CLAP
“In 1850... small light parade tied in with a religious ceremony... December 8th, entire lighting of the city... Light installation on river... warming centre... Water fire: one of the most intimate, emotional experiences... Pulled asphalt up in the nineties...”
Hey, I’m remembering somethin, Chicago durin the 1830s they had need of a vast variety o’buildins. Dese were boom times in d’ol Northwest. In 1830 the population o’Chicago numbered 100, by the’nd o’dat decade it was more dan 4000. Of all Van Osdel’s buildins o’dis period, none is more significant’han d’emperor of early Chicago hostelries, de Tremont House, which’e constructed in 1850 on de southeast corner o’Lake an Dearborn streets. January 1851, “It is one of the chief ornaments of the city...” In de Tremont’s public rooms d’early Chambers o’Commerce met, business was transacted in its lobby. It was a city where, in de 1840s and 50s a ‘grocery’ meant an establishment’hat sold liquor as well as foodstuffs, and many o’dem’anaged to find room for a roulette wheel as well. The Mecca, built on de South Side at State an 34th streets in 1891, was de result o’de collaboration o’Daniel Burnham an George Edbrooke, a leadin warehouse an store designer.
Outta nowhere, a propos de nothin de man’ext’o me sits up straight, opens his eyes wide and says in a whisper, “I like her. She woke me up.”
“I noticed.”
“... very large to very tiny scale... park well-loved and so well-used.”
More technical difficulties.
“... How people use space... that matters... gather, sit, celebrate...”
A brilliant solution to the problem o’public space, wid Chicago’s harsh winters.
“... Tear down brick buildings, urban renewal... starts growing and can’t stop it... Even very tiny little triangle... cities grow around it... Waterfront and riverfront, rejuvenation... Wilderness coming through the city...”
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“... meander of the river... little neighbourhoods stuck in the middle, very tiny pieces... small interventions, a lot of volunteer labour... sometimes plants are donated... celebrating leadership and agriculture of the land... people thought... nice vacant land... lets see... make a park... put together all of the pieces, all abandoned railroad tracks, native landscapes disappearing... about the people, set aside for use of public park and nothing else... ”
There seems to be a lotta hope in de room right now.
“... ended up... transformed into what it is today... as much economic impact... institution... Why this study? Public process, challenge people to think about cultural and park experience, people value both... magic is in finding a balance... All these needs, infrastructure is shaping park instead of cultural institutions shaping infrastructure... What do people value? From different point of view... Small interventions... Shuttles, promote health of cultural institutions...”
Suddenly the van changed its course and I saw the towers in the distance, blue and half hidden in the smoke. At once my ideas changed.
“... transit... 300 million, so costs are distributed as well as benefits... that is probably the last slide... going to take some commitment and a lot of time... but I just wanted to show you something good. Thankyou.”
Finally. No’ffense to the speakers, o’course.
Oh, looks like I got London’line again. Here goes nothin.

“The abilities to attribute an action to its proper agent and to understand its meaning when it is produced by someone else are basic aspects of human social communication.”

Dese people don even know’hat de fuck dey talkin bout. Like, no’ne’ven knows what meaning is or how it even works. What de fuck. I mean, like, no wonder fuckin schizophrenics have a “dysfunction of the awareness of one’s own action as well as of recognition of actions performed by others”. In my mind dis takes us right back to fuckin Descartes, but dese guys probly never read’im. Dey too fuckin clinical. I’m gonna hafta learn’em.

The COGITO
The proposition, “I am, I exist” is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.
This version concerns a principle about thinking.


The Proto-COGITO

Whenever I am thinking, I am certain that I exist.
I think, therefore I am.
This version contains an inference.

I am doubting.

Doubting is thinking.

If I am thinking, then I must exist.

Therefore, I exist.

The cogito principle doesn’t deduce existence from thought via a syllogism, rather it is self-evident. ‘I am, I exist’, is a pre-reflective awareness built into thought.
We don’t need to reflect to know what thought is. It is an immediate awareness, evidence that one cannot doubt. The fact of consciousness cannot be doubted. Existence of the self becomes indubitable through the cogito. This helps Descartes to understand his own nature as a thinking thing. The cogito entails doubt, understanding, willing, etc.

“Such syndromes offer a framework for studying the determinants of agency, the ability to correctly attribute actions to their veridical source.”

Ahh, so da’s not good enough for dem, is it. Gonna hafta dig up somethin else.
He seems to wish to maintain that language is necessary for any type of thought to occur and that all thoughts will conform to some pattern of belief.
Dat oughtta do somethin good. Ha ha.

“A fundamental problem is raised by the mechanism of how one becomes aware of one’s own actions, and how one’s actions are distinguished from those of other people.”

Hmmm. I guess in some ways dey sorta’gree wid me. I’s jus’that’hey don’t agree bout’he solution. Hmm. Le’see what else we got here for dem. Dis includes consciousness itself (i.e., consciousness o’bein conscious and consciousness o’reality). What about Libet’s Timing of Conscious Experience (Consciousness and Cognition, Vol. 9, #1)?
“This would produce a lag in conscious awareness of the real world by up to about 500ms.” (p. 4)

“This mechanism is critical for a number of reasons.”

“We realized that there was a distinctive difference between cortical responses to a cortical stimulus and the cortical responses to a skin stimulus. The latter generated a fast primary evoked potential at the somatosensory cortex.” (p. 5)

“First, the ability to make a distinction between the acting self and the acting other is one way by which the self feels distinct from other individuals and self-consciousness built.”

What a fuct-up sentence that was. Glad I didn write it. I think they don understand at all what I’m gettin at.
According to Bermudez, psychological explanations are appropriate in cases where the representation of information will affect the way in which an animal behaves. In such cases, it appears that the most likely explanation for a behaviour is that it was a response to the particular beliefs and desires of the animal in question. If it is necessary to attribute a notion of rationality to a person in order to make sense of his/her actions, then we can see how it would be just as important to apply such a notion to any creature that has beliefs and desires.
I’m not sure da’s what I’m tryin to get at. But it was worth puttin out’here anyway.

“Second, the ability to recognise the meaning of an action when it is produced by someone else and to attribute it to its proper agent is a basic function underlying human social communication.”

Oh, man, der’s’o many fuckin problems wid’at I don’t even know’here to begin. But I got de feelin dey ain gonna care bout’his at all.
He assumes that organisms with the capacity to consider actions, learn concepts, and integrate perceptions will require an internal system of representation.

“Research on these points has been undertaken within several different frameworks. The study of mental and cognitive development is one of those. Researchers in this FIELD have set the stage for a renewal of developmental studies, by demonstrating the appearance, in early childhood, of a special ability of the individual to attribute to others mental states differing from his/her own, and to infer the content of these mental states from his/her own mental content (the so-called ‘theory of mind,’ Leslie, 1987).”

Oh, man. I can’t believe dey gettin’ to dat shit. GAWD.
Evidently, there are many problems inherent to establishing a connection between thought and language.

“The ability to imitate and to learn by observation is another critical developmental function, which might relate to the same basic mechanism (Meltzoff, 1995).”

Ok. Dat much I can agree wid.

“This highly influential research has recently merged with other work in normal adult subjects, aimed at determining the neural mechanisms of mental representations, particularly in the context of action generation.”

So, now’e back to Libet again, eh?
“The whole thrust of our experiments and conclusions was that the timing of a sensation is subjectively referred to the early signal given by the primary evoked potential, not that the conscious sensation itself jumped backwards in time.” (p. 7)
What I’m tryin to get at wid’is Libet stuff here is dat we don even know’hat d’hell is goin on wid fuckin skin pricks when it comes to consciousness. And’at’s really fuckin old research. So how de fuck are we gonna get’o the fuckin consciousness of ACTIONS?! But o’course I can’t fuckin say dat.
“In other words, it is the content of the subjective experience, of the neuronally delayed awareness, that is modified by referral to the earlier timing signal.”
Yeah, fuckin right.

“The notions of internal models and internal simulation borrowed from computational neuroscience (see Wolpert et al., 1995) have now become a conceptual tool for studying the early stages of action generation, such as intending, for example.”

Oh my gawd. I’m never gonna get through to these fuckin people.
Isn’t thought supposed to depend upon some form of interpretation, some instance of language-use?

“Experiments using brain mapping techniques have shown that merely observing an action performed by someone else is no less a powerful way of eliciting brain activity than other cognitive motor states, such as mentally simulating or preparing to execute that same action.”

I’m prepared to grant them that much.

“These results... raise the point of the differences and similarities of motor representations activated during these states.”

No, see, already dey taking it too far. We still don’t know shit bout motor’epresentations or any fucking “mental states”. GAWD. I’m gettin sick o’dis fuckin conversation. Plus, I got a call comin’ on another line. Fuck.