Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

What did you say? And what did you mean by it?

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TimeSeeker
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by TimeSeeker »

creativesoul wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:38 pm If you do not know how to tell if any statement is true or not, then you do not know what they mean either...

You're lying my friend...
You have reached an incorrect conclusion. And I can't even tell you why - because I don't know what your alternative hypothesis is...
Atla
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by Atla »

creativesoul wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:38 pm If you do not know how to tell if any statement is true or not, then you do not know what they mean either...

You're lying my friend...
See? Timeseeker doesn't have a normally functioning neocortex. He can't grasp the concept of truth/falsehood, can't grasp the concept of objectivity, can't grasp the concept of logic. He thinks that logic and language are synonyms, and has no idea what philosophical discourse is about.

Which is why it's actually pretty dangerous to assume that truth is presupposed in all thought, belief, and statements thereof. Such an assumption can set one up for exploitation.
TimeSeeker
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by TimeSeeker »

Atla wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 11:02 am
creativesoul wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:38 pm If you do not know how to tell if any statement is true or not, then you do not know what they mean either...

You're lying my friend...
See? Timeseeker doesn't have a normally functioning neocortex. He can't grasp the concept of truth/falsehood, can't grasp the concept of objectivity, can't grasp the concept of logic. He thinks that logic and language are synonyms, and has no idea what philosophical discourse is about.

Which is why it's actually pretty dangerous to assume that truth is presupposed in all thought, belief, and statements thereof. Such an assumption can set one up for exploitation.
There's a far simpler explanation than attributing it to some "unqualified brain disorder".

True/false is a bi-modal/dichotomized way of thinking. It's the most primitive thought-pattern there is. Just about every human is born with it because evolution.

I prefer to think along continuums. And so the notions of "more/less likely'" and "more/less unlikely" are far more useful to me. Bayesian approach. Quantifying one's (un)certainty on the decibel scale.

There was a time (20+ years ago) when I used to use the words "belief" and "truth" - I no longer find that vocabulary useful for the problems I am working with day-to-day.

But you should observe that there was a time I used to use your vocabulary. So you ought to wonder - what external forced contributed to this shift in perception?

And if my neocortex could undergo such a shift - what do you call this transformation/process? Learning? ;)

The distinction is as basic as recognising our individual preferences for quantitative vs qualitative way of thinking...

I like precision/control/exactness. You don't.

To claim that you "know" what a "normal brain" functions like (translation: how a brain OUGHT to work) is to be openly shameless of your bigotry and ignorance.
Not that I give a shit - you are free to be a bigot. And I am free to explo^H^H^H^H err. I mean sell you stuff :)
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

Atla wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 11:02 am
creativesoul wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:38 pm If you do not know how to tell if any statement is true or not, then you do not know what they mean either...

You're lying my friend...
See? Timeseeker doesn't have a normally functioning neocortex. He can't grasp the concept of truth/falsehood, can't grasp the concept of objectivity, can't grasp the concept of logic. He thinks that logic and language are synonyms, and has no idea what philosophical discourse is about.

Which is why it's actually pretty dangerous to assume that truth is presupposed in all thought, belief, and statements thereof. Such an assumption can set one up for exploitation.
I saw just fine. Timeseeker is not speaking sincerely. Even in his bid for better language use s/he presupposes truth(as correspondence). All language use does, aside from those with rigid designators, and even those could be made a case for their values corresponding to the way things are. You underestimate him/her.
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

TimeSeeker wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 11:20 am
Atla wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 11:02 am
creativesoul wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:38 pm If you do not know how to tell if any statement is true or not, then you do not know what they mean either...

You're lying my friend...
See? Timeseeker doesn't have a normally functioning neocortex. He can't grasp the concept of truth/falsehood, can't grasp the concept of objectivity, can't grasp the concept of logic. He thinks that logic and language are synonyms, and has no idea what philosophical discourse is about.

Which is why it's actually pretty dangerous to assume that truth is presupposed in all thought, belief, and statements thereof. Such an assumption can set one up for exploitation.
There's a far simpler explanation than attributing it to some "unqualified brain disorder".

True/false is a bi-modal/dichotomized way of thinking. It's the most primitive thought-pattern there is. Just about every human is born with it because evolution.

I prefer to think along continuums. And so the notions of "more/less likely'" and "more/less unlikely" are far more useful to me...
All such thinking presupposes truth as well... There are givens that are presupposed to be true. Because X, Y, and Z are the case then the likelihood of A is...

:roll:
TimeSeeker
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by TimeSeeker »

creativesoul wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:41 pm All such thinking presupposes truth as well... There are givens that are presupposed to be true. Because X, Y, and Z are the case then the likelihood of A is...

:roll:
So X,Y and Z are axiomatic? Pre-suppositions? Inputs to the black box? Starting conditions?

I can narrate the sequence of events unfolding in 10 different ways and I don't need the word "truth". Why do you insist on using it?

I have no use for "truth" outside of the way it's used in logic. Any statement which does not contradict the axiomatic pre-suppositions.
TimeSeeker
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by TimeSeeker »

creativesoul wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:41 pm All such thinking presupposes truth as well... There are givens that are presupposed to be true. Because X, Y, and Z are the case then the likelihood of A is...

:roll:
Are you familiar with Rodney Brooks' work? There is no need for symbolic representation of reality and 'truth'. Real-time orientation is sufficient for decision-making and intentionality.

The internal representation (holistic model) is only necessary for strategic (big picture, systematic) decision-making e.g voting, charity work, activism etc. Since you aren't about to rediscover all of scientific findings - you are at the mercy of the knowledge you've acquired by proxy and your trust in the institution of science.

For tactical (day to day) decision-making real-time information processing produces much better results because you are dealing with up-to-date information. You don't need a map for the territory. Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_AI
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1752988
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

TimeSeeker wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:04 pm
creativesoul wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:41 pm All such thinking presupposes truth as well... There are givens that are presupposed to be true. Because X, Y, and Z are the case then the likelihood of A is...

:roll:
So X,Y and Z are axiomatic? Pre-suppositions? Inputs to the black box? Starting conditions?

I can narrate the sequence of events unfolding in 10 different ways and I don't need the word "truth". Why do you insist on using it?

I have no use for "truth" outside of the way it's used in logic. Any statement which does not contradict the axiomatic pre-suppositions.
Because X, Y, and Z are true...

C'mon Time, you can say whatever you like, but you - just like everybody else who is a language user - presuppose truth(as correspondence).
Last edited by creativesoul on Thu Nov 15, 2018 2:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

Not sure why you believe that not using the term "truth" somehow eliminates the presupposition of correspondence. It doesn't.
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

Don't get me wrong, I'm as against truth with a capital "T" just as you are. However, I also realize that that is an inherently inadequate conception that usually conflates truth and belief or truth and reality. The church doesn't negate how thought/belief work. They just made the term "truth" something of a pariah, instead of how they used it. Well, at least they did so for people who don't know any better.

Others avoid talk of truth for more malicious purposes.
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

TimeSeeker wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:20 pm
creativesoul wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:41 pm All such thinking presupposes truth as well... There are givens that are presupposed to be true. Because X, Y, and Z are the case then the likelihood of A is...

:roll:
Are you familiar with Rodney Brooks' work? There is no need for symbolic representation of reality and 'truth'.
No.

Who claimed there was a need for symbolic representation of "truth"? More importantly, on what level are you talking about here? Clearly there's no need to talk about "truth" in all sorts of everyday situations for that would be to talk about a linguistic conception and/or the quality/value of our own thought/belief(didn't someone just mention 'qualitative' thought?) Lot's of folk get along just fine with very little 'introspection'. So what?

If one is working from a naturalist framework, then amongst other things, one must be able to take proper account of the origen of thought/belief and how it accrues in it's complexity. The value of any account is determined solely by virtue of how well it corresponds to what's happened and/or what is happening, or what has yet to have happened.

Predictive value, of course, is increased and/or decreased by what has yet to have happened. As a result, none of those statements are truth-apt at the time of utterance. No need to talk about "truth" in that situation, regardless of the fact that verification/falsification methods are looking for precisely that... correspondence to what has yet to have happened.

:mrgreen:

It's quite clear, and I've set out the grounds, that we form thought/belief long before we ever start to think about it. It's when we start to think about our own thought/belief that we begin to talk about whether or not what we say matches up to the way things are; the case at hand; the universe; the world and/or ourselves; reality; what has already happened and/or what is happening.

So, to drive this nail just a bit further...

So what that someone can intentionally not talk about "truth". It is impossible to not presuppose it, for everything that has ever been thought, believed, known, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered consists if mental correlations drawn between different things, and all correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content(regardless of subsequent qualification). <----------That is the presupposition of correspondence that is inherently within all thought and belief. It is how and why "is true" is and becomes a redundant use of language. All this having been said...

Some folk like you...

:mrgreen:

...do not understand that prediction cannot be true at the time it is uttered, have no idea how that's the case, and/or don't quite care about the commonality between all prediction and all false statements. That line of thinking is very interesting if and when one has thought/belief right to begin with. Suffering from the aforementioned ignorance is an inevitable consequence of attempting to dispense with truth(correspondence). Furthermore, I would wager that you also do not understand the gravity of the situation here. I mean the sheer scope of rightful application of what I've been arguing could not be any broader, and it's not a TOE, not an elaborate argument by definitional fiat, and not a tautology(which is ironic in and of itself given your glorification of 'higher' logic).

This thread is either prima facie evidence of ignorance or feigned ignorance - one of the two - regarding all sorts of neat stuff. Simple stuff. Elemental stuff. Irrevocable stuff. Crucial stuff. I've been explaining in between your episodes of irrelevant shit slinging...
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

TimeSeeker wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:20 pm
...For tactical (day to day) decision-making real-time information processing produces much better results because you are dealing with up-to-date information....
As if this is always the case?

No!

That quality of the results of information processing(day to day thinking and it's affect/effect) depends entirely upon whether or not the information being taken into consideration is reliable... ahem... true. Now that doesn't mean that the person has to think about whether or not the information is true.

Let 'em fuck up though(let expectation never happen). Then everyone soon sees how important truth is.

:mrgreen:
TimeSeeker
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by TimeSeeker »

creativesoul wrote: Thu Nov 15, 2018 2:27 am Because X, Y, and Z are true...

C'mon Time, you can say whatever you like, but you - just like everybody else who is a language user - presuppose truth(as correspondence).
Coming from the logical positivist school there are two distinctions that need to be drawn

1. X,Y and Z are first-hand experiences.
I have seen/experienced them with my own eyes - empiricism. Based on this I have no use for "truth". Either you trust your senses or it's all pointless.
This is what logical positivists call protocol sentences ( https://www.britannica.com/topic/protocol-sentence ).

2. X, Y and Z are 2nd hand (or higher order) reports:
2.1 By the verification principle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationism ) - if I can't (at least in principle) contrive a way to empirically confirm what you are saying then it's not meaningful to me - it's just linguistic lip service that will take far too long to unpack. I discard such statements immediately (this is the modern-day Qualia debates philosophers like to have).

e.g to say "There is a blue coffee cup on the table" is not a statement of fact/truth. It is a statement of linguistic convention for our experiences.

This thing on the floor (table!) and this other thing on top of the table (cup) which contains a liquid (coffee) reflects light in a particular way (blue).


2.2 If X, Y and Z are verifiable and I have a mechanism to verify them immediately - then I don't need your 2nd hand report, because I can (empirically) obtain the knowledge I need 1st hand.
2.3 If I can verify it in principle but not in practice then I have no way of confirming the truth-value of any 2nd hand information so I get to choose whether to trust the 2nd hand source or not.
2.3.1 I can do my utmost best to avoid errors in reasoning e.g using heuristics (falsification, contradiction, laws of physics as limits etc.) I can rapidly discard things that are clearly invalid.

But despite all caution at some point you get to choose. Either you will trust 2nd hand information or you wont.
This is where risk management kicks in. If the consequences of error are too grave to endure then I will not ACT on 2nd information without 1st hand validation. This is what we call pessimism in statistics.

If I am comfortable with some error margin - I will ACT on 2nd hand information. This is what we call pessimism in statistics.

In this entire framework the concept of "truth" is absent...
creativesoul
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by creativesoul »

You do know that Ayer came to the conclusion that logical positivism was guilty of what it charged all meta-physical positions of... right? It was based upon a meta-physical tenet/proposition/assertion/statement... an unfalsifiable one at that... which if we hold the positivists to their own criterion, renders the primary tenet(the mantra as it were) of positivism utterly meaningless...

:mrgreen:

One of my first serious philosophical reads was Ayer's Problems Of Philosophy.
Last edited by creativesoul on Fri Nov 16, 2018 3:29 am, edited 2 times in total.
TimeSeeker
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Re: Is It Possible To Think Without Language?

Post by TimeSeeker »

creativesoul wrote: Thu Nov 15, 2018 5:02 am As if this is always the case?

No!

That quality of the results of information processing(day to day thinking and it's affect/effect) depends entirely upon whether or not the information being taken into consideration is reliable... ahem... true. Now that doesn't mean that the person has to think about whether or not the information is true.

Let 'em fuck up though(let expectation never happen). Then everyone soon sees how important truth is.

:mrgreen:
Naturally. But I am getting a glimpse of how you use the notion of "truth". Here is the problem. No rational human being wants to err on purpose. But let me not speak of other people might or might not do - I will not ACT on information that I clearly know is "false" (not true?). That's just idiotic. Why would I do that?

And so the best you can do with all the information you hold in your head is to assign it confidence ratings.
If said information fails you - its confidence goes down. If said information works for you - its confidence goes up.
This is the Bayesian way.

You can go even further by playing "admission control" for new information. Do I accept/reject this? How likely is it to be "true"?

And so it's pretty clear to me that any piece on information you ACT on is "true" in some sense (although this sentence makes me queasy - all information is USEFUL). Else you wouldn't ACT on it.

It's all a betting game! If something I thought was "true" that wasn't - reality will soon provide me with an update.
As an engineer I have a LOT of systems in place to make sure the information I make decision on is reliable. Still - at the end of the day it's a bet and all bets are made conscious of your willingness to lose. No risk - no reward.

http://www.statisticalengineering.com/bayesian.htm
Last edited by TimeSeeker on Thu Nov 15, 2018 8:04 am, edited 4 times in total.
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