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Psychology

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Ash

Ash

Level 22
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Aug 27, 2005
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Sorry about the delay in replying! Things are extremely hectic here, having just moved house, working my PhD, and trying to fit in deliveries of furniture, white goods, and everything else in between. I still don't have internet at home (which is where I am now) so I'm writing this on my PC in emacs before transferring it onto my mobile and finally committing the post. WEOW. So without further ado:


Traditionally we would think of our brains acting like a computer, taking a number of inputs, processing them and then outputting in the form of a behaviour. This we know as the perception --> representation --> action loop. Fodor, and other lackies from the Fodorian era, maintain that representations are divorced from the perceptions and actions they represent. So instead of encoding a perceptual trace of a glass or the motor experience of drinking from it, our minds would encode a string of symbols totally removed from the context at hand.

My research, and others from the embodiment crowd, show this not to be the case. Representation cannot be totally removed from the sensorimotor information it maintains, as without context our words and actions are meaningless. Take the word bat. Am I referring to a flying mammal or the action of striking and hitting something? It is only when I give you a context that you actually come to know: "do you think a bat could bat a mosquito while flying".

If we take this from a conceptual level to a neuroanatomical level, the argument becomes that we should see similar patterns of activation in the brain when we talk about concepts as when we experience them. Another good example: a hunter that has a nasty experience with a bear should show similar patterns of activation when subsequently talking about or thinking about the bear. This happens, and is more commonly known as PTSD. Research by Niedenthal (2007) demonstrates this especially nicely, and classically Pullvermüller (2003 I believe) shows a similar trend in the data, too.

I gave a Pecha Kucha presentation on this not so long ago, I will try to cast it and upload the slides when I have interwebs again. I also maintain a few websites which could elucidate further, and am happy to PM them your way.

I hope this makes a little more sense!
 
Level 34
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It certainly does, and it's really interesting stuff. Feel free to PM me.

While not exactly the same, I had been studying Wittgenstein. While I really enjoyed it, I have found it difficult to continue to read him without both the aid and demands of a professor.
 
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