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Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

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Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#191

Post by james_marks »

endofreach wrote: post #96
benrutter wrote: post #56

It 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…

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…

Sounds like you’re describing the interplay between limbic and cortex parts of the brain.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thinking-in-black-wh...

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#192

Post by Jensson »

darby_nine wrote: post #187
benrutter wrote: post #56

It 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…

I'm not convinced it's a fact we all think as differently as implied. Try and get a room full of people to even agree what "internal dialogue" means or whether you actually hear a voice when you recall it.

Can you express your internal monologue in words? If not then it is clearly not an internal monologue. I can't express mine in words, hence I am certain it isn't an internal monologue.

Similarly I doubt others would say they have an internal monologue if they couldn't express it in words. Hence I am fairly certain that they think in a different way, or at least they think they do.

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#193

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

benrutter wrote: post #56

It 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…

The question about visualising three dimensional objects is fascinating to me. Because my answer has changed radically in the last five or so years, and I'm not a young person!

I used to consider myself 3D-impaired -- unable to maintain and rotate a 3D image in my head, which also made 3D software frustrating. (I also have, it turns out, some binocular vision issues and some other mild cognition weirdness).

But a few years back I started on a hobby project, and I started to assemble my own DIY kit (because the commercial stuff is too expensive). To do that I had a lot of mental puzzles to try to solve.

Then I decided the best way forward was a 3D printer so I tried to find 3D tools that would work for me on even a basic level -- OpenSCAD, CadQuery, FreeCAD etc.; as many different ways to approach the problem as would shed light on ways to think about it.

I'm no longer really an OpenSCAD person but once my first successful models came out of my printer, my brain was changed forever, and now I visualise mechanisms in my head.

(One of the most powerful things I have learned about how to imagine any man-made, real world object, is to imagine the tools making it.)

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#194

Post by mannykannot »

benrutter wrote: post #56

It 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…

I am, apparently, someone well on the linguistic side of the spectrum, yet I too was somewhat taken aback by this statement from the abstract: "Here we bring recent evidence from neuroscience and allied disciplines to argue that in modern humans, language is a tool for communication, contrary to a prominent view that we use language for thinking" [my emphasis].

My own thinking on this has been to consider the origins of language. In a community of hominins on the verge of developing a language, would they not need, as a prerequisite, some non-linguistic ability to consciously grasp that at least some of the vocalizations of their peers represented feelings that they recognized in themselves? But that, by itself, would not be enough for them to develop a language; in addition, I feel, it would take both a desire to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others (motivated in part, I would guess, by recognizing that it would be useful to do so) and the recognition that this might be accomplished through artificial sounds and/or gestures with arbitrarily-allocated yet specific meanings. I feel that there's a bootstrap problem in regarding language as primarily a means of thinking that was found to be useful in communicating.

Like you (and, apparently, the survey compilers) I am surprised to learn that a sizable minority of people report frequently visualizing words as text. On reflection, however, that sounds somewhat like a form of synesthesia, and I occasionally get enough of a hint of that to put it just barely in range of my personal experience - but then, I don't regard people whose experiences differ markedly from mine as wierdos.

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#195

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

derriz wrote: post #93
calf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual human natural language is meaningfully recursive, because any grade school student understands the recursive properties of certain toy sentence examples in that they could "go on forever" as a set of arbitrarily larger complex sentences. The commonality of mathematical grammars (as mathematical objects in their own right) and natural language is that both have computational properties such as recursive structu…

You're confusing the object language (human natural language) and the meta-language (formal grammars - ala Chomsky). Formal grammar theory relies on recursive formulae to define what is a a language (formally set of sentences), natural language itself does not use/require recursion as understood in the same way. Some natural languages support grammatical features like sub-clauses but that's only "recursive" in the se…

>> Some natural languages support grammatical features like sub-clauses but that's only "recursive" in the sense that attempts to describe such features (using formal language grammars) use recursion when in fact and in practice nesting sub-clauses do not "go on forever".

Recursion doesn't have to go on forever.

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#196

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

082349872349872 wrote: post #120
tetrisgm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great insight. How do you think animals store or communicate those thoughts? From your own experience.

Storage I have no idea. (for that matter, I have little idea how we store non-linguistic thoughts) Communication is primarily via posture, secondarily via sound. No "grammar" is involved, intensification is via intensification of signal, not addition of symbols. (that said, much human-animal communication is by means of arbitrary symbols, just that each symbol is serving as a sign because combinations of symbols and…

>> Storage I have no idea. (for that matter, I have little idea how we store non-linguistic thoughts)

Efficiently, probably. There was an article about chickadees' memories, recently:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/29/birds-create...

Although I haven't read the original article.

>> "Hey, you, thumb-monkey, feed us!"

Well, they do stick around because we can open tin cans...

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#198

Post by Guthur »

benrutter wrote: post #56

It 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…

This somewhat related to universals and how they are view from Platonic idealism and Aristotelian realism. With language we capture a symbolic representation of the ideal form, the red apple, or do we just imagine the last particular apple we saw. Or maybe if you're really modern you imagine the molecular structure and photonic reflective spectrum.

I suppose chose your own adventure.

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#199

Post by haswell »

ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #193
benrutter wrote: post #56

It 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…

The question about visualising three dimensional objects is fascinating to me. Because my answer has changed radically in the last five or so years, and I'm not a young person! I used to consider myself 3D-impaired -- unable to maintain and rotate a 3D image in my head, which also made 3D software frustrating. (I also have, it turns out, some binocular vision issues and some other mild cognition weirdness). But a few…

As someone with Aphantasia, this is fascinating to me. There have been other aphantasics who report gaining the ability to visualize after mental exercises, and what you’re describing sounds somewhat similar. No luck for me yet, but I’m really interested in the idea that I could actually learn these skills…

Re: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

#200

Post by posterboy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #74
gyomu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 積ん読 (Tsundoku) (Japanese): Buying books and never reading them, just letting them pile up. i don't speak Thai or Mandarin, so I can't speak to the other 2, but this one is a pun (combining tsundeoku, pile up, and dokusho, book reading) that survived in the language due to its catchiness. A bit like "hangry" (hungry + angry) in English. I have a hard time interpreting the existence of those words as an indication…

> They're just meme-like constructs that caught on due to arbitrary phonetic properties of the language. My take: they became instant memes and experience wide adoption because they capture a concept without another name - and that makes it not just easy to talk about, but also to think about in the first place (counter to article's thesis?).

However, Tsundoku hasn't caught on, at least not in English, except as a vain example of language fun facts. If there was a need, it would be borrowed eventually, perhaps as a semantic loan (calque). We call it hording already. Japanese simply adds a work related to reading. I don't read Japanese but I can recognize the "speech" radical at least.
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