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I'm right there with you. Always find it weird that people associate language so strongly with intelligence, and consciousness. First, I'm conscious when I'm aw

by psyc 9y ago

I'm right there with you. Always find it weird that people associate language so strongly with intelligence, and consciousness. First, I'm conscious when I'm aware of anything. I don't have to be thinking. Second, my thinking is 99% non-verbal except when I'm communicating to another person or imagining doing so, and even then it's only partly verbal. Almost all of my thinking is in moving or rotating 3D spaces and objects.

wallace_f 9y ago
So how do you think about abstract concepts, like morality, which have no visual structure?
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago
  By analogy? They don't necessary have verbal structure either. Use of spatial analogies for abstract concepts is common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    I'm convinced that different people have very different experiences thinking about the world.
- psyc 9y ago
  Morality is actually purely visual to me. It's daydreams about scenarios, their outcomes, even the expression on people's faces. Just about everything is visual to me.
notduncansmith 9y ago
My understanding is that all of us do our logical reasoning spatially, but there are different interfaces to it (visual, verbal, tactile, audible, etc), and each person is likely to have preferences among those. I find words to be a powerful medium between my memory and reasoning; it’s a good indexing system for memories/associations, and by carefully verbalizing and interpreting, I can load up a new spatial reasoning context and perform whatever evaluation is necessary.
beefield 9y ago
I have had some astonishing discussions where people actually refuse to accept that the verbal part of the thinking (talking in my head) is almost insignificant part of what thinking actually is. Or to be accurate, people claim that language is somehow crucial component of thinking. To me that is really weird idea, and I think that it can even be "proved" to be wrong (obviously my opponents disagreed also there) Namely, if language or verbal thinking was the defining part of thinking, following two things would necessarily be true: 1. There would need to be significant concepts that people talking different languages think differently. But of course, those are extremely rare and not so significant exceptions. Even if in some languages age is something a person owns and in another something a person is (I have 20 years vs I am 20 years), people in both languages both grasp the idea of age similarly, it is the time since you were born. 2. If the verbal thoughts were what thinking actually is, there would be no difficulties to convey my thought to you without errors. But obviously that is very difficult for anything but the most trivial thoughts. So it should be obvious that language is really only a very vague presentation of what thoughts really are.
- gizmo686 9y ago
  >There would need to be significant concepts that people talking different languages think differently. Not necessarily. If you study linguistics you will find that (human) languages are very similar. So it is possible, that lanugage is a central part of thinking, but the differences between languages are too minor to have significant effects. I agree with point 2 though.
  - beefield 9y ago
    That is a valid point. But to give context, the discussion I refer to was about whether there are reasons to keep small languages alive. And my opponents argument was that losing a languagle loses also ways to think, whereas my argument was that language is to a very good approximation means to communicate, nothing more, nothing less. so there is no reason to keep small languages alive. (My native language is a relatively small language)
- JackFr 9y ago

by psyc 9y ago

wallace_f 9y ago

So how do you think about abstract concepts, like morality, which have no visual structure?

SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago
By analogy? They don't necessary have verbal structure either. Use of spatial analogies for abstract concepts is common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor
- wallace_f 9y ago
  I'm convinced that different people have very different experiences thinking about the world.
psyc 9y ago
Morality is actually purely visual to me. It's daydreams about scenarios, their outcomes, even the expression on people's faces. Just about everything is visual to me.

notduncansmith 9y ago

My understanding is that all of us do our logical reasoning spatially, but there are different interfaces to it (visual, verbal, tactile, audible, etc), and each person is likely to have preferences among those. I find words to be a powerful medium between my memory and reasoning; it’s a good indexing system for memories/associations, and by carefully verbalizing and interpreting, I can load up a new spatial reasoning context and perform whatever evaluation is necessary.

beefield 9y ago

I have had some astonishing discussions where people actually refuse to accept that the verbal part of the thinking (talking in my head) is almost insignificant part of what thinking actually is. Or to be accurate, people claim that language is somehow crucial component of thinking. To me that is really weird idea, and I think that it can even be "proved" to be wrong (obviously my opponents disagreed also there) Namely, if language or verbal thinking was the defining part of thinking, following two things would necessarily be true: 1. There would need to be significant concepts that people talking different languages think differently. But of course, those are extremely rare and not so significant exceptions. Even if in some languages age is something a person owns and in another something a person is (I have 20 years vs I am 20 years), people in both languages both grasp the idea of age similarly, it is the time since you were born. 2. If the verbal thoughts were what thinking actually is, there would be no difficulties to convey my thought to you without errors. But obviously that is very difficult for anything but the most trivial thoughts. So it should be obvious that language is really only a very vague presentation of what thoughts really are.

gizmo686 9y ago
>There would need to be significant concepts that people talking different languages think differently. Not necessarily. If you study linguistics you will find that (human) languages are very similar. So it is possible, that lanugage is a central part of thinking, but the differences between languages are too minor to have significant effects. I agree with point 2 though.
- beefield 9y ago
  That is a valid point. But to give context, the discussion I refer to was about whether there are reasons to keep small languages alive. And my opponents argument was that losing a languagle loses also ways to think, whereas my argument was that language is to a very good approximation means to communicate, nothing more, nothing less. so there is no reason to keep small languages alive. (My native language is a relatively small language)
JackFr 9y ago