A Nice Surprise
I had an interesting night. It was a friend's birthday party and I ended up engaging a Cal philosophy major in a refreshing conversation. Foucault was her favorite and I shared with her my love and appreciation for Spinoza. Generally, speaking of Spinoza has had a similar effect as prodigious body odor. So imagine my glee to encounter someone who may not be as familiar with Spinoza as I am but could appreciate my great affection for the man and his work.
She spoke of abstractions and the use of language to free them of the limits of epistemology. I've been thinking about that all night and I don't know if that's possible. Humans think in language. Without language, there are no abstractions or concepts. In using language to describe the new term, you are again bound by epistemological concerns. How can you describe any concept without the use of language? I'm not familiar with Foucault. Maybe he has an answer for this. Please share if anyone can shed some light on this.
But this idea of using new language reminds me of what McInerny calls the tendency of modern philosophers to want to be "strong poets." In the desire to be original, they move away from the daily usefulness of philosophy. I did not come to philosophy from academia. I came from martial arts and fighting. The questions I had were not of my "self" or of "forms." I wanted to know when to fight. I wanted to know what were the limits of my behavior, of my effort and work. Aristotle spoke of men like Achilles and Alcibiades who were so naturally superior, they were a "law unto themselves." While not comparing myself to either of those great men, I found myself limited by convention and what was considered acceptable behavior. I sought personal excellence and when it conflicted with what my parents and teachers expected of me, I was punished.
Being a "strong poet" holds no interest for me. As much as I understand the need for artistry, I find myself mostly uninterested in form and the manipulation it implies. Certainly I find the Republic easier to digest in its form than the Nicomachean Ethics but I feel a great affinity for the starkness of Aristotle's work. "Here is the truth," he seems to say. "Digest it as you are able."
Am I trying to find the language to describe the purity of touch as my friend suggested at one point? Yes. Of course. I came to this from seeing the disconnect from what people said with their mouths to how they lived in their bodies. I am convinced your body cannot lie. It is the sum total of your experiences. If you are confident and open, I will feel that when I touch you. If you are fearful and withdrawn, I will feel that too no matter what you say. She pointed out that this is a futile quest as language, ipso facto, can never hold the purity of touch. While I'm inclined to agree, I still believe that I can develop a methodology for people to understand the truth of touch.
We interact with the world through our bodies and whatever we hypothesize in our minds, we must test with our flesh. The further we get away from this truth, the closer we get to neuroticism. Without the wisdom of experience, all things are equal and in being equal, they have no value.
So philosophy for me is a physical endeavor. It is not so much about what I think but rather how I move through the world. There are many men far more clever than me but I don't believe many are much more capable. And that matters more to me. I want to live my life in the mud, in the marrow-chilling cold, and the heat stopping heat. A life lived in one's mind cannot move through the world very well because it has never learned the world's rules.
Is that what Philosophy is to me? The Tao? Is it that vein of wisdom that every single spiritual teacher has sought to share since the beginning of time? How do I move in harmony with the Tao? What does the Tao expect of me? I don't know. I can only check and test over and over until I distill some sort of wisdom.
One of my teachers once said that being a warrior has nothing to do with winning or even succeeding. It has to do with risking and failing and risking again for as long as you live. Finding that universal truth, that consilience which I clumsily describe by the word "Tao" requires a stout heart-- one that can be broken again and again. Sir Francis Bacon once said, "I know not why, but martial men are given to love." I do know why. We are given to love because in learning our craft, we have had our hearts broken over and over by the shattering of every comforting illusion we might have every possessed. We are given to love not because our hearts are hard but because they are durable. We can make the risk because we can live with the pain. Finding the Tao is the same thing. As Spinoza described, understanding and belief is a single act. It is only after you believe can you test the validity of a premise or construct. You must believe with all your heart and you must bleed if your belief is proven false. Despite the risk of considerable pain, you must test your beliefs because in them lies your blindness.
"The important things is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."
-Charles Dubois
posted by Kahuna6 at 12:06 AM
31 Comments:
"...Humans think in language. Without language, there are no abstractions or concepts. In using language to describe the new term, you are again bound by epistemological concerns. How can you describe any concept without the use of language? I'm not familiar with Foucault. Maybe he has an answer for this. Please share if anyone can shed some light on this..."
I would argue that humans can think in many different "languages" unless you use the term language to mean any form of expression.
There are many concepts or abstractions that language (i.e. the spoken word) is very poor at describing. Beauty and love are the first two that come to mind. The arts are a much better tool with which to illustrate these concepts. Its like trying to use words to describe a sunset to a blind person or the fifth movement of Bach's Partida No. 2 in D minor to a deaf person. They can never come close to understanding the beauty and emotion embedded in these two things without the visceral experience provided by sight or hearing.
Thoughts?
11:28 PM
I agree with you about the primacy of experience. Being able to do is always more powerful than just knowing how to do. But I still hold that humans require language to think. Your statement still that humans think in many different languages I think blurs the separation between thinking and feeling. Can you think anything without language? You can act solely on emotion but that is something different than thought.
Music and visual art may make you feel something. They may even make you feel the way the artist intended. But you still have to use language to know how you are thinking. And the use of that language to describe how you are feeling in turn shapes, how ever inconsequentially, in some the way you feel about whatever is triggering the feeling.
When we are young, we just get mad. When our vocabularly gets better, we don't just get mad. We become frustrated, filled with rage, upset, etc. We draw distinctions through language which further clarifies our feelings.
But all this still requires thought which requires language. You are absolutely in correct in saying that a blind person will never fully appreciate the beauty of a sunset or a deaf person, Bach. They lack the experience of the medium and they are lesser for it. Of course, language can never come close to describing the primary experience but if we are to conveptualize about the experience in any way-- if we are to compare it to any other experience, we require language.
No, as humans, we are bound by language in our thoughts. And as you surely understand better than most, distinction in language matter and make a difference. Sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking and that's where murder and killing in defense of one's country might be confused as stemming from the same feeling but they surely do not though the act might be the same and hold the same result.
Also, there is a difference between feeling something and understanding those feelings. A person may be able to phsyically hear Bach but does he understand what he feeling when he hears it? He must use language in order to.
I think it's similiar to the question of what is better: experience or academic learning. Generally, if I were to only have one, I would chose experience but I don't think you can have complete understanding without both. But in saying that, one must recognize that they are two different things just as feeling and thinking are two different things. I believe that many people get into trouble when they confuse the two. Often, I think people just use thinking to justify their feelings. In not recognizing the difference, we miss the point.
It's really great to hear from you, my friend. I hope you are well.
5:10 PM
As you said, words matter, and I certainly agree. So we must define what you mean by language. A mathematician can think and communicate with himself and others similarly trained in numbers and equations with out the spoken word. He can write 2+2=4 and those of us who understand this "language" understand what he means without one thought communicated in words.
I disagree with your assertion that humans need language to think unless you are using the word "language" in the broadest possible way. Autisitc savants often cannot communicate through oral or written language (ie. the spoken word) but they can communicate and think through the language of mathematics or music. Mathematics and music are both languages which, in many cases, facillitate a greater depth of understanding on a particular topic than the language of the spoken word.
But I get the impression from your piece that you mean language in the strictest terms, ie. the spoken word.
Am I misunderstanding?
When you get a chance, shoot me an e-mail. I would like to know how your heath is coming along. I hope you are well and I enjoyed the visit back in Dec...
3:46 PM
Good example with math but I maintain that you require laguage to understand math. Yes 2+2=4 but somewhere along the line, you have to learn what "2" is. Yes language represents the reality of what "2" may be representing but language has pushed mathematics forward. Think of the conept of 'zero.' This was necessary for higher math and it was conceptualized through language.
Thinking and communicating are two different things. I can communicate intention to you physically by pushing you in a direction, etc. but what does that have to do with thinking? Thinking- I want to push you in that direection for a specific delineated reason-- requires language. I have to say to myself, "This is what I want."
Math is a language of its own but the person reading an equation is still thinking in language. When you think "2", you are thinking with language. When you say "plus" you are thinking with language. When you say "equals" you are thinking in language.
As far as music goes, I don't think it's a good medium for communication because it can mean different things to different people. And music doesn't necessarily have to do with thinking though at it's higher levels, it certainly does. When you are talking about contrapuntal music, 12 tone rows, or harmolodics, they are all conceptualized through language.
I ask you, what can you think about that doesn't involve that voice in your head? We can get into the zone and get out of our heads but then we aren't thinking. The second we start thinking we fall out of the zone. Every thought about everything begins with language. The more conceptual it is, the more it has to do with language.
So that's my question. What can you think about without language? Music doesn't count because it does not illustrate concepts that aren't directly related to music. It can't illustrate physics or hydrodynamics. You need language for that.
I still maintain that humans require language to think because I can think of an example where thinking exists without it.
4:05 PM
Again, you have not defined what you mean by "language". Do you mean the spoken word as communicated through the vocabulary and grammer of a language like English, Spainish, or Arabic?
If you do, then I disagree. I also disagree with your assertion that music is a poor medium to communicate. We use music to communicate specific things all the time. Warriors used music to send orders. When Alexander would incorporate other cultures into his army, music was what he used to communicate orders because it was easier to learn than the spoken word. The Romans used visual signals.
Another good music example is Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor. If you ask anyone what it is trying to communicate, they will tell you sorrow or death. Music can express ideas universally though not all the time. Poetry is an example of the spoken or written word that does an extremely poor job of expressing universals.
My example of autistic savants still stands. How can you explain a person who cannot learn, through language, to count to 1, yet who can still express through the language of mathematics the dynamics of planetery motion?
5:06 PM
You're still confusing my distinction between thinking and communication. I said that music is poor at communicating concepts. Can you listen to a piece of music and all of a sudden understand string theory? No way. Music is good at making you feel something. But to even know what we are feeling requires language. A piece of music makes me feel a certain way which I then associate with a specific emotion. A piece of music annot make me think of death unless I understand the concept of death first. That requires language.
Music may communicate as you say but you have to be taught that. I don't hear a piece of music and then say, "Yes, I must wheel right" unless somebody has taught me to do that which requires language. The instructor doesn't have to say anything but in my mind, I'm figuring things out with words. No words, no learning outside of baseline behavior.
I'm using learning beyond simple stimulus/response which doesn't require thinking.
I say again: I'm not talking about communicating. I can communicate my intentions in all kinds of ways. I'm talking about thinking. I'm talking about what's going on in your head.
I'll ask again: what can you think about that doesn't require words? I'm not talking about feeling. Name one thing you can think about which doesn't require language.
By language, I do mean the written word. But I'm not using it for the process of communicating. Your example of the autistic savant doesn't apply to what I'm saying. He's still thinking with words. He's just using words that apply to something directly without nuance- numbers. Look at someone with aspbergers. They generally prefer dealing with numbers because they are not ambiguous like most other things. Somewhere in the autistic person's head goes "when I write this number, it corresponds with this in reality. When I see this figure, it means I add which corresponds with this in reality." He may not be able to use language to speak but he is still using language in his head to understand something written. It may not be English. It may not be any lanugage that exists outside of his head but it's still a language.
What is language but something that has a corresponding form in reality? Language describes something- physical or conceptual. How else do you describe something?
I'm emphasize again: I'm talking abou thinking, not communicating. I'm using language as a way to describe the way all languages work- through representation. Humans are good at understanding things without context which requires language and thought. I'll ask you again, what can you think about that doesn't use words or had to use words to understand at one point?
6:15 PM
I meant to say that humans AREN'T good at understand things without context which requires language and thought.
I'm still talking about some basic--something way before communicating. I'm talking about what's going on in your head before you communicate it in whichever way you choose.
6:21 PM
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6:45 PM
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6:47 PM
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6:51 PM
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6:56 PM
"I'll ask again: what can you think about that doesn't require words? I'm not talking about feeling. Name one thing you can think about which doesn't require language."
Easy..."beauty". Tell me how you think about the conept of "beauty" to yourself in words. I certainly do not use words in my thought processesn to determine if something is beautiful. Words are too limiting.
Additonally, context does not necessarily require language. Context can be explained through visual references not associated with words. The words can come later.
A child first learns and relates to the world through sensory association and feedback...not words. Language ability develops much later and is then used to associate and delinate already learned and understood concepts gained through sensory perception.
We have since taken language and adpated it as a tool to explain the world around us. But one does not first conceive of ideas through thinking in a language. Most ideas are conceived through sensory experience subconciously associated with prior sensory experience and then expressed through language. But language is not the fundamental medium through which the understanding of a concept occurs.
6:57 PM
Sorry for the multiple deletions...I was having trouble posting my response.
7:00 PM
Beauty at a visceral level is stimulus/response thing. There are different types of beauty. Are you talking about the beauty of a woman or a landscape? Different types of beauty require distinctions which require language. The very use of the word beauty is language. What are you talking about specifically? What kind of beauty. What are the characteristics of beauty empirically or it is all dependant on how it makes you feel. I'll maintain that it is very easy to condition a human into thinking what others think is beautiful is horrible.
I would guess that when you find something beautiful, you aren't thinking consciously about why, but that doesn't mean that what you think is beautiful isn't influenced by your experiences. This however, is feeling, not thinking. You think something is beautiful because it makes you feel a certain way when you see it. If this is not the case, then you can tell me what is empirically beautiful to all people but then you would be thinking. CS Lewis talks about this in The Abolition of Man. Does something have an essence of it's own or do you describe it on how it makes you feel.
Biological impulses aren't thoughts. Breathing, the beating of your heart, moving your hand away when you touch something hot,etc. Those are stimulus/response, not thinking.
Context can be explained using visuals but just like music, it's because they represent something else. I can only use visual aids if I know what they mean to my audience. It would be very easy for me to use one type of aid and have it mean something to someone of a different culture. I would go even further to say that visuals don't mean anything without context. What about that picture of that officer shooting that guy in the head from Vietnam? The picture tells you nothing without context and that context would be very different for us than some lib in SF.
I agree with the sensory perception part. As you know, I'm not big on living solely in your head and I'm in a constant battle with Descartes. But sensing is not thinking and confusing the two leads to big trouble. You must sense clearly to have good data to work with. You must have good data to reach accurate conclusions. Those are two separate act: thinking and sensing. Confusing one for the other leads to doing a bad job at both.
Of course, language is the fundamental way we understand concepts. Feeling and thinking are two different things. Feeling is a sense act. Thinking is a brain act. You still haven't named a concept that you can think about without language. Beauty isn't a concept. We can talk about the "concept of beauty" but that's not the same things as experiencing beauty. Concepts require language. Otherwise they are just fuzzy feelings.
7:19 PM
Again...I completley disagree. You must sense before you think. Thinking is the result of sensing, not the other way around. They are not separate things but two parts of a whole with sensing having primacy over the thinking.
Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" deals with this problem magnificently. Our whole argument here is based around what Kant called the "phenomena", things as they appear to our senses, and the "noumena", things that are purely objects of thought independent of sense perception, which, by definition, we can never experience. The phenomenon is only the representation of the noumenon that a person receives through their sense experience, which their mind then structures in accordance with the categories of the cognitive apparatus of understanding (namely space and time and causation). Essentially, Kant is saying that are brains are hardwired to filter all experinece through space and time and the notion of cause and effect. We do have what he call "a priori" knowledge (intuition and logic for example) and "a posteriori" knowledge (knowledge gained through sense experinece).
So, my point here is that concepts are synthesized through the process of sensory experience being filtered through the cognitive apparatus (space, time, causation). Language is not "a priori" (it is learned) and conceptual thoughts can exist and be understood within one's mind without the need for language. We do it all the time. When a red car drives by, I do not, in my mind, say to myself "There goes a red car." That would be ridiculous.
Language is a great tool for sharing thoughts (like we are doing right now and could not be done without language) but language is not necessary for internal thoughts to be understood to the self which is what I take your entire argument to mean.
BTW...Music does not represent something else. Tell me what the note D minor, in whatever scale, "represents"?
8:05 PM
Again I will use beauty as a concept that cannot be thought of using language. I can think about beauty all day long without using language. In fact, language is exceedingly poor at attempting to explain the concept of beauty. And by beauty, I do not mean the pleasurable feeling sometimes associated with it. I can think something has beautiful characteristics without any emotional feeling or language tied to the concept.
Describe to me in words, the beauty of a sunset. You cannot do it to my satifaction, I gurantee. This is what poetry attempts to do and, in my opinion, fails miserably at a large majority of the time.
8:29 PM
We are not communcating clearly here. Yes the sounds that make up a D minor do not signify anything but I was responding to your example of Alexander using music to give orders. In that case, the music is representing something.
As far as music goes, there is thinking involved in the making of it. Musicians can reproduce sounds but to go beyond that requires some understanding of theory. Learn a new scale, learn a new sound. Performing music is a lot like martial arts. It requires thought, practice, experience and in the search of unconscious competence.
Bruce Lee said it best. "Before I learned the martial arts, a kick was just a kick and a punch was just a punch. After I learned the arts, a kick was no longer just a kick and a punch was no longer juust a punch. Now that I've mastered the arts, a kick is a kick and a punch is a punch.
Performaning something is differenct that thinking.
You do not have to sense before you think. You can think quite separate from sensing. Look astrophysics or string theory. They exist quite separately from the senses. They have to. The theory of microbiology existed in someone's mind before technology caught up to prove it.
Sensing doesn't exist for the sake of thinking or vice versa. Of course they are part of a whole just as everything is part of something else but in isolating it, you can make it stronger. By breaking things up into their constituent parts, you can work on them independantly and make them more powerful when they are part of the whole.
What I'm talking about is different. I know that the brain filters senses through its experiences. The problem that I encounter when I work with people is the tendency to confuse what we feel for what we sense. This happens because we are no good at separating the two. I want to sense as directly and purely as possible. To do that, I must separate it from thinking.
You bring up Kant but his argument has nothing to do with mine which leads me to believe that I'm not being very clear.
Let me use sense as anything not involving language-- anything ineffable and indescrible by works except symbolically. This is different than numbers. The word "beauty" is symbolic of beauty which may mean different things to different people but the number 2 is directly correlated to 2. There is no interpretive nuance.
About the red car. When the red car goes by, you notice it. That's a sense. But to know it a car, to know its color is red requires thought. Think about a color you haven't seen before. You think, "What do I call this color?" That's thinking. You do think something about that red car or you would have simply not noticed it.
The purpose of all this philosophizing is to make better decisions. Better decision require that I sense as clearly as possible and think as well as I can. I strengthen my thinking by thinking--devoloping my deductive and inductive powers. I develop my senses by separating them from my thinking so I limit the influence of my prejudices as much as possible. I remember reading a book once where the sense of it was floating around in my head but could not be crystalized until I had the vocabulary to do it. The language I had previously wasn't enough for what I wanted to say. That happens all the time.
Think of dealing with a punch. Your average punch is no big deal but people make it so because they throw all kinds of garbage on it. There's fear of getting hit. There the sense of violence which most folks aren't used to. There's the idea that you did something to deserve someone trying to punch you. None of it has any bearing on dealing with the punch. If you can remove all that shit, the punch is easier to deal with. In fact, it even looks slower. You have to separate it from your thinking if you're going to deal with it effectively. I'm just talking about the microsecond when you recognize a punch is being thrown. After you recognize what is happening, you can thne choose what to do depending on your ability. The better you are relative to your opponent, the more choices you have. That's a matter a thought.
Lastly, how do I know this. I know this by studying foreign languages that aren't western in origin such as chinese. There is no word in Chinese for logic. Consequently, they are for the most part incapable of it. They can reason but that is very different than logic. We have words to describe concepts in the west which the Chinese simply don't have. And you can't discuss something that another person doesn't have the words for. More importantly, he can think about it.
8:43 PM
Beauty isn't a concept. You can have a conept of beauty but beauty itself is not a concept. What is your concept of beauty? What makes something beautiful? Is there something in common with all things that are considered beautiful? If so, what it is. You can say beauty is something that is pleasing to the eye but that's a cop out. What is pleasing to the eye? And are all things pleasing to the eye beautiful? To think this much about the concept of beauty requires language. What makes beauty beauty? When you think about beauty without using words, are you really thinking about beauty and it's nature or are you simply running beautiful vistas in your head? That's not thinking either. That's something different.
8:49 PM
I take your argument to be saying that all thought (or thinking) requires language. If I am wrong, please let me know.
If this is the argument, I disagree. But I believe, ironically enough, that our difference in opinion lies not in thought but in language.
Again, I think the term "language" is not clearly defined in our argument. I think what you mean to say is not "language" but "reason" or "rationality". It is one thing to sense and another to correllate that sense to something else and synthesize an idea or concept. That is not "language" but "reason". I would say that all substantive, or higher order, thought requires "reason".
There are numerous languages that have words with no meaning in English. But that is not a linguistic problem, it is primarily a cultural problem. We are all a tabula rasa when born. We build our existential framerwork from the moment we exit the womb. Chinese thought is grounded in Confucian tradition where western thought is grounded in the Aristotelian tradition. These philosophies have very different views of the world, and therefore, would have a substantial effect on an individual's existential framework growing up under either tradition and also on the development of language under each system.
But, I would again argue that language is secondary to thought. Thought is predicated on reason. Language is just a means to expressing thought. A more modern example would be the naming of junk e-mail as "spam". The word was developed for the phenomena. We saw something happening that correlated to something else in our experience and then we brought in language in an attempt to express the concept. But language per se was not the tool used to understand it. Reason was that tool.
9:13 PM
Beauty (that which is beautiful) is a concept. Just like justice (as so passionately argued in Plato's republic) is a concept. And the reason you are having so much trouble using language to explain it is beacuase you cannot apply language too it to sufficiently explain it. It transcends language.
Again, language is secondary to a concept synthesized in thought. Language is only a means of expressing that thought. It is not the thought itself.
9:33 PM
I have to go but will be back later....
9:35 PM
You concept of beauty is well argued. But I still maintain that there is a difference between beauty and the concept of beauty. We can discuss the concept of beauty all day and we'll never come close to the platonic ideal of beauty. Beauty, I think, is related to virtue. But htere is a difference between recognizing beauty at a sense level and discuss the qualities of beauty. The concept of beauty doesn't transcend language. I always talk about how touch is more accurate than language-- something I learned and first thought of in aikido. But sensing something through touch is very different than thinking about it. I can work with someone and the second I grab them, I sense that they are scared. I've sensed other things too which required an instructor to tell me what I was sensing. The act of correlating a word or idea to a sensation require thought.
Can you reason without language? Deductive or inductive? Is it possible? I don't think so. It is different from stimulus/response. Language is the medium through which we reason.
What I was trying to say by talking about the Chinese is specifically what you said. Because a language is how it is, the speakers of that language are influenced and limited by it. If there's no word for snow, you can't imagine it until you see it or somebody tells you about it. The things that infuriate me about Chinese culture are things you really can't discuss with them and I suppose they feel the same way.
Language is the medium in which we think sort of like water when we swim. Our vocabulary frames our ability to reason. Again, it's a lot like martial arts. The more arts you are fluent in, the greater your ability to "think" when you fight. The more you can develop solutions of your own on the fly.
Thanks for spending the time to do this. I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
10:03 PM
"Our vocabulary frames our ability to reason." With this, I generally agree.
"Language is the medium through which we reason."
With this, I do not agree. I believe language is the medium through which we express the result of our reasoning, not the appartatus that enables the act of reasoning.
Again, I believe language is secondary to reason. A child learns how to reason through the causation associated with sense experience, what you have been calling "stimulus/response". Language, or in other words, the "expression of the result of our reasoning", whether that be in words, music, pictures, etc. develops later as it requires a higher order of thought than just reasoning.
I think what you are saying is that once one can express the result of their reason through "language", their process of reasoning changes. The language with which they choose to express their reason effects how they reason, but not the act of reason in and of itself.
For example, one can write music for the violin or for the trumpet. The music sounds different, but it is still music and the act of writing it is, in and of itself, not changed. But there are things that the trumpet can do that the violin cannot and vice versa when it comes to musical expression. The same piece of music will sound different and could even express a very different mood or thought depending on the instrument that is used to play it. But it is still music and the underlying aparatus (or process) by which it is written (the use of notes, scales, harmony, melody) is universal.
I think you will argue that in the above example the process by which music is written (the use of notes, scales, harmony, melody) is the language. I will argue that this process is "reason" and the instrument used to play the music is the "language" through which that reason is expressed.
Thoughts?
4:30 AM
I think the issue is less the definition of "language" and more my use of the word "thinking."
How about this:
1. Stimulus/response (biological)
2. Basic reasoning (intuitive)
3. Unschooled thinking
4. Schooled thinking
5. Intuitive thinking
I'm mostly talking about levels 3 and 4.
Stimulus/response is biological. Easy to explain. Touch somthing hot? You move your hand.
Basic reasoning is one level above that. It's problem solving at the level of a mouse finding cheese through a maze. It's also the same thing as, "If I'm nice to her, maybe she'll kiss me."
Unschooled thinking is where language really starts to play a role albeit without structure.
Schooled thinking is applying the forms of science, ethics, critical thinking, etc. to the unformed jumble of words from above.
Lastly is intuitional thinking along the lines of Feynman solving a math problem that can't be solved linearly.
I'm trying to talk about thinking-- not communicating, not reacting, etc. Language is perhaps the wrong word but I don't know any other.
If a person never learned a language, can he learn to think beyond the 2nd level? Does he have a "language" in his head that only he understands? I think no to the first and yes to the second.
11:26 PM
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