4 ms·
I had philosophy teachers who thought similar and dismissed my claims outright to the contrary. I call it mental-ese. To talk i often first have to translate
by ACow_Adonis 3y ago
I had philosophy teachers who thought similar and dismissed my claims outright to the contrary.
I call it mental-ese. To talk i often first have to translate between it and my native language (English). obviously, it's by its very nature hard to express in words exactly what mental-ese consists of, and it might arguably be impossible in the same way we cannot express general qualia using the written language.
but I've heard enough similarities from others trying to express such to be convinced there's something there. surely the phrase "I can't express my thoughts in words" is common and has meaning to you?
The analogies I've heard commonly from myself and others to describe it is that I see/feel the shape of relationship between the concepts or abstract thoughts before I then try to put it into language. just as my other senses do not require written language to first describe (my experience of tasting a strawberry is something qualitatively different experienced/impressed on the mind, not a word).
Another analogy I've used to try to convey my apparent experience to others in contrast to many people is that it appears to me that a common way of experiencing the world is to have relative primacy or weight on "things"(words) and then people have to work towards the relationships between things. whereas I feel my mind works the other way, receiving impressions of relationships between or behind things first, such that they are the primary unit, and the words/things must then be built up from these.