The Human Mind as Linguistic Structures

Pyrotex · December 13, 2006

On The Nature of the Human Mind

This is a subject I have been considering for a long, long time. I eventually came upon the writings of Korzybski, the Polish-American philosopher who appears in my signature below. After reading his essays, I became convinced that the Human mind is constructed out of Tinker-Toy-like elements that are not electrical, chemical or physical. They are in fact, linguistic, and all our thoughts, concerns and imaginings are linguistic structures.

And yet, to read the philosophers, scientists and sages, linguistic ability is merely a skill, communication, like other skills such as painting and making arrowheads. Most learned folks believe that we turn our thoughts “into words” in order to speak them or write them. And our audiences hear or read our words and turn them back into “thoughts”.

I shall attempt to refute this. I shall attempt to demonstrate that our minds themselves, centered upon our innermost concept of “I”, consist of and are totally made up of linguistic structures. We think with them, we feel with them, we yearn and hurt and love with them.

I invite all who have ever wondered at what the "mind" really is to jump in and contribute. All efforts to prove my little theory wrong are humbly welcomed.

I shall break my presentation into two large pieces:

Piece I: Explaining the Human Mind as a Linguistic Structure

Piece II: A “Proof By Contradiction” for the Human Mind as a Linguistic Structure

Pyrotex · December 13, 2006

Piece I: Explaining the Human Mind as a Linguistic Structure

First, many folks have a problem with making linguistic structures the “end all” of human thought. They suspect that linguistics entails merely the ability to communicate, and especially communicate “concepts.” They argue that “concepts” are not the only thing we can communicate and therefore there must be non-linguistic ways of communicating. Other forms of communication would involve expression of instincts, and secondary to that, expression of emotions. These expressions may involve sounds, body language, movement, or a combination of all three.

I agree that these take place. But humans assign meanings to these non-verbal expressions -- animals do not. We give these non-verbal expressions names, such as “contempt” or “smile” or “dancing”. We alter their meanings whenever we want to. Body language and gestures have no inherent meaning apart from the meanings we give them. This is “linguistic”.

Descartes felt he had to accept the concept of “mind-stuff”, as distinct from ordinary matter. It just didn't seem to him that mind could be constructed out of sub-units made of matter. Of course, he didn't know that flesh was made of individual cells, or that matter was made of individual atoms. Cells do not have the attributes of flesh on the scale of our senses. Individual atoms do not have the attributes of visible substance. The macro-objects we see and touch have “emergent” attributes not apparent in the constructive sub-units. So, there's nothing implicitly unreal about considering mind as made up of a myriad of “linguistic” sub-units.

A good question to ask here would be: “When an animal, say a zebra, senses danger, a lion, does it ‘think’ linguistically about the lion? Does it form ‘concepts’ of all lions it has ever known and from that create a generalized ‘Lion’?

My answer is not quite. The zebra’s brain is hard-wired to “recognize” the danger of being approached at high speed by any animal not of its own species. It reacts. Concepts would require words or equivalent symbols and their linguistic manipulation.

To understand the distinction between hard-wired reaction and linguistic thinking, we need to understand what processes are occurring in a brain/mind, and how it is communicating information to others of its species. For example, how does the zebra communicate a danger about the external world to the other zebras?

Brain scientists (the ones with the *really* thick glasses!) speak of three 'brains' in our skulls: the lizard brain, the mammalian brain, and the hominid brain. These correspond physically to actual sections of our brains from the topmost end of our spinal cord up to our frontal lobes. “Life-processing” goes on in all three, but at different levels of complexity.

The lizard brain can react quickly to motion and to shape engrams. For example, I have a problem in my own lizard brain, where any black, eight-fold shape having vaguely arachnid form, will trigger an immediate panic/flight reaction. And I mean *fast*. I often experience the panic of arachniphobia before I am aware that there is a spider near me (or just a wad of black thread!). *This* is what a lizard “thinks” with. Its world is one of engrams (patterns or pattern rules), pattern matching, reflex release of brain chemicals (we know these as “emotions”) and reflex reactions. There are no “words” or “meanings” in a lizard brain, therefore no linguistic structures.

However, the flight-or-flight reflex can be very complex; and there are other reflexes that operate in reaction to other stimuli. For example, we know that many pack/herd animals have complicated social structures: orders of hierarchy, rights of paternity, right of maternity, subservience, deferment, performance of services, etc.. They establish this social “structure” with each other via sounds, postures, body movement, attacks (mock or otherwise) and touch.

But these communications are more of a reactive expression, that the others react to in turn. A chain of reactions. At no point in the chain does “meaning” or “interpretation” or other linguistic operation take place.

Next, we come to the mammalian brain, with its cerebrum, which lizards do not have. It's here that the beginnings of the first proto-linguistic structures might form. Whereas the lizard is merely matching patterns that can trigger reactions, the mammal appears to actually “construct” a simulacrum of the external world. (It still has its lizard brain, with panic/flight reflexes.) But now it has a real “world” to “live” in. It actually “sees” the grass and the tigers -- seeing takes place within the simulacrum. At the center of the simulacrum is a not-quite-featureless void. Sometimes pain occurs there, but otherwise it is like the unnoticed blind spot we have in our visual field; i.e., there is no “self”. The mammal recognizes far more complex patterns than the lizard, including patterns spread over time, patterns of “behavior” of different species, including its own.

And its reactions are more complex. See “mating rituals”. And it can *learn*. The simulacrum of reality within which it “lives” is complex enough to learn new patterns over time out of its experiences, say, of the other members of the herd, or an encounter with its first jackal. The lizard brain has no room for learning. The mammalian brain allows the creature to actually participate and interact in a “seen” world, where objects have experiential identities, though no labels. It also enables the mammal to accumulate experiences and learn.

Then there is the hominid brain which we share only with the other apes. The cerebellum. This is added on, on top of, so to speak, the other two. We have the lizard brain of primitive pattern matching, strong emotions and reflex action, but which provides no “world” in which to recognize objects as members of object classes (carnivore!), and no ability to learn.

We have the mammalian brain wherein we experience a simulacrum of reality--we “see” the trees, and we “hear” crickets, and by moving our legs (or spinning our wheels) we can cause our point of view to shift within that world. We can learn from experience, so that once burned, we do not touch again. There is memory, short term and long term. But the objects and events in those memories have no labels as such. Rather than being “addressed” by a word (“lion”), they are addressed by a set of sensory attributes (size + shape + sound), and have pointers to lizard brain engrams ("panic!").

The hominid brain adds something else: symbols, storage of symbols (rather than patterns or sensory attributes) and construction of complex symbol structures. The number of brain cells required to store a “symbol” and relate that to past experiences should be much smaller that the number required to store sensory attributes.

And the symbols can point to more than just objects, events and experiences. They can point to other symbols. They can point to virtual objects, virtual events, and virtual experiences that are constructed entirely out of symbols. This in turn does something wholly unexpected: it fills in the “central void”. The “self” comes into being inside and yet somewhat removed from the simulacrum we “live” inside.

Consider this analogy: Life is a series of (Platonic) caverns opening up onto reality. No life form (except maybe for bacteria) directly experience reality -- all others must live in one of the caverns. The lizard lives in the first and smallest cavern. It has the closest perception of reality. But in its cavern, there is only room to eat, mate and run away. Its simulacrum of reality (cavern) has no room for recognizable objects, time, learning. It doesn't even “see” in the sense you and I mean. Its vision is merely a motion/pattern/danger detector.

Bison live in the next cavern away from reality, but it is far roomier. The Bison’s mind “expands” to fill this new simulacrum, which is far more detailed and sophisticated. The Bison “sees” a world with recognizable (and remembered) objects and events. The Bison cannot “live” in its lizard brain anymore, its conciousness has outgrown that primitive substrate.

Humans live in the third cavern, by far the largest, yet also the *farthest* from reality! We have *names* for all the objects and events. And we learn much faster, in fact, we learn to create new objects and events that are entirely abstract, yet we know them and react to them as if they were real (honor, love). And this contributes to the huge size and complexity of our simulacrum.

Well, you say: I can lie on my back in a golden meadow, looking at an azure blue sky broken by fluffy streams of white clouds and notice in the distance a multicolored rainbow dancing at the edge of a rain cloud. I can visualize and experience all of this and 'communicate' it to myself without ever naming any part of it. If I don't want to, I do not have to think 'cloud,' 'rainbow,' sky.' I do not think linguistically about any of these things until I try to communicate it to others!

Okay. But how long can you go without thinking 'cloud'? And if one turns into Richard Nixon's profile how can you not recognize it? As a human living in the hominid brain simulacrum, you might be able to squeeze some small part of yourself into the mammalian brain “cavern” where there are no names for anything, no meanings, but you can't stay there for long, and you can't “do” anything decidely “human” down there, like telling yourself how interesting it is to be like a Bison for a moment.

Okay, I understand that we sometimes think without subvocalizing words, or imagining a stream of speech. Your point is well taken that we can *visualize* without words. In any case, when we conjure up an image of a circle, the visual component may be just an image, but it was a “circle” we wanted. The identity of circle with “circle” is too close for ordinary mortals to split apart. We called up a circle specifically. Not a random shape. We knew what we would visualize before we did it, and we knew the *meaning* of the circle in that (linguistic) context, and *why* it was the circle we wanted rather than an ellipse. To think geometric shapes is to have already absorbed and utilized a vast body of linguistic structures.

The *image* is just the tip of a huge, hidden linguistic iceberg that precedes, cocedes, and postcedes the image itself. It's all part of our propensity for constructing things out of symbols. It's what we do best. It's what our cerebellum (the largest cavern) is for. Most importantly, it's in this morass of linguistic structures where the “I” (the central core of identity) emerges!

Pyrotex · December 13, 2006

Piece II: A “Proof By Contradiction” for the Human Mind as a Linguistic Structure

I begin by assuming: the mind can *not* be understood as a linguistic structure.

From this, we must conclude that either the mind “accesses” (experiences, sees, encompasses, knows, appreciates, fondles) the external world *directly*, or that it accesses the world *indirectly* via some paradigm other than linguistics.

After consideration, I believe there is “no cheese” down the second tunnel. No matter what other paradigm you choose, it can be reformulated as a linguistic paradigm. So I will conclude that the mind accesses the world directly.

If the mind accesses the world directly, that is, has a direct experience of reality, then there must be some direct physical interplay between reality and mind. The “things” in reality must make themselves known by supplying their attributes to the mind via some direct exchange of communication.

I shall rely upon the cybernetic “proof” that communication necessarily requires an exchange of energy between the “source” and “receiver” of communication. Therefore, there is an exchange of energy (change of energy states) between thing and mind that mediates communication of the thing's attributes (mass, color, size, speed, etc.).

We have evidence that this really occurs. The most obvious example is light, which by experiencing an energy change at the thing, then entering our eyes and depositing its energy there, provides us with knowledge of the outside world (the thing).

But this energy transfer does not directly impinge on “mind”, but rather on specialized sensory cells, that translate their new energy states into neural signals that go to the brain. Therein, we may assume the “mind” receives the signals and uses them to reconstruct the information provided by the light, that is, to reconstruct the “thing” that affected the light in the first place.

This sounds pretty good, so far. With only mechanical transfers of energy and mechanical (neural) signals as intermediaries, we have “mind” directly accessing the external reality. By this I mean, the “mind” can reconstruct a duplicate of the external reality. So, everything “out there” has its reconstruction, its image, “in there”. And every image in the mind has its reality counterpart “out there”.

What about “Honor”? Without question, there is an image in the mind, a concept, a “knowing” of this thing called “honor”. Where in the external world is the “thing” that corresponds to “honor”? We can't find any such thing. We conclude that there is no “thing” in the external world that corresponds to our clear mental image of “honor”. Then to *what* does the image of “honor” correspond, if not to an external reality? (In place of “honor”, I could just have easily used “love”, “beauty”, “justice” or a hundred other such words.)

We are forced to conclude that the mind has constructed (not 're-'constructed!) images that have no physical, reality counterparts. A search of our minds and their contents reveals that a significant portion, perhaps even a majority of our concepts, have *no* external reality counterparts!

This begs the question, out of *what* does the mind duplicate reality? And even more specifically, out of *what* does the mind construct concepts with no external counterpart? With no external thing to *cause* these images to exist, how do they get created? And for all our mental images, out of *what* are they made?

Well, signals between brain cells, and information stored within the cells chemically. But *what* does a (hypothetical) molecule of 2,5,6-benzylpheromone-alpha-3-methyl-RNA in a brain cell *mean*? What does a burst of “12,7,pause,3,9,15” neural impulses between two brain cells (or groups of cells) *mean*?

We must assume that they form a code which means something. That meaning (the original meaning of the things and events in the external reality) can be reconstructed in the mind by considering these molecules and these signals to be some sort of code. We can even assume that the code is so complex we will never understand it.

Fair enough, but *what* is a code? It's a relationship between “icons” and assigned meanings. The icons can be dots and dashes (Morse code), numerals, words, molecules in a cell or bursts of events like neuron firings. And the meanings are... No, we cannot say that meanings are yet another set of signals or events-- that just postpones the inevitable.

What are “meanings”? I will leave that for the time being.

But let's return to our question, what is a code? There's no way you can avoid the conclusion that if a code is a relationship between “icons” and “meanings” (whatever *those* are!--and yet we *KNOW* what they are in our minds, don't we???) then what a code is ... is a linguistic structure. Meanings can *only* be expressed in linguistic terms. A meaning has no other attributes other than itself, and it consists entirely of linguistic elements. A code correlates icons to linguistic elements, therefore is a linguistic structure.

Okay. So, the reconstruction of external reality in our minds is built out of a linguistic structure (icons/meanings). But that doesn't mean that the *mind* itself is constructed out of linguistic structures, does it?

Hey! We think and we consider and we are aware and even aware of ourselves, and we ponder and are aware of ourselves pondering, and *none* of that involves those linguistic structures out of which the external reality is built--does it?

Well, consider the question above. Think about how you think. Is your mind part of the “external reality”? NO! It's ... it's “internal”! Internal to what? Your skull? Your brain? Is *my* mind a part of *your* external reality? Well, of course it is. Do we have any reason to believe that your mind (out of 6 billion) is special and is the only one *not* part of your external reality?

No, we don't. :D

When your mind is thinking about your mind, then it constructs a mental image of itself out of the very linguistic structures that it uses to construct everything else.

Now, is that constructed mind the same mind with which you do your thinking? You say no. I ask you to describe any part of your mind that is not. You tell me. In so doing you construct that part out of linguistic structures. We can keep this up without end, you claiming that some part of your mind is not made up of linguistic structures, but you image that part in your mind with linguistic structures to even be able to think of it.

Okay, you say, I'll get around all this linguistic stuff--I'll just image in my mind a rainbow over a lovely forest--no words, just pictures. To which I respond, how do you know that's a rainbow? How did you conjure the image? Better yet, *why* did you conjure it? Did not the word “rainbow” *precede* the image? And even as you imaged it, didn't you *know* it was a “rainbow”--weren't you automatically *identifying* it? And how can you “identify” something without linguistic processes? You cannot.

“Identity” has meaning only within linguistics. To establish any connection between the rainbow image and the word “rainbow” requires a linguistic structure.

I conclude: without linguistic structures, there is no part of your mind that you can describe, consider, ponder or even *use*.

I conclude: without linguistic structures, there would be no way to encode concepts (like honor) that have no external counterparts in reality.

I conclude: without linguistic structures, there is no way to assign or incorporate “meaning” to the (for all appearances) random and/or chaotic firing of our brain cells.

I conclude: that without linguistic structures, the mind itself cannot assign or correlate meanings to even those images in the mind that *are* directly reconstructed from the external reality.

To even think to yourself: “nonsense! this is all poppycock!” is to construct, exercise, manipulate, and transform linguistic structures (icons/meanings) within the brain. I assert, that while you are thinking the above thought, *nothing* else is occuring within your brain (the flow of blood, I believe, is irrelevant here), except for the the neural activity associated with the mind's linguistic structures. There is nothing going on that is *not* linguistic structure activity. (Unless, of course, you fall pray to some strong emotion or bodily function! :sherlock: )

Therefore the mind doesn't merely *use* linguistic structures, it *IS* linguistic structures. This *contradicts* the initial assumption of my argument.

Therefore, the Human mind *must* be looked upon as essentially linguistic in nature. {pant, pant, pant} :hihi:

Buffy · December 14, 2006

So many words Pyro: I need time to grok it all.

I will say that your basic thesis is kind of like my thinking about "artificial intelligence" and "consciousness": these are a lot simpler than might be imagined, mostly because no one has ever put together a decent model of the building blocks--kinda like your tinker-toy--structures of concepts that solve the "world knowledge problem" through massive parallelism and lots of data. The implementation of these "blocks" themselves is complicated, but I think they do some pretty simple things. Pile several million of them together and you've got great pattern recognition, problem solving and even sentience.

There's a great article in this months' SciAm about mapping the neural code of rats' whisker sense stimuli and how the mechanism for sensing and reaction is not linear as previously thought, but massively parallel: meaning that a seemingly simple mechanism is masked by an almost impenetrably chaotic implementation. To me this is proof of the "accidental" development of the brain (see neural networks!), but its what gets in the way of us figuring out what the heck it does and how it does it.

Great thread Pyro! I'll be back....

Lego,

Buffy

Boerseun · December 14, 2006

Great thread, Pyro!

I suppose supporting the thesis could come from a more physical analogy; that of information storage.

We started with information hard-wired into our DNA. The information is there, but it's rather limited. But info stored in your DNA is more than sufficient to enable an organism to qualify as a 'living being'.

When the memory capacity of DNA became too restricted, brains evolved to supplement it. These brains do in fact make pattern recognition possible, Pavlov's Dog being a case in point. The Pavlovian response (which, although silly when a ringing bell is involved), does aid survival, but would be wholly impossible when your only tool is DNA. DNA must first code for a brain which would enable the Pavlovian response, but the DNA is not dynamic through the lifetime of the individual, although it will change over generations.

So when our brains became too restrictive, we invented another form of storage which our brains could understand, and which could be shared between individuals and across community borders. Heck, this medium could be shared across the ages! The written word! With this new 'brain addition' existing in the form of the Public Library (Using your reptile/mammalian/hominid onion-like brain-layer analogy, I guess the library would be the next layer). And we can only code into the library something that would be understood by our physical brains, otherwise the exercise would be futile. Thus, books are written in pure Linguistic Structures, otherwise our hominid brains won't 'get it'.

So, using another approach, I guess you may be right!

There's no 'Operating System' as such where our linguistic thoughts need to be translated into 'machine code' first before our bodies understand it. I think that our actual thoughts is the machine code itself!

Pyrotex · December 15, 2006

Great thread, Pyro!...

Thank you! :shrug:

I think that our actual thoughts is the machine code itself!

You're getting warm!!!!!!!

Racoon · December 15, 2006

First thing I thought of was Noam Chompsky

Language and Mind. Noam Chomsky (1968)

We are definitely hardwired for linguistics. Our ability to imitate sound for one.

( also shared by birds)

Michaelangelica · January 9, 2007

Here is an article on Human Memory that supports your point of view

Greater Paramus News and Lifestyle Magazine - A pair of top memory experts discuss an emerging science of the mind

eg

Humans have language, which is such an important part of encoding and retrieving memories. So the human brain is just richer from that point of view.

and an interesting comment on evolution:-

The other thing is that language gives rise to parallel evolution, which is important to memory storage. We can write things down, record them. We have a culture that develops around us based on our memory, and we have access to that. We can read about things. We have a whole surround of previous events that we can recall at any time, but that didn't actually happen to us. So language introduces an enormous dimension.

You could say that the human brain has evolved relatively little in the last 20,000 years, but that there's been enormous evolution in people and the culture around them. We drive cars. There's the Internet. This is a cultural evolution that works in parallel with biological evolution, but moves infinitely more rapidly. So our memories are constantly interacting with the culture around us, and evolving.

However I fell that i must disagree with you (heaven help me).

When I was young I was considered retarded at school. I spent my days quietly day-dreaming down the back of the class (of 60 boys). I was a 'nice'. well-mannered kid who didn't get into trouble and often got fun jobs like giving out the milk or doing the gardening.

Unfortunately my life came to a terrifying crash when the Health Department came to my school gave out IQ tests and tested eyesight. It was discovered that I was almost blind and intelligent. (No way I could see the board from the back of the class.)

From that day on my life was miserable, I was constantly told I was "lazy", moved to the front of the class and picked on by the teachers (who had been my 'friends') relentlessly.

I found it very difficult to write words "compositions" and to spell.

I discovered at University that the reason for this was that I thought in pictures. Thinking in pictures is much faster than words.

My arguments often jumped to conclusions that no-one else could see because I had not put them down in a logical sequence of words. I was angry & frustrated because I could literally SEE the answer and I thought everyone else was just being pig-headed or stupid.

Fortunately I met m,y too be, wife (in a Tragedy Tutorial !-another story) -an English major- who would read my essays and say-"You can't say that! It doesn't follow." and we would have furious arguments. That's went I started to write down my mind- pictures in great, boring detail and started getting good grades.

Eventually I have learnt to use words and have written two books (With the aid of the greatest of all twentieth century inventions The Spell Checker) and thousand of submissions and reports whilst working for the government & many magazine artivcle on herbs & gardening. Strangely, my wife, who is a much better writer than me, has done little writing

I feel, that now, I have all but lost the intuitive, picture-thinking ability..

My eldest daughter also thinks in pictures. She found learning Japanese- a pictorial script- at school boringly simple.

She also has her mother's writing skills and is now working as a journalist.

I fear, she too, is now losing the picture-thinking-making skill as her life is all words.

I think, she just may, see pictures-of-words,(?!) as she has a memory I am in awe of (Knows all the Monty Python, Goon Show, scripts off by heart and a goodly amount of Terry Pratchett too).

So, does this exception disprove the rule?

Do Japanese/Chinese think in pictures?

--

Pyrotex · January 9, 2007

...However I fell that i must disagree with you... the reason for this was that I thought in pictures. Thinking in pictures is much faster than words. My arguments often jumped to conclusions that no-one else could see because I had not put them down in a logical sequence of words. I was angry & frustrated because I could literally SEE the answer... So, does this exception disprove the rule?
Do Japanese/Chinese think in pictures?

Excellent, excellent! :) You have painted me into a corner! :doh: Now let's see how nimbly I can think my way out of this (using linguistic structures!).

You are correct that "visual thinking" occurs in some people, myself included. For me, math, even Calculus and its use in Physics was easy because I didn't have to memorize very much; I could "see" the relationships and the path to solution. I have many vivid visual memories of my childhood, detailed as a video, usually associated with an intense emotional experience. Let's start with that.

The mammalian brain is at work here. A strong emotion/feeling such as panic, rejection, pain, can release neuro-chemicals that cause a visual transcription to occur. Later re-experience of that same emotion/feeling can trigger replay of that "vizscription". This is (I assert) how mammals learn from experience. (For Pavlov's dogs, it was "audioscription". We can generalize with the word "eventscription".) This learning is actually a bonding of the eventscription with an emotion/feeling engram and with an outcome/action engram.

When we "think" with images (events), we are actually manipulating not the images per se, but the image inputs (emotion/feeling engram) and the image outputs (outcome/action engram). Using these inputs and outputs, we can string together eventscriptions in a "logical" fashion, accomplishing something like "visual thinking".

Why can't bison do this? They have mammalian brains. They have something very like the eventscription and its bonding to an outcome/action engram. Otherwise, it would not learn that the tail of a lion was just as dangerous as the entire lion, leading to the same reaction.

That's the key word here. Reaction. The bison reacts when a visual cue triggers the associated eventscription and its output reaction. ("Run away!")

You and I have done something far more subtle. We attach linguistic labels to the input emotion/feeling engram and to the output/action engram. And since linguistic labels can trigger subsequent emotion/feelings, we can now string together a sequence of eventscriptions like Lego bricks. But rather than merely reacting ("Run away!"), we are building a linguistic structure.

What we "see" in our minds, however, is the sequence of eventscriptions, not the labels -- even though it is the labels that enable us to construct the jigsaw puzzle that "pictures" for us the solution that we are seeking. The jigsaw pieces are the eventscriptions. The wiggly borders on each side of each piece -- the borders that interlock together -- are the linguistic labels associated with the eventscription.

The teacher asks, "how far does George travel if he starts at speed zero at time zero, and subsequently, his velocity along the X-axis is defined by the function Vx = Fx(t), and his velocity along the Y-axis is defined by the function Vy = Fy(t)?".

The linguistic trigger (velocity-to-distance) triggers an eventscription that looks like a picket fence, with the top border being velocity and the area of the fence being total distance. I "see" an animation of area being swept over and accumulated by the dot of current velocity traveling along the function of time, F(t).

I "see" that whatever I do in X and in Y are at right-angles.

This triggers an emotion/feeling of delight in splitting a hard problem into two easy problems.

I "see" the Integral Sign accumulating distance from velocity.

I "see" a distance traveled in X and a distance traveled in Y.

I "see" a Pythagorean triangle with hypotenuse.

This triggers an emotion/feeling of delight at knowing how to calculate the hypotenuse.

The jigsaw puzzle is complete, triggering an emotion/feeling of success which triggers a confidence that the solution works and that I am assured of the right place to start.

Maybe not ONE word may ever have been subvocalized in this process. And yet, at what we might call "the subconscious level" these eventscriptions, these visual, possibly animated memories of real (or constructed) "events" could not have been tied together into a "logical" sequence without each eventscription having been labeled; thereby causing these eventscriptions to be "wrapped" much as an Internet packet, producing a linguistic element that can be combined with other (jigsaw piecing) linguistic elements to form a linguistic structure.

I'll stop there. Not a proof, exactly. But perhaps a suggestion of a proof.

Michaelangelica · January 14, 2007

could not have been tied together into a "logical" sequence without each eventscription having been labeled

That's why I had trouble.

There were no words.

I just saw the answer.

No one could follow my logic as there was none.

I had to learn how to make the linguistic logical links in order to explain my ' vision' to others.

I still don't really "get" some areas of science because I can't visualise them.

Things like molecular chemistry, quantum anything, maths.

I am reading Dick Francis at the moment(slightly above chewing-gum-for-the-mind, but always entertaining who-dun-it type read) and I came across this in his book "Shattered". His main character is a famous glass blower. . "I tried to explain to him . . .was the draughtsman's inner eye that saw an object in three-dimensional terms. I could draw and pain all right, but it was the three-dimensional imagination that I'd been blessed with from birth that made. . ." (glass art creation easy)

I do not have a creative bone in my body; but when younger would come up with a dozen new ideas before breakfast.

How do you know how Bison think?

--

michael

rocket art · January 14, 2007

I have read that the human mind works more like a holographic. Linguistic itself is just one facet among many broader perceptions, like visualization, senses, etc.

InfiniteNow · November 28, 2007

I shall attempt to demonstrate that our minds themselves, centered upon our innermost concept of “I”, consist of and are totally made up of linguistic structures. We think with them, we feel with them, we yearn and hurt and love with them.

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