You gotta admit though-
Gendanken to Wesmorris: You've sent a message and I can't answer it because somebody around here's decided sciforums needed its diaper changed
^ that right there's some pretty funny shit. *gigglechucklesmirk*. MERCI.
Canute:
Isn't an indexical component much the same thing as an ostensive definition?
Try saying what you just wrote with your mouth and your tounge would bleed. Keep it simple, mon cheri. What the
h-e-l-l are you saying and why? Notice the simplicity in your target's (bigblue) explanantion- "point to a cow and you'll see what I mean" to clarify the 'indexical' modules in language. In a sense you've just proved why language is annoyingly circular, Canute.
I've always pictured Webster eating himself.
Now!- on to the good stuff. And I'll do it Wes-style:
//Hey you bring a thirsty man water, well, IMO a good man is a thankful for it. *shrug*. my lawyer said I stopped short of gushing.
Corny bastard. But true- this bluecabeza guy certainly has a neat little way of explaining things. Am I jealous? hmmm........
Gendanken:So I see my attempts to show what language is really doing to us is falling on deaf ears......or blind eyes...so I'll give it up.
Wes: maybe you forgot you were a mute? hehe.
And maybe you forgot the cold shoulders and dollops of 'bullshit' my theories get here and there when I post, Wes. You can't really call a girl with your hand over her mouth a mute could you? Who's fault is it?
//Wait here's the question: Would you think that if language were even more efficient at relaying experiences, they would get selected out because the emotional element would be too overbearing? I'd put it more like that given the current physical limitations to the faculty of language, language has hit a brick wall of either low demand or and effieciency barrier if you look at it from the angle of capacity to relay experience. Think if you could think to other people simply by thinking it; how thought itself would have to adapt to the mode.
You ask: would natural selection boot some out like a centrifuge if their lanaguage were any more emphatic?
My answer: yes and no. Really, its not up to me to say that the Neanderthrals mysteriously disappear from our record becuase they were whiny, compassionaate little bitches that cried to death. It'd be stupid to think so and stupider considering women still plague this planet. However, you bring to mind the incredible hold that philosophers,the really good ones mind you, the hold they have on language. Because their habit is to look on every aspect of life with the the tragic repose language gives them, you can almost picture one romantically giving up on life over roadkill. There's incredible pain in the world it seems and a good philosopher- Nietzche being one - come closer to drowning in it the better his language can feel it for him. See?
You could say this is some form of natural selection- which neatly ties into that other thread where I'm calling philosophers parasites. The planet has no need for them. Progression doesn't either- we would have never topped the foodchain with philosophers.
Damnit I like my style better. Back to quoting, says I:
I think language is going to change fundamentally sometihng within the next two centuries, probably starting within 50 years. actually in a lot of ways, it's alreay started. look around. it's that we are communicating in ways never before possible that is shaking us to our core as a species. The multimedia generation is close to a turning point in changingwhat it means to be human, because our capacity to deliver detailed information to one another is starting to spike.
There's this comedian who's name escapes me, incredibly ugly but that's besides the point. He talked about the lazy transmutations in language these past years in the use of 'What's up?":
Early to mind 20th century - "Good morning. How are you?"
The 50's early 60's - a tip of the hat and " 'mornin"
70's and 80's- 'What's up"
and as the world gained more mass and technology got better:
'what up'
then
'sup'
till one day when everything's run by computers people will be going around going
"*p*"
Get it? (snort)
If its changing, and in fact
it is, its
indirectly proportional to how fast technology is getting. The faster and more of it, the easier it is to forgo *that* much more time on what's being said. And this lazyness goes waaaaay back, years before Marconi or the Pony Express to that small group of humans that thought to replace a
feeling or quiet thought with letters.
Oh there's interesting times head. Interesting times indeed.
Ain't no doubt.
language shapes part of our thinking. it is encoded within it as a dynamic operational .........
Tossed salad, wessy. I get it- that's the whole point of this thread. A dynamic sponge is what that brain of ours is and it reflects the mechanism that most uses it- language. Some alien being out on Casseopia with ubercapacities would not thinik as small as we do.
If you ask me, the means we use to tell each other that we love, hate, or envy are fucking
clunky but I don't buy into any of us being able to bypass the machinery.
You do- you're into that transcendental hogwash. I do however believe that on some other planet evolving beings may have expanded further into possibilites our own evolution has denied us. This is it Wes- nothing more. Telekinesis
my ass.
Further I think that if one had the proper tools language could be much more powerful and I think there are pleny of phsyches that could bear the strain and likely be strengthened for the effort eh?
Hogwash.
What we've made for ourselves here are
congitive shortcuts that sacrifice accuracy. Really, can you picture communicating via anything other than the written, spoken, sung or digitalized word? Language changes and corrupts itself over years but still remains that clunky appliance based on ordered components moved around and put together to mean something once you learn them. Either way, truth can never really be capture by them.
Last but not least, you say this:
rats not self-aware by human standards. clause: the concept of self-awareness is known to be of wholly uncertain means, therefore we should leave room that it might be a sliding scale or something that we can't fathom due to it's anthro-foreign or unknown nature. is that somewhat agreeable?
How much would it take for you to see that I take those lab rats to be furry little Hellen Kellers before she was taught language?
my lawyer said I stopped short of gushing.