I believe language allows having more than one layer i.e. enabling complexity of representation. For example, If I want to think about the person thinking inside - these kind of recursive concepts need some sort of symbolic nesting to even materialise the idea.
Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
171–180 of 404 posts
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#172It absolutely melts my mind every time I come across the two facts that: - People experience their thoughts very differently - We all secretly believe that deep down, everyone experiences thought like we do. I've never really had a strong internal monologue when thinking, so my assumption would always be that of course, thinking isn't very linguistic (even if we can use it as a tool while thinking). It seems like the…
Same here. I had a conversation with friends who said, language influences thinking. I said, no, I have thoughts, and I communicate them with language but the thoughts are not language. Later we spoke about being able to have no thoughts - still mind. I said I can do this any time, I can stop the thoughts and be still. At the time I had no training but I could do it for 10, 20, 30 seconds easily. And I knew with trai…
> Later we spoke about being able to have no thoughts - still mind. I said I can do this any time, I can stop the thoughts and be still. At the time I had no training but I could do it for 10, 20, 30 seconds easily. And I knew with training I'd be able to extend that time, it was effortless.
> To them, that was crazy - they couldn't stop thinking at all!
I have the same experience of being "unable to stop thinking". Are you by any chance neurotypical, or close to neurotypicality? My impression is that neurotypical brains have a higher degree of synchronization than autistic brains, which would make suppressing thought easier.
I'm autistic, and I don't just have thoughts; they have themselves. Thoughts just spontaneously come into existence, and just think on their own. I can think about them myself, but only by picking up existing thoughts. Thoughts come into existence whether I intend them to or not, so it is not possible for me to suppress them.
On one paw, the fact that thoughts seemingly think about themselves allows me to fit a lot of logic in my head at once without getting overwhelmed. But on the other, being unable to control which thoughts are in my head can be really infuriating.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are many concepts in our thought stream without a 'word' or even a simple 'phrase' to label them. If those concepts would exist you wouldn’t be able to explain them using words, no matter how complex the phrase may be. Taking a phrase and expecting it to have a single word replace is unrealistic. You can’t just asign a word to every possible sentence/phrase. Having a direct translation means you don’t necessa…
How did Michelangelo create his masterpieces? Can one describe the process using any verbal language in sufficient detail such that another master or a robot could create David? That's an example of thought processes beyond language. I suspect the same happens in many other fields. Even in an abstract field like mathematics, intuition often forms in the mind before verbal description or articulation.
>How did Michelangelo create his masterpieces? Can one describe the process using any verbal language in sufficient detail such that another master or a robot could create David? That's an example of thought processes beyond language.
I'm not sure what you mean. He probably started with something "Ok, I need to create a statue", then "Who should I pick, I guess it should be someone Biblical, let's pick David because they like him in Florence", then "Ok, he was a healthy and muscular young man, and I have enough material for a 5 meter high statue", then "let's start with sculpting a general outline and then focus on head and neck shapes" (...) and finally "looks good, but the nose should be a bit smaller". I can almost imagine the whole thought process (except I know nothing about sculpting, but I'm not terrible at some other art forms).
There's nothing that is inherently non-verbal in this process. And all of these decisions can be described algorithmically and numerically (even though humans doing art usually compare their results to a reference images instead of doing 3d math in their head).
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#174It absolutely melts my mind every time I come across the two facts that: - People experience their thoughts very differently - We all secretly believe that deep down, everyone experiences thought like we do. I've never really had a strong internal monologue when thinking, so my assumption would always be that of course, thinking isn't very linguistic (even if we can use it as a tool while thinking). It seems like the…
> just how much of a wierdo I was surprised to learn the other day from HN that not only some people, but some commenters here, consider the notion of "not opening one's mouth to start a sentence before knowing how it's going to end" an impracticable ideal.
Hmmm, I don't think I know exactly what words I want so say when opening my mouth, but I usually do know exactly what point I want to express. Also, after having expressed my point I stop making noises. Some people seem to really need to say something, but then just go on meandering without giving any indication that they actually have any point to make.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> English as a communication tool looses very little expressive power when users do not use sub-clauses. Very little for that subset you wish to communicate, maybe. In some literary traditions, not only are clauses nested within clauses at the sentence level, but whole narratives are nested within others. (hmm, are there any in-the-wild examples of recursive tmesis? if so, that'd be just fan-far-fucking-out-tastic)
Clauses within clauses are not "recursive", no more than "let x = 1 in (let y = 2 in (let z = 3 in x + y + z)" represents recursion in some hypothetical programming language. Programming languages and human languages existed before people felt the need to define them using formal grammars. Yes most formal grammars use recursion but that's a property of the system you are trying to use to describe (meta) the structure…
Agreed: if you're willing to be as limited with composing in english as you would be with programming in C, lack of recursion is not an issue.
(there's a bit of a parallel, in that XVII english writers, not having readers as pressed for time as our current variant, make far more use of nested sub-clauses than we tend to; similarly, CPL, not having been as pressed for space as either BCPL or C, made far more use of nested sub-expressions than its successor languages)
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#176I hate to quote an abstract, but I'm really struggling to understand the purpose here -- it seems like they're angry that Chomsky defined language as symbolic operations and relegated the external facets to "history of language" or "anthropology of language" or other such fields. We conclude that although the emergence of language has unquestionably transformed human culture, language does not appear to be a prerequi…
The one part that directly contradicted Chomsky was the argument languages tend to minimise dependency length, which flies in the face of long range dependencies like question movement, topicalisation, pronoun binding etc. And misses the main point Chomsky was making: why have a system with movement?
The article seems to be arguing that statistically most sentences (in most languages) are simple. OK, sentences like "Which boys do the girls expect to fight each other?" may not be common, but you instantly understand that "each other" binds not to the closer "the girls", but the long range dependency "which boys". In order to understand it you reconstruct the question to its original position "the girls expect to fight each other" to know that the boys are the ones fighting, and bind to each other (the boys are fighting the boys)
Why have a system like that (in basically every language)? How is that optimised for simple dependencies & communication?
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#177It absolutely melts my mind every time I come across the two facts that: - People experience their thoughts very differently - We all secretly believe that deep down, everyone experiences thought like we do. I've never really had a strong internal monologue when thinking, so my assumption would always be that of course, thinking isn't very linguistic (even if we can use it as a tool while thinking). It seems like the…
> - We all secretly believe that deep down, everyone experiences thought like we do.
I wouldn't say that. What I would rather say is that everyone starts with the expectation that they share thought with others.
There is overwhelming empirical evidence that people can tell when others think like them. Not everybody treats this indicator the same way. Some are fascinated when others think differently. Some get uncomfortable when they can't tell what another is thinking or feeling.
I'm sure not everyone understands why there can be others that don't think like them. To a simple mind, it might just seem like there's something wrong with them or that they have unaligned goals/interests; you actually can see that assumption from certain neurotypicals. (I don't know if it's truly specific to neurotypicals.)
However, it is possible not to believe, even secretly, that everyone experiences thought the same; I certainly don't. I try my best to understand exactly how thought can differ between each person, of course, but in the process of doing that research, it does become abundantly clear just how much I don't know, and just how differently others think than how I do.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brevity is key for words that aid thinking. Consider Chinese 成语 (Chengyu) [1] or Japanese 四字熟語 (Yo Ji Juku Go) [2]: - 指桑骂槐 (Zhi Sang Ma Huai) - Pulling the shoots to make the rice grow = helicoptering - 拔苗助长 (Ba Miao Zhu Zhang) - Point at the mulberry tree to curse the locust tree = deflective criticism These condense a whole story with moral lesson in them, and they facilitate recall of that concept. The trick is om…
So you're effectively saying that Chinese is compressed Tamarian ? Like, instead of writing "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" you'd put their initials together, so you're saying the Chinese-equivalent of "DJT" and the listener instantly knows the story, and therefore the message, it refers to?
You recognized it. Tamarian does exactly that.
There's a subclass of 成语 the sense of which you can't even guess at unless you know the story:
- 塞翁失马 (Sai Weng Shi Ma) - Old man loses horse; a 5-fold story of riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches = life is unpredictable
- 自相矛盾 (Zi Xiang Mao Dun) - Resemble spear and shield = unstoppable force meets indestructible object
The latter is so common that 矛盾 (Mao Dun) is the dictionary entry for "contradiction" in Chinese and Japanese.
Because 矛盾 is so common, the story 自相矛盾 (=etymology) gets taught only later to native speakers. Similarly, consider the surprising etymology of word "rob", deriving from "robe" [1].
Consider also: - "Seven at One Blow" [2] = bamboozle
This proverb everyone knows, yet nobody uses it. It only cumbersomely embeds in a sentence; "bamboozle" is briefer. But 成语 do easily embed in Chinese or any phrase does in Tamarian.
1: https://www.etymonline.com/word/robe 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brave_Little_Tailor
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often times i can actively feel how laggy my brain is in wrapping the thoughts in language. Before i even have the words ready, my thinking is already way ahead at the next thought. Not sure if that's just ADHD. I like to think secretly it's because i am not too dumb and actually a quick thinker. On the other hand, my analytical thinking is not that good. While i enjoy the process of thinking about things alone for h…
Do your Human Design profile and see how much it fits. Our society expects everyone to be a Generator (in HD terms) - all people who are not then feel like they're totally weird. In reality, they're just wired differently, and have other strengths and weaknesses. Humanity is like a big puzzle piece. As someone who never was into astrology, Human Design was a shock. I didn't want to even consider that idea at all, but…
> Do your Human Design profile and see how much it fits.
How would one do that? Is there a website for it, or something? I tried looking it up and it purportedly uses date and place of birth, but those hardly have anything to do with me, so I don't see how that calculation could be any more useful than, say, a star sign.
The concepts seem interesting for sure, just not sure how to find what applies to me.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#180False dichotomy. Of course language is for communication like in all other animals, but where would man be without the invention of the language of mathematics? Probably not in the space and nuclear age. So the linguistic tools can push the boundaries of human cognition.
Did you read the paper? According to the authors, mathematics isn't a "language" in this sense.