Which is to say, language is a tool for rigorization.
Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
361–370 of 404 posts
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#362I totally agree. Kekulé's discovery of the structure of benzene was in a dream and purely visible. When I still did chemistry (post-doc), much of my thinking was not verbal but "Intuition" (whatever that is). Explaining in words my discoveries was secondary.
The fault lines between unconscious understanding and reality come into focus when writing code. Intuition is fantastic for one big idea, or a few medium-sized ones, but struggles to remember lots of details.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#363I totally agree. Kekulé's discovery of the structure of benzene was in a dream and purely visible. When I still did chemistry (post-doc), much of my thinking was not verbal but "Intuition" (whatever that is). Explaining in words my discoveries was secondary.
How did Kelulé pin down all the details of the dream image?
There weren't tons of details to pin down. IIRC, the question was the structure of benzene, which was known to be C6H6, but nobody could figure out how to make a carbon backbone six atoms long that would take only six hydrogen atoms. Hexane, for example, is C6H14.
Kelulé's dream was of six snakes in a circle or hexagon, each eating the next snake's tail. He turned that into the (correct) idea of the benzene ring - six carbon atoms connected in a circle. The only remaining detail was that it had to have alternating single and double bonds (and even that was wrong - the double bonds get smeared out, so that it's more like one and a half bonds between each atom).
So I'm not sure what you mean by "all the details". There were very few details. "Connected in a loop" was the only thing that mattered; it explained everything.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#364I totally agree. Kekulé's discovery of the structure of benzene was in a dream and purely visible. When I still did chemistry (post-doc), much of my thinking was not verbal but "Intuition" (whatever that is). Explaining in words my discoveries was secondary.
How did Kelulé pin down all the details of the dream image?
[deleted]
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#365This would be sort of a death blow to much of postmodernism, no? "Reality is structured like a language and the free play of symbols reigns over all"-style thinking was very popular at one time, but this would rule against it.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#366There are many that would strongly object to this conclusion. I have heard friends describe their inner life as almost entirely verbal, that they "think in words", and are totally unable to relate to anything else.
When we say "communication", I think there is an implication that the goal is communication with others. But there is also value in communication with oneself. To verbalize is to condense ones thoughts into words, and when we hear words they get unpacked and evoke meaning. The resulting feedback loop can be amazing for refining ideas.
It should be no surprise that humans might end up relying on this internal monologue when thinking to the point that they mistake it for thought itself.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#367I'm bilingual, people keep asking me what language I think 'in', and I don't think I think _in_ a language.
For lack of a better way of describing it, I rather think in concepts, sometimes the voice in my head likes to play along by imagining the words representing those concepts, sometimes in English, sometimes in Romanian, but the words are not necessary.
In dev words, I guess I think in structs and then optionally serialize those structs in En/Ro (JSON).
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#368Hmm, this definitely feels contrary to my intuition; it definitely feels like language is how I think, though I'll trust the research here more than my gut feeling, so I'm definitely wrong.
I guess the reason that I think that is because of how much clearer I can think of a problem after I write a somewhat structured paper on it. Maybe it's not the "language" so much as just forcing some structure is what's responsible.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#369I'm bilingual, people keep asking me what language I think 'in', and I don't think I think _in_ a language. For lack of a better way of describing it, I rather think in concepts, sometimes the voice in my head likes to play along by imagining the words representing those concepts, sometimes in English, sometimes in Romanian, but the words are not necessary. In dev words, I guess I think in structs and then optionally…
Same here. Also bilingual, also never related with people who think in sentences. It's all abstract bytes until it needs to be formatted and output into a specific language.
Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
#370The failure of language to provide for us a way to precisely say what we mean results in consciousness. (Lacan/Slovenian Troika/McGowan/Benjamin etc)