Although I am also a visual artist, I cannot see internal images; meaning I cannot invoke a picture of anything like a photograph and examine it like I would a photograph. — Janus
She explains that deaf people tend to experience the inner voice visually. “They don’t hear the inner voice, but can produce inner language by visualising hand signs, or seeing lip movements,” Loevenbruck says. “It just looks like hand signing really,” agrees Dr Giordon Stark, a 31-year-old researcher from Santa Cruz. Stark is deaf, and communicates using sign language.
His inner voice is a pair of hands signing words, in his brain. “The hands aren’t usually connected to anything,” Stark says. “Once in a while, I see a face.” If Stark needs to remind himself to buy milk, he signs the word “milk” in his brain. Stark didn’t always see his inner voice: he only learned sign language seven years ago (before then, he used oral methods of communication). “I heard my inner voice before then,” he says. “It sounded like a voice that wasn’t mine, or particularly clear to me.”
[...] and we agree on most. Word-forms are meaningless until people associate them with meaning. But this, to me, means that people are meaningful, not the word-forms. People convey the meaning, and stand ready to supply it should they come across word-forms they understand. — NOS4A2
I don't look at 'internal discourse' as an excess of an activity. — Paine
I cannot believe words transport meaning from A to B because I have not been able to witness this occur. — NOS4A2
not a single person can be affected by a word — NOS4A2
How would you characterize what happens in your head when you think? Like whenn trying to solve a problen? — Apustimelogist
but strictly consisting of meanings, or else the content of concepts (rather than their labels). — javra
Would you say these are like specific experiences? With phenomena? Its strange because I don't think I can express meanings without words so it is not clear to me what active cognizance of wordless meaning could be like in the moment. — Apustimelogist
But sometimes they don’t understand the words in the same way. — NOS4A2
I cannot believe words transport meaning from A to B because I have not been able to witness this occur. No one has. No one has looked at a symbol and seen anything called “meaning”. — NOS4A2
The reasons our understanding of a word rarely aligns is because I meaning something is not the same as the words meaning something. — NOS4A2
Say what you mean or mean what you say.
One has power, conveys meaning, thinks, speaks, writes, reads—the other is just the fleeting echoes of this being and His activity. — NOS4A2
Your inconsistent wavering between the two beings as the conveyor of meaning may satisfy your own understanding, but I cannot get past it. — NOS4A2
You follow the sentences with your eyes, left to right, top to bottom, according to your understanding, and endow them with your own meaning and at your own leisure. — NOS4A2
And the idea that meaning exists between or external to the beings who mean is fatuous piffle. — NOS4A2
I didn't know it had a technical usage. What I mean is the form of the word, like the sound or scribble it takes. Maybe a sign? — NOS4A2
I have a strong urge not to post this reply, because I partly think it's all nonsense (but there's still something in it somewhere that I think I want to say). But for once, I think that very confusion is sort-of on topic, so I force myself to click "Post comment". If you've been reading this, I have. — Dawnstorm
The basic question is this: are words more than their word-form? — NOS4A2
When it comes to the philosophy of mind and language it’s littered with figurative and almost superstitious language, and is largely speaker-centric. — NOS4A2
Perhaps it’s time we gravitated away from the metaphors, for instance “hear”, and focused on the actual. — NOS4A2
What meaning have I conveyed with this word? — NOS4A2
You mentioned that when you think with words they're neither sounds nor letters; they're just somehow in your head. Might those not be words, then? — NOS4A2
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