Language and its influence on thought

[lemit]

I don't have time to really respond right now, but you might want to look at this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7928996.stm

More later.

--lemit

[Pyrotex]

Okay, we have a very smart chimpanzee there. And a very angry one.
Are you familiar with "operant conditioning"?
Basically, an entity can initiate "rewards" or "punishments" upon an animal in consequence of some behavior the animal exhibits in response to some stimulus. If the animal is rewarded after doing X in response to Y, then the animal is more likely to do X in response to Y in the future.

Now, let's define the entity as the animal itself -- to the extent that the animal becomes the source of reward and punishment.

Furthermore, lets' collapse the response X to be the source of reward. This results in the situation where: when Y happens, the animal responds with X, and the response X itself supplies the "reward", say in terms of endorphins.

Specifically, the animal is stimulated with the presence of human zoo visitors. The animal responds randomly for a time, then one day, responds by throwing a stone. This "rewards" the animal. After a time (and numerous rewards), the animal gravitates to sources of stones, and then moves the stones closer to the visitors, in a series of steps which incrementally increase the likelihood of "reward".

We often joke about how cats "teach" humans to be good cat-servants. This may be more true than we first assume. The cat's behavior may be a product of operant conditioning, with the cat playing a larger role of entity than we play. The cat may care nothing for the toy mouse. But it may "learn" that playing with the mouse on the living room rug when humans are present is associated with getting attention ("reward").

That is why the phrase "cognitive thinking" does not refer to just any kind of thinking, or just any mundane sort of brain activity. Almost by definition, it refers to the kind of rigorous thinking that can only be done by a mind capable of categorization, symbolic labeling, abstraction, attribute determination, evaluation, comparison, enumeration, conceptualization and logic.

[lemit]

Oops! I think I must have wandered into a science forum.

Let's just say that some people seem to have cognitive thoughts that do not involve language. If I could verbally explain those thoughts to you, I would. If I could nonverbally explain those thoughts to you, I would. I am at a real disadvantage here.

If there are other people who have experienced what I have experienced, which can also be the essence of the ineffable mystical experience, but doesn't have to be, I hope they will just log in. No attempt to explain is needed. It will fail anyway.

--lemit

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by lemit

Oops! I think I must have wandered into a science forum.

[Karlov] I'm sorry, my dear boy, but now that you're here, I'm afraid we can't allow you to leave. Relax. Let Igor here strap you to this electrical chair. We wouldn't want to have to hurt you, now would we? [/Karlov]

Let's just say that some people seem to have cognitive thoughts that do not involve language. ...which can also be the essence of the ineffable mystical experience...

Okay.
Ineffable Mystical Experience. (IMX)
I can work with that.
But first, "some people seem to have... thoughts... [without] language".
Seem?
Are you speaking of an observation or a personal experience?
If observation, then how do you know that language was not involved?

[Karlov] Yes, dear lemit, this IS a science forum. You might as well stop struggling. I need your brain for an experiment, and dear boy, I WILL have it. [/Karlov]

I have experienced what you may call an IMX. Maybe several. They were transient, perhaps only a few seconds long. It wasn't what I would call thought. It was definately an experience of a sensory/emotional event. On one occassion, the emotion was quite joyful, though I did not know why. It was more like finding oneself on just going "over the top" of a huge roller coaster than it was "thinking". Was it the same for you?

[JMJones0424]

I have been away from this thread for too long, but I have little to contribute other than my own experiences...

Pyrotex, I found your differentiation between operant conditioning and cognitive thinking interesting. Here is an article from Edge by Irene Pepperberg concerning the training of parrots to communicate in a similar fashion to the training of great apes to communicate with sign language. The difference being that parrots are capable of speech, but their "language processing centers" are significantly smaller. I find the progress she made with the parrot remarkable.

Thus we are trying to get him to sound out refrigerator letters, the same way one would train children on phonics. We were doing demos at the Media Lab for our corporate sponsors; we had a very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to see Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, "Alex, what sound is blue?" He answers, "Ssss." It was an "s", so we say "Good birdie" and he replies, "Want a nut."

Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, "What sound is green?" Alex answers, "Ssshh." He's right, it's "sh," and we go through the routine again: "Good parrot." "Want a nut." "Alex, wait. What sound is orange?" "ch." "Good bird!" "Want a nut." We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh."

Not only could you imagine him thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the point was that he had leaped over where we were and had begun sounding out the letters of the words for us. This was in a sense his way of saying to us, "I know where you're headed! Let's get on with it," which gave us the feeling that we were on the right track with what we were doing.

I think that article demonstrates that cognitive thought and language may be intimately tied together, and the same mental development that allows one therefor allows the other, as if they were opposite sides of the same coin. In order to think of something, one must be able to label it (verbally or non-verbally). It is this artificial labeling that is the basis of language, and I believe that the way cultures label concepts and use those labels indirectly affects the way they view those concepts.

Then again, is it just an example of very good operant conditioning? It may have started out that way, but I think the quoted text shows that the parrot's thinking has definitely progressed beyond that. He was never prompted to sound out the letters for nut. He may not have even been able to spell nut. But he knew he wanted a nut, and he knew they were playing the phonics game. He was getting frustrated that the usual response of "want a nut" wasn't working, so instead he played their phonics game to try and get what he wanted. If this is still operant conditioning, at what point does operant conditioning end and cognitive thought begin?

[lemit]

Speaking of parrots and nuts, it is at risk of being considered the latter that I tell this story about the former:

A friend of mine, whom I supervised in a college library, had many parrots in her apartment, the remnants of a Chicago pet store. The first time I took her home, I noticed (who wouldn't) the cacophony of bird voices. I waited in the living room while my friend went to the parrots' room. I heard her calm, reassuring voice and the gradual subsidance of the cacophony. It sounded like good interaction with outraged library patrons if you can't hear any of the words.

The next time I took my friend home from work, I went into the parrots' room with her. The cacophony, I could sort out close up, was some parrots reporting what they had seen outside the window that day, others complaining that their fellow parrots had been somehow abusive or had stolen something, and still others complaining that the first parrots had kept them from having a chance to tell what they had seen outside the window that day.

I still don't know what to make of that. I just have a feeling that our understanding of the relationship of language to thought, as well as that of animals to humans, is inadequate.

--lemit

p.s. I no longer use the word "parroting."

[belovelife]

i have a very important question regarding language in the age of digital communication

the dynamic is code written in the language of computers (c++, java, html, etc.)
that pulses onscreen in patterns that are recognizable by the subconcious
but bareley percievable by the concious

what i intend is this

say there is a subscript of code that flashes an idea
we have all head of subliminal messages
but in the digital age we cannot assume that this concept is rare
we have to assume that it is part of our language

2 examples (@ non-AI influenced levels)

a code that is disruptive
a code that is moral based

now the code that is disruptive would be similar to a prank
where the subliminal message displayed caused a grimace whenever
the observer sees a condom (for example)
like a prank, the code integrates the two ideas, grimace condom
using symbol methods (i don't want to say to much otherwise a non-phd could do it)
so when the observer now is socializing, he/she is unaware that the grimace is showing
thus the "prank" is active

now on the other moral based code, the line relates what we deem as "sin" to have cause
when the observer is observed by others
the example is if the user is looking at porn (say man/women stripping)
the example would not neccisarily be a sin, but in the ethics of the programmer defining
sin on his/her own moral judgment, the effective condition would be the example of a grimace on a face

now since the digital era is here, it insinuates that this is already going on
this type of programming would be looked over by standard models of code protection
yet it is a form of language

now on the positive side of this idea
when someone is looking at a math problem
1+1=2
now if the code then subliminaly trasferred the next mathematical concept/s
1x1=1
1-1=0
1/1=1
etc.
then this language could be used to accelerate the learning potential of humanity

[sallynewell]

I'm also interested in the idea or experience than you can think and reason, at higher levels, without language as necessary and sufficient. For instance in art, complex concepts and experience are transmitted without abstract language... Somethings are just too fast for language, playing tennis, other complex motor tasks ... supposedly we make most of our daily judgements from some amalgam that is extra or pre verbal ... is this amalgam which might loosely called experience, then to be judged as insuffiencent? and what is habit?

[Miranda]

I think it will be best if I address the OP...

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

I have a hypothesis that language is necessarily abstract, and its learning of expression of abstract thoughts influences not only the expression of those thoughts, but how those thoughts themselves are created and expressed. The often quoted yet incorrect reference to thirty some odd names for snow by "eskimos" comes to mind.
So, how does one's language affect not only one's ability to describe the world around them, but also how one perceives the world around them?

It seems you have brought up the issue of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Their hypothesis more or less states that 1) we interact with the world; 2) we form a lexicon of grammatical categories that reflect our experiences and thoughts; 3) our thoughts and cognition are influenced by the resulting grammar of our language. Many linguists have found contention with the latter point, and it happens to be quite debated.

Perhaps you are going more in the direction of linguistic determinism, which is the idea that one culture’s language can express things that are unique to that culture that another language cannot, and thus the speakers have a different worldview. It may certainly seem that way, but I think this gives a lot of unnecessary responsibility to the power of words. Language represents what we have to work with, in a sense ‘reflectionary’. JMJones0424 mentioned the common 'eskimo' example, which says that Eskimos have many words for snow and that a speaker of another language such as English would not be able to understand snow in the way Eskimo’s do. For the record, this example has been proven more or less useless due to further research that says that Eskimo’s really don’t have that many snow words. But let’s pretend it’s true; even if they had a million words for snow, the words do not influence their conception of snow, but reflect the categorization that already took place in their mind that made them create the many terms in the first place.

We categorize all kinds of things, and such categories are arbitrary, much like the words we assign to them, as words do not have inherent meanings beyond our cognition. There may be a group of people out there who’s culture does not have the concept of “airplane”, and thus lacks a word for it. However, stating the word “airplane” to that group of people would not create this new concept in their mind from the word alone. They would have to develop the understanding of what an airplane is and then create a word for it. It is of course true that different cultures have different worldviews, but it is not because of their languages. Their language may only reflect various cultural values, but those values arise separate of the language itself.

If we agree that our words or subsequent grammatical patterns are able to influence our thoughts, then it implies that such a relationship can be empirically observed and is testable. It also gives way to more questions. If language affects our worldview, then what part of language does so, and why? How does this influence take place? What part of cognition would syntactic structure affect? And so on. It also implies a sort of language modularity… that our language is some entity that imposes itself on our brains, or perhaps is encapsulated from other cognitive faculties.

Someone mentioned Steven Pinker in an earlier post, and I'd like to recommend his book The Language Instinct, which talks extensively about this topic in his chapter on 'mentalese'.

[sman]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

That is why the phrase "cognitive thinking" does not refer to just any kind of thinking, or just any mundane sort of brain activity. Almost by definition, it refers to the kind of rigorous thinking that can only be done by a mind capable of categorization, symbolic labeling, abstraction, attribute determination, evaluation, comparison, enumeration, conceptualization and logic.

Are we defining "cognitive thinking" as some wierd thing that only humans do. Are there no precursors in other animals. Language is strictly human. Though there are precursors, the whole functioning thing is only found in humans. I'd be very surprised if this were the case for any definition of cognition.