Someone linked to a blog post of mine on this reddit and I was curious, so I followed it back. Scrolling down I noticed this entry about Rice University, which we know has a lot of stuff going on.
Anyway sharing - this on Frank McGuigan into cybernetics of mind and body ties to Navy
http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OhAkAHA0480.xml;chunk.id=bioghist_1;brand=default
Also Edmund Jacobson. This is interesting @stephers re synesthesia, encoding, and word spells
“ON MEANING”
The purpose of the project was to investigate the processes of “perception of single letters, the understanding of words, and of sentences.” Jacobson and his three collaborators acted as subjects. The subject was to open his eyes upon a card printed with a letter, a word, or a brief sentence, absorb as much of the experience as he could detail accurately, then close his eyes and give his report. These observers had much to say of internal events transpiring in that very brief interval, including sensations of color, auditory images of the sound of the letter, eye movements, and contraction and relaxation of the muscles of speech In one instance, an observer whose attention was diverted by a moving pendulum, reported kinesthetic images in the neck, as if following the swinging bob. Many of the reports were long and full of detail, providing a respectable account of the skills mastered by these early introspectionists.
He concluded that “for the most part, visual sensations aroused by the stimulus are not sufficient, of themselves, to constitute a perception of the particular letter; some additional process or processes must supervene.” Although at the time he was not ready to formulate it, the statements of the observations of activity in eye, speech and neck regions in connection with a simple reading task foreshadowed his position that the motor system plays a central role in mental activity.
A key element revealed in this early paper is the place of technical introspection in Jacobson’s system. Most workers of today are unaware of introspection, or consider it a quaint relic of a bygone era. Jacobson modified the techniques of introspection for his own purposes. As measurement devices for the physical sciences became increasingly sophisticated, psychology emulated physics by embracing objectivity, leading to the institutionalization of behaviorism and rejection of the subjectivity of introspection as unreliable. To Jacobson however, introspection offered access to the richness of the unmeasurable internal experience, and as his work unfolded, he unhesitatingly used introspective technique as the foundation for his method of relaxation. It is introspection, not relaxation, which through modifications and expansion, eventually became progressive relaxation. Introspection also proves one of the larger liabilities of the technique, providing, when behaviorism became the standard of the scientific method in psychology, a target for Jacobson’s critics."
BTW again @Stephers in the Orson Scott Card books Ender speaks with “Jane” the AI through subvocalization. Card emphasizes that often in the series.