5 ms·

That is not what is happening in this study, which is tapping into the motor system that controls the muscles used in speech. That is part of the externalisatio

That is not what is happening in this study, which is tapping into the motor system that controls the muscles used in speech. That is part of the externalisation of language, not the system of thought (which we know very little about).

wombatmobile 5y ago
Yes, this is just output. And Bach-y-Rita showed Input is digital. What’s left is all the logic between input and output.
- tikwidd 5y ago
  Yes, we have sophisticated digital systems that interface with our (analogue) sensory systems - a screen and keyboard are examples of this. Maybe these sensory interfaces involve some machine learning (maybe they don't). In the future, we might stimulate the sensory systems directly. But with any advances in technology in this domain we won't get closer to understanding the "logic between input and output" as you put it - i.e. what are the atoms of thought, how do they combine, and how these internal thoughts relate to external language. We can only meaningfully tackle these questions by linguistic theorising and experiments.
  - wombatmobile 5y ago
    > But with any advances in technology in this domain we won't get closer to understanding the "logic between input and output" We gain a pathway for investigation backwards. What neural substrate is active in generating the speech data? Work backwards from there.
    - tikwidd 5y ago
      As a proponent of biolinguistics, my bet is that as we study those neural substrates more closely, we'll probably just learn more about the sensorimotor systems (which we largely share in common with other mammals) that have been coopted for expression of language in humans. We already have a useful pathway for investigation: data from speech/sign of a speaker of a particular language. In fact this already yields a kind of overabundance of data. The tricky part is finding the right kind of data via careful experimentation and organising it, by building explanatory theories of language that meet the conditions of evolvability and learnability. (Which is not to say that cognitive sciences can't shed any light on this, but studying the brain independently of linguistic experimentation is a dead end IMO. Brain imaging studies coupled with linguistic studies have yielded interesting results - see Andrea Moro's work on "impossible languages").
mycall 5y ago
Part of me thinks it would be demoralizing to have gained speech again, only to lose it once more at the end of the study once the electrode array is removed.
acituan 5y ago
> That is part of the externalisation of language, not the system of thought (which we know very little about). Actually we have some idea and one theory is that they are not as distinct systems as we’d like to think, at least they work bidirectionally and reciprocally: language structures back the thoughts themselves, so there is a way that externalization actually feeds “inwards”. See distributed/embodied cognition.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  Linguistic determinism is really popular in academic circles at the moment, but it has been disproven. For example, there is a South American tribe, the Pirahã, who have no words for colors, but they have the cognitive ability to perceive them and draw analogies to objects of similar colors.
  - acituan 5y ago
    Invoking linguistic determinism here is a strawman. Never said all cognition is exclusively shaped by language.
  - xolour84 5y ago
    Your assertion of disproof isn't valid with the example you've provided? Please explain further because in no way does not having words for colours mean the tribe isn't substituting some other properties of linguistic determinism in the place of the words we use for colours.
  - fourtrees 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that some of the more outlandish claims of Everett (the big Piraha guy) have been cut down to size by his peers. Especially that boo-ha-ha over the Piraha's lack of recursion. If you're interested I have a few articles saved. As for the popularity of linguistic determinism, who knows. I wouldn't trust a linguist who took the strong Sapir-Wharf hypothesis seriously.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    I don't think that is about linguistic determinism in the sense of the Sappir-Whorf hypothesis, it seems to be more about Chomsky's theory that language is an internal thought mechanism first, and a communication mechanism second. That is, all thought is internally represented in langauge-like structures - not in Chinese or French, but in internal language trees which can, if you decide to externalize it, be translated to an external langauge phrase that you know.
fourtrees 5y ago
This 1000x. It's not the scientific miracle the press makes it out to be. While it is incredible that it restores speech, it's not resorting as language as some sources have claimed. This ain't gonna fix most aphasias.

wombatmobile 5y ago

Yes, this is just output. And Bach-y-Rita showed Input is digital. What’s left is all the logic between input and output.

tikwidd 5y ago
Yes, we have sophisticated digital systems that interface with our (analogue) sensory systems - a screen and keyboard are examples of this. Maybe these sensory interfaces involve some machine learning (maybe they don't). In the future, we might stimulate the sensory systems directly. But with any advances in technology in this domain we won't get closer to understanding the "logic between input and output" as you put it - i.e. what are the atoms of thought, how do they combine, and how these internal thoughts relate to external language. We can only meaningfully tackle these questions by linguistic theorising and experiments.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  > But with any advances in technology in this domain we won't get closer to understanding the "logic between input and output" We gain a pathway for investigation backwards. What neural substrate is active in generating the speech data? Work backwards from there.
  - tikwidd 5y ago
    As a proponent of biolinguistics, my bet is that as we study those neural substrates more closely, we'll probably just learn more about the sensorimotor systems (which we largely share in common with other mammals) that have been coopted for expression of language in humans. We already have a useful pathway for investigation: data from speech/sign of a speaker of a particular language. In fact this already yields a kind of overabundance of data. The tricky part is finding the right kind of data via careful experimentation and organising it, by building explanatory theories of language that meet the conditions of evolvability and learnability. (Which is not to say that cognitive sciences can't shed any light on this, but studying the brain independently of linguistic experimentation is a dead end IMO. Brain imaging studies coupled with linguistic studies have yielded interesting results - see Andrea Moro's work on "impossible languages").

mycall 5y ago

Part of me thinks it would be demoralizing to have gained speech again, only to lose it once more at the end of the study once the electrode array is removed.

acituan 5y ago

> That is part of the externalisation of language, not the system of thought (which we know very little about). Actually we have some idea and one theory is that they are not as distinct systems as we’d like to think, at least they work bidirectionally and reciprocally: language structures back the thoughts themselves, so there is a way that externalization actually feeds “inwards”. See distributed/embodied cognition.

oceanplexian 5y ago
Linguistic determinism is really popular in academic circles at the moment, but it has been disproven. For example, there is a South American tribe, the Pirahã, who have no words for colors, but they have the cognitive ability to perceive them and draw analogies to objects of similar colors.
- acituan 5y ago
  Invoking linguistic determinism here is a strawman. Never said all cognition is exclusively shaped by language.
- xolour84 5y ago
  Your assertion of disproof isn't valid with the example you've provided? Please explain further because in no way does not having words for colours mean the tribe isn't substituting some other properties of linguistic determinism in the place of the words we use for colours.
- fourtrees 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that some of the more outlandish claims of Everett (the big Piraha guy) have been cut down to size by his peers. Especially that boo-ha-ha over the Piraha's lack of recursion. If you're interested I have a few articles saved. As for the popularity of linguistic determinism, who knows. I wouldn't trust a linguist who took the strong Sapir-Wharf hypothesis seriously.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I don't think that is about linguistic determinism in the sense of the Sappir-Whorf hypothesis, it seems to be more about Chomsky's theory that language is an internal thought mechanism first, and a communication mechanism second. That is, all thought is internally represented in langauge-like structures - not in Chinese or French, but in internal language trees which can, if you decide to externalize it, be translated to an external langauge phrase that you know.

fourtrees 5y ago

This 1000x. It's not the scientific miracle the press makes it out to be. While it is incredible that it restores speech, it's not resorting as language as some sources have claimed. This ain't gonna fix most aphasias.