On a less related note,
I, for one, don't think in language but in images. I can't imagine what it is like to think in language, if someone tells me to imagine a golden mountain, I picture a mountain coloured over in bright yellow. — Lionino
I always assumed everyone did both — Jamal
This hypothesis doesn't seem valid to me even on its face, due to the fact that the individual has no existence independent of the collective (species). — Pantagruel
If you're referencing Chomsky's preference of language for thought over language for communication, I agree with your assessment. If there's anything essentially inter-personal and essentially communicative, its language, isn't it? Also, I'm guessing the infant learns to hear words and repeat them (or see visual patterns and connect them with ends) before forming intentional thoughts within a linguistic medium, whether verbal or visual. — ucarr
Try to refine your question to a single, focussed point of discussion. — alan1000
So, sometimes images, sometimes words—and sometimes concepts. There are pure concepts in mind when a jazz musician is improvising (I know; I’ve done it), such as tension and release, growth and decay, entropy, yearning, etc. They may be in some sense linguistic, but they’re not mentally articulated in (mental) words (which was what I meant by “pure”). I think in these cases one only properly identifies them later, using mental words. — Jamal
Maybe they’re like beliefs, only determined post-hoc. Does it make sense to say that in the moment I was enacting the concepts, such that they were not at that stage concepts at all? But I’d still want to maintain that I was thinking, for no more reason than it really felt like cognitive work. — Jamal
Of course. Put a picture of a golden mountain next to block letters spelling out "golden mountain." When told to imagine a golden mountain, I imagine something liked the picture.I, for one, don't think in language but in images. I can't imagine what it is like to think in language, if someone tells me to imagine a golden mountain, I picture a mountain coloured over in bright yellow. — Lionino
Surely, you are thinking when you are just speaking naturally and going with the flow. Are you not thinking in language?I can also do "both", but for me thinking in language is also literally picturing the written word/sentence in the mind's eye, I typically do that when I need to plan a sentence between uttering or writing it, as opposed to just speaking naturally and going with the flow. — Lionino
I have a vague memory from decades ago that a study was done that said people could not think easily when their vocal chords were numbed. Wish I could find that study.I suspect that what people with "aphantasia" do is in fact subvocalise. — Lionino
Can the content only ever describe the thinker more-so than what it is intended to describe? — NOS4A2
& , should I feel flattered or flattened?A Banno impersonation — Jamal
Lately I've been thinking that maybe human thought really is some kind of language model. We expose ourselves to massive amount of text and discussion, and then just "continue the prompt". Well I'm not saying this very seriously, but for sure I'm going to prepare myself to that scenario by reading and writing as much as I can. It will be good for me in any case — Olento
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