The Voices in Your Head

[caroljane]

No, of course I don't. He used a considerable part of a giant mind in developing this theory, I just don 't think it especially valid. I'll blame my thoughtless slur onearly training.."afflict the comfortable."

[PDS]

No, of course I don't. He used a considerable part of a giant mind in developing this theory, I just don 't think it especially valid. I'll blame my thoughtless slur onearly training.."afflict the comfortable."

Why would anybody ever want to "afflict" anybody, let alone the comfortable?

[caroljane]

Sorry, old journalist motto, "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"

[PDS]

Sorry, old journalist motto, "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"

Oh, i get that. I just wonder about the sense of life (not talking about you here, by the way) of somebody who wants to afflict the comfortable.

Sounds like a young Ellsworth with the hose in his hand.

[Samson Corwell]

Writing changed our brain physiology. I find that preposterous.

Samson,

That's the part with Jaynes that gives me pause. That's why I got the book. (So far, I've only seen a few YouTube videos where Jaynes is discussed.)

I can agree that writing created new neural pathways from the vast amount of extra knowledge the tool allowed. And maybe that prompted some furtherance of evolutionary development.

I don't know.

It's interesting to look at, though.

Michael

It smells too much like social constructionism or some such nonsense.

[Darrell Hougen]

Writing changed our brain physiology. I find that preposterous.

Samson,

That's the part with Jaynes that gives me pause. That's why I got the book. (So far, I've only seen a few YouTube videos where Jaynes is discussed.)

I can agree that writing created new neural pathways from the vast amount of extra knowledge the tool allowed. And maybe that prompted some furtherance of evolutionary development.

I don't know.

It's interesting to look at, though.

Michael

Hi Michael,

In order for evolution to play a role, people that were unable to write would have had to be less likely to mate or more likely to die before having offspring than people who were able to write. Since the majority of people in the world have been illiterate until modern times, I find it difficult to believe that the ability to write has had much effect on human evolution.

On the other hand, most people are able to speak and I find it plausible that people that were unable to speak were less likely to find a mate and more likely to die before having offspring that those that were able to speak. Thus, the ability to speak probably spread rapidly in prehistoric humanoids.

I also think there is a direct connection between speaking and hearing one's own voice. Hearing one's own voice is verbal imagination. Just as one can visually imagine driving a fast car on the freeway or sawing a board or building a house or dancing a waltz, one can imagine saying things and responding to what was said. One can literally have an imaginary conversation with oneself.

Imagination is, I would guess, an extension of the human capacity for anticipation. When we take an action --- say, we kick at a ball --- we anticipate the consequences of our action --- the ball flying in the air. Literally, neurons from the motor cortex connect to the visual cortex and tell the visual cortex that the leg is about to move and the visual cortex knows to expect the flight of the ball. There might be other brain regions involved that mediate this communication. At any rate, during the process of imagination, the motor neurons fire but a switch, somewhere in the brain, prevents the signal from actually reaching the leg. However, the signal still reaches the visual cortex which then anticipates the flight of the ball and literally sees the ball flying even though there is no flying ball.

As an aside, the brain does contain such switches. For example, during sleep, the nucleus coeruleus prevents signals from the brain from activating the efferent neural pathways to the muscles. (At least that is what I learned 20 years ago.) If the blockage is not total, a person --- or cat --- a lot of experiments have been done on cats --- may twitch while dreaming. Total functional breakdown can lead to sleep walking.

At any rate, the inner voice would amount to having the cortical neurons that control speech fire as if to produce a sequence of sounds. The signal to the vocal and mandibular muscles would be blocked, but the signal would reach the auditory neurons which would then "hear" the anticipated sound of speech.

Clearly, for the above mechanism to work, humans would require speech generation centers in the brain but no writing ability would be necessary.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Darrell, re #16,

Sadly I am not the current Oracle of all Knowledge on OL, that appears to be Moralist, but I am flattered anyway.

Modestly,

Carol

Modesty is very becoming on you. I look forward to more of it in the future.

Darrell

[Selene]

Darrell, re #16,

Sadly I am not the current Oracle of all Knowledge on OL, that appears to be Moralist, but I am flattered anyway.

Modestly,

Carol

Modesty is very becoming on you. I look forward to more of it in the future.

Darrell

I have a different vision..,

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In order for evolution to play a role, people that were unable to write would have had to be less likely to mate or more likely to die before having offspring than people who were able to write. Since the majority of people in the world have been illiterate until modern times, I find it difficult to believe that the ability to write has had much effect on human evolution.

On the other hand, most people are able to speak and I find it plausible that people that were unable to speak were less likely to find a mate and more likely to die before having offspring that those that were able to speak.

Darrell,

Some random thoughts on this.

1. I am not familiar enough with the evolutionary psychology to know what their stance is on this. I have only looked at Geoffrey Miller's work (I read most of Spent, for example, and skimmed the rest--I really should read it correctly ). His view is that the market is mostly driven by mating, not survival. By extension, there is a close parallel between producing and language. I won't opine more than to say I found the view very interesting.

I get turned off when people focus on something like this as if it invalidates everything else. (Miller leans in this direction, but at least he's not boring.) When I look, I see it more as a closeup like a person does in the movies. A person is holding a gun. Suddenly there is a close up on the gun in his hand. Then cut back to a longer view. That's the way I see this kind of inroad into a different idea. (I.e., a closeup on a gun. )With that in mind, here is a very entertaining close-up:

2. I am more inclined to accept human evolutionary development from writing than you, but I do agree that spoken language had its own impact. I don't see where one negates the other. Except in my view, the difference is not the voice in your head so much as storytelling. We are all storytelling animals. The problem with storytelling orally is that it always changes from person to person.

Think of the game "Telephone" as an easy example. One person phones another with a story, then that person telephones another to tell it, and so on. At the end, the story is completely different.

Imagine ancient times!

As an aside, in creative writing, there is a theory that ancient stories and story-forms still have impact because everything but their essence was chipped away by centuries of change through oral storytelling.

With writing, once a story is written, that form of the story stays the same for ever and ever amen. Now that we have recorded sound and image, we have the same unchanging story happening in those forms. I notice that this "frozen story" development occurred at the same time there was a huge increase in production, population growth and life extension of humans, knowledge, etc. I haven't delved into this deeply enough to say anything other than note the situation, but it is a place I intend to look into more deeply.

Humans not only think in concepts. We also think in stories. I've even toyed with the idea of story-concept, but I'm still working on that one.

As a speculation, I find it plausible that "frozen storytelling" greatly aided conceptual development, creativity and production--and that mating was a strong driver in this process. If so, there has to be an evolutionary impact of some sort.

3. Without the development of writing, I don't believe freedom would have been possible in human society. Writing had a huge impact on social organization. Instead of a member of a society being subject to the word of a ruler and that's all folks, now there is an unchanging text called law. Even rulers have to obey it. You can make a new text to replace it, you can have people ignore it at times, you can even have people try to "interpret" the meaning of it, but you cannot say the text does not say what it says. This is huge compared to before.

I believe there could even be a case to show the effects of freedom on human evolution, although it might be too early to see anything concrete. And that would be due in part to the development of writing.

4. Ayn Rand once wrote an essay in The Ayn Rand Letter called "The Missing Link." She had a similar, albeit different enough, view on human mentality, but it does remind me of Jaynse's bicameral mind. She ended by discussing the difference between an association and a tribe, then posited her speculation about the anti-conceptual mentality being an evolutionary missing link.

Just as a proper society is ruled by laws, not by men, so a proper association is united by ideas, not by men, and its members are loyal to the ideas, not to the group. It is eminently reasonable that men should seek to associate with those who share their convictions and values. It is impossible to deal or even to communicate with men whose ideas are fundamentally opposed to one's own (and one should be free not to deal with them). All proper associations are formed or joined by individual choice and on conscious, intellectual grounds (philosophical, political, professional, etc.)—not by the physiological or geographical accident of birth, and not on the ground of tradition. When men are united by ideas, i.e., by explicit principles, there is no room for favors, whims, or arbitrary power: the principles serve as an objective criterion for determining actions and for judging men, whether leaders or members.

This requires a high degree of conceptual development and independence, which the anti-conceptual mentality is desperately struggling to avoid. But this is the only way men can work together justly, benevolently—and safely. There is no way for men to survive on the perceptual level of consciousness.

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between man and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man's consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man's consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon—a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless "safety" of an animal's consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve.\

For years, scientists have been looking for a "missing link" between man and animals. Perhaps that missing link is the anti-conceptual mentality.

Like I said, this is merely grist for the thought-mill. I am still gathering information before I can come to any conclusion in my own thinking. I have bents, but no firm thought-out ideas yet.

Michael

[Peter]

Darrell responded to Carol:

Modesty is very becoming on you. I look forward to more of it in the future.

end quote

As Goofy said, “Ah yuk!” I like it when a woman shows her breasts or the top two thirds anyway, but I am turned off by Miley Cyrus or the twerking idiots on the web. In public, the concept of “too much” can be discerned by the beholder, so why do some people grind “too much” in? A lust for notoriety? A desire to offend? Who knows. But I do know I will not willingly tune into anything Miley does because she is disgusting. So “too much” is less profitable to an entertainer.

Frozen storytelling is an interesting way to describe writing, and frozen pornography is an interesting way to describe "writhing."

Peter

[Darrell Hougen]

Hi Michael,

I agree with you that writing has had a huge impact on culture. I agree with your examples of law, freedom, and social organization, etc. I would like to add the example of science. The scientific community is a large sub-community that communicates largely in written form --- papers, books, journals. The usefulness of writing down ideas for future use or use by others can hardly be overstated. The OL community is, itself a good example of the value of the written word.

My point regarding speech versus writing has to do with a couple of things, evolutionary time and brain physiology. I just don't know if writing has been around long enough to have had a significant impact on the gene pool. Also, although there seem to be special regions of the brain for speech production, those regions are required for both oral and written communication and since the former probably came first, it doesn't appear that there are any special regions just for writing. That doesn't mean that writing has had no impact on evolution. Perhaps it has had more impact than I'm inclined to believe. People that are eloquent are probably attracted to other eloquent people. But, have people with less scholarly aptitude died off?

Darrell

[caroljane]

The development of speech in humans is a fascinating thing to theorize about, since it seems impossible to ever know when and how it arose, There are many, many theories and no hard evidence. For example, did we first laugh soundlessly?

At least we know roughly when writing first appeared.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's an interesting thought.

In the learning how to learn courses I have studied (and keep studying, including my sporadic forays into speedreading), one item keeps popping up over and over.

They tell you to write notes by hand, not by computer, if you want to learn something better. There seems to be some kind of connection between the physical act of writing and the brain that makes ideas more sticky in memory.

I believe there are tests on this, too, but I would have to dig to find them.

My own experience tends to validate this. I have tried all kinds of methods, but taking notes by hand works well for me.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Riffing off the last post, as a detour, the only thing that rivals note-taking by hand in terms of learning new terms and things like that is a program I have called SuperMemo (see here and here). Despite some success, my experience with that that program is limited so far. It's clunky and irritating to learn.

As to flash-cards (which is the same general concept), I have never used them although I might start one day. I believe I would have the same success. Still, you have to prepare the cards and that will be almost the same thing as taking notes by hand, whereas SuperMemo is all on the computer.

I intend to stick it out with SuperMemo because, once you get a handle on it correctly, you can easily chop up articles, dismiss the parts you know, and almost automatically prepare the card quizzes based on clozing (leaving out a word or phrase in the middle of a sentence and replacing it by an underline). It also calculates how often you need to repeat each card based on scoring you do as you go through the deck.

I wonder if that could influence evolution, too?

(God, I need a silver bullet for learning. Anyone got one for sale? )

Michael

[Samson Corwell]

Darrell responded to Carol:

Modesty is very becoming on you. I look forward to more of it in the future.

end quote

As Goofy said, Ah yuk! I like it when a woman shows her breasts or the top two thirds anyway, but I am turned off by Miley Cyrus or the twerking idiots on the web. In public, the concept of too much can be discerned by the beholder, so why do some people grind too much in? A lust for notoriety? A desire to offend? Who knows. But I do know I will not willingly tune into anything Miley does because she is disgusting. So too much is less profitable to an entertainer.

Frozen storytelling is an interesting way to describe writing, and frozen pornography is an interesting way to describe "writhing."

Peter

Mileys Cyrus: Brought to you by the same corporate corruptors of childhood stars (Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears), Disney!

[Selene]

Darrell responded to Carol:

Modesty is very becoming on you. I look forward to more of it in the future.

end quote

As Goofy said, Ah yuk! I like it when a woman shows her breasts or the top two thirds anyway, but I am turned off by Miley Cyrus or the twerking idiots on the web. In public, the concept of too much can be discerned by the beholder, so why do some people grind too much in? A lust for notoriety? A desire to offend? Who knows. But I do know I will not willingly tune into anything Miley does because she is disgusting. So too much is less profitable to an entertainer.

Frozen storytelling is an interesting way to describe writing, and frozen pornography is an interesting way to describe "writhing."

Peter

Mileys Cyrus: Brought to you by the same corporate corruptors of childhood stars (Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears), Disney!

You do realize that your comment will die in the current digidal ocean...

[tmj]

Evolution may be too big to fail, or pin down.

Writing , the skill or tool, can be looked at as any other tool, isn't it similar o a sharpened stone that aided in hunting to provide more protein to enable a larger , albeit localized, gene pool. Written language aided the collection and communication of the store of human knowledge. Technology aided production to sustain and or grow the aggregate gene pool. Is any of this 'evolution' in action?

[Samson Corwell]

Darrell responded to Carol:

is very becoming on you. I look forward to more of it in the future.

end quote

As Goofy said, Ah yuk! I like it when a woman shows her breasts or the top two thirds anyway, but I am turned off by Miley Cyrus or the twerking idiots on the web. In public, the concept of too much can be discerned by the beholder, so why do some people grind too much in? A lust for notoriety? A desire to offend? Who knows. But I do know I will not willingly tune into anything Miley does because she is disgusting. So too much is less profitable to an entertainer.

Frozen storytelling is an interesting way to describe writing, and frozen pornography is an interesting way to describe "writhing."

Peter

Mileys Cyrus: Brought to you by the same corporate corruptors of childhood stars (Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears), Disney!

You do realize that your comment will die in the current digidal ocean...

Not sure what you're trying to say here. All I did was make a crack.

[Selene]

Darrell responded to Carol:

is very becoming on you. I look forward to more of it in the future.

end quote

As Goofy said, Ah yuk! I like it when a woman shows her breasts or the top two thirds anyway, but I am turned off by Miley Cyrus or the twerking idiots on the web. In public, the concept of too much can be discerned by the beholder, so why do some people grind too much in? A lust for notoriety? A desire to offend? Who knows. But I do know I will not willingly tune into anything Miley does because she is disgusting. So too much is less profitable to an entertainer.

Frozen storytelling is an interesting way to describe writing, and frozen pornography is an interesting way to describe "writhing."

Peter

Mileys Cyrus: Brought to you by the same corporate corruptors of childhood stars (Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears), Disney!

You do realize that your comment will die in the current digidal ocean...

Not sure what you're trying to say here. All I did was make a crack.

As did I...just banter...relax...stay a while...

[Darrell Hougen]

Here's an interesting thought.

In the learning how to learn courses I have studied (and keep studying, including my sporadic forays into speedreading), one item keeps popping up over and over.

They tell you to write notes by hand, not by computer, if you want to learn something better. There seems to be some kind of connection between the physical act of writing and the brain that makes ideas more sticky in memory.

I believe there are tests on this, too, but I would have to dig to find them.

My own experience tends to validate this. I have tried all kinds of methods, but taking notes by hand works well for me.

Michael

Interesting. I guess writing would require forming the stroke or strokes for each letter and would generate a "muscle memory" for what was written. On the other hand, typing requires using different fingers in different physical locations and should lead to some sort of location memory. Personally, I never took many notes in college, but all of them were written, not typed, so I have no real reference by which to judge such a claim.

Darrell

[caroljane]

I took notes and never looked at them afterwards. Their only use was to lend them to somebody who had missed a class.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's another trick.

In many speedreading systems, you use your first finger to underline the text as you read. This practically forces your eyes to follow it. Many people know that trick and it works. The eye is attuned to follow movement, so it can't help but follow the finger. This cuts down on backtracking, and a nonstop finger even helps cut down on subvocalization. According to reports I have read, just learning this one technique doubles people's reading speed on average.

But wait, there's more!

Here's an added trick. If you use the first finger on your left hand (for most people) instead of your right to underline the text, this will access the right brain more than the left as the words go in. Believe it or not, this helps you to remember more, but only if you get into a certain mental drift while reading. (At least that's the way it works for me.) Kind of like focused passivity. The reason this works is because the left brain is more analytical and the right brain is more emotional and creative. Emotions are the glue of memory.

One way I use to get into this focused passivity is to ask questions to myself about what I expect to get from the text (gleaned and dreamed up from a preliminary skim of the material), then pretend I am a sponge as I start reading--just soaking it all up.

For those interested, give it a try. See if reading speed and comprehension improve at least a little (or not). Your mileage may vary with mine, but this technique helped me a lot.

As an aside, I also look up words I don't know right on the spot. I find my mind drifts all over the place if I skip this, even if it is just one word. With the computer and electronic readers like Kindle and Nook (I have both), looking up words is a breeze. I come from a generation when we used to have nothing but heavy-ass dictionaries, so this is a Godsend.

My reading has improved, but I am still seeking how to do it better. I find it interesting that the first step starts with the hands.

Michael

[anthony]

Send screen-cleaning fluid asap! (Humus on my finger).

[moralist]

Darrell, re #16,

Sadly I am not the current Oracle of all Knowledge on OL, that appears to be Moralist, but I am flattered anyway.

Modestly,

Carol

Personally, I prefer understanding to knowledge.

Our minds are radios, so I'm not the thinker of thought. I'm the observer of thought who makes the final decision on which thought to act upon and which to let pass by unresponded,

[Selene]

Darrell, re #16,

Sadly I am not the current Oracle of all Knowledge on OL, that appears to be Moralist, but I am flattered anyway.

Modestly,

Carol

Personally, I prefer understanding to knowledge.

Our minds are radios, so I'm not the thinker of thought. I'm the observer of thought who makes the final decision on which thought to act upon and which to let pass by unresponded,

Greg:

Out of curiosity, do you feel stress from resoloving your individual judgments on good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and their potential conflict with your Christian beliefs of accepting all souls and embracing their weaknesses, "sins" and other human frailties?

A...