Why "The Harmonic Mind"?
I am finally finding the time and the topic for my first post. First a word of caution for anybody who has found themselves reading this blog. I intend to use this space for several different purposes. First and foremost I want this to be about language. Language and its aspects affect and account for so much of what defines who I am, what I do, and what I like, that in very recent times I have felt the need for a space where I can write about the things I am interested in, the ones I don't quite understand, the ones that puzzle me, or that inspire me to more thought. There are a few other blogs out there - some very influential ones (I'll be building a blogroll soon) - that fulfill in some shape or form the same purpose. They do so, though, for their respective authors. I enjoy reading them and I will continue to do so, but on the other hand I wanted to have a space of my own where I can initiate similar discussions, or continue some of the ones that have been spun off elsewhere.
On the other hand, I hope with time to make this a place of exchange with others who share some of the same curiosities, passions and interests about the topics I will write about. This is more of a wish than a real objective for this effort.
Finally I intend this to be a tool for myself, for my own development and learning. Although I'm working full-time as a researcher in computational linguistics, I am putting a lot of thought and effort in completing my academic journey. I have finally somewhat made up my mind about my dissertation topic and I expect that there will be traces of the progress I will make, in this blog as well. From time to time, I will reflect on the issues that more closely relate to my research and by that time, hopefully enough people will be reading this that I will actually be able to benefit from feedback, and other people's insights and opinions about such topics.
As a final cap to this first post, I will spend just a few words on the title of this post, and not so incidentally of course, the title of this blog. As I believe it often happens with any name, or title, or brand that one finds particularly appropriate or that just fits right whatever communicative intent one wants to exercise, this name too, has been used before. Curiously enough, I didn't know, until I came up with it and bothered to google it. Incidentally though, its previous usage fits the frame and the purpose it will serve here. "The Harmonic Mind" seems to have been the title of a series of talks first, and of a book in more recent times, by Paul Smolensky. It refers to the parallelism and profound links between the connectionist view of cognitive processes and language processing and the optimality-theoretic framework of harmonic selection invented by Smolensky and Prince. I had chosen it because it appropriately describes at least one of the general themes I will try to touch which closely connects to my thesis research - harmonic selection in discourse-level language processing - and because it sums the wish I have for this forum, a harmonious convergence of my ramblings and questions, and the precious exchange of ideas with whoever will stop by and be interested enough to read any further.
On the other hand, I hope with time to make this a place of exchange with others who share some of the same curiosities, passions and interests about the topics I will write about. This is more of a wish than a real objective for this effort.
Finally I intend this to be a tool for myself, for my own development and learning. Although I'm working full-time as a researcher in computational linguistics, I am putting a lot of thought and effort in completing my academic journey. I have finally somewhat made up my mind about my dissertation topic and I expect that there will be traces of the progress I will make, in this blog as well. From time to time, I will reflect on the issues that more closely relate to my research and by that time, hopefully enough people will be reading this that I will actually be able to benefit from feedback, and other people's insights and opinions about such topics.
As a final cap to this first post, I will spend just a few words on the title of this post, and not so incidentally of course, the title of this blog. As I believe it often happens with any name, or title, or brand that one finds particularly appropriate or that just fits right whatever communicative intent one wants to exercise, this name too, has been used before. Curiously enough, I didn't know, until I came up with it and bothered to google it. Incidentally though, its previous usage fits the frame and the purpose it will serve here. "The Harmonic Mind" seems to have been the title of a series of talks first, and of a book in more recent times, by Paul Smolensky. It refers to the parallelism and profound links between the connectionist view of cognitive processes and language processing and the optimality-theoretic framework of harmonic selection invented by Smolensky and Prince. I had chosen it because it appropriately describes at least one of the general themes I will try to touch which closely connects to my thesis research - harmonic selection in discourse-level language processing - and because it sums the wish I have for this forum, a harmonious convergence of my ramblings and questions, and the precious exchange of ideas with whoever will stop by and be interested enough to read any further.
posted by Lorenzo at
5:07 PM
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