Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 17:24:48 -0800 Subject: Perspectives on Events Ari, et.al. Some thoughts on recent postings: Thinking of paralogy and Ashbery's poetry, and remembering Nietzsches comment on the "thing-in-itself", which reminds us that taking away relations of a "thing" to other things leaves a that "thing" without description, we realize that "events" are all that can "be the case". The level of events and the combination of events combine into "brain-states". Pre-natal brain states may have permanent (though unconscious) effects on newborns, just as physical imperfections may affect heart, lungs, or other organs. Language, presumably, is not a pre-natal experience. For the infant, sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, accompany experience of other living beings, and other objects. Such experience includes visual and audio patterns, tastes, and odors. Conscious and unconscious perceptions are apparently continuosly stored in infant memories, forming a data base of learning. Lyotard writes much of messages, addressor, addressee, referent etc. Such concepts express the "transactional" nature of human communication in speech and body language, and other languages of the senses and the arts. The infant is a receiver of sensations and a sender of sound and body language; a new and imperfect instrument to be sure. Normal growth and development adds capability to both receiving and sending faculties. And, in only two or three years, the child will respond to fairly complex events: For example, rhythm, the immemorial beats of nursery rimes, tunes, hand-clapping. Such "events" are witnessed, understood, interpreted. The instruments of receiving and transmission are progressively upgraded. Parents want the child to develop and be able to integrate syllables, words, sentences, meaning. However, paralogicaly, adults sometimes wish to deconstruct rather than integrate. Thus it is possible to read a poem treating each syllable as an event. One reading or one syllable is one event. Pitch, decibel count, and the voice quality, with which each syllable is delivered make it a unique event with or without the presence and body language of the reader. The "order" of syllables in reading a poem may be varied for experimental purposes. Rapid speech, say 250 to 300 words per minute, would perhaps deliver a thousand separate syllables, each one a separate event. Experimenting with this poetic minute could yield a million combinations. Compared to possible brain-states of a mature adult, a million a very small quantity. As Carl Sagan observed, the number of possible brain states is so very large that human beings can only realize a small portion of their potential; that identical twins have quite different brain states, and that those of us who think we understand our "selves" are sometimes surprised at our own actions.
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