Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Language of Thoughts - Part I

Hear your thoughts closely and you'll notice that it uses languages. Often this is in English, your mother tongue, some regional language spoken in your place or some language you know. The logic of requirement is understood - Thoughts are a form of communication. Communication requires a language. Therefore, thoughts require a language.

But thoughts are something personal to you - why is the mind, which I suppose is the originator, require a loopback communication to itself through a language. Is it not taxing for the self to support itself from something gained externally. This also raises a second question - how does one think before one has learnt a language? I find it hard to believe that I never thought before I learnt a language!

Maybe the answer to the first lies in the second. This is my theory: Thoughts have forms - one using pictures or the other using languages. When a person sleeps he/she hardly thinks using languages. Thoughts occur as picture sequences. When the person is awake, he/she can think using both ways. Like what you do when you imagine swimming - you see only pictures. When you plan on how you will spend money, you will use a language and 'hear' yourself talking. Maybe there is a way to eliminate languages and think as it should be thought. Wouldn't that mean our mode of thinking is primitive.

I still need to consider how this applies to newborns and people with disabilities. As I write this post I did hit upon a few links in google. If you have a different opinion, let me know your comments


4 Comments:

At 9:30 PM, March 21, 2006, Blogger deepsan said...

I was reading about this yesterday:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031226.html

 
At 12:19 AM, March 22, 2006, Blogger Karthik said...

Inline reading - signs and pictures - but why say we can't think without a "language". May be it's the structure - more on the next post

 
At 2:52 PM, March 31, 2006, Blogger Kapil said...

language is nothing more than codification of thoughts ...the role of language is more importantly to communicate those thoughts externally using a protocol...even when u learn something u co relate to wht u alrdy knw .something like a radio signal...content remains codified while the language is the carrier wave

 
At 1:11 PM, April 03, 2006, Blogger Karthik said...

Sometimes people can speak without thinking. That might be unconscious is what you are suggesting I think

 

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