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Re: [ontolog-forum] Cultural variation in cognitive machinery

To: Ali Hashemi <ali.hashemi+ontolog@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:30:44 -0500
Message-id: <8C488A52-FFA6-4C36-8766-255EB2449274@xxxxxxx>

On Apr 11, 2010, at 9:07 PM, Ali Hashemi wrote:

Dear John and Pat,

John,

[JS]This is the kind of thread that can go on indefinitely without making
much, if any, contribution to the methods for developing ontologies.

Agreed. I've just never come across a coherent criticism of McLuhan that wasn't a severe misinterpretation, and I've looked very hard. This will be my last response on this topic.

And mine. I do not mean to continue the argument, but only put my own views clearly on record. There seems to have arisen a kind of bland consensus that we really do agree on the basics, etc.., whereas in fact I think we really do disagree, quite profoundly. Ideas that you consider to be so obviously true that nobody could rationally disagree with, I believe to be false, and all the evidence for them I have analyzed has, IMO, turned out to be specious. Obviously, I don't expect you to agree with me.

Note though, there can be a very real connection to how one develops an ontology, but i'll leave that to the side for now.

[JS]I'm sorry that I stated my original point without enough qualification
to clarify the point I was trying to make.  But in summary,

 1. The basic cognitive machinery for all humans is established in
    the first 3 years during which the basic biological needs and
    interactions with parents or other caregivers are the major
    influence -- not technology, including writing.  In fact, some
    technology, such as television can be a deterrent by reducing
    the amount of human contact.

I agree with this. The basic cognitive machinery is relatively stable. However, like the weather, there are enormous variations in its manifestation.

That again is a claim that is often made, but without adequate empirical justification. It seems to imply that there is another 'layer' between cognition and observable behavior. But what would this be, if not part of the machinery of cognition? 

How we choose to, and in what contexts we employ which cognitive machineries is highly dependent on the technologies / frame of mind we are in.

Frame of mind, maybe (though I think this is much less common than we all would like to believe), but technologies? I see no evidence for this. 

When writing on the computer, with access to the internet, the type of thought that comes out, with all the attendant references, links etc, is very different

Nonsense. I am sorry, but this is just too silly to allow past without comment. The type of THOUGHT is different when using a computer on the internet? What possible trace of evidence could there be for such an amazing claim? Such a finding would rock psychology to its foundations. 

than a conversation conducted say by letters over a several month period.  Of course, we being humans, the net results of our thoughts would be accessible in both, but more likely, flow more easily in one vs the other.

Imagine we spoke what you just said. The "content" is the same, but I'd have to have a pretty good memory to remember what your point #2 was. With symbolic representation, it's there, plain for me to refer to. How I think about, process and use what you said has changed...

Your ability to access the past is improved, yes. But that does not mean that you are THINKING differently. An analogy: wearing a coat makes you warmer. But it does not alter the physiology of your body's temperature-regulating machinery.


============

Pat,

When I am engaged in argument with my friends, a general rule of thumb we employ is to interpret each others' remarks in the most reasonable manner. We get to the crux of our disagreements much more quickly in this way.

There are several comments of yours which completely baffle me. Do you really think so lowly of me(?) to think that I'm making such absurd claims.

I take you at your word, as best as I can. 

Hilarious... Anyway, see below.

On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:37 AM, Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Apr 9, 2010, at 7:56 AM, Ali Hashemi wrote:

Dear Ontolog,

I apologize for the length of this message, I am generally internetted only through phone, so I am being thorough in my intermittent access. I have tried to make the last section of the message more relevant to the ontology mission.

============

Dear John, Dan and Pat,

Pat,

Thanks for that ... response. Perhaps as an exercise, we can reflect on the very fact that you and I are able to have such a conversation.

For fun, let's briefly devolve the history of languaged communication.

Before internet, we could phone. Assuming we'd had met or exchanged information, either you or I would have had to call the other. Additionally, if you made the call, I'd have to happen to have the time to talk (or pre the cell phone, had physically been in the same location that you were calling).

And before the phone? We could try to carry on this conversation via what, a telegraph? I suppose each day, we would excitedly go to the telegraph station to see the short, dotted response. You know, Twitter, but old school.

And before that? Well we could mail, I guess airmail or before that, rail or boat or perhaps horse, or lights along an imperial road. It might take days, weeks or months, but I guess it'd make the anticipation of how this conversation would evolve all the more intriguing.

Let's also consider the act of writing. Imagine instead of typing, at what, 40-120 words per minute, we had to grasp a pen and write these messages on paper. For me at least, the type of thought that comes out through pen is profoundly different than when on the computer. Imagine if we had to use a quill and ink, refreshing the tip every few minutes?

And what if we had to use stone? To communicate our ideas, you and I, living in different locale would either have to send each other stone carvings or happen upon one another in some fair town, a port most likely, and sit down to an enlightening discussion. If I were on another continent, to carry out this conversation, would require a commitment of months to travel to a common physical location. I would certainly hope that the results of said conversation would be worth that time!

Now, were you actually suggesting that the way we consider space has not changed?

Yes, I am suggesting exactly that. 

I think you are misreading what I mean by "consider space."

I think not.

The laws of physics are still the same. Our idea of what it means for a person to be at a particular location in space is completely different!

No, that is exactly what I disagree with. The idea of someone being in Florida is the same whether or not I can contact them by phone or only by letters carried by a sailing ship. The IDEA is the same. 

You in Florida can communicate with me. You can be here in a matter of minutes. I am at a loss how you do not see how this changes how I think about space. 

I see that you are at a loss. However, that is exactly what I maintain, yes. 


That the way we form, exchange, communicate and shape our thought has not fundamentally changed?

And that, yes. I see no evidence that our *thinking* has changed because of technology. We still read Homer and understand, and even empathize with, the thoughts of his characters. Their ideas and thoughts have not become alien or incomprehensible. 

!!! How in the world did what I say come to mean "because we think of space, communication, etc. in different ways, reading Homer would be incomprehensible". ?

No, I said that. It seems to me to be a consequence of your position. If our modern ideas of space and location were so drastically different because of technology, how could we even *understand* what Homer was saying? His concepts, his thoughts, located in his time and his technology, would be lost to us for ever, like ancient inscriptions without a Rosetta stone to help us translate them. 

This is beyond absurd and a complete red herring.

Nowhere does the claim that "the activities and technologies one engage in affect and alter our employed patterns of thinking" lead one to conclude that "these changes render artifacts and experiences from the past inaccessible." 

Seems to me that is exactly what they entail. How can we access those past experiences and thoughts, if the very thoughts can no longer be formulated by any living human being? And if our thoughts are hostage to the technologies and 'media' we are embedded in, how can they possibly be shared with those had by persons embedded in a completely different culture? It would be like expecting us to be able to translate from Martian to English. And this seems to me to be a reductio argument against your position.

The absurdity of this example makes me think you have not really understood the point at hand.

Let me go back to an example you "debunked" in an earlier email:

[AH] 3) Which brings me to the last example. Consider communities where the predominant form of transport is:

a) driving
b) biking
c) walking

Each person in these communities will have a fundamentally different conception of space, location, time etc.

[PH]Again, I think this is highly unlikely; and I know that there is no evidence for it. When railway travel was introduced to English culture, nobody had ever travelled faster than about 20 mph, and many doctors predicted that speeds over 35 mph would be fatal. But they weren't, and the introduction of the railway, while having many profound social and economic changes, did not seem to change people's notions of space, location or time.

Aside from the fact that this is a specious argument (just because someone using a hammer broke a glass doesn't mean hammers don't work...)

I don't quite follow the point of that analogy, but whatever.

, what you write is not only consistent with what i've been arguing

You said: 
"Each person in these communities will have a fundamentally different conception of space, location, time etc. "
and I said 

" the introduction of the railway,... did not seem to change people's notions of space, location or time. "

That seems to me like a pretty clear inconsistency between us.

, but demonstrates the point quite well.

For one, the car (and railroad) decreased the abstraction of space-at-a-distance. Whereas long distances (say 500km) when walking were serious impediments, a car contracted what it meant to traverse this space. Bringing entities in the car-driving range into roughly the same conceptual store as those when walking.

The railway and the car made a great difference to how far people could travel in a day, and this had many consequences for how they conducted their lives, did business, were able to socialize, etc. etc.. None of this however shows that they THOUGHT differently, still less that their CONCEPTS of time, space and distance were in any significant way altered. 


But more acutely, the rules of what movement is in space changed

Rules? We were until now talking about concepts, thoughts, ideas. If your point is that driving a car (say) involves motor skills not used when walking, then I will agree (though I doubt that they differ in any deep way from those used when driving a horse-drawn carriage, for example.)

too, which is also why there weren't all these accidents. The way people understood space when walking (or riding, but lets stick to walking for brevity) were completely altered.

There is absolutely no evidence for this claim. People did not suddenly *understand* space differently when the railway carriage reached a speed of, say, 25 mph. They did not achieve an epiphany of new spatiotemporal ideas from being conveyed rapidly. 

When walking, the wind is generally enjoyable,

Hence, no doubt, the Burns lyric

"O wert thou in the cauld blast
On yonder lea
My plaidie tae the angry air
I'd shelter thee."

People in earlier centuries were quite familiar with the effects of wind speeds of around 100 mph. The word "gale" is from old Icelandic, and the concept is probably thousands of years old. 

I can walk quite closely behind another, I can swerve immediately. What it means for me to be in space is quite different than when I'm driving, people are abstracted to their cars. I need to follow only at a safe distance. I rarely care about the visages of other drivers, but of their tools.

All you are saying is that driving is different from walking, which is obvious. This does not establish that I think about space and time differently when driving and when walking. What I mean by 'an hour' does not change when I get into a car. 

Not only that, but consider the implications of what space means to an urban planner. An urban planner, emphasizing a car wrt to space might design cities on grids. It might also lead one to centralize shopping into malls, and delegate the pedestrian use of space to small, unwelcoming sidewalks on busy thoroughfares. The ontology of space and roads for an urban planner who considers only cars will be vastly different than one who considers other forms.

No, their ontologies of space will be identical. But one of them will also be thinking about cars and their requirements, hence the difference. The fact that cars travel large distances at speed and need wide roads does not alter the concepts of distance, speed and width. I just finished driving across the country in a large diesel truck, a new driving experience for me. I had to learn to drive it in various new ways, to see the traffic flow differently, to plan overtaking, etc., etc. Still, I don't believe I used any new *concepts* when learning to do all of this, or that my ideas of time or velocity changed. 

Or more importantly, a planner who actually has experience / engages in significant walking will be able to better understand how to translate the understanding of space and time via walking much better into a city design than one who mainly commutes by car.

I can't imagine how much more obvious this point could be.

This point is indeed obvious, but it has nothing to do with the claim (about concepts being hostage to technology/culture) which I am objecting to.


Our agency in space has increased. Our projection of mind, ability to share and engage has been transformed.
 
Our understanding of a social network has changed. The very notion of what it means to be a productive, living human being is radically different.
 
The fact that you and I take this projection of thought and language through space for granted – the fact that it is so trivial, trite and assumed that we, one located in Quebec, the other in Florida can so easily converse at near instantaneous speed is exactly the point. Remind me again, how is this all complete fantasy?

It is incontrovertible that different senses, different sense modalities are more suited to different types of knowledge.

Nothing is incontrovertible. And this claim is, IMO, a contemporary myth, a kind of widely accepted assumption without any foundation.

Even if I turn my speaker upside down, sound still comes at me right side up... I can stare at sheet music all day, but I at least, won't really appreciate Bach's Cello Suite No.6 in D Major unless I hear it.

Of course. The *sound* of the cello suite is uniquely auditory. But that is a different (and trite) claim.

Not at all. The content of the music is ostensibly the same.

I do not, myself, listen to any "content" of music. I listen to the music, which is comprised of sounds. Hence, I tend to listen to it rather than, say, watch it. This is a remarkably unproductive thread of conversation, however. 

Access to this information is mediated by our senses. I'm surprised that the first example wasn't picked up. Note, orientation of sound source does not affect my interpretation of said sound

It does not affect the sound itself, is surely the point. This has nothing to do with interpretations.

- i.e. sound in its raw form is less suited for communicating that "something is upside down" -- it just isn't supported by the medium. Of course you could use sound to make that claim in language, but that's a different medium.

 


Now I certainly am not taking the strong position. I won't deny that there are other routes to such appreciation, but obviously, certain ones are better suited. And our lifestyles reinforce these choices and have other attendant effects...

==

As this email is long, I won’t go into the details of the rest of your post, but if you like, I can do so…  I do have to however remark on the attack on Postman (I don't recall McLuhan proclaiming "the world is going to hell, or at least to some undesirable place, in a handbasket.")

I wish I had Postman’s book physically with me (it’s been lent out to a friend), or that I had a pdf copy, but alas, my everyday assumptions of this work in space and time are challenged.

I have become so used to thinking of text as remotely accessible, that it is only in the absence of such access, I can appreciate that it is quite remarkable what was once considered an intimately physically bound artefact has been transformed into “mere” electricity…

Let's quickly unpack the implicit assumptions in McLuhan and Postman.

1) Our interaction with the world is mediated by our senses

True, of course. But a platitude. 

2) Depending on what we are doing, we are engaging our senses in different ratios (i.e. watching TV, we are more aware of what our eyes see; playing basketball, we are more aware of our sense of touch; listening to music, we are more aware of our hearing...)

More *aware*, I am not so certain of. I do not find that I am *aware* of using my eyes when watching TV. I simply watch, using my eyes (of course).

I spoke loosely. You are attending more to your eyes that say your sense of touch. The fact that you are sitting on your couch (unless it is uncomfortable etc..) is not something you will generally notice...

3) Habitual, repetition of the same types of actions affects one's disposition

Again, is there any evidence for this? I am not sure what it means, actually: what do you mean by disposition here? And do you mean to imply that seeing or hearing are actions?

I mean to imply that watching is an action (the rest of the body is relatively passive, the brain functions differently than when reading etc.)...

Disposition i mean the attitudes. I.e the fact that eating fast food makes one impatient changes that person's disposition. Hence, if that person were to be required to consider something, they will be less likely to use those parts of their cognitive machinery that is employed for careful consideration. Instead, said person will likely use the parts of their cognitive machinery that is more rash, abrupt and immediate. Hence how this person thinks in this context is fundamentally different than if they were not impatient.

If I follow this, you are saying that eating fast food will lead me think in a fundamentally different way, by being careless and rash because I am not using a 'careful' part of my brain. Do you really believe stuff like this? If so then, as you suggest, there is little point in continuing this conversation. Be well and prosper, but be very careful in Wendys. 

And here's the "leap"
4) Different media, technologies, lifestyles will draw out and engender biases in those who repeatedly engage in them

Well, at some level that is no doubt inevitably true. At the least, one can become skilled at certain kinds of perception due to familiarity. When I first came to the USA, I found the rapid-fire switching of topic in news programs almost dizzying: now it is second nature. But I don't accept that this is usefully referred to as any kind of 'bias'. 

It would really help if you stopped thinking I was arguing some sort of exclusive / strong position.

But you STATE a very strong position. Maybe you should try to say your own claims more cautiously and carefully.

If I am habituated to watching "30 minute" television programs which are themselves interrupted every 7-9 minutes with 30 - 180 seconds of commercials (which contain "emotional conclusion / association" messages). And if the vast majority of these 21 minute programs contain a very similar story arcs, the same level of content complexity (aimed at the perceived "average joe"), and generally resolve all the issues / conflicts that arise very neatly so that everything can be reset for the next week.

If all this, then I will be rapidly bored. Which is maybe why I don't watch much TV or read pulp fiction. I am sure that are people in Japan or Indonesia who would share my tastes in this, just as there will be many people in all cultures who do not. Again, what *cultural* distinctions between *ways of thinking* and *mental concepts* do you think this anecdote illustrates?

Then you will be biased to perhaps not expect, but appreciate this type of thinking more often. It will be far easier to understand an argument in this form than one which breaks these norms.

By Jove - your experience proves exactly my point; if you would only care to interpret it reasonably instead of as a cheesy strawman... :D

The same way that the cultural shock you experienced was discomforting and dizzying, and after a bit of time, habitual exposure to said phenomena made the parsing of such content "second nature."

In other words, I learned a new 'language' of how news is presented on TV. 

Now think about it going in reverse. You are habituated to rapid-fire, quick conclusions etc. Might not then long arguments, complexity etc. be dizzying?

I doubt it. 

Would you not be "biased" against arguments employed / communicated in said form?

No, I think not. 

Especially if you weren't in an environment which habituated you to these complexities, would you not be more suspicious of arguments in this form?

Certainly not more suspicious, no. I have no idea why you would even believe this, it seems so obviously unlikely. 

Would you not prefer the argument presented in a familiar form, in a familiar style? Especially if it is packaged and delivered to you via a pseudo-authority figure that you empathize with on some level? This is exactly and only what I mean by bias and fundamental shift. Your cognitive machinery is still all there, though obviously you do not make use of all of it. Indeed, which aspects of it you choose to employ are largely (tho not completely) dependent on your culture.

Well, again, I just find this wholly implausible. Take my example. I don't think that exposure to American TV, even when I had become 'habituated' to it, had any effect on how I THINK. It did enable me to actually understand what the people on TV were saying, of course. But that isn't a cognitive change. 

And let's be clear, culture includes very immediately, how you choose to express your thoughts (an essay written on a cellphone is much different than one on a computer!).

In Japan, novels written on cell phones have become very popular. Are you arguing that the same types of ideas are communicated in these

I think that to a first approximation, the same ideas are communicated in just about all of fiction. (With a few notable and famous exceptions, of course, which are notable and famous for just this reason, eg. Cervantes' Don Quixote.)

( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html ).
Excerpt:

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels.
...

“It’s not that they had a desire to write and that the cellphone happened to be there,” said Chiaki Ishihara, an expert in Japanese literature at Waseda University who has studied cellphone novels. “Instead, in the course of exchanging e-mail, this tool called the cellphone instilled in them a desire to write.”

Indeed, many cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers.

...

Rin said ordinary novels left members of her generation cold.

“They don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them,” she said. “On other hand, I understand how older Japanese don’t want to recognize these as novels. The paragraphs and the sentences are too simple, the stories are too predictable. But I’d like cellphone novels to be recognized as a genre.”


Forget about the "this will ruin writing." That's an interpretation based on the very basic observation that different forms/types of thought are generated / disseminated. Feel free to disagree with Postman's conclusion (I disagree with many parts of his work too), but the basic chassis of analysis is quite apt.

This is all I, and indeed, McLuhan (and Postman's analytic technique) are laying claim to. I have no idea what makes you so upset.


 Does the above acceptable to you?

Mostly not, no. 

See above.


Now extend this basic premise to public discourse. Simply because of the over exuberant tone of your post, I'm tempted to ask if you've been hiding under a rock for the past 20 years. However, I’ll leave that as a voiced temptation.

More relevantly, consider a news broadcast in 2010 vs. one in 1960. Consider a "serious" interview today, to one 30 years ago. Is it even conceivable we might have a televised Chomsky - Foucault debate today (irrespective of whatever one thinks about their ideas)?

About the most complex message that the current US presidential election affords (quite literally), is "hope and change."

Policy is reduced to soundbites. Public awareness of issues is (with many many exceptions) dominated by knee-jerk reactions and cartoonish television personalities. Voters are spend inordinate amounts of time trying to decide whether evolution should be taught in school, or whether two men or two women should be allowed to enjoy the same rights as others.

I could go on and on…

You could indeed, but I would still fail to see what point you believe yourself to be making.

Indeed. This seems to be crux of the problem...

I find it interesting that you see this conversation as constituting a "problem". Has it ever occurred to you that it is possible to disagree?


Anyway, see below for one last attempt.
 
Again, due to my limited internetting, I would need to physically go to a library to access the requisite research, and I am not very inclined to do so right now. I'm sure you can see what I'm saying :D

Actually, no. You seem to be repeating familiar cliched complaints about the dumbing-down of American democracy, etc. etc. , all of which I am familiar with and all of which I fail to see any hard evidence for. Plato thought that teaching people to read was a disaster because it would ruin their memories. My father thought that TV was a kind of brain-rot. My son believes that playing video games all day leads to brain rot. I don't believe any of this, Seems to me that people are about the same as they always have been, no better or worse, and that they will likely go on being about the same for the forseeable future. 

Incidentally, Jon Stewart makes a very similar point here:
http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/#clip285117
and
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-8-2010/the-big-bang-treaty

It's a curious thing when sometimes the most honest news is in a satirical comedy show...

I'll additionally cite one more study and one more article.

Study:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009433

Nothing conclusive, but yet another drop in the ever increasing bucket for the fact that the tools we use alter how we think.

I am afraid I find this almost comically unconvincing. To quote from the paper itself, "One cannot directly test Heidegger's concepts using the tools of psychological science because his is not a psychological theory."
Quite. The fact that they then set out to do just that is not a great improvement. 
 
Again, not the base cognitive machinery, but which parts of it are employed / emphasized / focused upon. This is a key distinction that seems to be consistently.... forgotten.

Not forgotten, but rejected. First, this idea of a contrast between 'base' and 'focussed upon' machinery is purely hypothetical and not, AFAIK, part of any worked-out cognitive theory. Second, even if it were, this 'employment' would itself be part of the basic cognitive machinery. For example, check out BDI theory, which is largely devoted to explaining shifts in emphasis in attention. 

Article:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html
(relevant excerpt:

[CD] I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+. 

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).

The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

Well now, I am (as you, presumably, also are) a consumer. That is, we both buy things and use them. Do YOU think this offensive, smug, sneering, childish prose is an accurate description of YOU? 

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Dale Dougherty's piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard's gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.


This is another prime example. The implicit message in the ipad is that one should simply purchase one's problems. That is part of the indirect message of this medium. In contrast, as the writer notes, the implicit message in the Apple ][+ was, if you have a problem, you dive in and figure out what to do.

This is utter BS, typical of Make (a magazine I do in fact read from time to time, though its aggressive adolescent amateurishness rapidly gets boring.) The reason you can't open up the iPad, as with most electronics for the last decade, is that it is literally impossible to re-engineer any part of it without something on the scale of an electron microscope. Human hands cannot make such a thing. It could only have been assembled by robots. The Apple ][+ was probably one the last generation of computers made out of non-monolithic chips, and (in spite of this writer's bravado) very few people could have usefully made any modifications even to that. (To find out why, try reading the details of how Wozniak hacked the available chipsets to make the damn thing work.) I had an Apple ][+ which I used for years, and I certainly wouldn't have 'dived into' it: it cost way too much for me to risk damaging it. I am pretty handy, but I also don't 'dive into' my truck engine or my washing machine or my TV. I'd rather pay someone who knows what they are doing. That doesn't make me a technophobe, it just means I have some money and a modicum of common sense. BTW, I also don't try to take my own appendix out.) 

There is no "implicit message" in the iPad. It is simply a piece of consumer electronics. 


Imagine I grow up in a culture where linear connections are emphasized.

I have absolutely no idea what this could possibly mean. 

I will be more likely to look for and recognize said types of patterns. This doesn't mean it's impossible for me to learn other ways of thinking. However, I will be primed / biased to look for these patterns.

Alas, if you reject that these two products don't bias one towards different types of thinking

Yes, I do reject it. At least until someone shows me that it might be true.

, if you reject that the patterns of thought, the dominant metaphors do not affect how we employ our cognitive machinery, then there is no hope for this conversation.

I do reject all this, yes. I see no evidence for it; it seems like an extraordinary claim to make about human thought; it it were true, then all kinds of intercultural difficulties of communication should occur, but they seem not to. (I do not refer to the obvious fact that there are culturally determined differences in notions of justice, vengeance, etc.. But I do reject the idea that what one might call the basic conceptual apparatus of thought, especially thought about the everyday world, is different between cultures.) I think it far more likely that the conceptual apparatus of human thought is largely, almost entirely, determined by human biology, and that this is almost uniform across all human cultures. (Humans are in fact extremely homogenous, compared to many other species.) I do have an open mind: if any convincing empirical evidence were to be presented, I would be most interested in it; but all this rhetoric about it being 'obvious' I do not find convincing in the slightest degree. Most of the classical evidence given for these hypotheses (eg Whorf's views on language and thought) have been resoundingly trashed by more recent (and more careful) research. 

, but if you need more convincing, I suggest you consult the reading list of nearly any Public Relations, Media Studies or Critical Theory

Thanks, but I won't bother. Ive spent too much time already dealing with cross-disciplinary communications among the, er,  softer sciences. 

Pat Hayes

I wish you well Pat. My friends have suggested that you have no interest in understanding what I've been trying to communicate and that I ought not bother to engage further.

I believe I do know what it is that you are trying to communicate. As i said, I have read McLuhan (and Whorf.) However, understanding is not the same as agreeing. I actually, believe it or not, disagree with you. But I also wish you well, of course :-)

I have had difficulty appreciating why this simple point has been so arduous to communicate.

If you wish, we can continue this offline. I only as that you:
(a) state what you think I'm claiming

The original claim, to which I reacted, was that the way we **learn to think** is culturally dependent. I take this to be a claim about developmental psychology, and perhaps (with less emphasis on the 'learn') about cognitive psychology in general. 

(b) state what evidence would be compelling for you

I would take a lot of convincing, but perhaps some psychological experiments which clearly indicated a difference in actual modes of thinking between populations in different cultural settings. As I say, I have never seen any (convincing) such demonstrations. Observations along the lines that cultures are culturally different do not make the cut. 


At that point, it'll be abundantly obvious if I should throw in the towel.

Best,
Ali

--
Founding Director, www.reseed.ca
www.pinkarmy.org

(•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,

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