--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
><SNIP> The same is
> true
> > only more so with electronic music. Complex electronic timbres can be
> hard to pin
> > down right away, but I can usually create the sound I'm hearing in my
> head
> > with some time and trial and error.
>
> I appreciate the additional response, but it only leads to more questions.
> :-) When I do something like that, having a flash of an idea and then work
> to get it down, I find that my origional idea isn't fully there. The work
> getting it into a presentable form is also creative, not just a matter of
> writing things down. This is given as one of the reasons Phd candidates
> are encouraged to begin writing their dissertations as soon as possible.
Dan, I don't think that everyone works this way all the time. I do know what
you are talking about, but that is a completely differnt situation. What you
are describing is what I would call a "Hunch" rather than an "Idea". Once
again the english language fails to provide clear translations of abstract
ideas....(Overloading of the root "idea" intentional).
I have "hunches", but the exercise of communicating those "hunches" does not
serve me best to "solidify" or "detail out" or "correct" the "hunch" into an
"idea". It can do this. I have experienced the improvement of a hunch into an
idea through the communcation excersize, but I fine simple consentration on
the hunch much more effective. Group "hunching" can also be very helpfull,
and I suppose that this is actualy the communication exercise and
consentration happening at the same time. It does require participation.
I had an office mate with a stuffed monkey. He would talk to the monkey to
try and work out hunches untill they were ideas. It didn't seem to work all
that well for him and so I started makeing suggestions whenever the monkey
drew a blank. After a while, tiering of being ignored, the monkey went to
share an office down the hall. When I inquired about his friends abandonment
he told me that talking to an inanimat object didn't seem to work as well. We
then began a lengthy discusion on how I was actualy providing a lot of the
creative input to "Ideas" that has started in our office as mear "Hunches".
Believe me I was fully aware of how much of ~my~ ideas were ~our~ ideas, but
he was not. Two brains are much more efficient at turning a hunch into an
idea. But it does require that the neccisary communication is not
overburdened. You both must be able to "get" what the other person is
"getting" at without specific detailed specification (to be precise).
Anyway, if you are stuck with just the one brain, (or if the other brain
requires too much detailed specification, then doesn't the communication
excersise just get in the way?
It seems that you are saying that this is the othe way around for you, and
that you turn hunches in to ideas efficiently through the communication
exercise.
You also seem to be saying that you seldom have ideas that do not first begin
as hunches and then migrate to ideas specificaly through the communication
exercise.
> > I more or less agree, but do you think there are ideas that could be
> > expressed
> > in a language that has not been developed yet? For example, 100 years
> > before
> > Newton, could someone have thought of a concept that required calculus to
> > express?
>
> How about to solve? Zeno's paradox can be adressed with calculus. It was
> not an inability to think about infinesmals that stopped the Greeks from
> developing calculus, it was their opinion that the whole thing was rather
> ridiculous that stopped them.
>
> Also, remember that Libnitz (sp) developed calculus in parallel with
> Newton.
See, there again you are not addressing the consept (at least not as I read
it). A discussion of Goodel I think would be much more benificial here...or
maybe Curry.
You do not seem to be seperating the consepts of an idea and communicating
the idea. The point of the above passage seemd to me to be about this very
differnce. We do not know if Newton was the first to have the idea or mearly
the first to have the idea of how to express the idea. The skill at
understanding the system and the skill at creating a method to communicate
that system to others are not necisarily the same thing. You may see Newtn as
a genious becouse he "descovered" so many tings. I see Newton as doubely a
genions becouse not only did he gain an understaning of these things, but he
was also able to communicate those things in a way that others could
comprehend.
I appologize for speaking to you directly in this manner Dan, but I seem to
have the opposite assumption for the one you have. I deal every day, even
presently, with a dificulty in expressing the consepts that I have. These
consepts to not go through much alteration in their writting other than to
become much much less precise than they were when I thought them. I therefore
allways see what you see as ideas as two seperate entities. The idea itself,
and the communication of that idea.
You appear to see these as one thing and to have difficulty seperating them.
If you are unable to comunicate an idea then you must be forded to recognize
that this idea is actualy a hunch. This makes me beleive that your
communicatie abilites must be quite impressive relative to myself, but that
your self "conseptualizing" awareness is not. But then this may simply be a
side effect of your assumption, if you do in fact assume that an idea and the
expression of that idea are linked. i.e. it may not be that you are not as
aware of your own conseptualizing, but that you mearly instantainously
traslate any conseptes to a communicatable form. So you become aware of your
hunches by realizing that the communication is difficult. Or it could simply
mean that you conseptualize mostly in language and therefore recognize the
"hunch" status of a consept durring communication.
Personaly, I beleive that latter to be true (well that and your high
communication skills). Why? becouse I beleive that I differ in opinoin from
you specificaly becouse I conseptualize very little "in language".
uh, well, I could have written about 20 more pages on that, but...hope you
understand.
The short of it: You only tink that becouse you are a "language thinker". I
disagree becouse I am not.
> Or can ideas in calculus be expressed (albiet not as succintly) in
> > other
> > forms of math that existed at the time? (I've never taken calculus, so I
> > really
> > am curious.)
>
> They can even be described in words. :-)
Language thinker bias?
=====
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