The shape of language

[Canute]

Originally posted by wesmorris


You're right, but there is more to it than that. It's not "just a tool" in that it contributes directly to what comprises one's mind throughout its development. I think it IS more important than other modes of communication in that aspect. For instance, I wonder if it would be possible to really appreciate art if it had not been for language shaping your mind in a manner that lets you appreciate the term and concept of "art" in the first place ya know? ...9snip)

I mean, language kind of has a life of it's own. It's a sort of conceptual repository for human thought.

I thing you're just about right. Orwell had the right idea about the power of language on thought imo. Language is a very powerful constraint on our thoughts, and when political (or religious, or scientific) use debases it we think less rationally. Also Wittgenstein argued we couldn't think at all without it, as you do.

I don't agree since, as Kami says, a bit of Buddhist practice soon proves him wrong. But I'd say he (and you) were very nearly right. Wittgenstein said that to overcome the limits of language on our thoughts (to transcend it) is analagous to a fly getting out of a fly bottle. Buddhists would agree.

 

[wesmorris]

Originally posted by Canute
I thing you're just about right. Orwell had the right idea about the power of language on thought imo. Language is a very powerful constraint on our thoughts, and when political (or religious, or scientific) use debases it we think less rationally. Also Wittgenstein argued we couldn't think at all without it, as you do.

Well, I think we hit the nail on the head in that language thread. Gendy and I argued long and hard about this and what I left the conversation with was the following: Words create conceptual nodes in mind. Without them, it would be conceptual blah. Sure you'd think, but without the ability to contrast concepts as clearly as words allow, your thoughts could not be so crisp.

Look at a baby going through their lingual development (I'm sure Kami could help us out here). They are shaping the foundations of their thoughts for the rest of their thinking days. Forgoe this excercise, isolate the child from intellect and watch the potential for mind virtually disintigrate. Certainly a POV remains, but wholly unrefined excepting the blurbs that the individual can manage for themself. It's arguable that in this case a form of gruntspeak would emerge, language itself emerging as a result of the ability to conceptualize to begin with. Certainly in a culture without language (say pre-historic) "i want to do it" and "I'm hungry" emerged as recognizable grunts which evolved into a semi-formalized system... and on and on and on.

You take away language and you send a brother back to the stone age. You rob them of the conceptual dilineation of generation upon generatoin, and as such, if you skip that period in youth where the brain is ready for that stuff.. you miss the window of opportunity and language can never really take hold.

Bah, I don't feel that was worded well, but I hope you can follow my meaning.

 

[Kami]

What should be distinguished in this is the difference between language for use for oneself and language for use between individuals. Language for oneself is really not very important. I'm sure that there are all sorts of things that you can visualize in your head without knowing the name of it, nor the names of its parts... this does not keep you from visualizing it, knowing how to manipulate it, or understand its meaning. This is a little difficult to describe, but it's not too difficult an exercise. Now, what language allows us to do, and the reason that it is such an underpinning of our society and philosophies is that it allows us to convey those thoughts to other people reasonably well. That is why it is so important to us and why it is believed that the lack of language would result in a stunted intellect. Studies show that the intellect (that is, the capacity for learning) is not at all impaired by the lack of a language, in fact, in babies, the intellect is fantastically huge, because they start with. more or less, a blank slate and it is the acquisition of language that reduces the ability to learn some things... like other languages.

What language DOES do for us is that it allows us access to all those thoughts and achievements of people throughout the past history of the written word. So it does allow us (and this is writing more than language) to pass down information to future generations and to glean information from experiences in the past. This allows us to build upon pre-existing knowledge istead of starting from scratch every time. Of course, sometimes the most original ideas come from scrapping what was learned before and try to start as new as possible. Sometimes, pre-existing knowledge is flawed and leads to bad conclusions or incorrect ones at the least.

Thought appears to be nearly instantaneous (nearly) and then it takes some time to rationalize it, understand it and translate it into language. How many times have you known what you want to say, but been unable to express it in words? I think that shows, very simply, how thought exists without words. But language is what allows society to develop and continue to do so throughout time.

 

[wesmorris]

/Language for oneself is really not very important.

To be a stickler, note that you should consider that "importance" is subjective.

/I'm sure that there are all sorts of things that you can visualize in your head without knowing the name of it, nor the names of its parts... this does not keep you from visualizing it, knowing how to manipulate it, or understand its meaning.

I agree with you up until "understanding its meaning" and then would interject "not necessarily". Internally, language largely represents "that which I have previously concieved" in the sense that conceptually, language is a kind of label for a conceptual node. Lots of different thinking type mishmash converges at the internal linguistic node for the word "red", for instance. My hair, slurs against me, a fight with a friend in first grade, the web page I was working on yesterday, the range of hues I might consider red... blah blah etc, etc. So to say language isn't required to "understand the meaning of your thought" is somewhat a pointless statement really, as the meaning is something in and of itself, merely facilitated by words. I think you "feel" the meaning of your thoughts.

/This is a little difficult to describe, but it's not too difficult an exercise. Now, what language allows us to do, and the reason that it is such an underpinning of our society and philosophies is that it allows us to convey those thoughts to other people reasonably well.

Of course. Your point is taken as obvious and uhm... well, not at all contradictory to what has been said.

/That is why it is so important to us and why it is believed that the lack of language would result in a stunted intellect.

No, I believe it would result in a stunted intellect due to my understanding of mind.

/Studies show that the intellect (that is, the capacity for learning) is not at all impaired by the lack of a language, in fact, in babies, the intellect is fantastically huge, because they start with.

Yes of course. Are you stating this as contradictory to my prior statements or???

/more or less, a blank slate and it is the acquisition of language that reduces the ability to learn some things... like other languages.

Any action comes with an opportunity cost.

/What language DOES do for us is that it allows us access to all those thoughts and achievements of people throughout the past history of the written word. So it does allow us (and this is writing more than language) to pass down information to future generations and to glean information from experiences in the past. This allows us to build upon pre-existing knowledge istead of starting from scratch every time.

Are you plagerizing me???? Hey didn't I just say that?

/Of course, sometimes the most original ideas come from scrapping what was learned before and try to start as new as possible. Sometimes, pre-existing knowledge is flawed and leads to bad conclusions or incorrect ones at the least.

Okay and?

/Thought appears to be nearly instantaneous (nearly) and then it takes some time to rationalize it, understand it and translate it into language. How many times have you known what you want to say, but been unable to express it in words?

Maybe that's because you don't really know what you want to say eh? If you did, you wouldn't have to figure out the words.

/I think that shows, very simply, how thought exists without words.

I haven't said thought doesn't exist without words. You're missing a degree of depth here. A word is a node representative of a concept at which experiences can intersect. If you don't have the words, you don't have the nodes (at least untill you define them yourself which is as we both acknowledge, sending someone back to the stone ages). If you don't have the nodes, you have experiences but they are mushier, significantly less compartmentalized, the shape of your concepts is never clearly dilineated because you don't have things to contrast vs. other things with the benefit of language to add classifications, labels, blah blah blah.

/language is what allows society to develop and continue to do so throughout time.

Sure.... kind of like a "conceptual repository for human thought".

 

[Canute]

Wes and Kami

I agree with all you said. But I wonder. Are we so sure that language is beneficial to us? What exactly was so terrible about being a stone age hunter-gatherer?

 

[wesmorris]

Originally posted by Canute
Wes and Kami

I agree with all you said. But I wonder. Are we so sure that language is beneficial to us? What exactly was so terrible about being a stone age hunter-gatherer?

THAT, is simply a matter of opinion.

I like gadgets.

EDIT:

Oh and there is something to be said for the ability to interact in the manner that we currently are.

Let's put it this way. Bad has nothing to do with it. This is evolution baby.

 

[Canute]

Ah, but I didn't say good or bad, I said beneficial. But I agree it's a matter of opinion.

 

[Kami]

i think that it is beneficial to a society. almost all animals, and some would say plants, have forms of language, if you define language as a method of communicating information. sign languages, chemical trails, body language can all be used to convey information and I think that that is the most important function of language. it allows us to build upon the experiences of others as well as those of our own... as wes said, a repository of human thought.

even in a hunter-gatherer society, or simple agrarian one language is extremely useful for saying things like "don't sneak up behind a mammoth" or "corn grows well if you do this to it." it's a system of shared experience.

 

[Fafnir665]

For you bilinguilists :

Do you first think in your native tongue, then translate that to english, or do you think in english?

If you think in english... has this developed over time?

If you don't... does your native language ever go away? (as thought processes, i dont think you can forget the language you were raised on)

 

[wesmorris]

Random introspection on consciousness

Thought is a floating filter, filtering through recorded experiences (which are in a sense still dynamic). At the same time, these experiences themselves have a sense of time about them. As they are brought into focus, their internal depth offers a sense of persistence in time. In the present, I see consciousness or "that which creates (or attaches to)" the animating "force" of the universe, or what I term "the life force".

In the same sense that time itself animates space, consciousness animates time.

The collaboration of space and time seems like "space time" from a POV. Similarly, the collaboration of time and "the abstract" or "the inward dimension" seem like "self" as the combination creates a sense of self. In this sense the brain is space and mind is a result of the interaction between "the abstract" and space.

Just thoughts I was having. I'm not exactly sure how to prep them for your particular arrangement of experience and concepts.

*sigh*

 

[Xev]

Thought: It's that it's a floating filter, filtering through recorded experiences (which are in a sense still dynamic). At the same time, these experiences themselves have a sense of time about them. As they are brought into focus, their internal depth offers a sense of persistence in time. In the present, I see consciousness or "that which creates (or attaches to)" the animating "force" of the universe, or what I term "the life force".

Have you ever, in your musings about language, considered communicating like a non-retarded human?

The perception of consciousness is not dependant on language, only the communication of consciousness is.

 

[wesmorris]

Originally posted by Xev
Have you ever, in your musings about language, considered communicating like a non-retarded human?

No. I have not considered it.

Originally posted by Xev
The perception of consciousness is not dependant on language, only the communication of consciousness is.

Okay. Is that supposed to be contradictory to the quoted text?

Note the post was labeled "random" which indicates at best "only loosely related to the topic".

 

[Canute]

Originally posted by Xev
Have you ever, in your musings about language, considered communicating like a non-retarded human?

Have you considered communicating like a moderator might?

 

[Kami]

Originally posted by Fafnir665
For you bilinguilists :

Do you first think in your native tongue, then translate that to english, or do you think in english?

If you think in english... has this developed over time?

If you don't... does your native language ever go away? (as thought processes, i dont think you can forget the language you were raised on)

It's hard to completely break out of thinking in your native tongue. Usually I think abstractly (or at least, that's the goal) and let the language come naturally. I don't think any language in my head. I suppose that's where people are having trouble with languages. If you think English in your head before you speak it you would have a very deliberate tone. It's different when you write, because then you ARE thinking about what to "say" before you write it, but language doesn't really do that. There may be a split-second in which you realize what you are going to say, but you don't plan it, generally. So, in English, or any language, I think abstractly then translate THAT into words... which language just suits the occasion.

Ha ha, yeah, that makes it sound like I'm fluent in all languages, but really it's harder than that and the above is the linguistic ideal. In the real world, I tend to think in the language I'm speaking, it's faster that way. If I don't, then I have problems like saying: "Oh, I was just going to the ... oh, shoot, what's that word?" Probably because thinking about it too much or thinking in english then translating, is like saying in your head "I'm going to the library" --> "Ya ponimayu v bibliotekye" ---> ::say these words out loud:: When you try to think in the language, you're trying to form complete sentences and make sure they're correct. Speaking fluently involves making some mistakes, but knowing which ones are okay to bend. Do you speak fully proper English when you speak? And again, writing is different.

Finally, no, your native language never really goes away. I speak several languages to varying degrees of fluency and grew up bi-lingual, but my primary languages are still the dominant ones.

Did that answer any questions, or just confuse things?

 

[Fafnir665]

Does it change when you become fluent?

I've attempted (in school) to learn 4 different languages.

German, Spanish, French, and Latin.

All of them I would find myself thinking the english before I would try to speak the language. At the time, I wondered if a better teaching method would be word association with pictures, as you would teach a child, and once you have that done you can move on to more complicated ideas, but it seems to have worked for generations the current way, so maybe it's just me.

 

[Kami]

With time it gets easier to think in another language. It helps if you're immersed in the language, then the english words don't come to mind as quickly. Your idea about picture recognition would be effective (sort of a flash-card thing) and that's what you end up doing as you gain fluency. When I think of a house, I get the idea in my head (that concept-node again, wes) then I have all the labels attached to it, like: home, warm, safe - and the linguistic ones "casa, getsadi, doma, uchi, haus... etc." which one comes to mind depends a lot on what language I'm already speaking. If I'm translating from english (which I am guilty of sometimes) then it's harder to remember the right words.

It's like when you're typing, if you try to think about which letters you're hitting, it slows you down and tends to confuse you. If you just "let it flow" it comes out much more smoothly and fluently. Also like that video-game trance where you just zone out and cruise through the game, totally fluent. It's zen. ha ha.

You just have to be comfortable with the language and be willing to make mistakes. People will understand you anyway as long as you don't butcher it too badly and the mistakes help you learn and get better next time. That's the advantage of language, especially english (which is probably why its today's lingua franca) is that you can speak it badly (sic) and still be understood.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Fafnir, Kami:

I've stayed out of this one because you all seem to know so much more about this than I do.

(Although I would dispute the premise that Japanese is easy to learn. The honorifics and status-words are bewildering, and if you get them wrong the Japanese will be horrified. When they hear a man using women's verb forms or children speaking like elders, it makes them ill. I believe that's why they generally don't encourage foreigners to learn it. They'd rather speak bad English than hear bad Japanese!)

But someone finally asked a question I know the answer to: How do you know when you're really thinking in another language, rather than translating very efficiently from your native tongue in real time? The answer is: When you find yourself or someone else speaking the language in your dreams. That's your unconscious in control. If it can generate sentences in a language, then you're thinking in it.

 

[gendanken]

Canute:

I thing you're just about right. Orwell had the right idea about the power of language on thought imo. Language is a very powerful constraint on our thoughts, and when political (or religious, or scientific) use debases it we think less rationally. Also Wittgenstein argued we couldn't think at all without it, as you do

Think of hydraulics- you can manipulate the meanest machines on Earth with something as simple as water.
Man is tamed by his simple alphabets.

And so, Russia was burned by a penny candle (1701)

Are we so sure that language is beneficial to us
?

I don’t know if Wes here would agree but look how limited Rome became once its language shaped its thoughts of Octavian- before, the man was that fearless General that grabbed Egypt by the hair, a mere First Citizen subject to elections. But once he was given title of Augustus he was thought of with awe because that title is one used by gods. Opposing him as Octavian was shit but since “Augsustus” invoked holiness, godly wisdom, and fancy bullshit ..........opposing Augustus now became spiritually immoral.

The mind rearranged itself to receive him brand new. Mentality now became imperial.

See?

Wes:

Now I know you've said this before and I'm kind of with you on it but I gotta ask: Aren't vicariousness and recursion both aspects of displacement?

You could say they’re all variants of displacement, but whether it is or not is not what eats me or care about. They’re all the same miscaculations in this invention of ours (language) but for clearance (this is where you put the put the fries down and concentrate):

Displacement- it allows you to talk about things that are not there, or never been or going to be there. Either way it allows for things that both are and aren't. Ever seen a fairy?
Its also interesting to see that this feature is common among the superstitious- they displace where control *is*. And so these backwoods know-nothings place their control no longer in them but in lucky rabbit feet, clovers, and crosses.

Vicariousness- it allows you to be somehwere, do something or live via something outside of yourself.

Recursion- which allows for introspection, insight, reason and ego.

All this being allowed to go around playing with things that are not is the surest means to see patterns where none are and lose track of reality somewhere in the middle of playing so hard.

Which brings me to none other than Bigblue.


Bigblue:

Fucking beautiful:

When you look at a featureless surface for a long time, you will begin to see patterns. These patterns are not actually there; you can even influence them to some extent and make yourself see things that aren't there, in a limited way.

Patterns not there.....

Second:

My personal theory is that our perceptual system tries to find patterns in the things that it perceives, and when none are apparent it "fiddles" with them to try to show up subtler patterns. This can be seen in the old concave/convex cube pictures that they used to show you in school when they talked about optical illusions. First they are convex, then concave, and so on, and you can learn to see them one way or the other (although holding the image is difficult).

!

Those puzzle books with the cubes, dots and parallel lines I fried my brains with in grade school. Which was which? Convex or concave, red or blue, up or down and were those lines truly parallel or were the scratch lines throwing me off?

Is there really a spiritual side to man? I ~debated~ with Wes a long time ago about my ideas of homo duplex (ego) being a myth but he would not bite because he was so real to himself.

I asked myself then why it is that he's so real to him and I could come up with nothing else but that his mental voice, his "elan vital", sense for reality, feel for life- of things happening- were convincing him of something transcendental- something more.

Organisms I've said have a sense of time and things happening of course- proof you'll find in reprodution, movement, synthesis and I'm not as cruel to rob them of choice.
But Wes here being the human that he is has an extra sense of things that have happened, are happening and wil happen and they all travel with him wherever he goes. He projects into the future and creates possibilities with imagination.

Now why is that? What's made this possible? My answer was language. Conscience alone won't do it. Something making the insight possible for him to define himself apart from reality in terms of two things is needed and that's what is doing it.

Wes not just knowing, but another self knowing that he knows for him.

What can do that other than than the voice he thinks with? And what does it think with when he's thinking of himself? Language.

This gives him identity. And identity, to me, is the pattern language has made for its speaker, chopping up lines and groups of squares........... patterns where, and I quote you directly BigBlue, "there is no actual division depicted in the picture of repeated squares"

Machines fake "consciousness" by making choices between parameters, but no neural network will ever show the insight to grasp its life with sudden understanding.

Perhaps I've made this a bit long so I'll cut it short. Bigblue:

It is hypothetical conjecture that permits us to lie, and even to describe things that can never happen, like the contradiction above. But, as I said before, removing this capacity from our language would at the same time remove its ability to describe anything that had not already happened.

Bigblue, you little, little, godsend....

Permits us to lie.....describe the impossible, contradictions galore.......limit reality with lables...sucking its meaning by narrowing. All key ingredients for mythos.

I tied all this with religion. I said once that religion and language were exactly the same things. There is nothing mystical about language. Its as real as the keyboard I'm typing on.

 

[gendanken]

Motherfuckers..................

So!- this thread has mummifyied. Fucking pity- bigblue was on to something.


Wes- you still think I'm full of shit, yes?

 

[wesmorris]

Originally posted by gendanken
Wes- you still think I'm full of shit, yes?

Not entirely, no, but I don't exactly agree either. I'll try to find the time to reply. I'm still pissed off that I wasted hours last night on a fucking perfect reply to J.P. which succumbed to the crack of my system when I attempted to record some video. My machine crashes so rarely that I'd been taking it for granted that it's stable. Goddamnit. Anyway, I was thinking earlier about how I owe you a reply, but I've been spending all my time trying to learn web page stuff. I spent prolly 11 hours working on it yesterday. Slow going damnit. I'll try to get it together and give you something to chew on.