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old hand
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OP
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I'm not sure if this warrants a whole new thread, but anyway. . .
I was intrigued by what Avy said about dreaming with languageless thoughts and got to thinking about how one actually thinks without language. I can't speak for everyone else, but when I think, I basically hear the words in my mind. But how would someone, say a person that was raised by wolves, think? Obviously there are wordless feelings and impulses, but does this constitute thought? Also, does a deaf person think by mentally seeing sign language or the written word? In what manner did Helen Keller think?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well, this is a very interesting topic to me. I have said here before that I often think in images or pictures, and
very much wish that I could transfer these images to the intended recipient. For example, I'd like to send either one of my kids an image of their room perfectly cleaned, and know that they cannot mistake my meaning (oh, I didn't know you meant under the bed, too!).
I haven't read or done any studies, but I should think that most people think in images, don't they? What comes to mind when I ask you about your first bicycle? A favorite
birthday celebration? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could
get across to others, not merely the description of how we felt, but the actual feelings themselves? Oh, the thrill/fear of my first "big" bike, and the terror when the chain fell off! And sounds, too--they could "hear", not my actual childish scream, but my memory of it.
I can't guess how a person without language would think, but surely it would have to be in terms of something he'd
experienced. To take your example of a wolf-boy, perhaps if he is very hot, he'd think of himself in the river, and how cool, wet, and smooth the water feels to his skin?
I think Brandon, whom I was delighted to find a post from today (yesterday?), would be the best-qualified person here that I know of to say how deaf people think of language.
I somehow doubt that thinking in sign language is common.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I think the ability to be rather fuzzy about feelings may be a defence mechanism provided by our body.
After having a baby a mother can talk about experiencing pain but cannot re-live it. I remember disliking having a tooth out and remember it as being unpleasant but I can't think myself into the experience so I can really remember the pain.
In the process we lose the ability to remember pleasurable feelings too, other than in the vaguest terms. Perhaps it's nature's way of letting us put things behind us. If we were stuck in the bad experiences it would stop us moving on. If we could conjour up the good experiences it might stop our motivation to achieve and give ourself another pleasurable feeling. That may also be part of the problem with mood enhancing drugs, de-motivating the user to get pleasure in less "quick fix" ways.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Perhaps it's nature's way of letting us put things behind us.
Spang on, Jo, I'll bet. Good thinking! And yet--mayn't it not work the same for everyone? Can't we choose, at least to some extent, what to recall the clearest? For me, when I have good life-experiences, and think about them (which I do almost constantly), it just makes me look all the more eagerly to see what neat new thing is coming next. It doesn't stop my motivation to achieve.
Is there an "opposite" for the term 'vicious circle'?
Exuberant circle, maybe? Whatever, I think it works in the same pattern as a vicious circle does: each happy instance reinforces the feeling of happiness, which in turn attracts more happy occurrences.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>For me, when I have good life-experiences, and think about them (which I do almost constantly), it just makes me look all the more eagerly to see what neat new thing is coming next. It doesn't stop my motivation to achieve.
Yes you think about them and it inspires you try to achieve another good experience or maybe you are lucky and another good one just comes along. Thinking is significantly different to feeling. The point is that you can't feel it all over again and really re-live it, it is elusive, the actual feeling itself is very short lived. Try as hard as you will you won't be able to re-capture it (at the same level of intensity). Maybe if we could command our bodies to do that then we might never feel the need to achieve anything anymore.
I'd love to know of anyone can actually re-feel something. Perhaps it is possible.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Jazz, this a very interesting subjet.
Let me remind this quotation
How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words.
Maurice Maeterlinck .
This is very often my feeling: my thoughts are pre-verbal and it is sometimes hard to me to find the correct words to express them (even in my Italian, which is rich enough). I feel that the language is like a cage.
I would say that the possible thoughts are MORE than the possible sentences - even if infinite in both cases.
In fact, it is possible to give a meaning to the sentence
an infinite set is BIGGER than another infinite set (Cantor did - about 1880)...My apologies if I went too much in my mathematical field - someone dislikes it?!!
Ciao
Emanuela
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I'd love to know of anyone can actually re-feel something.
I re-feel. I broke the bone in my left thigh in a car accident about 6 years ago. If I think about it, it starts to hurt again. The injury is fully recovered, but in my head, if I think about that pain a small portion of it comes back to me. I also feel pain for others. If I see someone who is injured my head tells me that I hurt in that place. Certainly not to the extent of the injured person, but I feel that person's pain. Same goes for others' scars. I dated a guy once who had a deep scar on one of his fingers from a paper cutter accident. Every time I noticed that scar my hand would start to hurt. After a while, I learned not to see the scar to save myself the pain.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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xara
I think this also happens in "phantom limb syndrome" where people can still feel a missing limb, even though it is no longer there.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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language is like a cage.
YES! Exactly!
I am not a mathematician, but I think I followed you on the
sets. Thoughts are infinite. Language is finite.
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old hand
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In management jargon these days, the phrase "virtuous circle" or "virtuous cycle" is much used - to refer to the positive feedback spiral you are talking about. 
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