Compressed Language versus Mentalese

Hanover

I was playing around with AI and asked it to extrapolate the way English would look in the year 3500 based upon how it has evolved over the past 1,500 years or so. According to AI and the articles I could locate, languages compress over time, with the more "evolved" languages showing great reliance upon contextual clues and less extraneous words like articles and the like. Mandarin, for example, is a highly compresed language, which is why native speakers translate English in a compressed way. As in they might say, "I bring two chair" instead of "I will bring you two chairs," often eliminating pronouns, plural designations and the like.

As an interesting aside, you can also ask AI to speak English as a Russian, French, German, or whatever would. It gives a quick understanding of how other languages use word order, emphasis, and so on.

Anyway, this got me to thinking, which is that one would expect one's internal langauge to be highly compressed, meaning it need not adhere to conventional grammar in order to be language, but it would need to adhere to some sort of grammar to be a rule oriented language (per Wittgenstein).

For example, to say "brick" while pointing to a brick could mean "hand me that brick" or "that is a brick" or "watch out, there's a brick in the road," etc. That is a highly compressed sentence, dependant upon context and even gesture.

Consider, "the egg dropped," which means "there is yolk on the floor that needs to be cleaned up," and yet there is no mention of yolks, floors, or cleaning in the text itself. If I shrug when I see it, that might mean, "you need to pay better attention next time, and you're the one that needs to clean that up, not me."

This then raises the question of what linguistic process goes in in my head when I arrive at a propositional truth. It might be so highly compressed it would not appear as language at all, but as long as it is translatable into a longer expression, that it began compressed does not matter.

I think this might be where some confusion arises where people refer to their internal processes as mentalese. It's not. It's just highly compressed language. True mentalese would be pure experience, like pain, not reducible into language at all.

But the distinction becomes harder to maintain when our internal sentences are so elliptical (the ommission of superfluous words while still maintaining meaning) that they lack almost any structure, and we are forced to argue that our compressed internal speech (not to be confused with private language) is expressed in long-hand when spoken, as a type of translation of one grammar (i.e. language game) to another. And we are forced to deal with the fact that our internal speech without sound is a public language even though it might have no identifiable syntax.

"When I think in language, there aren’t ‘meanings’ going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought." — PI §329

What then does the hyper-compressed vehicle look like if not letters, words, and sentences? How does that shrug look prior to my shoulder shrugging?

Anyway, I leave this open to thoughts, efforts to clarify whatever my misunderstandings might be, and possibly to better understand what language actually is under this framework.

Banno

↪Hanover

Quality OP

To consider mentalese as a highly compressed language is to accept mentalese.

The idea of a private mental language supposedly explains how pubic languages come about, emerging from some innate and private place. It's a supposed computational explanation for how language arrises.

Private language was shown to be incoherent.

And we increasingly understand how the brain is not computational. It uses neural nets, which do not code situations symbolically.

So mentalese, if it is anything at all, must be a form of talking to oneself that is a back-construct from public language.

So briefly and dogmatically, mentalese as an innate, computational system is incoherent. Internal thought may appear compressed or elliptical, but it is always derived from public, norm-governed language. Any “mental language” we experience is a back-constructed internalisation of public language, not a separate symbolic system. The brain’s architecture (neural nets, not symbolic computation) supports this derivative view.

But that idea of thinking as a very compressed language still has merit.

kindred

Language is more than a tool for mapping descriptions to the external world. In as far as it’s used to communicate ideas, feelings and even sensations it can only be compressed based on the familiarity with which the circle is acquainted with one another. Think of in jokes for example to ones outside the circle it might not make sense yet to the inner circle it does without context being supplied. I think this is the essence of compressed language the idea of an in language as in an in joke between the parties partaking in communication with each other.

T Clark

"When I think in language, there aren’t ‘meanings’ going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought." — PI §329 — Hanover

This of course is the problem. Assuming all thought is verbal is clearly not right.

As I noted elsewhere, the answers to your questions are not philosophy, they’re science. I doubt anyone likely to participate in this discussion knows enough to have a credible opinion about this subject.

Nuff said.

Hanover

This of course is the problem. Assuming all thought is verbal is clearly not right. — T Clark

No one suggests that though. The quote only says that there are not meanings outside language but the meaning is the language.

As I noted elsewhere, the answers to your questions are not philosophy, they’re science. — T Clark

This too is incorrect because if you look at what I said above, I made no reference to brains or neuroscience. We're defining terms: language and meaning.

Banno

I doubt anyone likely to participate in this discussion knows enough to have a credible opinion about this subject. — T Clark

Then since you participated, we need not pay your opinion any attention. :wink:

PI §329, in context, does not presume that all thought is linguistic. Rather it is giving consideration to linguist thought as a sample that is readily available for philosophical consideration. He's talking about linguistic thought for the same sort of methodological reason that a geneticist might study fruit fly rather than elephants - it's easier, and we can extrapolate later.

Banno

↪T Clark

Furhter, ther eis plenty in @Hanover's OP that is philosophical - conceptual - rather than scientific. The nature of internal thought and language, the relation between compressed thought and propositional truth, the distinction between internal language and private language and mentalese...

What is the minimal criterion for a thought to be considered “linguistic”? Does internal compression preserve the normativity and rule-following required for something to qualify as language? How can a single, highly elliptical internal expression maintain truth-conditions? What does it mean for a thought to be “true” if the content is context-dependent and underspecified? How do we rigorously distinguish between internalized forms of public language and a hypothetical private language? What guarantees that internal compression doesn’t slip into the incoherent private-language scenario that Wittgenstein critiques?

These are not issues that can be decided by experimentation.

Hanover

So briefly and dogmatically, mentalese as an innate, computational system is incoherent. — Banno

Perhaps "incoherent" is the proper term, but there's no suggestion that thoughts emerge without all sorts of unknowable brain processes. What is incoherent is how those pre-linguistic whatevers can "mean" something. Meaning requires use of the language I say this for @T Clark's benefit as well, so as to avoid some suggestion we're delving into neuroscience. The question is whether the neural goings on can have meaning without public use, and the answer per Witt is no.

The brain’s architecture (neural nets, not symbolic computation) supports this derivative view. — Banno

Let's say it didn't, and we discovered the mind computed symbolically, why would that matter? That seems problematic, as that would suggest Wittgenstein is only valid insofar as science reveals him to be, but I'd assert his claims are entirely non-science based..

Banno

Let's say it didn't, and we discovered the mind computed symbolically, why would that matter? — Hanover

If the mind computes symbolically, we'd be heading in support of Fodor and Pinker, and we really would have to conclude that all thinking is symbolic, linguistic, and indeed, algorithmic.

But it seems to me that such a view would be far too restrictive.

Hanover

I think this is the essence of compressed language the idea of an in language as in an in joke between the parties partaking in communication with each other. — kindred

The idea is that all language is compressed, which is to say it's contextual, to degrees greater or lesser.

Banno

Yes, tot he first paragraph of your reply.

What is incoherent is how those pre-linguistic whatevers can "mean" something. — Hanover

If, of course, we look not to meaning but to use, those neural weightings and whatever do stuff with hands and eyes and so on. Language develops as we do stuff together. Then we learn to talk to ourselves internally. A potted analysis, an outline, but it might be worthy of some consideration.

apokrisis

Anyway, this got me to thinking, which is that one would expect one's internal langauge to be highly compressed, meaning it need not adhere to conventional grammar in order to be language, — Hanover

In terms of the neuroscience, the "compression" happens as you don't have to fully unpack an intention because you already know where it is largely about to go.

Standing waiting to return a tennis serve, you could go through the effort of constructing a complete mental image of lunging low to your backhand and smiting the ball straight as an arrow down the line. Or you could just stand there feeling the general intention of being about to do exactly that kind of thing should the need occur.

So it a general thing about the brain. You know what to do from well-drilled habit. And you also know that you need to be ready and focused in an oriented and intentful way. Each moment presents its challenge. You are aware enough of what it is to already be predicting your actual response with the degree of vividness and fixity that would be helpful.

And so it is with our linguistic responses to the world. And with our own internal organising narrative of that world.

We face the moment in a way that already the right kind of words are starting to assemble. If we wanted, we could develop that general oriented intent into some spoken utterance. Or even the motor image of that utterance as words we are saying to ourselves in our head. A shadow sensorimotor image of exactly the same sort which would be imagining the perfect backhand return if we happened to get a wide kicker served by our net-rushing opponent.

But much of the time, we don't have to promote an intent to respond to a full actual – or even vividly imagined – sensorimotor response. Just being aware the circumstances of the moment are what they are, and this is the general idea of how we might launch into some fully grammatical structure of words as a suitable thought, has already got the job done. We can skip on ahead having just got ready to say something, and not then hanging around to articulate what would be by now a rather predictable thing to have heard being said.

Often we do articulate our inner speech – promote it to sentences – as it is useful to be surprised by how our machinery of speech habits does express our intent. But mostly the world moves fast and so we let the articulation slide. Our thoughts feel as if they fly along in rather wordless fashion. Perhaps just fragments of phrases and abandoned points we might have made.

So there is an interesting question about how languages evolve to become better for some kinds of thinking. English is said to be good for form abstract nouns out of everything. The Chinese number system is better suited to maths.

But the mentalese issue is explained by the fact that cognition divides into rapid learnt habit vs slower patient attention.

The brain always needs to be reacting to whatever is happening. So everything passing through our lives is putting us in mind of the sort of responses we ought to start generating. The kinds of clever things we could put some attention on and develop into a fully imagined motor intent.

But more often than not, the challenges of the moment turn out rather mundane. We get ready, but can already start to relax again. Something else is bubbling up and now we are getting ready to lurch in this next direction instead.

Paine

↪Hanover

One way to hear the PI §329 statement is that some kinds of internal dialogue demonstrate that the thinking through using language is where thinking would otherwise not happen. It may not be exclusively "private" in origin, but it is nonetheless personal.

That would make it different from both the dialogue with others or translating a purely individual experience into words.

↪Hanover

Just to be sure I'm understanding you: When, for instance, I have an ordinary conversation, and find myself using a sentence to reply to something that was said perhaps half a second ago, is the idea that I had a brain event that preceded this sentence, something in mentalese that contained the thought I then express out loud in English? Is this what is "so highly compressed it would not appear as language at all"? Certainly there hasn't been time to form the words prior to saying them, if "forming words" indeed takes time.

(I do think something like this happens, but I'm not sure how to describe it.)

Manuel

What then does the hyper-compressed vehicle look like if not letters, words, and sentences? How does that shrug look prior to my shoulder shrugging?

Anyway, I leave this open to thoughts, efforts to clarify whatever my misunderstandings might be, and possibly to better understand what language actually is under this framework. — Hanover

I think taking a look at Polanyi's work, particularly The Tacit Dimension might be very interesting. At least the first half of the book. The second half gets quite weird.

But the mantra coming from him is "we know more than we can say." Quite right. That's why people write novels, draw paintings, compose music, etc.

As for the mentalese part, as far as I understand (which is not much, I have not read Fodor too much) it is not quite language and it is not quite thought, it's a mixture of the two.

Putting Fodor aside, we end up articulating a part of our thought through externalization. Other parts we can't.

That's why you get the phenomenon of not being able to find "the right word". There's something there we can't say. Maybe a passage in a novel gets it, maybe a scene in a movie. Sometimes nothing.

The answer to your question is, we don't know very well. Some kind of structural shortcut that can be used when we acquire a language.

Hanover

If the mind computes symbolically, we'd be heading in support of Fodor and Pinker, and we really would have to conclude that all thinking is symbolic, linguistic, and indeed, algorithmic. — Banno

This comment suggests it matters how the brain computes things and lends support does it not to the idea that Pinker and Wittgenstein operate within the same sphere, which is to offer an explanation for how the brain uses language?

I see Wittgenstein"s objective is to show us how we use langauge in our everyday lives and clarify its limitations.

I sense a category error in throwing a cognitive scientist into the ring with a philosopher.

I agree generally that Pinker et al appear facially contradictory to Wittgenstein because they assert an a priori sort of linguistic underpinning while Wittgenstein is purely posteriori in outlook (he requires public usage for langauge to exist), but I don't think there is true contradiction.

Even if langauge emerges from symbol manipulation, that doesn't suggest private langauge can exist. Under my compressive language challenge, you can preserve Wittgenstein only if you deny that shorthand language is primordial, but you must insist it is full language, publicly confirmable to grammar rules.

If I think in Latin as the last Roman, I don't have a private language as long as it can be spoken in the common language among the people.

Hanover

That's why you get the phenomenon of not being able to find "the right word". There's something there we can't say. Maybe a passage in a novel gets it, maybe a scene in a movie. Sometimes nothing. — Manuel

This very issue is discussed at length in Philosophical Investigations, starting at 335 and going to 339. The critical line comes at the end of 337 where my hand is, "To the extent that I do intend the construction of an English sentence in advance, that is made possible by the fact that I can speak English." That is, sure, you're word searching, but you must have an appreciation for the rules of the language game you play to even engage in the search. You might not know which chess move you'll make until you find it, but you necessarily searched within the confines of the rules.

ProtagoranSocratist

There seems to be, at least in english speaking countries, a big rift between the formal "proper" english and the various dialects. I personally wouldn't bet that it's different anywhere else, but that's a source of friction against the context-based simplification of languages that you describe.

And predicting english over 1000 years into the future is quite a monstrous task: it seems that the technologies that people use in their daily life has a big effect on it, both in terms of vocabulary and manner of use. For example, it seems that the internet has encouraged the use of acronyms due to the freedom from phonetics.

Compressed Language versus Mentalese

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