16.523 mens pristina

From: Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2003 - 04:53:56 EST

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 523.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                       www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                         Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu

             Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 09:44:22 +0000
             From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
             Subject: Minsky's daughter

    See the following anecdote, which might have some appeal to those of us too
    busy for thinking. But then it does lead to the question of what kind of
    thinking the poor man was able to do. I recommend to your attention,
    Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving-Bell & the Butterfly (London: Fourth
    Estate, 1997), transl. from Le Scaphandre et le papillon
    (Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 1997). A Google-search on his name will
    yield abundant material. What sort of a challenge, I wonder, do stories
    like this pose for theories in cognitive science about kinaesthetics in
    thought?

    Yours,
    WM

    >Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 09:27:54 GMT
    >>From: John Lavagnino <John.Lavagnino@kcl.ac.uk>
    >
    >Judy Roitman <roitman@MATH.UKANS.EDU>, on the University of Buffalo
    >POETICS list, 9 October 1997:
    >
    > Once a very long time ago I was visiting friends who were being
    > visited by Minsky and his daughter. A man had just awakened from a
    > very long--10 year?--coma in which he apparently was aware of
    > everything around him (and how could this be a coma one asks? but at
    > the time we didn't) and we were all clucking about the poor man as
    > one does hearing news like this and Minsky's daughter--about 17 at
    > the time--said "why are you so sorry for him? think of all the
    > thinking he was able to do!" We all looked at her incredulously.
    >
    >John

    Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
    Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
    7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
    www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/



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