Much of your post is not clearly intelligible without considerable further elucidation; what is intelligible, would seem to prerequire and presuppose a complete theory of knowledge. Try to refine your question to a single, focussed point of discussion.

This hypothesis doesn't seem valid to me even on its face, due to the fact that the individual has no existence independent of the collective (species). It's interesting insofar as individuality is created and defined within and through the mechanisms of thought and language. To me, this is yet another example of the dialectical nature of the universe, an ongoing balancing act between contrary forces.

On a less related note,
I, for one, don't think in language but in images. I can't imagine what it is like to think in language, if someone tells me to imagine a golden mountain, I picture a mountain coloured over in bright yellow.


On a more related note, Chomsky says that language is "a mode of creating and interpreting thought, it is a system of thought basically, it can be used to communicate". What thoughts are we interpreting? Our own thoughts? Do we need to do that? Perhaps language can be an effective way to connect our image of "cat" with all the real world examples of "cat" we have in our memory.
He goes on to say that the communicative efficiency is sacrificed in favour of the "efficient biological design of language", no clue what the latter would mean.

On an unrelated note, the sound is so goddamn low, I put the sound on a speaker and blasted it at 100% and I still could barely hear him.

Interestingly, many models of how conciousness is "produced" would suggest that thought itself is also a sort of communication, as well as the product of intensive communication between different specialized systems.

Language is no doubt extremely useful for both interpersonal communication and thought, so it seems hard to differentiate which would be more important in the development of humans' linguistic capabilities. It's like asking what made us develop cars, the fact that they go fast or the fact that we can put ourselves and stuff in them. Well, both clearly.

Phenomenological explanations of language tend to emphasize that the intersubjective, communicative facets of language and those which are intra subjective, "thought-focused" are probably best thought of as mutually reinforcing, rather than one reducing to the other, and I think this is a wise assessment.

Chomsky is confused (à la Witty, Peirce-Dewey). I think thought is also a kind of communication (unless something other than 'coordinating with others via synchronizing sign(al)s' is what is meant by communication). Or has this thought not communicated anything? :chin:

On a less related note,
I, for one, don't think in language but in images. I can't imagine what it is like to think in language, if someone tells me to imagine a golden mountain, I picture a mountain coloured over in bright yellow. — Lionino

I always assumed everyone did both. To imagine is, after all, to form a mental image. I suppose people who can’t do this just somehow think of the concept, by putting a word to it.

So, sometimes images, sometimes words—and sometimes concepts. There are pure concepts in mind when a jazz musician is improvising (I know; I’ve done it), such as tension and release, growth and decay, entropy, yearning, etc. They may be in some sense linguistic, but they’re not mentally articulated in (mental) words (which was what I meant by “pure”). I think in these cases one only properly identifies them later, using mental words.

But as you say, this is somewhat off the topic.

The old man's position isn't surprising to read, given his defunct beliefs that the structure of syntax reflects universal aspects of neurological processing. I now think of Chomsky as proposing largely unhelpful tautologies for cognitive science and linguistics as those subjects were conceived under his influence in the latter half of the previous century that tended to downplay the external and behavioural causes of thought for ideological reasons (american individualism?), rather than him presenting useful and relevant scientific theories of language and cognition for this age.

I mean, what exactly are "thoughts"? where is the supposed interface between perception, thought and communication?

I always assumed everyone did both — Jamal

I can also do "both", but for me thinking in language is also literally picturing the written word/sentence in the mind's eye, I typically do that when I need to plan a sentence between uttering or writing it, as opposed to just speaking naturally and going with the flow. I suspect that what people with "aphantasia" do is in fact subvocalise.

This hypothesis doesn't seem valid to me even on its face, due to the fact that the individual has no existence independent of the collective (species). — Pantagruel

If you're referencing Chomsky's preference of language for thought over language for communication, I agree with your assessment. If there's anything essentially inter-personal and essentially communicative, its language, isn't it? Also, I'm guessing the infant learns to hear words and repeat them (or see visual patterns and connect them with ends) before forming intentional thoughts within a linguistic medium, whether verbal or visual.

If you're referencing Chomsky's preference of language for thought over language for communication, I agree with your assessment. If there's anything essentially inter-personal and essentially communicative, its language, isn't it? Also, I'm guessing the infant learns to hear words and repeat them (or see visual patterns and connect them with ends) before forming intentional thoughts within a linguistic medium, whether verbal or visual. — ucarr

:100:

If anything, I'm more inclined to view thought as fundamentally social-collective than to view language as fundamentally idiomatic.

Thoughts are mental images. They may or may not contain words (language) in visual or audio form. You can "see" them and "hear" them in your mind. They are similations or reproductions of percepts. Memory and rememberibg is a good example.

This is not theory. It's reality. Anyone can realize and experience that, if one just pays attention to one's thougths.

Too much theory and/or conceptualization, not matched with sufficient experiencing --or even with lack of it, as it often happens-- may make one miss or deviate a lot from simple reality or truth. And the irony of it is that conceptualization itself is made of thoughts and it is the product of thinking. So, one can miss what one is actually doing! :smile:

I find the terminology on this sort of thing incredibly inconsistent and frustrating lol. :rofl:

Are there a good parallel words for "visualizing" that apply to taste, sound, touch, etc?

Imagining seems like it should involve images, that's the root of the word right? But then I've seen phenomenologists call mere visualization "picturing" where as "imagining" involves the displacement of us as an agent into some sort of imagined setting.

The problem is that then you can talk about both "picturing" or "imagining" sounds, smells, touch, etc.

Same problem with the idea of "mental images." Wouldn't an imagined sound be more a "mental recording?"

But then "images" and "recordings" are themselves records of some object. Yet as Husserl says, "my centaur is my centaur," my imagined centar isn't an "image" of some real centaur, but my own creation. It's a funny area.

Look what showed up on my fyp:



Though the title isn't really what he talks about.

Try to refine your question to a single, focussed point of discussion. — alan1000

The center of my focus looks at a concept of the structure of thought as a complex of multiple parts. The essential parts are content, language and meaning. Content lies within the noumenal realm of things-just-are. Language is the transport for the meaning of noumenal content. Meaning is the interpretive narrative that hovers about the things-just-are noumenal content. When meaning comes into the picture, we're looking at narratives about narratives.

The complex of thought includes the noumenal content perceived through the senses plus what we think about our perceptions, the interpretive meaning supplied by the work done by thinking.

If narratives about narratives is an essentially correct characterization of thought, then it's clear thought and communication are inseparable. This is the gist of my argument against complete acceptance of Chomsky's argument rooted in the separation of the two.

Another important part of my focus is the characterization of the self as an irreducible complex that perplexes unitary characterizations of selfhood. So, self as emergent property of material physicality leads to a characterization of self as a distributed complex of interwoven fields.

Consciousness is the spinner thrown into the mix of interwoven energy fields. With the advent of consciousness within a material physicality based universe, the logic_science matrix of not-now-but-forthcomingness introduces absential materialism. The principle agent of absential materialism is abstractionism.

Mr. Abstraction -- A principle agent of thought who takes perceived patterns of material_physical phenomena and cognizes them into linguistic generalizations amenable to logical representation and scientific examination. The complex dynamical evolution of self-organizing systems gives an appearance of parallel realities, one extended and one unextended, but it's actually a distributed complex of interwoven fields.

I, for one, don't think in language but in images — Lionino

How do you think when it comes to writing and re-writing?

for me thinking in language is also literally picturing the written word/sentence in the mind's eye, I typically do that when I need to plan a sentence between uttering or writing it, as opposed to just speaking naturally and going with the flow — Lionino

for me thinking in language is also literally picturing the written word/sentence in the mind's eye, I typically do that when I need to plan a sentence between uttering or writing it, as opposed to just speaking naturally and going with the flow — Lionino

Fascinating.

So, sometimes images, sometimes words—and sometimes concepts. There are pure concepts in mind when a jazz musician is improvising (I know; I’ve done it), such as tension and release, growth and decay, entropy, yearning, etc. They may be in some sense linguistic, but they’re not mentally articulated in (mental) words (which was what I meant by “pure”). I think in these cases one only properly identifies them later, using mental words. — Jamal

What is it about those concepts which you could not state? (hashtag @Banno)

Good points. It’s a minefield.



Maybe they’re like beliefs, only determined post-hoc. Does it make sense to say that in the moment I was enacting the concepts, such that they were not at that stage concepts at all? But I’d still want to maintain that I was thinking, for no more reason than it really felt like cognitive work.

Maybe they’re like beliefs, only determined post-hoc. Does it make sense to say that in the moment I was enacting the concepts, such that they were not at that stage concepts at all? But I’d still want to maintain that I was thinking, for no more reason than it really felt like cognitive work. — Jamal

Yeah I think it makes sense. I was being tongue in cheek. I have the impression that rendering the phenomenology into statements is post hoc, and if words are in the phenomenology they arise as summaries and condensations of affects, without any natural language grammar. It's more appropriate to talk about such things as concepts and affects than as those concepts or affects' symbolising words! The emerging landscape of experience isn't all wordy is it, the words are rivers and troughs, signposts, swamps and rafts. Coordinative rather than principally determinative. Producing words like brow sweat.

I just wanted to add another question (if you would allow it) regarding the so-called “content” of thought. Can the content only ever describe the thinker more-so than what it is intended to describe?

I was being tongue in cheek — fdrake

Ah, I get it now. A @Banno impersonation. Still, good question.

Fascinating. — Arne

I appreciate the compliment, though it does make me feel autistic.

I, for one, don't think in language but in images. I can't imagine what it is like to think in language, if someone tells me to imagine a golden mountain, I picture a mountain coloured over in bright yellow. — Lionino

Of course. Put a picture of a golden mountain next to block letters spelling out "golden mountain." When told to imagine a golden mountain, I imagine something liked the picture.

I can also do "both", but for me thinking in language is also literally picturing the written word/sentence in the mind's eye, I typically do that when I need to plan a sentence between uttering or writing it, as opposed to just speaking naturally and going with the flow. — Lionino

Surely, you are thinking when you are just speaking naturally and going with the flow. Are you not thinking in language?

I suspect that what people with "aphantasia" do is in fact subvocalise. — Lionino

I have a vague memory from decades ago that a study was done that said people could not think easily when their vocal chords were numbed. Wish I could find that study.

Can the content only ever describe the thinker more-so than what it is intended to describe? — NOS4A2

Yes. Language and meaning are always distillations of content. For this reason, language and its circumambient meaning are well done when heavy laden with concrete imagery that shows more than tells.

Supose that how you think is not the same as how others think.

There is a growing body of evidence that this is the case.

Suppose that despite this there were common habits that we all learned, allowing us to do things together.

So how we think is not important, but getting on with doing things is.

Beetles in boxes, in a slightly different context.

Language is not about sharing information so much as coordinating behaviour. It's use that counts, not information.

A Banno impersonation — Jamal

& , should I feel flattered or flattened?

The obvious objection is that we coordinate behaviour by communicating.

But "I promise to fetch water for you if you give me some of that haunch" does much more than just communicate; it changes the way things are. It does something new by setting up a contract that did not previously exist and which would stand scant chance of happening outside of language.

That's very interesting! I'm more of an audio type of person I guess. So I constantly "hear" the words when I'm thinking or writing. Well I don't really hear them, but they more or less just pop out of somewhere and if I really pay attention, I guess they are kinda the same as in trying to remember or reproduce music. So "mind's ear", I suppose. Sometimes I also see some text, but I suppose it has more to do with me making some intense notes to some page of a book, and then remembering that situation.

Lately I've been thinking that maybe human thought really is some kind of language model. We expose ourselves to massive amount of text and discussion, and then just "continue the prompt". Well I'm not saying this very seriously, but for sure I'm going to prepare myself to that scenario by reading and writing as much as I can. It will be good for me in any case.

Lately I've been thinking that maybe human thought really is some kind of language model. We expose ourselves to massive amount of text and discussion, and then just "continue the prompt". Well I'm not saying this very seriously, but for sure I'm going to prepare myself to that scenario by reading and writing as much as I can. It will be good for me in any case — Olento

:up:

, , that'd be ChatGPT, not you. You can do more than just "continue the prompt".