4 ms·

This is what I don't understand when people claim things like "language is required for higher thought" or whatever (no link but I'm sure I've seen that claim n

by TOGoS 7y ago

This is what I don't understand when people claim things like "language is required for higher thought" or whatever (no link but I'm sure I've seen that claim numerous times across various articles). We necessarily do plenty of thinking without words. Certainly you can be someone who focuses more on the words or less on the words, and maybe word-based people are naturally better at talking because their thoughts are mostly in word-form to begin with, but you can't put all the thoughts in words.

yesenadam 7y ago
A google came up with this long article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the language of thought hypothesis, which seems fascinating. Mentions Turing, NNs etc.. "The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) proposes that thinking occurs in a mental language. Often called Mentalese, the mental language resembles spoken language in several key respects: it contains words that can combine into sentences; the words and sentences are meaningful; and each sentence’s meaning depends in a systematic way upon the meanings of its component words and the way those words are combined. .. LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham offered the first systematic treatment in his Summa Logicae (c. 1323), which meticulously analyzed the meaning and structure of Mentalese expressions. LOTH was quite popular during the late medieval era, but it slipped from view in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From that point through the mid-twentieth century, it played little serious role within theorizing about the mind. In the 1970s, LOTH underwent a dramatic revival. The watershed was publication of Jerry Fodor’s The Language of Thought (1975)." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#MentComp https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#MentCom...
- cat199 7y ago
  > LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham Based on the people mentioned, this theory sounds hugely and heavily influenced by western-christian theology, philosophy, and anthropology, which, since we don't 'know' scientifically, is neither good nor bad, but simply one strain of hypothesis. Other religions have other concepts - eastern christianity followed different lines (cf. 'logismoi', palamas, etc), and of course other religions have differing concepts e.g. chakras, etc. without being an expert at all, it seems to me that at least on a higher than biological level (e.g. 'proto concious'), internal representation is to some extent malleable and based on ones own philosophy and conceptualization, something which some more esoteric or 'symbolic'/'structural' religious groups focus on - and perhaps (or perhaps not) - one representation may or may not be adaptive or maladaptive to our biology or not..
jmiskovic 7y ago
At least language is a huge help. For me crucial insights won't come readily formed in words, they come as abstract occurrences that need to be converted to words. Some of insight is lost in this conversion, I think, because the mind has to switch over to linguistic mode and serialize the memory content. Still, when putting ideas to words it also makes them more clear and distilled. As they say, you don't really understand the phenomenon unless you can explain it clearly.

by TOGoS 7y ago

yesenadam 7y ago

A google came up with this long article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the language of thought hypothesis, which seems fascinating. Mentions Turing, NNs etc.. "The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) proposes that thinking occurs in a mental language. Often called Mentalese, the mental language resembles spoken language in several key respects: it contains words that can combine into sentences; the words and sentences are meaningful; and each sentence’s meaning depends in a systematic way upon the meanings of its component words and the way those words are combined. .. LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham offered the first systematic treatment in his Summa Logicae (c. 1323), which meticulously analyzed the meaning and structure of Mentalese expressions. LOTH was quite popular during the late medieval era, but it slipped from view in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From that point through the mid-twentieth century, it played little serious role within theorizing about the mind. In the 1970s, LOTH underwent a dramatic revival. The watershed was publication of Jerry Fodor’s The Language of Thought (1975)." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#MentComp https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#MentCom...

cat199 7y ago
> LOTH emerged gradually through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and many others. William of Ockham Based on the people mentioned, this theory sounds hugely and heavily influenced by western-christian theology, philosophy, and anthropology, which, since we don't 'know' scientifically, is neither good nor bad, but simply one strain of hypothesis. Other religions have other concepts - eastern christianity followed different lines (cf. 'logismoi', palamas, etc), and of course other religions have differing concepts e.g. chakras, etc. without being an expert at all, it seems to me that at least on a higher than biological level (e.g. 'proto concious'), internal representation is to some extent malleable and based on ones own philosophy and conceptualization, something which some more esoteric or 'symbolic'/'structural' religious groups focus on - and perhaps (or perhaps not) - one representation may or may not be adaptive or maladaptive to our biology or not..

jmiskovic 7y ago

At least language is a huge help. For me crucial insights won't come readily formed in words, they come as abstract occurrences that need to be converted to words. Some of insight is lost in this conversion, I think, because the mind has to switch over to linguistic mode and serialize the memory content. Still, when putting ideas to words it also makes them more clear and distilled. As they say, you don't really understand the phenomenon unless you can explain it clearly.