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> usually when we choose a word we choose to have it understood by whomever it is we are to speak, otherwise, why speak?
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who speak only to hear themselves. Really? Or does the Buffalo speak only for himself?  Still wondering... where do you, Shrdlu, keep the words you use when you are not using them? And in what form?
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Carpal Tunnel
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Thanks, Buffalo.
Now tsuwm, Faldage, BranShea, and anyone else who would like to add something to this discussion, I ask:
If the words you see here can be physically stored in your computer, are not the words you use when speaking physically stored in your brain?
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Carpal Tunnel
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We don't understand this sort of thing very well, but there would appear to be some sort of storage in the brain. To say that this means there is some concrete thing which we can, if only metaphorically, point to and say "this is the word" is stretching the meaning of things a little too much for me to buy into it.
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Yeah, what Faldage says.
I don't think of words as being physically stored in my computer or my brain. What are the dimensions of a word, what's its mass? Does my computer/brain get heavier with each new word I store? Is "it" smaller, lighter than "Rumpelstiltskin"? How tiny must the tweezers be to pluck it out? What's its chemical composition, its reactivity? Solid, liquid, or gas? What color? Nope, I can't buy it, either.
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Hallelujah! A happy turn of events.
Tromboniator and Faldage admit that our brains store information. Their only stipulation is that the information stored must be made of... nothing.
How strange, but since Trombo and Faldo are (for-the-most-part) open-minded the paragraph below should transfigure their "inert nothing" into a more logical "dynamic something".
posting interrupted will add by edit in a minute.
[This post to be continued below Faldage's elaboration below.]
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Carpal Tunnel
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I didn't say that that the information stored must be made of... nothing. I said we don't understand how it is stored.* Besides, any storage of words is no more intrinsically linked to the Reality, insofar as there is a Reality behind the words, of what those words mean than is the vibrations in the air that we perceive when we hear those words.
*Or at least that is what I intended to say. If I didn't do a very good job of it the fault is all mine.
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Faldage.
There is no fault in thinking. And, other than high crimes, there is no fault in living except being rude which you are not.
My construction of the nature of things stems from a fifty year observation of this world without my cock in the fight.
Let me summerize:
I think that our sensory system automatically imputs (filters) selective data from the external world into the data storage system required by the brain.
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Yup. Hence my differentiation between Reality and reality.
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jenny jenny, jenny jenny, jenny jenny, neither of us stipulated anything (or both of us stipulated nothing) about information storage being of "nothing," and certainly not of "inert nothing." Electrochemical, most likely, I suppose, but not physical like putting old lamps into a storage unit down the street, and the one Aunt Lucy broke is the third on the left. I don't "admit" that the brain stores information, I wholeheartedly embrace the concept, but I have trouble with the idea that each word is some discrete brick or package, which is the image I get when you talk about physical storage. Words have meanings and spellings (right or wrong) attached to them when we retrieve them, emotional baggage, memories, associations inextricably connected to other words, experiences, images. It may be that "wherewithal," "girn," and "rapid" all have very specific coordinates in my brain, but I doubt that it's that simple.
I rather think that's a long version of what Faldage was saying a post or two back, but he is of course welcome to contradict me. Not my place (nor is there need) to put words into his mouth.
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