If you used symbols (inculding mathematicaal symbols and numerals) could that replace the need for language? If not, what's your example?
Okay: how do you speak in those symbols? And what makes you think that they wouldn't be classed as language anyway? All languages are based on the use of symbols: e.g. the word "apple" isn't an apple, it's a "shorthand commonly-understood description" (i.e. symbol) for the object itself. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=language
ok but I mean in subsitution of languages that are naturally considered languages such as English, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Grereek, Chinesse, Japaneese, Korean, ect.
yes Science_man, math will ultimately replace all languages. But that age is eons away. Computers use algorithms/functions to increase efficiency, so will we.
Read any good maths or physics books lately? How far widespread are you positing the substitution gets? Why would it become widespread?
0010110110111100001010111010011001101110100 That's all I have to say on the matter Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I'm asking if it is possible to use symbolism as a language which doesn't include languages I mentioned before or binary code. you wouldn't speak it you'd have to draw everytime. possible?
you can potentially get rid of language alltogether. Just see how computers communicate, basically telepathically (wifi...microwave). We can potentially have a relative to a specific data code a key of a sort, sort of like an encryption that will allow everything to be seen as mathematical numbers.
Crap. Mathematics wouldn't work for poetry, let alone everyday use. How do you say "Would you like to go for a coffee sometime?" mathematically? Computers transmit/ receive symbols (0 and 1): they have a language. And even if telepathy were possible (and I doubt that language would disappear if we were telepathic - we'd still have to have language to share concepts) we'd need language for written material. Mathematics is a language.
to express the need to go to a coffee with someone else, I give relation of that person position A in coordinates X, Y, Z to position B with time coordinates t1 and t2 for A and B position I would also create a function which would express the person I want to go out with and me as intersection, in mathematical words when our lines meet we meet at the coffee. I would relay the mathematic data telepathically with emotions of what I feel when I want to be with that person, to the other person. In addition I could just send imagery of the place telepathically where I want to go with her. yes mathematics is a language, but it is not developed enough for us to use in daily lives (and neither are we developed enough to use it)
We are not at the stage of our development that we can transmit senses beside hearing and visual...in the future we will be able to transmit smell and feelings of apathy or love just like computers are transmiting data today.
Telepathy? Forget that nonsense, how would you do it mathematically? What's the mathematical symbol for coffee? Does everyone carry the X and Y co-ordinates of every coffee house in their head? And you left off the fact that it would be a question. Send the imagery? So you wouldn't do it mathematically? Fail. On top of which, even if possible is that really more efficient (per your comment on efficiency) than simply saying "Fancy a coffee sometime?" It doesn't need to be, and it never will be (IMO). And now you're really trying to drag the thread into woo woo territory.
The thread question: Could symbolism replace language? this question asks about future of our civilization. I am envisioning future, something that you seem to not be able to. Maybe if I showed you the past, you would understand how different and bizarre the future will be. In past there was no physics, no chemistry, long ago people thought of heaven as a physical place not just a concept we do not even believe in today. According to a Judeo-Christian tradition a tower of Babel was constructed by people of all Earth, the tower that was to reach to heavens and connect people with the Gods. Have you been at that age you would no doubt believe that if that tower was constructed high enough it would reach into heavens where Gods live. Now a millenia away, we do not need towers to heaven, we built rockets that showed that beyond clouds are no heavens, but vacuum. There are no Gods, but stars and vacuum. Do you still believe that in future our concepts of reality will not radically change? Just look in the past century how far we progressed: internet became and integral communication way to express our thoughts. We have basically done away with writing and replaced it with keyboard typing and we are doing away with language, using cellphones we can take photos and send it to others, graphs that relates one variable to the other, charts, money balance.
Yup, which I've given a reply to. Correction: you're going off into insupportable nonsense. I'm being rational. Which has nothing to do with the topic. No. Is there an actual point to that statement? All of that is specious. Typed messages still use written LANGUAGE. Photos don't convey a full message. Graphs etc aren't easily understandable by everyone (and still don't get around the "Fancy a coffee?" question). In other words you're talking nonsense and providing nothing toward answering the OP. Doing away with language? Oh please, everyday conversation and the internet itself itself shows that we aren't.
How does your paradigm deal with cants, which are deliberately made up to thwart understanding by outsiders? The one we all know is Pig Latin, which therefore doesn't work too well any more as a tool for secrecy. The classic example is Shelta, the speech of the Irish Travellers, which no one can bust without studying it. ("Bloke" and "moniker" are both borrowings from Shelta.) There's a little town in California called Boonville where the people speak a cant they call "Boont." As I have noted more than once on this website, many of us have already reached the point where more than half of our communication is in writing. For me it's more like 75%. Even though we don't "have to draw every time," we still have to use a keyboard and I regard that as a very minor distinction. I think the point you're searching for is that if it's not spoken language, it doesn't use quite the same area of the brain. After his stroke my father could not speak, but he could write just fine. He was too old to have learned to type when he was a kid like I did, and he died before there was an internet connection in every home, but if I ever suffer that fate it won't slow me down nearly as much as it did him. Alphabets, abjads (phonetic writing without vowels like Hebrew), syllabaries, Chinese characters, hieroglyphics, emoticons, stick figures, it's all the same idea. All writing (arguably) started out as pictures. Please keep the discourse civil. Perhaps you guys aren't familiar with my "scorched earth" style of moderation, but I have zero tolerance for flame wars on this board.
