Please note that the theory isn't new, simply the Cornell study is. 'Cognitive sciences' are a cross-disciplinary mess, and not even a very enlightening mess. The reason why a computer model was used as that they have consistently tried to use their understanding of how a computer works to model human cognition and language control--in order to get, among other things, computers to act more like humans! The reasoning is quite circular, a 'pragmatic' vicious circle.
Still, the misuse of models in this field goes back to the structuralists. Besides degrading Marxism, they came up with a discrete binary way of analyzing just about anything. Take for example language and the sound systems of languages. The basic structuralist concept is called the phoneme. This is supposed to be a unit of phonology that psychologically or sociologically controls language processing and acquisition (unquestioningly inherited into fields like language teaching). The structuralists weren't strong on psychology but preferred 'social systems' as controllers, since their mental models were basically behaviourist. All Chomsky did early on was psychologize the structuralist concepts like phonemes. This led uninterestingly enough to theoretical phonology being concerned with controlling sub-lexical units divorced ENTIRELY from considerations of actual speech, articulation, phonetics, etc (something even the structuralists didn't do). Which makes good sense if you want a phonology for a computer, but not a human who can speak a language with a mouth, vocal cords, glottis, nose, lungs, etc (in fact, the human vocal tract is a convergence of our upper digestive and respiratory tracts). Charles Jannuzi Univ. of Fukui, Japan _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
