The Human Mind as Linguistic Structures

[rocket art]

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]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

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.

You might enjoy the following:

TED | Talks | Steven Pinker: The stuff of thought (video)

[orbsycli]

Originally Posted by rocket art

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.

There are many people on the brink of this vague theory...that the mind and the brain somehow work like a halogram....and although I have absolutely no proof it makes perfect sense to me, and so many others.
I think you physicists should study the correlation between halograms and neuroelectricity,
just for kicks.
You might find access to the other dimensions we play in,
and the numbers that constitute such a cathedral inside ourselves.

[orbsycli]

I like how scientists are always searching for something MORE.
This is good.

Well,
we have something more.

I want to see more science shed light on the obscurities of consciousness!
I have no money!
All I can offer you is experience.

blows my mind, mans!

[Pyrotex]

Thank you guys very much for reading this stuff. I know it's not easy.

As for visual thinking, I am pondering that very hard. Perhaps it doesn't require a "word" label on an eventscription to be able to manipulate that visual memory as if it were a piece of a larger puzzle. Perhaps there can be linguistic labels that mirror 'purpose', 'intention', 'cause-and-effect', 'correlation' -- without having semantic (verbal) content. So I can visualize the cat chasing the mouse, catching it, eating it, without actually verbalizing "chase", "catch", "eat" etc. But the string of images were in fact connected by sub-semantic labels that mirrored those event relationships. The mind may have invented non-verbal labels as place-holders for the purpose of linking up the puzzle pieces -- and then later "discovered" that those place-holders corresponded to actual words: chase, catch, eat.

More thought is required here.

Ah move like da bison, ah huff like da bison, ah shrug like da bison do.
Ah thinks wif ma movin, ah thinks wif my huffin, ah thinks wif ma shruggin too.
Ma thinks are in da moment, ma thinks don't know no time,
Ma thinks don't name no names, ma thinks don't make no rhymes.
Ma body tells me pain, ma eyes done tell me fear,
Ma body tells me hunger and ma ears done tell me hear.
Da motion tell me run and da scents done tell me mate.
Dese tings define ma thinkin as da world cooperate.

[jedaisoul]

Hi Pyrotex,

I've skimmed your lengthy posts, so my apologies if I have not fully grasped your meaning. However, from what I've read, I believe that it is your claim that all human thought is in the form of words. If that is your contention, I would suggest that you over-simplify our mental processes. Yes, once language is acquired it dominates our thinking, but that does not eradicate the pre-language functionality.

I've occasionally wondered how an animal, or a human baby, thinks. My own mental processes are so heavily language orientated that it is impossible for me to intentionally think without language. But that does not mean that it is not still going on outside my conscious awareness. So if by the "mind" you mean our conscious awareness, I would agree with you. But that is not the totality of our minds.

I would suggest that "emotion" and "hunches" are pre-language functions of the brain that may, or may not, be subsequently expressed verbally.

What is your view of this?

[Pyrotex]

You have a point. I did not mean to imply that ALL brain activity was linguistic.

Strong emotions and fight-or-flight reactions are mediated by the so-called "lizard brain", which I think is the hippocampus and amygdyla. These emotions and reactions are FAST and are not built out of linguistic structures, though we USE linguistic structures for thinking about them, talking them about, analyzing them.

And we still have our mammalian brain which gives us hand-eye coordination, mastery of object detection, identification and classification, environment mapping and event memory. Primitive learning also takes place here, especially learning of physical tasks like hunting, killing, tracking, danger detection, etc.

But none of that enables us to think about our thinking, or even to identify the "I" that is doing the thinking. For THESE tasks, we need a brain that can label, name, associate, and provide linkages (cause-and-effect, correlation, predecessor, successor, temporal and spatial location, etc). These require linguistic structures.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

You have a point. I did not mean to imply that ALL brain activity was linguistic.

Strong emotions and fight-or-flight reactions are mediated by the so-called "lizard brain", which I think is the hippocampus and amygdyla. These emotions and reactions are FAST and are not built out of linguistic structures, though we USE linguistic structures for thinking about them, talking them about, analyzing them.

And we still have our mammalian brain .

Yes I agree, the cerebral cortex is a much later evolutionary structure and may be much more involved in language, but even here there a specific areas for speech.and words. Even specific regions for nouns, adjectives etc.
Not only that but some responses (removing a hand from a burning fire) do not even involve the brain but just a reflex loop from the spinal cord to the hand and back.
Some neuroscientists say they are not sure even where the brain begins and ends. The body might just be a part of the wonderful 'abacus' of the brain.

A friend's son is teaching Japanese babies English in Japan by flashing English words at them with flash-cards. They are picking up the language very quickly.

The Japanese and Chinese language both seem very visual (pictorial ) to me.

Interesting that there are two schools of thought on teaching reading one involves "sounding out" the word phonetically. the other just visual recognition.

My English teacher wife does a bit of editing books, student essays, PhDs etc. She is amazing! She can pick one mistake out of a 100 pages very quickly. (Always complaining about the lousy editing in the detective stories we read) When I asked her how she did that she just said the wrong words 'jump out' at her.

The other day I saw her having great difficulty decoding the "Are you human? " letters and squiggles for security on abanking website. She has a lot of trouble with reading these where as I have little (Sometimes they are very hard to read). So she is very "literal" in her language.

My daughter is a journalist and Magazine editor. She taught herself to read when she was three years old. My wife was appalled . "What will she do at school?" she bemoaned. As it turned out, my wife was right and her first school experiences were not good. She had a raeding ("sic.reading"- my dyslexia?) age of 8+ when she started. As it was we could not stop her raeding (sic again!)if we had wanted to. We read to her every night.

The same daughter found Japanese very easy to pick up. She used to think in pictures and words and make logical (?) 'jumps' like me. Consequently we can/could talk in a sort of 'shorthand" ( she also learnt real shorthand -something I would be unable to do) Lately however I notice she is starting to think more in words, and loosing the ability to think in pictures, as that is her life.

Yesterday on ABC 702 radio was a report from ACER (Aust. Council Ed. Resarch) saying that 50% of Australians could not properly undrestand (sic dyslexia again -low blood sugar)or comprehend a newspaper or magazine article.
The announcer Richard Glover found this hard to believe and was appalled by this figure.(He has written a number of books.) But it seems Australians are up there with the 'advanced countries' of the world like Canada and USA. So Why is this?
I will try to google a link for you.
Can't find it, but you might enjoy looking at their site:-
ACER - Australian Council for Educational Research

Also I read some research a long long time ago which said 90% of those in jail had major reading difficulties. (The other 10% accountants, lawyers, politicians had very superior skills !!)