); slower than the speed of

speech.

4. More generally, the understanding of some difficult sentences

require the auditor to retrieve a lot of not readily available

information from memory. This takes some time.

5. It takes some times to have clever thoughts. I'm not convinced

that `l'idée vient en papotant' only. I think there is something true

that is conveyed by this old image of the wise old man who goes

pondering alone in the mountains.

6. We can even say that some thoughts are the fruit of some long

historical process.

 

Scientific thought is slow. Maybe it is one of the reasons it evolved

with writing only (the other interelated reason being memory

management as mentioned by Harnad).

 

C'est si bon, oui?

........bob

 

 

C'est Si Bon

Words & Music by Andre Hornez & Henry Betti

English lyric by Jerry Seelen

Recorded by Louis Armstrong, 1949

 

 

C#m7-5 Cm7-5 Bm7 Bm7-5 E7 E7/9 E7 A D9 Bm7-5 A

" C'est si bon " -- lovers say that in France

 

Fdim Bm7 Bm7-5 E7

When they thrill to romance;

 

Bm7-5 E7 A6 Cdim E7/9

It means that it's so good.

 

 

C#m7-5 Cm7-5 Bm7 Bm7-5 E7 E7/9 E7 A D9 Bm7-5 A

C'est si bon -- so I say it to you

 

Fdim Bm7 Bm7-5 E7

Like the French people do

 

Bm7-5 E7 A

Because it's oh, so good.

 

 

 

Bridge:

 

 

A7 F Dm7 CM7/6 CM7

Ev'ry word, ev'ry sigh, ev'ry kiss, dear,

 

B7 Bm7 Bm7-5 E7

Leads to only one thought, and it's this, dear:

 

 

C#m7-5 Cm7-5 Bm7 Bm7-5 E7 E7/9 E7 A D9 Bm7-5 A

It's so good, nothing else can replace

 

Fdim Bm7 Bm7-5 E7

Just your slightest embrace

 

Em7 F#7

And if you only would

 

Bm7 Dm7 AM7

Be my own for the rest of my days,

 

A A7 Bm7-5 E7

I will whisper this phrase,

 

 

 

First Time:

 

Bm7-5 E7/9 E7 A Edim E7

My darling, c'est si bon.

 

 

 

Last Time:

 

Bm7-5 E7/9 E7 A D9 A6

My darling, c'est si bon.