Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.
Peak Warming Man said:
Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.
I usually don’t think in language.
dv said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.I usually don’t think in language.
What do you think in most of the time?
The lav…
Witty Rejoinder said:
dv said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.I usually don’t think in language.
What do you think in most of the time?
Thoughts
Witty Rejoinder said:
Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.
That idea has been put forward before, but has no merit. If I asked you to think about a car engine, for example, what language would you think about it in? Specifically, what words would you think about?
Moreover, if people always thought in words, they’d never have difficulty putting their thoughts into words. It’s a translation process.
btm said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.
That idea has been put forward before, but has no merit. If I asked you to think about a car engine, for example, what language would you think about it in? Specifically, what words would you think about?
Each singular thought has a corresponding word. It may usually happen too quickly to be articulated in language but to express anything meaningful i would wager that language was involved. Are not the two most pertinent thoughts about a ‘car engine’ the words ‘car’ and ‘engine’?
If we’re lucky CN might come along and draw us a mind map.
btm said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.
That idea has been put forward before, but has no merit. If I asked you to think about a car engine, for example, what language would you think about it in? Specifically, what words would you think about?
A. English
B. car engine
It’s the whole premise of newspeak, isn’t it?
Witty Rejoinder said:
If we’re lucky CN might come along and draw us a mind map.
I hope so. I love mind maps.
(He’s not Crazy anymore.)
>As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language.
yeah sounds a bit like bordering linguistic determinism
but not to be taken too far, you’ll sense much (thinking) is and can be done without spoken/written language.
if you’ve ever done anything in a big hurry, like something urgent, without time to think in words, you’ll notice you do it before you trouble about putting it into words and sentences.
you’ll notice too, if you’ve been out on your skateboard lately, you ride it with no internal monologue, in fact you could have been born completely deaf, and had your tongue chopped out at birth, still you’d be able to ride a skateboard. If you don’t think that requires much thinking, that it’s a simple task, then program up some AI to do it.
probably worth mentioning too, that humans have the ability to suspend language for thought.
which suggests an internal language, call it mentalese, as some do.
similarly, we never see any transitional organisms in the fossil record
SCIENCE said:
similarly, we never see any transitional organisms in the fossil record
There are many, some are classified as distinct species, but with some primitive features, whilst others that evolved more quickly might not be represented in the fossil record because they were not around for long and so fossils are very scarce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_fossil
I think in language, images, sounds, emotions, numbers etc.
Peak Warming Man said:
Listening to a science show on the Beeb.
As an aside to something they were discussing which escapes me at the moment one chap said that people think in language, the broader their lexicon the better they were able to think.
They were discussing an obscure Welsh (Cymru) word that has no equivalent in English.
I thought that the idea has merit.
I agree. Most of my thoughts are in language, and English language at that.
Even when doing mathematics, I find it easier to think “multiply by the fluctuating x component” or “one on 1.1 is a bit more than 0.9” than to think in mathematical symbols. Although I must admit that I tend to think visual ∑ rather than verbal “sum”.
Another thing I’ve noticed, when computer programming I think in verbs – procedures for doing things – rather than nouns – object oriented stuff.
Another thing I’ve noticed – my language is almost completely free of adverbs, I don’t use them.
I totally agree that the broader the lexicon, the better I am able to think. I’m not the only person who makes up new word associations while doing jigsaw puzzles in order to get a better handle on the shapes and colours encountered.
My thoughts aren’t always in words, I almost always have a background tune going on, at the moment it’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik that I’m singing to myself as I type this. But that doesn’t help my cognitive ability, it acts more as a hindrance.
Consider how difficult it would be to think about subatomic physics if the lexicon didn’t include words like “proton”.
I agree with transition.
I think it is hard to determine how much of our thoughts are in language, but certainly when asked to think of a car engine, my immediate thoughts were much more than “car engine”, but certainly not a detailed verbal description of a car engine.
SCIENCE said:
similarly, we never see any transitional organisms in the fossil record
I’m presuming that was ironic, but I’m not sure what the point was.
Do deaf people think in sign language?
How do deaf and blind people think?
The Rev Dodgson said:
Do deaf people think in sign language?How do deaf and blind people think?
The Rev Dodgson said:
Do deaf people think in sign language?How do deaf and blind people think?
I imagine with blind people it would depend if you were congenitally blind or you went blind. If you have experienced sight you would still have the pictures in your head. But congenitally blind people would probably have a “visual” picture of the world built on touch and sound.
buffy said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Do deaf people think in sign language?How do deaf and blind people think?
I imagine with blind people it would depend if you were congenitally blind or you went blind. If you have experienced sight you would still have the pictures in your head. But congenitally blind people would probably have a “visual” picture of the world built on touch and sound.
Says something similar here: http://deafblindness.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/how-deafblind-think-and-dream.html
The Rev Dodgson said:
Do deaf people think in sign language?How do deaf and blind people think?
There have been several people either born blind or blinded early in life whose vision has been restored later in life. The best known is probably Sidney Bradford, who lost his sight at 10 months and had it restored at 50 years. See Recovery from Early Blindness: A Case Study for a detailed case study. See also the TATE article on Mike May, who was blinded in a chemical explosion when he was 3, and had his sight restored at age 46.
In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks describes the case of a 14-year-old boy whose parents were both profoundly deaf; the child had never learned any language. Sacks, who was involved in his rehabilitation, described the boy as very intelligent. If intelligence were dependent upon language, the boy could not have been intelligent. Taking this a step further, if intelligence was a consequence of language, and a person’s cognitive abilities increased with the number of languages he or she knew, infants — who have no language until they learn their first — could not learn any language.
btm said:
Taking this a step further, if intelligence was a consequence of language, and a person’s cognitive abilities increased with the number of languages he or she knew, infants — who have no language until they learn their first — could not learn any language.
Good point :)
btm said:
In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks describes the case of a 14-year-old boy whose parents were both profoundly deaf; the child had never learned any language. Sacks, who was involved in his rehabilitation, described the boy as very intelligent. If intelligence were dependent upon language, the boy could not have been intelligent. Taking this a step further, if intelligence was a consequence of language, and a person’s cognitive abilities increased with the number of languages he or she knew, infants — who have no language until they learn their first — could not learn any language.
Really bad logical errors there.
1. Assumes that all languages are oral – false, language is also written, and gestural.
2. A person’s cognitive abilities increase with the number of words they know (up to the point of saturation), which isn’t the same as the number of languages.
3. It takes babies 12 months to learn even one word. Couldn’t that be because they have no language to think in before then. I had a child who hadn’t learned even one word before she died at age 3.
PS. When thinking in language, it helps to summarise. For instance, I remember the Navier Stokes equation as the summary:
Dee vee dee tee plus vee dee vee dee ex equals …
not as the full English version:
The partial differential of the i’th component of velocity with respect to time plus the sum over jay equals one to three of the j’th component of velocity times the partial differential of the i’th component of velocity with respect to the j’th component of position equals …
I suppose that everyone is different and some of us think in language more than others.
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
SCIENCE said:
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
Fair enough.
How can people think in language?
Using words or something else?
SCIENCE said:
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
I disagree, but I can’t find the words to express the reason for my disagreement.
Tau.Neutrino said:
How can people think in language?Using words or something else?
As mollwoll pointed out, it depends on the language.
If it was mime, presumably you would think in images of mime.
Witty Rejoinder said:
I suppose that everyone is different …
I’m not.
The Rev Dodgson said:
SCIENCE said:
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
I disagree, but I can’t find the words to express the reason for my disagreement.
correct
SCIENCE said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
SCIENCE said:
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
I disagree, but I can’t find the words to express the reason for my disagreement.
correct
most processes of thought aren’t wordable. It works a bunch of tricks, like magic.
SCIENCE said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
SCIENCE said:
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
I disagree, but I can’t find the words to express the reason for my disagreement.
correct
What a waste of pressing letters on a keyboard.
transition said:
SCIENCE said:
The Rev Dodgson said:I disagree, but I can’t find the words to express the reason for my disagreement.
correct
most processes of thought aren’t wordable. It works a bunch of tricks, like magic.
It is a bit like the cognitive timespace in which this occurs, doesn’t exist.
transition said:
SCIENCE said:
The Rev Dodgson said:I disagree, but I can’t find the words to express the reason for my disagreement.
correct
most processes of thought aren’t wordable. It works a bunch of tricks, like magic.
take something simple, like a musical note you enjoy.
pluck the note yourself, enjoy it, then explain it all in words, how you came to enjoy it.
transition said:
transition said:
SCIENCE said:correct
most processes of thought aren’t wordable. It works a bunch of tricks, like magic.
take something simple, like a musical note you enjoy.
pluck the note yourself, enjoy it, then explain it all in words, how you came to enjoy it.
My English teacher used to ask me questions like that when I was eleven.
SCIENCE said:
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
You are aware, of course, that the converse is false.
ie. Just because a thought can be expressed in words it definitely doesn’t follow that I can express that thought in words.
Or to put it another way
Just because I cannot express a thought in words, it doesn’t follow that the thought cannot be expressed in words. It just means that my lexicon is insufficient.
mollwollfumble said:
SCIENCE said:
I completely agree that every thought we can express in words, must be a thought that can be expressed in words.
You are aware, of course, that the converse is false.
ie. Just because a thought can be expressed in words it definitely doesn’t follow that I can express that thought in words.
Or to put it another way
Just because I cannot express a thought in words, it doesn’t follow that the thought cannot be expressed in words. It just means that my lexicon is insufficient.
Yours or the listeners?
dv said:
Moreover, if people always thought in words, they’d never have difficulty putting their thoughts into words. It’s a translation process.
Also, thoughts predate language. Language arose somewhere from 100000 to 50000 years ago. By that time, hominids had built structures and communities, made fires and tools and searched for resources and planned their use for hundreds of thousands of years. Clearly, they were having thoughts. Language is recent.
dv said:
dv said:
Moreover, if people always thought in words, they’d never have difficulty putting their thoughts into words. It’s a translation process.
Also, thoughts predate language. Language arose somewhere from 100000 to 50000 years ago. By that time, hominids had built structures and communities, made fires and tools and searched for resources and planned their use for hundreds of thousands of years. Clearly, they were having thoughts. Language is recent.
Yeah, prior to language they used the power of interpretive dance.
dv said:
dv said:
Moreover, if people always thought in words, they’d never have difficulty putting their thoughts into words. It’s a translation process.
Also, thoughts predate language. Language arose somewhere from 100000 to 50000 years ago. By that time, hominids had built structures and communities, made fires and tools and searched for resources and planned their use for hundreds of thousands of years. Clearly, they were having thoughts. Language is recent.
I’m quite a lot hard of hearing and though I had hearing up until age 14, most of that exists only in memory bank for access by brain looking for answers.
I often speak aloud to make sure my brian is watching.
I’m sure that there was always language for actions. Comprehending language is by action. If you wish action of making words but this can be way simplified in the action itself.
I have the nickname of ‘brows’ by a longtime neighbour. He knew what I was thinking whether I said it or not by the attitude of my eyebrows.
AwesomeO said:
dv said:
dv said:
Moreover, if people always thought in words, they’d never have difficulty putting their thoughts into words. It’s a translation process.
Also, thoughts predate language. Language arose somewhere from 100000 to 50000 years ago. By that time, hominids had built structures and communities, made fires and tools and searched for resources and planned their use for hundreds of thousands of years. Clearly, they were having thoughts. Language is recent.
Yeah, prior to language they used the power of interpretive dance.
I disagree. Mountain gorillas have two types of language already, a language of grunts and a language of gestures. To go back to a time before the origin of a language of gestures you have to go back before the first insects. Prior to 400 million years ago.
mollwollfumble said:
AwesomeO said:
dv said:Also, thoughts predate language. Language arose somewhere from 100000 to 50000 years ago. By that time, hominids had built structures and communities, made fires and tools and searched for resources and planned their use for hundreds of thousands of years. Clearly, they were having thoughts. Language is recent.
Yeah, prior to language they used the power of interpretive dance.
I disagree. Mountain gorillas have two types of language already, a language of grunts and a language of gestures. To go back to a time before the origin of a language of gestures you have to go back before the first insects. Prior to 400 million years ago.
You make very little of what you call grunts and gestures. What if the recipient was actually harder of hearing than you? What if they had far greater aural cognizance than you?
The distinction between instinct and cognition is important here.
A mayfly lives it’s whole life on instinct, a thoughtless life.
Whereas say a beaver does have some cognition that can determine it’s destiny and quality of life to some degree.
Peak Warming Man said:
The distinction between instinct and cognition is important here.
A mayfly lives it’s whole life on instinct, a thoughtless life.
Whereas say a beaver does have some cognition that can determine it’s destiny and quality of life to some degree.
You haven’t had any good acid. I can see you have never been inside the head of a mayfly.
roughbarked said:
transition said:
transition said:most processes of thought aren’t wordable. It works a bunch of tricks, like magic.
take something simple, like a musical note you enjoy.
pluck the note yourself, enjoy it, then explain it all in words, how you came to enjoy it.
My English teacher used to ask me questions like that when I was eleven.
between the English teacher and the school counselor poking a picture of the bell curve in front of you, well, your trajectory of achievement was bound to be complicated.
Peak Warming Man said:
The distinction between instinct and cognition is important here.
A mayfly lives it’s whole life on instinct, a thoughtless life.
Whereas say a beaver does have some cognition that can determine it’s destiny and quality of life to some degree.
dunno, the workings of 300,000+ year old instincts of man don’t exactly jump out in full detail.
transition said:
roughbarked said:
transition said:take something simple, like a musical note you enjoy.
pluck the note yourself, enjoy it, then explain it all in words, how you came to enjoy it.
My English teacher used to ask me questions like that when I was eleven.
between the English teacher and the school counselor poking a picture of the bell curve in front of you, well, your trajectory of achievement was bound to be complicated.
I see you have been taking notes.
transition said:
Peak Warming Man said:
The distinction between instinct and cognition is important here.
A mayfly lives it’s whole life on instinct, a thoughtless life.
Whereas say a beaver does have some cognition that can determine it’s destiny and quality of life to some degree.
dunno, the workings of 300,000+ year old instincts of man don’t exactly jump out in full detail.
weathering accounted for?
roughbarked said:
transition said:
roughbarked said:My English teacher used to ask me questions like that when I was eleven.
between the English teacher and the school counselor poking a picture of the bell curve in front of you, well, your trajectory of achievement was bound to be complicated.
I see you have been taking notes.
I remember some shit, makes a momentary distraction from my own :)
transition said:
roughbarked said:
transition said:between the English teacher and the school counselor poking a picture of the bell curve in front of you, well, your trajectory of achievement was bound to be complicated.
I see you have been taking notes.
I remember some shit, makes a momentary distraction from my own :)