Language and its influence on thought

[Miranda]

What's wrong with the idea of symbolic thought prior to language? There are all kinds of symbols in the world, not all of them linguistic. Do we not frame concepts of place, self, family, pain, pleasure, guilt, joy, hope, and fear on non-linguistic symbols?

seem to agree that the word "symbol" makes no sense at all except in the context of a linguistic system that manipulates symbols.

 

Judging by these last two quotes, there is a contention on this thread. I agree to having concepts before linguistic capabilities. Language is not necessary for making associations between two things and thus symbolizing them. Pavlov's Dog is an example of non-linguistic symbolism. The dog associated the sound of a bell to food, making the bell sound symbolic for the dog. Linguistic abilities are the most developed excercise of symbolized thought, but not the prerequisite for it.

 

Cognitive generally implies that you know what you're doing. If I'm engaged in cognitive thinking, I know that I'm thinking, I know what it is that I'm thinking about, I know the goal of my thinking, I intentionally engage in that thinking, and I know when I have reached a conclusion and why.

This sounds more like conciousness to me. Cognition refers to the brains ability to process or apply information, concious or unconcious. AI can have cognitive processes without linguistic functionality, correct? Thus the ability to form concepts (cognition) would be the precurser for language, not the end result. But when we're talking about our symbolic nature, that would require a more developed level of concept forming, or cognitive processing, right?

 

I'd essentially like to get back to the issue of the thread. The way I see it, we form a concept, and then apply language. Perhaps I just have a contention with the Sapir-Whorfian view of language influencing thought. How does something arbitrary like words and syntax have any effect on cognition? I don't see it. Language reflects, not effects! :)

[Larv]

I'm glad Helen Keller was available to support my point of view, although I'm not sure that's why she was introduced into the thread.

lemit, I brought up Helen Keller in post #26:

 

Perhaps the OP question can be approached by using Helen Keller as a case in point. She managed to find an external reality by learning to use language as a tool. She possessed human consciousness of course without the benefit of language, and she must have had thoughts without the benefit of language before Annie Sullivan, her teacher, came along. Or did she?...

Please read the rest of my post. I suggested that before Helen learned a symbolic language all she had were sensory experiences and emotions. Then Pyrotex followed on with a post that seems to confirm a differentiation of thinking from experiencing.

[lemit]

lemit, I brought up Helen Keller in post #26:

 

 

Please read the rest of my post. I suggested that before Helen learned a symbolic language all she had were sensory experiences and emotions. Then Pyrotex followed on with a post that seems to confirm a differentiation of thinking from experiencing.

 

Sorry for any misunderstunding.

 

--lemit

[HydrogenBond]

There is a flip side to language. Language not only allow us to transfer information and organizes the way we think into progressive ways, but language also allows lying, spin and fantasy The first can lead one to better reality thinking and the other can lead us away from reality.

 

The good used car salesman, will will pick his words carefully to tell the buyer what they wish to hear. The goal is to use language to make a junk look like a good deal by blowing sunshine up their skirt. If there was no language, he would be out of business.

 

Politicians use a special form of language called rhetoric. It is designed to induce emotion which goes in the opposite direction of reason. Reason is suppose to function without irrational distractions like emotion. With the irrational induction, we can use language to induce thoughts down irrational avenues and detach people from reality. We can see the sunny place and irrationally assume the speaker and image, overlap.

 

Animals have minimal language skills and not enough language to transfer intricate meaning either rationally and irrationally. They tend to stay in touch with their instinctive inner cause and effect with respect to their reality. They don't go too far beyond that, but they also don't regress into irrational worlds created by used car salesmen. It would be hard to get a dog stoked about global warming. He may look like it, but he is just reacting to your irrational emotions via cause and effect.

 

The dog sees food. If it smells good they eat without needed to know its name or language to guide them, like a seeing eye dog. With language we can read more into it, or too much into it. We can know its extended composition, or we can irrationally shun it, do to the latest used car dealer fad using language. Because of the two sided language coin, how so you know which language organizations of meaning are real, which are an illusion, and which are half-and-half? The half and half are toughest to see since part is real and part is make-up to enhance the beauty. The composite does look better and may be more desirable that way.

[Pyrotex]

Well, I have no big attachment to you guys agreeing with me. After all, the idea that language was only an addendum to thought, needed only for transferring thoughts from one person to another (communication), has been the default POV for ages.

 

It wasn't until Alfred Korzybski, Polish-American philosopher, tackled the problem of "what is thought?" at the turn of the 20th Century, that anyone has thought otherwise. Korzybski blew the doors wide open. He showed that "thought", as it occurs in humans, is ENTIRELY the manifestation of Languaging. The experiences you guys have shared are indeed valid experiences, but a Cow could never have had them. Whether you are conscious of it or not, everything you hear, see or sense, is immediately evaluated by your linguistic engine -- even if you never "think" a single word.

 

The Cow cannot interpret what it sees and hears.

You cannot NOT interpret what you see and hear.

Interpretation is a linguistic function, and does not require any particular word to be thought or spoken.

 

The Cow associates what it sees and hears.

It associates them with its analog memories of limbic feelings (Pain, pleasure, fear, etc)

 

You associate what you see and hear.

You associate them with memories, yes, but digitized, symbolized memories of limbic feelings (The concept of "pain", the concept of "pleasure", the concept of "fear", etc). You do this with your vast linguistic engine.

 

Anyhow, Korzybski's theory of languaging became the heart of General Semantics, which is still taught in a few colleges. Colleges that teach negotiation, diplomacy, rhetoric, leadership, etc, often use many of the basic tenets of General Semantics, whether they explicitly say so or not.

 

It took me YEARS of research on Korzybski and related theories to appreciate how far down the linguistic engine goes. It is very likely that the vast majority of our Mind, Itself is just a linguistic structure capable of referencing itself.

 

But, if you guys want to believe that you can see like a Cow, and hear like a Cow, and experience a beautiful Spring day like a Cow, well... :lol: ...you just go ahead. Why you would want to think that your minds are no more complex than a Cow's is a mystery to me, but after some of the debates around here, I am no longer surprised at what folks want to believe.

 

Your comments are welcome. But as for me: "It's languaging all the way down."

[freeztar]

"I think, therefore I am" - said the Cow

 

Well, not really. Cows don't talk.

"The map is not the territory" and Cows don't have cognitive maps. The territory is under dispute. :(

 

It's high time I dug into some Korzybski. So I'm off to Amazon...(the book czar, not the river)

 

:lol:

[sman]

I am well aware that most people would agree with you. At first.

 

But just because a chimp has a mother does not mean that the chimp comprehends her unique status as "my mother", nor is able to abstract to the general class of "mother", nor is able to deduce that some other chimp also "has a mother".

 

The chimpanzee is a good control for language, but I think we need to know more about chimpanzees first. I’m pretty sure that chimps are capable of exactly this kind of nested categorization. Our social “engine” is pretty much identical to theirs.

 

 

Our chimp may show lots of affection and spend lots of time around its mother. That may be entirely because he was in physical contact with her for the first X months of its life.

 

My 10yr old son shows lots of affection for his mother and that may be entirely because he was in physical contact with her for the first X months of his life. The experience is not dependant on his knowledge and power of the semantic label “mother”. There is no immediate reason to think that it is any different. My thoughts and feelings about my mother are in complete accordance with the fact that I am one of these chimpanzees that has a mother.

 

 

The concept of "mother" is an entirely semantic concept, requiring a sophisticated language engine.

 

 

How about this: The NOUN “mother” is an entirely semantic concept, requiring a sophisticated language engine. It is a label that points the concept mother, but as a chunk of language, it can do more than that. It can be the subject, or the object of a thought, or the head of a subordinate clause hanging off another thought. It can even be a verb: “to mother”, a concept that, it could be argued, we might not have access to exactly without language.

 

 

My cat, Harley, jumps on the bed, purrs and rubs against my hand. I say, "Harley loves me!" But Harley doesn't have a language engine. Harley FEELS certain things. Harley has fear sometimes and has pleasure sometimes, and has been operantly conditioned to associate certain actions with certain feelings. Harley associates rubbing my hand with getting scratched and rubbed, and associates that with pleasant skin sensations, and associates that with purring.

 

But Harley has no abstract concept of "love". If I wanted to get really picky, I would say Harley does not love me because Harley cannot comprehend the concept "love". But I DO love Harley, and I love it when he rubs my hand, and I say to myself, "awwwww, does Harley want some loving??" and I scratch his head and he purrs, and THAT FEELS TO ME just like "Harley loves me". And I can comprehend that. And it gives me pleasure, too.

 

It’s not that I think you underqualify Harley’s concept of love by couching it in 1950s associationism (I do, but it’s a different discussion), rather, I think you overqualify Pyrotex’s concept of love. Harley could just as well think that you don’t really love him because what you are feeling is just a psychosomatic reward that you have come to associate with affection, and not the real feline thing. You see how it can be anthropocentric to circumscribe our ideas about other creatures in anthropomorphism. There’s no reason to think that Harley’s love is the exact same thing as human love, but there’s no reason to think it’s very different either. And there’s no reason to think that human emotions are in a class by themselves.

[Pyrotex]

...There’s no reason to think that Harley’s love is the exact same thing as human love, but there’s no reason to think it’s very different either. And there’s no reason to think that human emotions are in a class by themselves.

LOL :hyper:

But we ARE in a class by ourselves.

NOT our emotions. My point all along is that the limbic feelings, emotions, are held in common by all mammals.

 

My point has to do with "thinking", not emotions. And in that we are alone. Just as we are alone in having symbolized speech, and a linguistic mind that can classify our experiences into semantic "concepts" and label them with words.

 

This is a really complex and tricky subject. And it's okay if you disagree. No problem.

And it's okay if you anthropomorphize the emotions of chimps and cats. Everybody does it, and it's a real effort to avoid it.

 

[Pratt Psychology Group 1]

A word is a verbal abstraction, created by and evolved within a society to represent a concrete or abstract entity to allow for communication. However, without the word the entity still is comprehensible, and undoubtedly exists. With one word, open interpretation and individual experience can lead us to derive different meanings and perceptions of the word. As society progresses and grasps new concepts, the language adapts as society adds new symbols (words) to further define entities. While a word is assigned a concrete definition, it's perception is objective and allows for a society to form as a whole a word's connotation, which changes as a culture does. Referencing Pinker's example, while three words carry the same denotation, their connotations are very different:

 

"I am firm, you are obstinate, he is pigheaded.", or "I am exploring my sexuality, you are promiscuous, she is a slut."

 

 

Abstract thought can also exist outside of words. Music and art are also versions of abstraction that exist without the use of words. A painting of a farmer in a field acts as an abstract symbol of that instance, just as the word field acts as a symbol for the idea of a field. Seeing the image of the farmer in the field creates a thought process of its own that does not necessarily utilize words. Cognitive thought is not bound by language, however it is directly affected by it. Abstract thought relies more heavily upon language, yet there are other forms of abstract thinking that utilize cognition. Such things as visual language are equivalent to and sometimes communicate information more easily than written language, and thus written language is not the only means for cognitive processes. Language therefore is not required for cognition as it serves merely as a symbol which can be, sometimes more effectively, represented in another manner.

 

Rachael, Dara, Max, Ashely, Taissia

[Pratt Psychology Group 1]

Carolina, Kaylee, Shirin, Chance, Megan

 

We recognize that Language affects one’s conception of reality. If we look at the example of two different languages, one example within the Science Forum discussion on Language and it’s influence on thought, “Hypography,” being Korean and English, it is noted that between these two vastly different languages, concepts are expressed uniquely. It reflects on the statement of, in English being, “I am going to the store,” that this expression to an English speaking individual is regarded as, “I am coming to the store and coming back.’ However, in Korean, you would not assume the person is coming back unless the person specifically states such. Therefore, language must be naturally built around of perception of reality. According to Pinker, “Language is understood in multiple as well as in direct [parts] of the content of the sentence.” Pinker 22. Therefore we can conclude that language is not thinking, but the expression of the process of cognition.

 

We use metaphors and analogies within everyday life in the physical world to assist in explanation of abstract thoughts, which often can create discrepancies between unique experiences and cultural context. This can be seen in the work of Lawrence Weiner…He’s so bad ***.

 

The work that he creates utilizes text and various graphic elements to create unique sculptural experiences for each viewer. Although the visual experience of the sculpture is universal, each person, based on their relationship to the language, viewers will create different abstract associations with his work.

 

Thoughts?

[Donk]

In my experience, the concept, the idea, comes first. It arrives as a single fully-formed flash of consciousness. I then have to convert it as best I can into words. Sometimes I can't - either I don't have the vocabulary, or the words don't exist in English.

 

If I can't find the words, the concept blurs and fades over time. I suspect that language isn't just a means of communicating between ourselves, it's also a way for us to fix an idea within our own minds. Perhaps that's what happened to Helen Keller - the ideas came, but she had no language to analyse and fix them, so they faded until she could no longer remember them, or even remember that she had had them.

[HydrogenBond]

Different languages use different structure to express the same thought. For example in English we say the "red apple" and in French we say "la pomme rouge" or the apple red. Both humans see the same thing in the mind or do they?

 

The English puts the word red first, so this is the first image induced. If we talked very slowly, with the mind working faster, one might extrapolate red into red apple, red dress, red flag, etc., until finally the word apple appears. In French, if we talked slowly, we would get the word apple first. The mind, working faster, would then wonder is this apple red, yellow, green, has a worm, etc., until the word rouge/red appears.

 

If I just pointed to a red apple, without language, would someone who speaks English see the red first then the apple? Would the French man see the apple before he sees red? Or would they both see the same order?

[sman]

Referencing Pinker's example....

 

The Language Instinct, right?

 

I recommend his latest The Stuff of Thought to anyone toying with linguistic determinism, which this thread is about.

 

You might be interested in this thread as well.

[Pyrotex]

Well, I appreciate all you folks getting involved in this conversation. I think it's an important conversation. Alfred Korzybski, the father of "General Semantics" did too. He felt so strongly about it, that he wrote a book titled, "Science and Sanity". It's a very slow book, so I'm not going to insist you read it.

 

Essentially, Korzybski showed that language (as in: structure, syntax, semantic variation, etc.) plays a PROFOUND role in our perception of the reality around us, our reaction to it and our awareness of our "selves". He gives the example of two young, unmarried women from good, respected families. Both women find they are pregnant. One woman runs to tell her mother--there is much rejoicing over her discovery that she now a "complete" woman. The other woman bears her discovery in total secret, slowly becoming more and more anguished until she commits suicide.

 

The difference? In the girl from 19th century Samoa, her brain's semantic structures reflect a culture where marriage occurs typically after first pregnancy because it demonstates that she is fertile. In the girl from 19th century England, her brain's semantic structures reflect a totally different culture, a totally different set of values attached to words such as "pregnant", "marriage", "fertile", "woman". It wasn't the pregancy that killed the English girl. You could say it was her shame, but that wasn't the root cause. You could say it was her culture, but that wasn't the root cause either.

 

The root cause was the particular details of her brain's semantic structures that caused her shame, that associated her physical state with a concept "pregnant" (which is labeled with the WORD 'pregnant'), associated that with the concept "shame" (which is labeled with the WORD 'shame'), associated that with fantasies of rejection and not-belonging, which triggered her limbic center to generate fear. She was done in by the details of her semantic structures.

 

In reading over the last dozen or so posts, I keep seeing folks talk about "thinking without words" and "thinking thoughts without language to express them". If we exclude pure emotional reactions, such as joy, fear, pain, anger and such -- then we are left with nothing that does not depend upon some form of semantic structure in a (human) brain's languaging center.

 

You react to "beauty" with wordless joy! What is "beauty"? How do you recognize it? How do you associate it with positive "value"? How do you associate it with a pleasant emotional reaction?

 

Does a cow know that van Gogh's "Starry Night" is beautiful?

Does a cow know that Mozart's 2nd violin concerto is beautiful?

Does a cow know "beauty" at all?

No.

 

You guys are confusing "languaging" with "using words".

You guys are thinking that when I talk about "languaging", I'm talking about words and sentences and definitions and verbs.

I'm not.

 

There is a languaging center in the brain of humans, and in it is "stored" a vast and complex logical structure. This structure "exists" in the same sense that your family pictures "exist" on a 1 gigabyte flash drive.

This structure is constructed of atomic pieces that we might call symbols.

The data within this structure is constructed of symbols.

The processes within this structure are mediated by symbols.

Some symbols are associated with words, others with images or experiences or emotions.

Some symbols are obviously nouns or verbs, others are merely types of associations between other symbols, or types of relationships between other symbols and sensory "objects", or linkages that generate "category", "hierarchy", "importance", "time-stamping", "value", "desireability", "consistency", "trustworthiness", and on and on.

This semantic structure is a TinkerToy construction that is dynamic and fluid, where only the unpainted, wheel-like hubs are actual "words" you can find in a dictionary -- and ALL the OTHER pieces are NOT.

 

You see a van Gogh, or hear Mozart, and endorphins flood your bloodstream, and you smile and relax, all without a single "word" being vocalized or subvocalized or even "thought". But it was your semantic structures that detected that the sight or sound was "recognized", and that it was associated with the word "art" or "music", and categorized that with the semantic concepts of "good" and "beauty", and the high "value" attached to those two concepts sent electrical signals from the languaging center of your brain directly to the pleasure center of your brain, where it triggered the release of endorphins.

 

No words were spoken in the execution of this process.

 

But without "languaging" in the sense that I use it, without this complex, "symbol" mediated, semantic structure, the process described above could never have occurred -- could never have existed. Because "art" and "music" can only exist as conceptual constructs within a semantic structure.

 

You first have to grok the distinction: "languaging".

It gives you your reality. It assigns values to everything you experience. It enables you to create and manipulate words that have NO physical referent. (Like "love" and "honor") It gives you "who you are", and it is the engine which generates nearly all of what you call "thoughts" or "thinking".

 

Languaging. It's not just about words.

[Buffy]

Since plants apparently grow better to Jazz than Vanilla Fudge, does that mean they can appreciate beauty?

 

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities, :)

Buffy

[Pyrotex]

Since plants apparently grow better to Jazz than Vanilla Fudge, does that mean they can appreciate beauty?...

No dear, but some plants which have long, flexible stems and heavy leaves, have a natural "waving" frequency down in the lower register of some instruments often associated with jazz. In other words, they're tuned in to the joy of sax.

 

:)

[sman]

This is a really complex and tricky subject. And it's okay if you disagree. No problem.

 

:)

 

Actually the problem is that I'm looking for an ally in my own flaming-radical notions of linguistic determinism. But I can't discuss those until the fairy tales are put down. It's not me that disagrees, its the evidence: aphasics, stroke victims, the "wild childeren" who never aquired language during the critical childhood period, certain types of brain damage...all can show signs of language breakdown, and yet cognition can remain unaffected. Mozart, VanGogh - unaffected. These things do not depend on language. I didn't say it, psycholinguistics did.

 

I'm reading two things between the lines of your posts that concern me: associationism/behaviorism and pre-Chomskyan linguistics.

 

The behaviorism of B.F. Skinner et al has gone the way of Freud's Id/Ego/Superego and MacLean's Triune Brain. It's just not how the mind works. Not that I (or anyone, really) know everything about how the mind works, but I know that contemporary cognitive science does not rely on these models.

 

What Noam Chomsky did, in a nutshell, was prove (that's right, prove) that the semantic structures in the brains of 19th century Samoan speakers are exactly the same as the semantic structures in the brains of 19th century English speakers - and every other language. In fact I believe the book is called Universal Syntactic Structures.

 

I have a feeling that linguistics since Chomsky, and particularly psycholinguistics - the study of human cognition through language - would fascinate you the same way it does me.

 

Here's a problem - let me know what you think:

I don't believe in a languaging center in the brain. That is, I cant believe that language is produced from a single module of the mind, because I can't reconcile it with the way I understand biological evolution. I'm inclined towards thinking of language as a chimera of cognitive tricks, all evolved separately by their different benefits, commondeered, or co-opted, for a beneficial effect: language. Compare with the way language has co-opted the tongue, larnyx and nasal.