where my head is..right now
So some of you might be wondering what it is I'm doing in this boring city spending my time getting in debt even while living with my mother, instead of going back to Dublin, making money and having the fun I deserve. At least that's what I've been wondering. But there's an answer to all this somewhere.
What I'm studying is crazy fantastic and I'm writing this not as much to convince you (because I know I'm one of a kind when it comes to this stuff) but to remind myself. There gets to be a time around, well, November when you just lose sight of WHY you're doing this and WHY AREN'T you out frolicking in the snow. (Yes...snow a foot deep today. Note to my fav girl in Delhi---remember, white, cold, wet. Of course you remember. :) ).
So right NOW I'm working on an essay for History of Cognitive Science. Here's a thought. Sometimes you think in words in your head (some people don't of course). Sometimes you think with images (again, there are exceptions). In fact, you have this amazing experience of visualising beautiful things, of singing songs to yourself, whatever it is you do. But let's say nobody beleives you about that. They look inside your head with all the latest technology, they have a crystal clear image of your brain and no matter how loud you sing your songs, you can't prove to anybody that that's what's actually happening inside your head or anywhere for that matter. So how do you go from lump of fat and protein to, well, that picture in your head? How is that actually stored, how is it you can manipulate that image and remember it or learn a new one? And how do you prove that you're not the only one experiencing this?
That's sort of what cognitive science is about. How things are coded and processed. And it's very hard to do because what you experience may not resemble whatsoever the mechanism used to represent it. Would you believe that some people say that what you experience as an image is actually stored as a string of descriptors in your brain, not visually at all? Who's to prove them wrong?
Um, if you're wondering what my essay is actually about, I doubt you want to know. It actually suggests that verbal thought and imagery are coded the same way in the brain. Oh, perfectly plausible. In fact, what's great about this science is that between what we know physically about the brain and what we know about our behaviour and experience, there's a huge black abyss. Theories come and go like fashions.
All my other courses are about representation. Everything is about representation. Linguistics. What is grammar, what does a sound mean, how do we have meaning at all? (Semiotics--what's a sign anyway? What makes something a symbol? ) Neurology. Exactly about how a cell in the brain, grouped with a million other ones, can mean something. That and Canadian Literature, which, well, is all about when it comes down to representing an 'identity' of some sort, it is only mythified in literature.
More later :)
What I'm studying is crazy fantastic and I'm writing this not as much to convince you (because I know I'm one of a kind when it comes to this stuff) but to remind myself. There gets to be a time around, well, November when you just lose sight of WHY you're doing this and WHY AREN'T you out frolicking in the snow. (Yes...snow a foot deep today. Note to my fav girl in Delhi---remember, white, cold, wet. Of course you remember. :) ).
So right NOW I'm working on an essay for History of Cognitive Science. Here's a thought. Sometimes you think in words in your head (some people don't of course). Sometimes you think with images (again, there are exceptions). In fact, you have this amazing experience of visualising beautiful things, of singing songs to yourself, whatever it is you do. But let's say nobody beleives you about that. They look inside your head with all the latest technology, they have a crystal clear image of your brain and no matter how loud you sing your songs, you can't prove to anybody that that's what's actually happening inside your head or anywhere for that matter. So how do you go from lump of fat and protein to, well, that picture in your head? How is that actually stored, how is it you can manipulate that image and remember it or learn a new one? And how do you prove that you're not the only one experiencing this?
That's sort of what cognitive science is about. How things are coded and processed. And it's very hard to do because what you experience may not resemble whatsoever the mechanism used to represent it. Would you believe that some people say that what you experience as an image is actually stored as a string of descriptors in your brain, not visually at all? Who's to prove them wrong?
Um, if you're wondering what my essay is actually about, I doubt you want to know. It actually suggests that verbal thought and imagery are coded the same way in the brain. Oh, perfectly plausible. In fact, what's great about this science is that between what we know physically about the brain and what we know about our behaviour and experience, there's a huge black abyss. Theories come and go like fashions.
All my other courses are about representation. Everything is about representation. Linguistics. What is grammar, what does a sound mean, how do we have meaning at all? (Semiotics--what's a sign anyway? What makes something a symbol? ) Neurology. Exactly about how a cell in the brain, grouped with a million other ones, can mean something. That and Canadian Literature, which, well, is all about when it comes down to representing an 'identity' of some sort, it is only mythified in literature.
More later :)