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It’s a great question. That depends on if an emotion and image would be language. Given we had no language and communicated telepathically I’ve imagined that:

It’s a great question. That depends on if an emotion and image would be language. Given we had no language and communicated telepathically I’ve imagined that: 1. Using a feeling 2. Using a mental image May be enough to form abstractions but that may in of itself be within the set of languages. Said another way though, does language require symbols? It’s certainly possible to imagine language without words and we live in a time where symbols are abstractions for entire concepts within the noosphere. Language is fundamentally based on abstractions. Abstractions are fundamentally based on mind. If the mind conjures abstractions then is it fundamentally a language no matter what? Probably. What are the ways that we may use language to communicate? Far more than we think of today. Every time we extend the abstraction we are essentially evolving as a species. Almost to the point where our evolution is entirely dependent on our ability to abstract novelty continuously.

andrewjl 6y ago
> 2. Using a mental image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia There are many who are unable to form images in their mind. Aphantasia isn't rare. But it's also not universal and people with aphantasia somehow manage to communicate to those without well enough most of the time. Perhaps then language isn't just visual images or purely mathematical abstractions. I think the view of Wilfrid Sellars, basically language as a collectively-authored set of referents to a non-visual conceptual "picture" of reality, matches well with what you're saying here.
- dfischer 6y ago
  Yeah I just came across some similar ideas with reality being a shared hallucination that is based on aggregate consensus. Similarly the universe is an eventually consistent algorithm to allow that private state of each human to converge on a shared reality. Interesting stuff. Thanks.

andrewjl 6y ago

> 2. Using a mental image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia There are many who are unable to form images in their mind. Aphantasia isn't rare. But it's also not universal and people with aphantasia somehow manage to communicate to those without well enough most of the time. Perhaps then language isn't just visual images or purely mathematical abstractions. I think the view of Wilfrid Sellars, basically language as a collectively-authored set of referents to a non-visual conceptual "picture" of reality, matches well with what you're saying here.

dfischer 6y ago
Yeah I just came across some similar ideas with reality being a shared hallucination that is based on aggregate consensus. Similarly the universe is an eventually consistent algorithm to allow that private state of each human to converge on a shared reality. Interesting stuff. Thanks.