Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Tuesday 24 July 2018

Can you think complex thoughts without language ?

Yes, of course you can. As Plato said, "Names would have an absurd effect on the things they name, if they resembled them in every respect, since all of them would be duplicated, and no-one would be able to say which was the thing and which was the name."

Language is a description of reality, not reality itself. Visual mental imagery doesn't require language : complex mathematical functions can be imagined without their associated formulae. The brain doesn't calculate them by calculating the value of sin(x) or e^x because it's not a computer in the conventional sense. Plenty of less esoteric phenomena can be visualised without language too, like the colour red or the concept of circularity, say. What's really interesting is, as that Oxford introductory philosophy course pointed out, to try and visualise a circle without colour... It's also interesting to consider things which are purely conceptual and immeasurable, like goodness.

Whenever I'm trying to solve a tricky problem, there's a moment before I can express it linguistically where I know the answer but can't articulate it. By definition, this is impossible to describe. When it "clicks" (or as I think of it, crystallises) into a linguistic state, it's very much easier to preserve. I can then also transmit the concept to others vastly more easily. And they can communicate other ideas to me. Language unlocks our deeper understanding, providing handy mental tools for compressing complex concepts and making certain mental gymnastics easier. But it certainly isn't the be-all and end-all of thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=_UqxSq19_Aw

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