Val Valiant Five wrote:I'm not talking about meditation.
I'm asking you if you can wipe your mind of all learned language and just let your imagination visualize imagery and auditory ideas devoid of all interjections by thoughts in the form of words(?).
I can't, not for long anyway.I find I get trapped in explaining what I imagined to myself like I was telling someone else about it. Like even this part I'm typing here; Before I sat down at the keyboard most of this was written in my head in fragments that are just coming together now. <--- even this part was pre-planed in my head repeatedly. Weird, I know.
I find my mind goes berserk when I do this experiment in forced description-less, imagination time. I dream up the strangest stuff, then get tripped up by descriptor language trying to dissect what I imagined.
I guess what my question to you is, can -you- think without words?
I would find it hard to do for the most part. "Thinking" in terms of reflection and rational deliberation. However, I'm sure my emotions can arise in me at any given time without the need of thinking with words.
I'll just take a guess and say that people born deaf frequently think without constructing words in their mind, without hearing their voice in their mind.
Also... all other animals pretty much think without reliance on an alphabet that can construct words with a clear concept or an ambiguous concept or words that carry multiple meanings depending on how they are used in a sentence. But all those animals are less intelligent than humans. That's why they don't make refrigerators or recipes. They don't even make and carry bottled water with them on a long and hot journey.
-- Updated June 18th, 2014, 8:37 pm to add the following --
Obvious Leo wrote:Hog Rider wrote:
(Nested quote removed.)
My dog can, so why not me?
I've lived with dogs all my life, usually a number of them at once. Dogs have a very complex language of their own and an amazing capacity to learn ours. It never ceases to amaze me how much we underestimate the cognitive capabilities of those of the canine persuasion but I guess human hubris knows no limits. By what convoluted perversion of logic do we deny the dog the capacity to think and plan and modify her behaviour according to her own personal agenda, just because this agenda is not always known to us and her thought processes are beyond our imagination. Many mammal species are even smarter than our dogs, as are many birds, and all these species have a unique language of their own and a specific vocabulary. Personally I don't even know how my wife thinks so what chance have I got with a magpie?
Human cognition may be quantitatively different from that of other species but to suggest that it is qualitatively different has no scientific basis. Thinking is simply information processing and nothing more.
Regards Leo
I love dogs and I'm aware they have their own level of intelligence. Chimps too but Chimps only reach the intelligence level of a small human child (I forget what age of human child). But
words as I'm understanding it here is contingent on an alphabet and interlinked with
sentential logic. No animal and no species on earth has the complexity of human language and none has produced literature in the various genres of fiction, biography, instructional manuals, romance, mathematics, or science etc.
Words are exactly why humans can and have built the metal and glass skyscrapers of Chicago sent man to the moon and produced veterinarians capable of diagnosing and surgically treating other animals for their diseases. The opposable thumb is partly responsible for human capabilities too, but only partly.
-- Updated June 18th, 2014, 8:42 pm to add the following --
Neznac wrote:Hog Rider wrote:
(Nested quote removed.)
My dog can, so why not me?
Have you ever seen a dog kill something? They use words like crazy, first to warn and then to intimidate, and finally when they are in the throes of murdering the rat they are practically using full sentences to express their joy and fury!! Killing is a wordfest!
Dogs don't use words. They use sounds to communicate emotions similar to humans that laugh at a joke or scream in terror.