What do you think? Mammals evolved on this planet about 200 million years ago. One type of mammal, the hominid, began using audible signals to convey meaning about 4 million years ago. Language, as we comprehend that word, began much less than 4 million years ago. What is thought? The dictionary gives us various definitions of thought; I would guess that it is accurate to say that the actions of neural networks that control our sensorimotor actions can be regarded as thought. In other words, such things as memory, control of movements, and processing of sense inputs are all a process of thinking. Thinking produces thoughts. Thinking goes on all the time even while we sleep. I guess that we will agree that all mammals had to have the ability to think. This leads to the conclusion that thinking was been happening on this planet at least 200 million years before human language existed on this planet. Those individuals who accept the science of evolution must then conclude that humans may think in linguistic forms some small percentage of the time but that most thought is not in linguistic form. “It is the rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimates.” What does all this mean to you? It means that most of the things that you think are true about thinking are pure non-sense. This also applies to many of the things we all believe that are based upon the philosophical attitudes that fills our life are like wise pure non-sense. Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”—Lakoff and Johnson
alot of insects seem to work on chemical signals to each other, like a swarm intelligence. they seem to act as one collective mind, abviously i was talking about insects that live in a colony peace. peace.
Well there are certainly many different forms of thought. Most animal thought is instinct/learned survival. As for the rest, I guess we just don't know. Basically an ordinary dog or cat could have told you what Lakoff and Johnson did. I really wonder how much their degrees were.
Well, there is instinct, and that is a kind of thought isn´t it? It is a well known fact that instinct is obtained from the learning and experiences of past generations, it means not only humans are involved in the cyclic existence or reincarnation, learning and therefore thoughts. Maybe our ego doesn´t let us see the fact that we are 100% animals...
People think in different languages, so linguistic thought must have something over conceptual thought. Probably the advantages for social interaction. I wouldn't say that most thought is purely conceptual though. After a while, linguistic thought becomes conceptual thought. That's how it seems to me anyway. Shit, what about cephalopods? They're pretty smart. I think some of the more social species communicate through their camouflage.
Generally I like Lakoff, but I gotta take a step back from him here. To say that 95% of all thoughts are non-linguistic would mean that there is some strict definition of the word thought. I don't recall him or anyone else ever providing that (or being able to).
What are some of the processes of thinking that must go on when I speak? Accessing memories that I need Perceiving the sounds as being language and breaking the language into phonetic aspects Picking out words and assigning meaning appropriate to the context Making some kind of pragmatic sense out of the whole Framing the matter relative to the situation Developing inferences Constructing appropriate images Interpreting the body language of the other person Anticipating the direction of the conversation Planning a response while listening What are some of the processes of thinking that must go on when perceiving? Sorting out the inputs from all of the senses Focusing back and forth on desired object of perception Developing categories and other conceptual structure Developing inferences I am quite likely doing both of these things at the same time I am walking or driving etc.
That is exactly what I believe. Well they can't very well say that unless they know what I think is true about thinking. And what I think is true is just what they said -- that most thought is non-linguistic.
I can tell you coberst that there are a lot of analogues to this concept. I believe that every muscle in the body is connected to these synapses and the synapse connections fire or signal in the same pattern as the muscle movement. If it takes place unconsciously the muscle will still perform the unconscious movement. Perhaps unconscious synapses are just the confusion of actual stimuli and events with those existing in memory only. This kind of complexity might have been grossly overestimated to the point of being labelled irreducible. That was when I.D.ists like Chris Langan and William Dembski talk egotistical nonsense and start to separate the mental from the physical and make statements like, "anyone attempting to explain reality must acknowledge that it is both mental and physical". But you've just indicated that the mental is just the physical in a more sophisticated format that our present science has not quite explained yet. Sidenote: There seems to be a trend amongst theorists that a scientific model becomes absolute truth when it is consistent a certain percentage of the time. A mind cannot ever be capable of grasping absolute truth if it is based on personal prejudices. There may be no such thing as truth in the first place. And reality is but a veil. One example of this trend taking place might be this.
It appears to me that CS has two paradigms, symbol manipulation (AI), and conceptual metaphor. When I speak of CS here I am speaking of the conceptual metaphor paradigm. Cognitive science has radically attacked the traditional Western philosophical position that there is a dichotomy between perception and conception. This traditional view that perception is strictly a faculty of body and conception (the formation and use of concepts) is purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our ability to perceive and move. Cognitive science has introduced revolutionary theories that, if true, will change dramatically the views of Western philosophy. Advocates of the traditional view will, of course, “say that conceptual structure must have a neural realization in the brain, which just happens to reside in a body. But they deny that anything about the body is essential for characterizing what concepts are.” The cognitive science claim is that ”the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.” The embodied-mind hypothesis therefore radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the same neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movements) plays a central role in conception. Indeed, in recent neural modeling research, models of perceptual mechanisms and motor schemas can actually do conception work in language learning and in reasoning. A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters. Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving. Our understanding of biology indicates that the body has a marvelous ability to do as any handyman does, i.e. make do with what is at hand. The body would, it seems logical to assume, take these abilities that exist in all creatures that move and survive in space and with such fundamental capabilities reshape it through evolution to become what we now know as our ability to reason. The first budding of the reasoning ability exists in all creatures that function as perceiving, moving, surviving, creatures. Cognitive science has, it seems to me, connected our ability to reason with our bodies in such away as to make sense out of connecting reason with our biological evolution in ways that Western philosophy has not done, as far as I know. It seems to me that Western philosophical tradition as always tried to separate mind from body and in so doing has never been able to show how mind, as was conceived by this tradition, could be part of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Cognitive science now provides us with a comprehensible model for grounding all that we are both bodily and mentally into a unified whole that makes sense without all of the attempts to make mind as some kind of transcendent, mystical, reality unassociated with biology. Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”
we can't think. we only think we can. words and letters can't create meaning anymore than sounds can create music.
Alot of this reminds me of Humphrey's : evolution and the birth of consciousness, ive not read the book itself - ive only read extracts cited in other books. It looks like there's a few conceptual holes in the theory such as how in the first stages of evolved matter a signal ever became an instruction (its a real mind-bender this one) Its either some sort of predetermisn, retro-causality or some sort of quantum-like duality of process. Never the less from what ive read he unearths some interesting ideas about how we have evolved to have subjectivity. Heres a summary off amazon So basically the idea is that subjecivity is just a higly abstracted form of sensation (sensation to humprehys being a consciously created instruction informing the lifeform of its surroundings).
Permit me to follow up with a question coberst; are we to think that mind is not the isolated mystical conundrum once made out to be? But an equivalent complex to the body, both functioning deterministically to acheive a singular output.
Have a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception Does that mean that whatever you believe you percieve? If so then does this say anything about reality itself as possessing exclusively physical and mental properties? Can we now conclude that the universe is the mind of God? Perhaps the mind is simply the body. And beliefs, ego. Perhaps it is not that the universe is either mind (mental) and body (physical), but also ego... One too big for an atheist to comprehend. Perhaps reality is a psychological veil over the senses that prevents us from shutting up about it. When in fact it is but a word that if, non-existent, would be of no consequence.
Cortex I posted my last post before I read your last post. I have no idea what your last post is telling me. "There you have it in a nutshell" applies to your earlier post and not your last post. Have I confused you?
