Dear Ontologers, (01)
The Economist has a special report on "outsourcing
and offshoring" with an embedded article titled
"rise of the software machines". In it, they
claim that descendants of Eliza have been
installed in call centers to replace Indian
English speakers with automated
conversationalists. Here is the link to the
overview of that article: (02)
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21569
573-attractions-employing-robots-rise-software-mac
hines (03)
Having just discussed Sapir-Whorf topics,
ontolgers might also like this material. Here is
an excerpt from the article: (04)
IPsoft's Eliza, a "virtual service-desk
employee" that learns on the job and can reply to
e-mail, answer phone calls and hold conversations,
is being tested by several multinationals. At one
American media giant she is answering 62,000 calls
a month from the firm's information-technology
staff. She is able to solve two out of three of
the problems without human help. At IPsoft's
media-industry customer Eliza has replaced India's
Tata Consulting Services. (05)
CIO magazine has a reference on the same topic
where IPsoft's product is mentioned in more
detail: (06)
http://www.cio.com/article/721800/IT_Robots_May_Me
an_the_End_of_Offshore_Outsourcing?page=2&taxonomy
Id=3195 (07)
Automated natural language assistants seem to be
finally becoming commercially viable. (08)
-Rich (09)
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 9:39 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis (010)
Pat, Rich, and Steven, (011)
Those are indeed fascinating anecdotes that make
the abstract
discussions about connections in the brain more
concrete and vivid.
It's especially poignant to hear the stories from
someone we've
known and loved (and sometimes get into fights
with) over the years. (012)
PH
> She ... told me draw a sketch map of the route
to our home, about
> 5 miles away. It was a surprisingly difficult
task, and my final map,
> which I know was inadequate but was powerless to
improve, showed
> a diagrammatic equivalent of Wernicke's aphasia:
it had well formed
> pieces but they were not connected into a
coherent whole. It was
> this experience, in fact, which started my
interest in thinking
> of maps as a symbolic language rather than
simply a kind of pictorial
> summary of a terrain. (013)
The parietal lobes, which are immediately above
Wernicke's area, are
considered the region for storing and processing
patterns that are
called frames, schemata, or cognitive maps. (014)
Slide 36 of http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/goal.pdf
has a diagram by
Peter MacNeilage about the information flow during
the production
of speech. It shows how the *inferior parietal
cortex* which is
adjacent to Wernicke's area is central to that
flow. (015)
Slide 37 has a diagram of connections by the
linguist Sydney Lamb,
who spent half a century collaborating with
neuroscientists.
Lamb (and many others) believe that what we call
"concepts" can be
correlated with nodes in the parietal lobes. Note
the plural '-s'
-- the corpus callosum has direct connections from
each area in
each hemisphere to its mirror image in the other. (016)
Those nodes have much richer and more complex
connections to both
hemispheres than those shown in slide 37. When
Gabby Giffords
got a bullet through her left hemisphere, the
connections in
her right hemisphere were sufficiently rich to
compensate to
a very large extent. (017)
Antonio Damasio, who wrote an impressive book on
consciousness,
said the following (quoted in slide 40): (018)
AD
> The distinctive feature of brains such as the
one we own is their
> uncanny ability to create maps... But when
brains make maps, they
> are also creating images, the main currency of
our minds. Ultimately
> consciousness allows us to experience maps as
images, to
> manipulate those images, and to apply reasoning
to them. (019)
Note that Damasio calls maps the "main currency of
our minds." (020)
PH
> I believe that, for me at least, listening to
music uses many
> of the same brain areas. (021)
There's a huge literature on the psychology and
neuroscience involved
in music. The following book summarizes the
developments up to 2006: (022)
Mithen, Steven (2006) The Singing Neanderthals:
The Origin of Music,
Language, Mind, and Body, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, MA. (023)
Mithen claimed that the Neanderthals had music,
but not language.
That idea was dubious in 2006, and evidence since
then suggests that
they had some kind of language. But he has
intriguing examples: (024)
Mithen, p. 33
> In 1953, at the age of 51, [the Russian
composer] Shebalin suffered
> a mild stroke in his left temporal lobe, which
impaired his right
> hand, the right side of his face, and disturbed
his speech. Shebalin
> recovered from these symptoms within a few
weeks... Then on 9 Oct 1959,
> Shebalin suffered a second and more severe
stroke... After experiencing
> two epileptic fits, he died from a third stroke
on 29 May 1963. (025)
During that period from 1959 to 1963, Shebalin
exhibited symptoms of
Wernicke's aphasia, which made it very difficult
for him to understand
and speak his native Russian. Following is a
sample Shebalin's
speech, as quoted by the neurologist Alexander
Luria: (026)
S quoted by AL quoted by M:
> The words... do I really hear them? But I am
sure... not so clear...
> I can't grasp them... Sometimes - yes... But I
can't grasp the
> meaning. I don't know what it is. (027)
But amazingly, Shebalin continued to compose music
and to teach music
at the Moscow conservatory. He published 11 major
works between 1959
and 1963. A few months before his death he
completed his fifth
symphony. Dmitri Shostakovich described it as "a
brilliant creative
work, filled with the highest emotions, optimistic
and full of life." (028)
RC
> I met a PhD Mathematician and another PhD
Physicist, both of whom
> claimed to NOT have a visual memory in which to
sketch their thoughts. (029)
Bertrand Russell also said that he couldn't
imagine thought without
language. But Whitehead, who I believe was a much
better mathematician,
said that when he was writing in English he had
the feeling that he was
translating from a foreign language. (030)
SEZ
> despite western governments, including the Obama
administration,
> apparent enthusiasm for the subject, "mapping
the brain" tells us
> nothing much of consequence (031)
The research summarized above was based on mapping
dead brains by
dissecting and mapping live brains by scanning.
Those results are
essential for both diagnosis and treatment.
Without them, surgeons
would still be doing lobotomies. (032)
See the web site for the Human Connectome Project: (033)
http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/ (034)
One of their goals is to diagnose Alzheimer's
disease prior to doing
an autopsy. If they can detect it, they can
compare the effectiveness
of different drugs and therapy. (035)
John (036)
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