Language and thought (moved)

[Tres Juicy]

Hi all,

 

I wasn't sure where to put this question but I think this is the right place now.

 

When I think about something I use language, I "hear" the words in my head.

How do you think without language? for instance if you were born deaf (or raised by wolves or whatever...) what would your thoughts be like?

 

would there be a more abstract process of thought going on, or would you sort of "create" your own personal language of sorts to enable higher thought?

 

Also, if thats the case does that make language the enabler of higher thought?

 

Any feedback welcome

 

Thanks,

 

Alan

 

 

[Phi for All]

I knew a Swiss lady once who spoke five languages. I asked her which one she "thought" in, and she said it varied based on what she was thinking about. Math was easier to think about in German, French for more abstract thought and English for social interactions.

[Tres Juicy]

I knew a Swiss lady once who spoke five languages. I asked her which one she "thought" in, and she said it varied based on what she was thinking about. Math was easier to think about in German, French for more abstract thought and English for social interactions.

 

 

Which makes me wonder...

 

As your example above

 

If language is the "tool" of thought, then are some languages more appropriate for certain cognitive tasks than others?

 

Does the way that language is structured have an effect on the formation of thought?

[iNow]

Language is about much more than spoken words alone. It's about logical relationships, structure, and objects. Even without vocabulary, you can still have language. There are computer languages, and body language, and written or spoken language of various types. Language is about relationships of objects, and hence even if you don't know English or Chinese or Swahili, you still have a language. It's just a structure and a pattern. How it's described and shared with beings in our social group is a separate issue entirely.

[michel123456]

From what place was this thread moved? It is not Religion, and it is not philosophy.

 

To the point: I speak fluently 2 languages. A few days ago I noticed I am not "thinking" in my mother's language anymore. When someone talks to me in the 2nd language, I don't have to translate any more: I simply understand. I still don't know how it works in my head.

[immortal]

It was moved from the Psychiatry and Psychology forums.

 

If language is the "tool" of thought, then are some languages more appropriate for certain cognitive tasks than others?

 

Does the way that language is structured have an effect on the formation of thought?

 

Oh! Yes, definitely, I find that eastern thought can be better understood with Sanskrit or any other similar languages having good source of sanskrit words, there are specific words which will distinctly distinguish between the entities and helps us to better understand their literature but if you translate the same literature into english then it sounds gibberish, it doesn't have the same efficacy as the former one and therefore it prevents one to have deep insights when thought in that language.

 

I wonder what views did Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky had about the language as the tool of thought.

[tar]

Tres Juicy,

 

I am not an expert, but I have been musing along these lines and investigating "the meaning behind language".

This investigation is why I am on these threads. I have much to learn, and am just reading Pinker and Chomsky and Deutscher now.

 

At arms reach with early bookmarks in each, I have;

 

Language and Mind-Noam Chomsky

The Unfolding of Language-Guy Deutscher

Language Instinct-Steven Pinker

The Stuff of Thought-Steven Pinker

InQuiries Into the Origin of Language (the fate of a Question)-James H. Stam

Critique of Pure Reason-Immanuel Kant

 

I do not pretend to have either the knowledge or intellectual horsepower of these writers, and I have not yet read them through, primarily because just a few pages of any of them get me "thinking" trying to put together all the ideas into "my" understanding.

 

Chomsky writes of a "universal grammar" that learners of language are "already" armed with.

 

This goes along with INow's "It's about logical relationships, structure, and objects. Even without vocabulary, you can still have language."

 

'Cause there is these relationships "already" in the folds and connections of our senses and brain, and in the world around us, that we intuit, and come to know. This is my direction anyway, sort of an "average" of the thoughts on the matter that I have read about.

 

But to your original question, and consistent with what I have read and understood so far, it would indeed be difficult to think about anything without using "something" that stood for something else. Even in math (another language), the relationship between things is expressed, and each term in any statement stands for something else. MEANS something.

 

It is the meaning behind our words that I am on a quest to discover, but interestingly, as soon as we use a word, we "already" know what it means. At least we had something in mind.

 

One of my recent guesses about language is that it is conventional symbols(that stand for something) used to communicate meaning between two minds that already know each other. So that the symbols in and of themselves are not really the "thing" that is being shared. So what of "when I think of something"? Don't I already know my own mind? Why would I need a "language" to think in?

 

Have not really fleshed out the answer to this yet. Have some guesses and candidates to put together yet. But we do have these "internal conversations". Perhaps it has something to do with "focus" and we utilize the mechanisms already evolutionarily available, that bring the outside world into focus and locate and identify the distance and nature of threats and opportunities, and perform some similar "operations" on the analog model of the world we remember, that we hold internally. So that the "things" that we mean, when we think, are those things in our model that we are focusing on. To do this, it is not unlikely that there are important analogies between the grammar and symbols we use for language between minds and the grammar and symbols we use to know "what we mean" when we think.

 

Regards, TAR2

Edited December 2, 2011 by tar

[John Cuthber]

Since those people without language can still think (the most obvious and numerous examples being young children) it is clear that you don't necessarily think "in" a language.

Also, if thought only happens "in" language, how come we use diagrams (and gestures etc.) to explain things?

So the whole premise of this thread is questionable.

Clearly some languages will express some concepts better than others- but it's hard to see that generalising much or there would be no translation.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

Interesting to me is the fact that you CAN translate a meaning between languages.

 

I would include symbols in "language".

 

And having "your own language" to think in would be a possibility for young children that do not show a complete grasp of the language of their parents.

 

When I was very young, before I could "talk", I would converse with my year and a half year older sister. My parents regarded it as "babble".

My sister knew what I was talking about.

 

There seems to me, to be a conventional nature to language. Perhaps some "roots" that have been continually used and modified for ages, but still, within a particular group of people that use a common language, there is meaning associated with words, that is commonly understood, because the words that are used ARE the ones you use to communicate that meaning.

 

Consider esoteric fields where everyone involved has read the same literature, applied the same principles and learned and use the same vocabulary.

 

PSU where I work is known to all to be referring to the Power Supply Unit of the machiine.

 

"Where Kant and Hegel disagree" would mean reams in certain circles.

 

In every scientific disipline there are huge concepts and mountains of evidence behind rather short and unintuitive terms. If you are aware of the studies and arguments and findings behind the term, then you know "what it means".

If you do not know all that, the term can not mean all those things, to you. Till you go do some reading, or someone explains it to you, and you "learn" the meaning behind the term.

 

With your family I am sure you have some terms that will mean something to the "initiated" that will go right over the head of others in the room.

 

If I say "Uncle Louie", my sister might laugh, but you would have no clue what I meant. Unless you knew Uncle Louie or some of the stories about him.

 

Words have meaning. They often have definitions made with other words that each have a meaning. Sometimes different meanings in different contexts. Sometimes "shades" of meaning.

 

While I would agree with you that you can manipulate stuff in your mind, without using words, I am not sure you can do it, without visualizing SOMETHING. And since you are imagining something, that is standing for something else, or is an analogy of something else, I would argue that you are using language. Even if it is your own, reprentational language that you are using. I would still say that you have to have language to think.

 

No? Yes? Maybe so?

 

Regards, TAR2

Edited December 3, 2011 by tar

[Tres Juicy]

Since those people without language can still think (the most obvious and numerous examples being young children) it is clear that you don't necessarily think "in" a language.

Also, if thought only happens "in" language, how come we use diagrams (and gestures etc.) to explain things?

So the whole premise of this thread is questionable.

Clearly some languages will express some concepts better than others- but it's hard to see that generalising much or there would be no translation.

 

 

"Since those people without language can still think (the most obvious and numerous examples being young children) it is clear that you don't necessarily think "in" a language"

I'm not suggesting that people without language cannot think (that would be silly), I'm wondering what thought would be like without language and whether language is the enabler of HIGHER thought (not all thought)

 

"Also, if thought only happens "in" language, how come we use diagrams (and gestures etc.) to explain things?"

 

Diagrams and gestures are part of language (some would say a language in their own right).

 

"So the whole premise of this thread is questionable."

 

You seem to have missed the point somewhat... There clearly is some connection between language and thought, my question is about how deep that connection goes and whether it has a bearing on the way we think. NLP is practised by many people as a way to modify thought processes and attitudes using language (to my limited knowledge of NLP).

 

"Clearly some languages will express some concepts better than others- but it's hard to see that generalising much or there would be no translation."

 

Some languages don't translate very well at all, the are some Japanese words that we need to give long and rambling expanations of and still dont quite convey the true meaning, they just dont work in English...

[TaoRich]

An interesting bit of reading I did many years ago stuck has stuck with me ... I think it was written by Alan Watts who was one of the first Westerners to bring Zen and Eastern thinking to popularity.

 

The gist of it was:

 

"You hear sometimes a Chinese person saying that some word or sentence cannot be translated into English. Sometimes this is viewed as 'Oriental inscrutability' ... but it is actually quite possible.

 

In English, as with most Western languages, you have a word for a hand and another word for a fist. This language structure has no place in Chinese. In Chinese you have an open hand and a closed hand. One noun cannot change into another noun. A noun can only change its state, relative to itself or something else.

 

This is captured in Chinese writing, consisting of characters or logograms. There is no sentence for 'A man stands in front of a house.' There is in fact no sentence at all. There is the character for house and the character for man and the character for stand all superimposed into one collective (relational) character."

 

He went on to speculate about how the difference in language construct would affect the learning and understanding of a Western or an Eastern child as it grew up and was encultured into knowledge and society.

 

His suggestion/implication was that Western and Eastern minds actually function differently due to this language difference. An English person may think in a different language than say a German person, but they are inherently the same or a very similar construct ... "different flavours". English/German versus Chinese/Japanese is a different system of thought entirely.

 

Interestingly, this is seen in the evolution of the age old fairy tales that we call religion and moral structure.

 

In the West, we have silos of knowledge: History. Religion. Science. Morality.

 

In the East, these are all interconnected, one cannot have History without Morality. One cannot have Science without Religion (or spiritual belief). Each topic exists only in relation to the other topics, and not in isolation.

 

This for me, explains why Eastern thought seems to come to grips far better and far more naturally with Quantum Mechanics and the Interconnectedness of Everything - whether we are talking Hindu or Tao - than the Western way of thinking.

 

In the Western world, God is a complete spiritual being, existing "in front of us on the evolutionary path of spirituality" or "above us" towards which we must strive.

 

In the Eastern world, the god sense is behind us, it is the origin, the source, supporting the evolutionary path as the universe itself evolves as the god sense evolves with it (or through it) or of it.

 

Rich

Edited December 5, 2011 by TaoRich

[John Cuthber]

"I'm not suggesting that people without language cannot think (that would be silly), I'm wondering what thought would be like without language and whether language is the enabler of HIGHER thought (not all thought)"

Higher than what?

 

"Diagrams and gestures are part of language (some would say a language in their own right).

Only if you draw them with your tongue.

 

"You seem to have missed the point somewhat... There clearly is some connection between language and thought, my question is about how deep that connection goes and whether it has a bearing on the way we think. NLP is practised by many people as a way to modify thought processes and attitudes using language (to my limited knowledge of NLP)."

NLP is even more questionable than this thread.

 

"Some languages don't translate very well at all, the are some Japanese words that we need to give long and rambling expanations of and still dont quite convey the true meaning, they just dont work in English... "

Ironically, the answer to that is to ask you to explain what one of these inexplicable things is.

[tar]

TaoRich,

 

To John Cuthber's last point. I understood what you were saying about the way Eastern and Western people "think" as related to the grammar and pictographs of their written language. However, you expressed the thoughts in English, and I understood the thoughts in English. Does that mean that English can express the same thoughts, or that I didn't really understand?

 

Regards, TAR2

 

Not every Japanese person, can read every Kanji character. Does that mean they can't think about those things that the Kanji stands for? They in fact might very well know the spoken word for the idea, without being aware of the character. As an illiterate English speaker might well be able to have a thought, or say a word, without being able to spell it, or recognize it on a page.

 

I am not sure if it has been decided that language "determines" thought. I think it might work better, thinking of it, the other way 'round.

 

Or maybe that the two are not easily considered to be that much different from the other.

[TaoRich]

TaoRich,

 

To John Cuthber's last point. I understood what you were saying about the way Eastern and Western people "think" as related to the grammar and pictographs of their written language. However, you expressed the thoughts in English, and I understood the thoughts in English. Does that mean that English can express the same thoughts, or that I didn't really understand?

 

Mrmmm ... trying to formulate a decent response to that. Let's try this:

 

A person speaking a Western language may be able to converse with, and agree with a person speaking an Eastern language, and agree on exactly the same point. However, the bits of information or understanding surrounding that point might be quite different. The proximity of related concepts may be an entirely different landscape.

 

What connects "naturally and logically" to a Western mind, may not connect as naturally and logically to an Eastern mind - and of course vice versa.

 

So although the minds could meet on a particular topic, or concept, "how they would think about the context of this concept" would differ.

 

I'm not sure how well this fits in here, but this is another lovely anecdote, so I'll repeat it anyway:

 

Some years back, NASA put out a call to the scientific community to design a solar panel that was to be transported into space. The criteria were "minimal size when folded" and "maximal surface area when unfolded".

 

In Japan there were two "Leading Universities" ... one of which was modelled on a "conventional Western/International approach" ... the other was "based on traditional Eastern philosophy and thinking".

 

One of the science professors at the Eastern university was an Origami expert ... it was a hobby of his since childhood and he was very well practised in the art of intricately folding paper. He set out to devise a design for the solar panel, working entirely by hand with a piece of paper. He was taking the intuitive approach.

 

When he came up with what he considered was the optimal design, he submitted his folded piece of paper to the Japanese government, requesting that they in turn submit it to NASA. The government flat out refused. All other submissions were theoretical papers, mathematical solutions, with equations of optimisation. They felt that a submission consisting of a folded piece of paper would make them a laughing stock.

 

So our professor spent over a year trying to mathematically model his folded piece of paper solution. When he succeeded, he submitted his theoretical paper to the Japanese government, who approved, and sent it on to NASA. NASA determined that this was the most effective submission received, and decided to use his solution.

 

They wrote to him and asked him to send them a practical model.

 

He posted his folded piece of paper to them.

 

- - -

 

Now the reason I bring up this example is to show how comfortable we are in a particular area of thinking, and how the origin of our language and culture can affect this. A Western mind may typically seek deterministic proof, logical, number based solutions. An Eastern mind may be comfortable with relational proof.

 

Having folded hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper, making swans, frogs, flowers ... our professor above learnt the relational nature between folds, and surfaces, and areas.

 

He could "just feel" when a fold improved a target criteria, or when a fold degraded a target criteria.

 

I know that this is not all entirely due to language, and that enculturation also plays a large part in this difference ... but I feel that the nature of the language can bring some significance to bear on how we think.

[Schrödinger's hat]

Hi all,

 

I wasn't sure where to put this question but I think this is the right place now.

 

When I think about something I use language, I "hear" the words in my head.

How do you think without language? for instance if you were born deaf (or raised by wolves or whatever...) what would your thoughts be like?

 

would there be a more abstract process of thought going on, or would you sort of "create" your own personal language of sorts to enable higher thought?

 

Also, if thats the case does that make language the enabler of higher thought?

 

Any feedback welcome

 

Thanks,

 

Alan

 

Hmm, I have an anecdote which may be relevant.

The way I process mathematics, geometry, logic, and related concepts may be relevant.

 

I would consider mathematics a language, when I do algebra in my head I most certainly do not use english.

Most frequently I process it visually, symbolising it in much the same way I write it down.

Although some operations have a decidedly tactile feel, I often find my eyes or hands move around when I'm rearranging equations and not paying attention.

The motions match the spatial arrangement of the symbols in conventional notation.

 

I can think about and plan actions/spatial activities without anything that maps to any formal language I know.

It's hard to describe the exact process.

It's certainly symbolic to a degree, but the symbols are not exclusively (or sometimes at all) audo or visual.

It may involve the impression of a weight, a torque, heat etc, or some combination of some of those and/or sounds/sights.

Least frequent is a smell or taste.

I am not imagining all the details of the action, and sometimes the symbols don't match up exactly (ie. an impression of warmth may apply to an engine that hasn't been started in some time).

 

Back to mathematics, some operations are decidedly visual. If I am dealing in vectors/multivectors, or tensors I understand the geometric meaning behind I will imagine something that visually resembles the symbol I'd use to write it down, but it carries a lot more information.

If it is a bivector, for example, it will have a sense of squareness (I don't know why squareness rather than ellipseness or parallelogramness, I gues that's just the symbol for two dimensions) or sometimes circleness, and if it has known components it will have a sense of size (although the visual symbol doesn't change size) or perhaps more appropriate would be mass (even if it represents some other quantity).

I'll deal with a cross product in much the same way I deal with real algebra (as described above), but a wedge product will be dealt with in this more intuitive manner. It will twist (again, this twist doesn't apply to the visualisation of the picture-symbol, but to the ...tactile symbol) everything it applies to as it distributes itself across a set of brackets.

 

If I'm dealing with vectors/matrices which are in component form I operate differently again.

This is almost purely visual.

For example: If there is a multiplication involving a column vector it will move, rotate 90 degrees, then merge with a row of a matrix or a matrix vector.

The final arithmetic calculations are then mapped to english/audio, although carries are processed/stored visually as if I were to write them down.

 

Numbers do not have any extra information associated with them, when doing arithmetic I use my visual memory almost exactly as I would use a piece of paper for multiplication/addition. Although intermediate results are often stored as sounds.

 

 

All these representations are very closely tied to the language(s) and abstractions I used when first encountering these concepts. So I think that thought and language both inform each other to a large degree.

 

In response to some of Tar's comments. This is a selection of some of the highest level abstractions I could think of.

Some of my thoughts are much less abstracted, the visualisation/other imagination may be close to an exact simulation of the event. Or at least the details I am interested in.

I would agree that thought is difficult without some level of abstraction, but I don't know quite where I stand on whether or not any level of abstraction constitutes language.

One should be careful of getting into issues of semantics.

I'm in danger of veering off topic and/or falling into a recursive loop, but what exactly is language? If it were just abstraction we wouldn't have a separate word for these two concepts.

 

Edit: Another thought. What do you define as thinking? Some of the things I do, do not involve any abstract thinking -- be it visualisation, thinking in english or other -- these are usually very simple tasks, or things I've done many times. In spite of me paying almost no attention to these things they can be very complicated if you actually think about them. Take walking for example.

If we exclude this kind of processing what are we left with as our thesis? Abstract thought requires abstraction? It seems somewhat tautilogical at this point.

Few more thoughts rolling around, but it's well and truly someone else's turn. If anyone is interested ask me about intuition and I'll remember what I wanted to say.

Edited December 6, 2011 by Schrödinger's hat

[Tres Juicy]

"I'm not suggesting that people without language cannot think (that would be silly), I'm wondering what thought would be like without language and whether language is the enabler of HIGHER thought (not all thought)"

Higher than what?

"Diagrams and gestures are part of language (some would say a language in their own right).

Only if you draw them with your tongue.

 

"You seem to have missed the point somewhat... There clearly is some connection between language and thought, my question is about how deep that connection goes and whether it has a bearing on the way we think. NLP is practised by many people as a way to modify thought processes and attitudes using language (to my limited knowledge of NLP)."

NLP is even more questionable than this thread.

"Some languages don't translate very well at all, the are some Japanese words that we need to give long and rambling expanations of and still dont quite convey the true meaning, they just dont work in English... "

Ironically, the answer to that is to ask you to explain what one of these inexplicable things is.

 

 

Higher than what? Higher than basic recognition of needs (I want a sandwich...), things like maths and philosophy could be examples of higher or deliberate thought.

 

A dog can think, but his thoughts would not be considered to be deliberate. He has no ability to make considered rational decisions and he cant try to understand complex ideas.

 

Only if you draw them with your tongue. Really..? Sign language, body language, mathmatics.... the list goes on.

 

Are you suggesting that language only counts if its tongue related?

 

I rarely see mathmaticians licking a whiteboard in hopes of solving a particularly fiendish equation.

 

NLP is even more questionable than this thread. As questionable as NLP might be, it is a widely held belief that many people use (although I have very little knowledge of it at all and only used it as an example).

I have been in sales for many years and I know first hand the power of a well constructed sentence to have a measurable effect on the thought process of another person.

 

Also, what is questionable about discussing the link between language and thought? is it somehow not a valid question? I have posted it the philosophy section and there have been some thought provoking responses (thanks), are you suggesting that there is no link between them? If so, please give your reasoning.

 

Ironically, the answer to that is to ask you to explain what one of these inexplicable things is. That becomes very difficult, very quickly doesn't it? I speak very little Japanese and no examples sping to mind (as soon as one does I will post it)

 

 

Thanks

[Schrödinger's hat]

I rarely see mathmaticians licking a whiteboard in hopes of solving a particularly fiendish equation.

You clearly haven't hung around with enough mathematicians.

[Tres Juicy]

You clearly haven't hung around with enough mathematicians.

 

 

Another bad example I'm afraid...

 

Perhaps a better one would be a blind man licking a braille book...

Edited December 6, 2011 by Tres Juicy

[TaoRich]

Perhaps a better one would be a blind man licking a braille book...

 

What did the blind man say when he put down the cheese grater ?

 

"That's the goriest book I've ever read."

 

tadish !

 

 

[JustinW]

As to the OP, since you can get meaning from some languages that you can't from others, wouldn't it make since that this influences our thought processes much like the events of life influence our actions. Sure you might can think of all possibilities no matter which language you use, but the way you think about it might ifluence your thought path in a certain direction depending on language(meaning). Thought about in this context it could be an enabler when it comes to higher thought. But it could also work the other way and give one a path to higher thought or cognition.

[Tres Juicy]

As to the OP, since you can get meaning from some languages that you can't from others, wouldn't it make since that this influences our thought processes much like the events of life influence our actions. Sure you might can think of all possibilities no matter which language you use, but the way you think about it might ifluence your thought path in a certain direction depending on language(meaning). Thought about in this context it could be an enabler when it comes to higher thought. But it could also work the other way and give one a path to higher thought or cognition.

 

I agree

[TaoRich]

JCWDroid raised the term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" in #otw today as Shrödinger and I were chatting about this post topic.

 

I checked it out on Wikipedia, and it was a useful concept to throw in here. I'm posting the opening paragraph here, but if you are following this topic seriously, it's worth heading over to read the full article.

 

http://en.wikipedia....stic_relativity

 

Linguistic relativity

The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined a having two versions: (i) the strongversion that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behavior.

 

<snip>

 

History

The idea that language and thought are intertwined goes back to the classical civilizations, but in the history of European philosophy the relation was not seen as fundamental. St. Augustine, for example, held the view that language was merely labels applied to already existing concepts.^[4]

[Tres Juicy]

Hmm, I have an anecdote which may be relevant.

The way I process mathematics, geometry, logic, and related concepts may be relevant.

 

I would consider mathematics a language, when I do algebra in my head I most certainly do not use english.

Most frequently I process it visually, symbolising it in much the same way I write it down.

Although some operations have a decidedly tactile feel, I often find my eyes or hands move around when I'm rearranging equations and not paying attention.

The motions match the spatial arrangement of the symbols in conventional notation.

 

I can think about and plan actions/spatial activities without anything that maps to any formal language I know.

It's hard to describe the exact process.

It's certainly symbolic to a degree, but the symbols are not exclusively (or sometimes at all) audo or visual.

It may involve the impression of a weight, a torque, heat etc, or some combination of some of those and/or sounds/sights.

Least frequent is a smell or taste.

I am not imagining all the details of the action, and sometimes the symbols don't match up exactly (ie. an impression of warmth may apply to an engine that hasn't been started in some time).

 

Back to mathematics, some operations are decidedly visual. If I am dealing in vectors/multivectors, or tensors I understand the geometric meaning behind I will imagine something that visually resembles the symbol I'd use to write it down, but it carries a lot more information.

If it is a bivector, for example, it will have a sense of squareness (I don't know why squareness rather than ellipseness or parallelogramness, I gues that's just the symbol for two dimensions) or sometimes circleness, and if it has known components it will have a sense of size (although the visual symbol doesn't change size) or perhaps more appropriate would be mass (even if it represents some other quantity).

I'll deal with a cross product in much the same way I deal with real algebra (as described above), but a wedge product will be dealt with in this more intuitive manner. It will twist (again, this twist doesn't apply to the visualisation of the picture-symbol, but to the ...tactile symbol) everything it applies to as it distributes itself across a set of brackets.

 

If I'm dealing with vectors/matrices which are in component form I operate differently again.

This is almost purely visual.

For example: If there is a multiplication involving a column vector it will move, rotate 90 degrees, then merge with a row of a matrix or a matrix vector.

The final arithmetic calculations are then mapped to english/audio, although carries are processed/stored visually as if I were to write them down.

 

Numbers do not have any extra information associated with them, when doing arithmetic I use my visual memory almost exactly as I would use a piece of paper for multiplication/addition. Although intermediate results are often stored as sounds.

 

 

All these representations are very closely tied to the language(s) and abstractions I used when first encountering these concepts. So I think that thought and language both inform each other to a large degree.

 

In response to some of Tar's comments. This is a selection of some of the highest level abstractions I could think of.

Some of my thoughts are much less abstracted, the visualisation/other imagination may be close to an exact simulation of the event. Or at least the details I am interested in.

I would agree that thought is difficult without some level of abstraction, but I don't know quite where I stand on whether or not any level of abstraction constitutes language.

One should be careful of getting into issues of semantics.

I'm in danger of veering off topic and/or falling into a recursive loop, but what exactly is language? If it were just abstraction we wouldn't have a separate word for these two concepts.

 

Edit: Another thought. What do you define as thinking? Some of the things I do, do not involve any abstract thinking -- be it visualisation, thinking in english or other -- these are usually very simple tasks, or things I've done many times. In spite of me paying almost no attention to these things they can be very complicated if you actually think about them. Take walking for example.

If we exclude this kind of processing what are we left with as our thesis? Abstract thought requires abstraction? It seems somewhat tautilogical at this point.

Few more thoughts rolling around, but it's well and truly someone else's turn. If anyone is interested ask me about intuition and I'll remember what I wanted to say.

 

 

I would completely agree that maths is a language in its own right (even though it appears to have little relation to the tongue) and also that there are highly complex operations which we accomplish with little or no consious thought involved, like walking, ducks can walk but are not regarded as great thinkers.

 

As an example, the ancient Greeks had many highly regarded philosophers, could this be in part due to there shared language, does it lend itself particularly well to the subject?

 

Obviously there will have been cultural and environmental influences as well, you can't knock about with Plato and Socrates and not ask a few difficult questions yourself...

[tar]

Mrmmm ... trying to formulate a decent response to that. Let's try this:

 

A person speaking a Western language may be able to converse with, and agree with a person speaking an Eastern language, and agree on exactly the same point. However, the bits of information or understanding surrounding that point might be quite different. The proximity of related concepts may be an entirely different landscape.

 

What connects "naturally and logically" to a Western mind, may not connect as naturally and logically to an Eastern mind - and of course vice versa.

...

(origami example)

...

I know that this is not all entirely due to language, and that enculturation also plays a large part in this difference ... but I feel that the nature of the language can bring some significance to bear on how we think.

 

TaoRich,

 

I agree that language can "influence" how and what we think, but I am on a quest for the "meaning" behind our language, and I do not think that the representations "determine" the meaning per se, but more that the language expresses or holds, or represents the meaning to the language user(s).

 

However, if we are just talking about the structure and form and the language's capabilities to accurately express certain meanings better than others, this is probably true, and could be true, even if language did not "determine" thought.

 

One example might be the symbols and syntax of math. They can do a more efficient job often, than english words and you might be able to hold a complicated equation "better" in your mind and manipulate the relationships between "ideas" when they are placed in this "mathematical language" than you could if you were trying to "juggle" the more cumbersome, larger, "thoughts" in which your native tounge might express the meanings you are comparing and manipulating, and attempting to find the "working" relationships between.

 

But also good to note, speaking of math, that we stipulate at the beginning what each symbol is going to be standing for.

 

E=MC² only means what it means if you know the E means energy(in the proper SI units), M means Mass (in the proper SI units) and C means the speed of light (in the proper SI units). And there is a whole lot of meaning, behind each of those terms. Meaning only really understood by physicists or students of physics who know the conventions and the bodies of work and study and experimentation, behind each of the terms.

 

If we stipulated that E was elephant and M was manure(in the proper poop units) and C was the universal Circus factor, we would be talking about something else. The same equation would have a different meaning and it would depend somewhat on the work of the people who discovered and defined the universal Circus factor, as to what the exact meaning was.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

Hey, I said all that, without once touching my tounge to either the keyboard or the screen!

 

Hmm, I have an anecdote which may be relevant.

The way I process mathematics, geometry, logic, and related concepts may be relevant.

 

I would consider mathematics a language, when I do algebra in my head I most certainly do not use english.

Most frequently I process it visually, symbolising it in much the same way I write it down.

Although some operations have a decidedly tactile feel, I often find my eyes or hands move around when I'm rearranging equations and not paying attention.

The motions match the spatial arrangement of the symbols in conventional notation.

 

I can think about and plan actions/spatial activities without anything that maps to any formal language I know.

It's hard to describe the exact process.

It's certainly symbolic to a degree, but the symbols are not exclusively (or sometimes at all) audo or visual.

It may involve the impression of a weight, a torque, heat etc, or some combination of some of those and/or sounds/sights.

Least frequent is a smell or taste.

I am not imagining all the details of the action, and sometimes the symbols don't match up exactly (ie. an impression of warmth may apply to an engine that hasn't been started in some time).

 

Back to mathematics, some operations are decidedly visual. If I am dealing in vectors/multivectors, or tensors I understand the geometric meaning behind I will imagine something that visually resembles the symbol I'd use to write it down, but it carries a lot more information.

If it is a bivector, for example, it will have a sense of squareness (I don't know why squareness rather than ellipseness or parallelogramness, I gues that's just the symbol for two dimensions) or sometimes circleness, and if it has known components it will have a sense of size (although the visual symbol doesn't change size) or perhaps more appropriate would be mass (even if it represents some other quantity).

I'll deal with a cross product in much the same way I deal with real algebra (as described above), but a wedge product will be dealt with in this more intuitive manner. It will twist (again, this twist doesn't apply to the visualisation of the picture-symbol, but to the ...tactile symbol) everything it applies to as it distributes itself across a set of brackets.

 

If I'm dealing with vectors/matrices which are in component form I operate differently again.

This is almost purely visual.

For example: If there is a multiplication involving a column vector it will move, rotate 90 degrees, then merge with a row of a matrix or a matrix vector.

The final arithmetic calculations are then mapped to english/audio, although carries are processed/stored visually as if I were to write them down.

 

Numbers do not have any extra information associated with them, when doing arithmetic I use my visual memory almost exactly as I would use a piece of paper for multiplication/addition. Although intermediate results are often stored as sounds.

 

 

All these representations are very closely tied to the language(s) and abstractions I used when first encountering these concepts. So I think that thought and language both inform each other to a large degree.

 

In response to some of Tar's comments. This is a selection of some of the highest level abstractions I could think of.

Some of my thoughts are much less abstracted, the visualisation/other imagination may be close to an exact simulation of the event. Or at least the details I am interested in.

I would agree that thought is difficult without some level of abstraction, but I don't know quite where I stand on whether or not any level of abstraction constitutes language.

One should be careful of getting into issues of semantics.

I'm in danger of veering off topic and/or falling into a recursive loop, but what exactly is language? If it were just abstraction we wouldn't have a separate word for these two concepts.

 

Edit: Another thought. What do you define as thinking? Some of the things I do, do not involve any abstract thinking -- be it visualisation, thinking in english or other -- these are usually very simple tasks, or things I've done many times. In spite of me paying almost no attention to these things they can be very complicated if you actually think about them. Take walking for example.

If we exclude this kind of processing what are we left with as our thesis? Abstract thought requires abstraction? It seems somewhat tautilogical at this point.

Few more thoughts rolling around, but it's well and truly someone else's turn. If anyone is interested ask me about intuition and I'll remember what I wanted to say.

 

Schrödinger's hat,

 

I quote your whole post for quick reference to see how it "assists" or "hinders" a guess about language I am developing.

 

Here is the reasoning behind the guess, and the guess.

 

We as humans have language ability, and thought/reasoning ability that seems rather more powerful and useful than that of other animals on the planet. However, we evolved under the same conditions and in concert with other species, and have many of the same structural and functional attributes of other mammals and a whole lot of similarities of this nature with our "close" relatives like the chimps and apes. So what evolutionary equipment could we have "repurposed" or selectively "improved upon" from which such as language and thought would follow?

 

My guess is our "predictive motor simulator". The same aparatus we use to learn about and control our own muscle movements, used to learn about and control the world outside our nervous system, by having neural signal patterns "stand for" something "outside" the nervous system. The outside world "already" present in representational form through the input from our senses, among the folds and firings of our brain, this is not an "impossible" leap.

 

Read your mathematical thoughts again with particular attention to the references to sense and motor control, and, if you would, let me know if you think my guess has any grounds.

 

Regards, TAR2

Edited December 9, 2011 by tar

[Allan Zade]

May be there is something more beyond usual meaning of the words? That thing can be responsible for universal meaning of each spoken word and each written symbol at each language.