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This affects the philosophy of mind and theories of consciousness. As someone who has relatively little internal talk and is visual thinker, it was always real

by nabla9 6y ago

This affects the philosophy of mind and theories of consciousness. As someone who has relatively little internal talk and is visual thinker, it was always really perplexing to read how some people are so convinced that without language there can't be consciousness, or that you need a language to be intelligent. Thinking the Way Animals Do: Unique insights from a person with a singular understanding by Temple Brandin. https://grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html https://grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html https://outline.com/qcMNKY https://outline.com/qcMNKY >A horse trainer once said to me, "Animals don't think, they just make associations." I responded to that by saying, "If making associations is not thinking, then I would have to conclude that I do not think." People with autism and animals both think by making visual associations. These associations are like snapshots of events and tend to be very specific. For example, a horse might fear bearded me n when it sees one in the barn, but bearded men might be tolerated in the riding arena. In this situation the horse may only fear bearded men in the barn because he may have had a bad past experience in the barn with a bearded man.

OrbitRock 6y ago
I have the same mental style and that has always perplexed me too. Language to me is a kind of slow and inexact medium that we use to try to describe the stuff of thought. It probably makes us capable of thinking things that we otherwise might not. For example, it would take a big imaginative leap to conceptualize “the universe” for the first time. But since we have that word now it’s trivial for any of us. But in my own head I don’t think of the words “the universe”, I think of something like an image or representation of the concept of the universe that usually just arises without an accompanying word. Animals think like this too, I’m sure. Tell your dog “you wanna go for a ride in the car?”. He knows the car, he knows rides, and this knowledge is what comes up in his mind, not the word “the car”. And he’s probably thinking of stuff like this all the time without being triggered to do so by a word.

by nabla9 6y ago

OrbitRock 6y ago

I have the same mental style and that has always perplexed me too. Language to me is a kind of slow and inexact medium that we use to try to describe the stuff of thought. It probably makes us capable of thinking things that we otherwise might not. For example, it would take a big imaginative leap to conceptualize “the universe” for the first time. But since we have that word now it’s trivial for any of us. But in my own head I don’t think of the words “the universe”, I think of something like an image or representation of the concept of the universe that usually just arises without an accompanying word. Animals think like this too, I’m sure. Tell your dog “you wanna go for a ride in the car?”. He knows the car, he knows rides, and this knowledge is what comes up in his mind, not the word “the car”. And he’s probably thinking of stuff like this all the time without being triggered to do so by a word.