Now, "In the beginning was the Word" never made sense to me since the first time I heard it in school. It still doesn't, if I connect "Word" to and with the meaning of speech. If you echange the words, the saying becomes: "In the beginning was Speech". (Not as elegant, of course, but it shows the point.) It certainly doesn't make sense. Yet, Jews and Christians managed to keep alive this meaning with all sorts of explanations, the most important of which are that God created the world by (the power of) his word, that God's Word became flesh (Christ being that Word), etc. Still, all that doesn't make much sense, does it? Instead, I believe that logic and reasoning (the second meaning of "logos") make much more sense ... "In the beginning was Reason". This can be easily extended to mean "Consciousness", something which a lot of thinkers today consider as governing the Universe. "Consciousness" has no language, no face, no location and not time. — Alkis Piskas
The elephant as you've described it here is the phenomena, not the noumena. If not, how do you distinguish the phenomenal and noumenal? — Hanover
I taste oysters only with my tongue, and hence I never taste oysters as they really are.
As if this meant one never tastes oysters.
SO there's the problem with the OP. If you adhere to Stove's Gem, if you never taste oysters, of course you can't recognise the beginning.
The alternative is to recognise that you do taste the oysters. The noumenal is a misleading nonsense. — Banno
What else could it be?Is speech material? — Constance
No, I din't say that. I only said the "Word" ("logos") as "speech" doesn't make sense in ths famous Christian quote and I just tried to give a better explanation by considering the meaning that word "logos" acquired with time, and that was "reason" ("logiki"). This is much more plausible since reason is beyond any borders imposed by languages (speech), religions and civilizations. And this because its nature is mental, spiritual and not material. The expression "conscious thought" which you are using is very close to it. The word "Consciousness" that I used, is also very closely connected to "Thought".so you think conscious thought and its reason was there in the beginning of all things? — Constance
Sure. But in a more realistic way, we can ask how it is that language, "the word", constructs meaning that makes it possible at all to conceive of anything at all. The tree in the Eden was a knowledge tree, so what is knowledge? It is the power of language and logic. We were kicked out of Eden because we developed that supreme violation of comfort and familiarity: the ability to inquire. Nothing but trouble from there.
Language "creates" the world. Prior to this, there is no world; there is what cannot be said, but talking like this raises Wittgenstein's, and the Buddhist's, ire. But once acquired, language is the backdrop of understanding that constitutes a person, who can then drop the explicit, move back into the primordial through the regressive (call it) method of yoga, and let the world speak as it once did. — Constance
Ok. The Big Bang is a better story than Genesis. With Genesis the story is given, and folk spend their time trying to make the world fit the story. With physics, the world is given, and we change the story to fit the world. One story closes off further discussion, the other opens it up. — Banno
OK, but is this actually an interpretation of "In the beginning was the Word" or just an opinion about some being (creator) who created the world? See, there are a lot of such interpretations, esp. coming from East. So, we have to stick to our Christian quote and esp. the word "Word" or "logos". At least, this is how I understood your topic ...in the beginning was the rational creator who fashioned all things according to a rational plan, and so forth. — Constance
Idem.You have to deal with Kierkegaard who argues against this Hegelian view by pointing out that the world of actuality bears nothing of the rationality ... — Constance
Good! I don't either. And "In the beginning was the Word" is one more of 'em! :smile:I don't buy into creation myths at all. — Constance
Good that you mentioned this! I didn't think at the moment that "has no language" could be taken to mean that it does not contain language. Of course it does! And it is affected by it. But what I mean is that consciousness is beyond language. Just think this: Man has been always gifted with consciousness, well before he created languages. Language is not the main content of consciousness. Consciousness contains all sorts of things: knowledge, ideas, feelings, etc., which may be common to any two persons on the planet, independently of their native language.But you do say consciousness has no language, location or time. No language? — Constance
Exactly! This is exactly where the quote "In the beginning was the Word" fails. When "Word" is interpreted as "language". BTW, I just read that this quote comes from the Gospel of John, which like all Gospels was written in Greek. So, by "Word" did he refer to the Greek language? That God spoke in Greek? Of course all this is ridiculous talk, but it shows the confusion around the word "Word". And this is more pronounced in English, in which the main meaning of the word "word" is "A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed." (Oxford LEXICO)No language, no logos — Constance
But point here to see that the tasting is one thing, the proposition is another. — Constance
My claim (borrowed, put together) is that this conception can only lead to one conclusion: that cat on the sofa is really not a cat on a sofa at all, but I cannot see this because I understand the world only through my cognitive and sensory limitations — Constance
Of course the world is always, already interpreted. Your reaching for, talk of, an uninterpreted world is a conceptual mistake. — Banno
don't have any theory that must hold sway. I was asking sincerely how one would remember things without language. I'm not sure how that would happen. Like muscle memory? Like the memory of an aroma where you literally smell it again by the magic if cranial nerves? — frank
Well, you have touched on the very point: Kant was wrong to make this prohibitive distinction. The noumenal is the most inclusive concept imaginable, and this present moment of p henomenological plenum is inherently noumenal; we just don't see it this way because we are too, well, busy — Constance
like a new color (as unimaginable as this is) would remain what it is, but would be understood contextualized in the usual way. — Constance
How do you remember that "the dogs cornered me when I went over to feed them" without language — frank
just do. This idea that every mundane thought must be articulated into language and spoken to oneself is absurd. — Hanover
This empirical claim regarding how thoughts must occur pervades so much discussion on this site, it has become sort of a given that then motivates a philosophical position regarding how we're to deal with knowledge, but it's just plainly empirically false. — Hanover
Isaac
Can modeling happen without any linguistic or symbolic component? If so, could you explain how? — frank
Well, that's not what I would have supposed, although care is needed here. Russell commented that "Mr Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said". Much of the Investigations, and also of On Certainty, touches on this topic, which his biographers agree was for him or the highest importance. Wittgenstein's enterprise is targeted at the enterprise of scientism; for him what is of the greatest import is what is unsaid. — Banno
I believe the world has bad and good elements. Just like God, or the universe, or whatever, it's just the essence of reality — Gregory
We can either deconstruct to achieve insight, or construct a big picture consistent with science and physics which I prefer to do. And when I do I find it is all about the evolution of forms. These forms are all self organizing, and they are made of endlessly variable informational structure. So really, everything can be reduced to the self organization of information. We know what information is - the evolutionary interaction of form, but we don't know what self organization is. We know self organization is what creates order in the universe, from which structure and life evolves.
When I consider this issue, I find that if I say self organization is caused by God, or physics, or the anthropic principle, etc. I do not change what it is, but I change myself. I limit my ability to experience reality. It becomes something like Wit's word game, or as I prefer to call it information game. Ultimately this becomes a process of information, where what occurs is an interaction of forms. :smile: So we cannot escape the fact that everything is information, because everything is information from every perspective.
So it makes sense to me not to define the source of self organization, rather to call it consciousness, and this way there is consciousness and information in its many forms. This way I do not limit my ability to experience reality, and in this knowledge I also learn to respect the various forms of reality of others. — Pop
Aphasia doesn't preclude modelling (although it disrupts it - so there's a link). — Isaac
I don't think an aphasic person is really language-less, are they?
People who recover report knowing what they wanted to say, but just couldn't access the right words. — frank
If someone was truly language-less, how would we know modeling was happening? By their behavior? — frank
Possibility/impossibility points to the quality or diversity of the idea(l) - what do you think logic constructs its concepts out of? Itself? And construction requires a source of energy. Perfect relation is paradox, because nothing else is necessary. And if this paradox exists, then any and all of them do. — Possibility
Mainly, if we see modelling in experimental data from language capable people who can express their thoughts, we can then map similar behaviour over to similar regions in language-less people and make a reasonable inference that it represents the same processes. That way we can make a judgement about what is and is not impacted by the loss of language. — Isaac
What you're proposing is modeling without any sort of symbolism? Or at least that's the intriguing notion I'm taking from you. — frank
Case in point: in another thread, someone commented to you and you responded that they should read my response to that same question because I articulated it better than you. Such is a common occurrence: that you hear or read someone express your own beliefs in a manner better than you could have linguistically expressed them. — Hanover
This very idea that you can have complex thoughts that you have not and cannot fully linguistically express means those thoughts pre-existed their linguistic expression. — Hanover
Maybe. The non-linguistic modeling Isaac talked about might explain how that's possible. — frank
Why do you reject my claim to you that I have complex mental ideas and thoughts without them being reduced to language? — Hanover
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