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DividedQuantum
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Language
#26355974 - 12/01/19 05:44 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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It is interesting to speculate as to how many unique meanings can be generated by a language, e.g. English. Linguists seem to suspect that an infinite number of grammatically correct sentences could be constructed, which is counterintuitive since the Roman alphabet only has twenty-six letters. On the other hand, modern mathematics is a finite set of operations that handle the infinite quite easily, so a finiteness of symbols does not necessarily imply that the meanings the symbols can represent are finite in number. Certainly, the number is astronomically enormous. If finite, it is still quite enough of a system for creativity to flourish indefinitely.
Do you feel language is finite, or infinite? More than that, do you feel that language can, maybe not describe or fully illustrate any phenomenon, but refer to, or in some way deal with any possible phenomenon at all? Some people feel that psychedelic states are completely beyond language, and this may in some sense be true, but on the other hand, isn't it wonderful that we can even talk about these states? We can say quite a lot about them, so perhaps it is not totally relevant that I cannot communicate what an acid trip feels like to someone. But if two people have experienced nonordinary states, they can use language to have a very constructive conversation about it.
I'd love to hear your insights.
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laughingdog
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1) Infinity itself has different meanings or associations. Mathematicians point out that there are many infinities and that some (counter intuitive, I know), - are larger than others. When ordinary folks use the term "The Infinite" they take it mean everything put into one category.
2) Even without 'psychedelic states' language cannot ever describe any of ordinary experience. No one can describe the taste of a banana, to another, who never tasted one, in such a way that they will really know what it tastes like. In fact there is no such stable thing as how even one apple tastes. Eat an apple after a fast of two weeks, and once the palette and tastebuds are resensitized it will be discovered that every bite tastes a bit different.
3) As even ordinary experience cannot be accurately described, it is perhaps even more so for psychedelic states, exactly as you say.
4) Language is a system of abstractions and decidedly not telepathic. Folks misunderstand each other all the time. It distorts things/communications in ways that have been systemized. To get a taste for these sorts of details, if you like, Do a web search for the terms: Neuro linguistic programing or NLP or the Milton Model or neurolinguistics
fascinating stuff.
If it grabs your fancy, you could go on to: Alfred Korzybski and a little General Semantics
Korzybski and M.H. Erickson are considered foundational in this field, and perhaps Bateson and the 'double bind' next.
Edited by laughingdog (12/01/19 06:35 PM)
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laughingdog
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Indeed there is a good chance I already misunderstood you. You may have wished more to stimulate, discussion to keep the board 'more lively' and on 'worthwhile' topics rather than to add to your knowledge base. But who knows? What i just did is called 'reading between the lines' if correct, and perhaps what is meant by the term 'mind reading' in NLP, if incorrect. Someone up on NLP could clarify this.
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laughingdog
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"But if two people have experienced nonordinary states, they can use language to have a very constructive conversation about it." ... perhaps ... NLP makes much of the fact that one can help another without knowing the content of their experiences, using certain specific techniques.
On a fundamental level Zen takes as a premise that language is very limited and generally misleading to some degree - therefore to use language to die-sect language is of absolutely no use if the aim is to be in 'nonordinary states'.
NLP does not aim to take one to 'nonordinary states', but to discover the current distortions in a person's beliefs , and therefore their thoughts, associations, and emotions, & then to lessen the distortions or replace them with happier or more creative ones.
Aldus Huxley and Milton Erickson however did explore some rather altered sates, with hypnosis, a process that is based largely on language patterns.
https://www.behavior.net/forums/ericksonian/1997/msg412.html
http://www.hypnos.co.uk/whitlark-awareness.html
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Darwin23
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As an American living in Bogota, I think about language quite a bit. I once jokingly called my fiancee ridiculous and she ended up in tears. In Spanish, ridiculous has maintained its original harsh and negative meaning (think ridiculous vs ridicule). But beyond that, we can communicate the original meaning by saying "deserving of ridicule". In that way, language is incredibly adaptable. It both breaks itself and then creates work-arounds when the original meaning of a word is watered down or changed. Another example would be awe-inspiring instead of awesome.
Beyond that, I'm fascinated by how language influences our own perceptions. I could write a whole book but I'll give two examples. In Spanish the auxiliary "haber" (in English that's "have") can be expressed in present-tense but is almost never used in past-tense. As a result, sentences like "I had been waiting for four hours and just lost my temper" don't really exist. Spanish-speakers tend to have a lot of difficulty in mastering this and I would argue that not having it creates a flatter perception of time.
Spanish (and I believe most romance languages) are more quantum. In English we are always speaking in the indicative (certain) mood. In Spanish, however, there is the indicative and the subjunctive (uncertain) mood. An easy example of this would be in "I hope you have a good day." In Spanish, the certain you form of "to have" is "tienes" but we say "Que tengas un buen dia". Because the potential of a bad day exists and we are only hoping, we must express an uncertain version of "you have". In this way, Spanish forces speakers to see more than one potential reality.
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Darwin23
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Sorry for writing a book, it's not a topic I get to speak about too often, hahaha. To answer your question, though, yes. You hit the nail on the head: "But if two people have experienced nonordinary states, they can use language to have a very constructive conversation about it." Our language can express shared experience but can never truly be understood if the experience isn't shared. I can talk about ego death or godhead because it's a common experience.
More personal bizarre experiences can be expressed with enough descriptive words, too. That gap between what we can express and what we experienced is present even outside of psychedelics. While doing humanitarian work with water filters in the third world, I watched a mom in a dirt poor and hopeless community staring at the filter. I saw everything going through her mind and I broke away from the group and just started sobbing. I could explain to you everything I saw in her eyes and I could explain everything that was going through my head, but I could never fully express what I was feeling in that moment. Because psychedelics are so personal, I feel like it's a similar situation. You can express what can be understood but not exactly what your experience was. The limiting factor isn't language as much as it's our own personal experiences.
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Loaded Shaman
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Conceptual consistency is the foundation of language and is the single-most important aspect, or the entire thing is actually worse than moot.
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redgreenvines
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Registered: 04/08/04
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English has the subjunctive too, although it has mostly fallen out of favor.
much of psychedelic is beyond that mood of wished for things - instead the universe is already expanded and enriched - more resonant yet decoupled from the logic and constraints of time and tense.
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DividedQuantum
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Registered: 12/06/13
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Quote:
laughingdog said: Indeed there is a good chance I already misunderstood you. You may have wished more to stimulate, discussion to keep the board 'more lively' and on 'worthwhile' topics rather than to add to your knowledge base. But who knows? What i just did is called 'reading between the lines' if correct, and perhaps what is meant by the term 'mind reading' in NLP, if incorrect. Someone up on NLP could clarify this.
Quote:
laughingdog said: "But if two people have experienced nonordinary states, they can use language to have a very constructive conversation about it." ... perhaps ... NLP makes much of the fact that one can help another without knowing the content of their experiences, using certain specific techniques.
On a fundamental level Zen takes as a premise that language is very limited and generally misleading to some degree - therefore to use language to die-sect language is of absolutely no use if the aim is to be in 'nonordinary states'.
NLP does not aim to take one to 'nonordinary states', but to discover the current distortions in a person's beliefs , and therefore their thoughts, associations, and emotions, & then to lessen the distortions or replace them with happier or more creative ones.
Aldus Huxley and Milton Erickson however did explore some rather altered sates, with hypnosis, a process that is based largely on language patterns.
https://www.behavior.net/forums/ericksonian/1997/msg412.html
http://www.hypnos.co.uk/whitlark-awareness.html
Yes, my principal aim was to stimulate discussion, but I am always ready to learn, and both were motivations for making the thread.
Your point about language being misleading and ambiguous is certainly well-founded. You also mentioned Korzybski. All of the good things about language aside, errors and misunderstandings find their way in all the time. Robert Anton Wilson was fond of pointing this out. He was a great proponent of "E-prime," which eschews the usage of the verb 'to be.' He points out that, when we use the is of identity, we begin to confuse language with reality. I believe Alan Watts said something like, "The menu is not the meal." I wouldn't go so far as to suggest everyone study E-prime, but it's an interesting approach in avoiding the fragmentation that so often plagues our attempts to communicate with each other. Certainly, our usage of language, especially these days, is decidedly fragmentary.
I am aware of NLP but don't know much about it. It certainly seems promising.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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DividedQuantum
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Registered: 12/06/13
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Quote:
Darwin23 said: As an American living in Bogota, I think about language quite a bit. I once jokingly called my fiancee ridiculous and she ended up in tears. In Spanish, ridiculous has maintained its original harsh and negative meaning (think ridiculous vs ridicule). But beyond that, we can communicate the original meaning by saying "deserving of ridicule". In that way, language is incredibly adaptable. It both breaks itself and then creates work-arounds when the original meaning of a word is watered down or changed. Another example would be awe-inspiring instead of awesome.
Beyond that, I'm fascinated by how language influences our own perceptions. I could write a whole book but I'll give two examples. In Spanish the auxiliary "haber" (in English that's "have") can be expressed in present-tense but is almost never used in past-tense. As a result, sentences like "I had been waiting for four hours and just lost my temper" don't really exist. Spanish-speakers tend to have a lot of difficulty in mastering this and I would argue that not having it creates a flatter perception of time.
Spanish (and I believe most romance languages) are more quantum. In English we are always speaking in the indicative (certain) mood. In Spanish, however, there is the indicative and the subjunctive (uncertain) mood. An easy example of this would be in "I hope you have a good day." In Spanish, the certain you form of "to have" is "tienes" but we say "Que tengas un buen dia". Because the potential of a bad day exists and we are only hoping, we must express an uncertain version of "you have". In this way, Spanish forces speakers to see more than one potential reality.
Quote:
Darwin23 said: Sorry for writing a book, it's not a topic I get to speak about too often, hahaha. To answer your question, though, yes. You hit the nail on the head: "But if two people have experienced nonordinary states, they can use language to have a very constructive conversation about it." Our language can express shared experience but can never truly be understood if the experience isn't shared. I can talk about ego death or godhead because it's a common experience.
More personal bizarre experiences can be expressed with enough descriptive words, too. That gap between what we can express and what we experienced is present even outside of psychedelics. While doing humanitarian work with water filters in the third world, I watched a mom in a dirt poor and hopeless community staring at the filter. I saw everything going through her mind and I broke away from the group and just started sobbing. I could explain to you everything I saw in her eyes and I could explain everything that was going through my head, but I could never fully express what I was feeling in that moment. Because psychedelics are so personal, I feel like it's a similar situation. You can express what can be understood but not exactly what your experience was. The limiting factor isn't language as much as it's our own personal experiences.
Fascinating, thank you for posting! Your point about Spanish being more "quantum" and fluid than the more Germanic English is very interesting. Also that perceptions of time are different between the two. It is certainly very important that people have some awareness of other languages -- Americans are very seriously deficient in this area.
Yes, I think shared experience is certainly a very central part of why language is effective. I may not be able to communicate my perception of "purple," but when I say the word, we are both sharing our awareness of our mind's interpretation of that frequency of visible light. Which clearly is infinitely useful and valuable.
I agree that experiences themselves are often not amenable to being communicated and, as you say, this may not necessarily be a deficiency of language so much as a result of the overwhelming complexity of emotions and other interior states. I wonder if someone who was telepathic (for argument's sake) could even have appreciated your individual perception in that situation, which as you point out is so personal. An interesting question.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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laughingdog
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said: .... ...Yes, my principal aim was to stimulate discussion, but I am always ready to learn, and both were motivations for making the thread.
Your point about language being misleading and ambiguous is certainly well-founded. You also mentioned Korzybski. All of the good things about language aside, errors and misunderstandings find their way in all the time. Robert Anton Wilson was fond of pointing this out. He was a great proponent of "E-prime," which eschews the usage of the verb 'to be.' He points out that, when we use the is of identity, we begin to confuse language with reality. I believe Alan Watts said something like, "The menu is not the meal." I wouldn't go so far as to suggest everyone study E-prime, but it's an interesting approach in avoiding the fragmentation that so often plagues our attempts to communicate with each other. Certainly, our usage of language, especially these days, is decidedly fragmentary.
I am aware of NLP but don't know much about it. It certainly seems promising.
...As “Science and Sanity” was published in 1933, by Alfred Korzybski and he is famous for saying: "The map is not the territory”, it seems Alan Watts saying: "The menu is not the meal", is derivative. ...Of course Taoism and Zen made similar points as regards the limitations of language ages ago, but they did not go into the particulars, as Korzybski attempted. ....Milton Erickson by example, used the peculiarities of language, to help people, explore the unconscious, and redevelop the entire field of hypnosis, develop brief therapy, and change how many approach therapy. But he purposely did not systematize. Bandler and John Grinder developed, much of NLP based on the work of Erickson, this is mainly what makes it interesting, ( so some of it is insightful, (as they attempted to systematize) but it is also a commercial enterprise, developed by rather arrogant guys…) so it is not sufficient to learn about Erickson just from them. To learn about Erickson from himself, and the many legitimate therapists, who have written dozens of books based on his teachings, is likely better depending on ones aims. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming says: “Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication,”….
from; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski
“Many devotees and critics of Korzybski reduced his rather complex system to a simple matter of what he said about the verb form "is" of the general verb "to be."[5] His system, however, is based primarily on such terminology as the different "orders of abstraction," and formulations such as "consciousness of abstracting." The contention that Korzybski opposed the use of the verb "to be" would be a profound exaggeration.
He thought that certain uses of the verb "to be", called the "is of identity" and the "is of predication", were faulty in structure, e.g., a statement such as, "Elizabeth is a fool" (said of a person named "Elizabeth" who has done something that we regard as foolish). In Korzybski's system, one's assessment of Elizabeth belongs to a higher order of abstraction than Elizabeth herself. Korzybski's remedy was to deny identity; in this example, to be aware continually that "Elizabeth" is not what we call her. We find Elizabeth not in the verbal domain, the world of words, but the nonverbal domain (the two, he said, amount to different orders of abstraction). This was expressed by Korzybski's most famous premise, "the map is not the territory". Note that this premise uses the phrase "is not", a form of "to be"; this and many other examples show that he did not intend to abandon "to be" as such. In fact, he said explicitly[citation needed] that there were no structural problems with the verb "to be" when used as an auxiliary verb or when used to state existence or location. It was even acceptable at times to use the faulty forms of the verb "to be," as long as one was aware of their structural limitations. “
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
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laughingdog
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DividedQuantum here's a rather "radical" view on the matter. Listened to a lot but not all. Let me know what you think of it.
Seems best to watch from the beginning to understand the foundation. Starts to tie in thought and language about 6 minutes in.
Darryl Bailey, Challenging the Fantasies Part 1 of 3
http://www.darrylbailey.net/
Edited by laughingdog (12/02/19 05:54 PM)
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


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i was thinking of where to post this: here will do, because it's on-topic:
"The American 'flaw' is minimalism. Not the art theoretic minimalism, I mean, in their semiotic and train of thought...I enjoy the fact of being completely open about my righteousness, but only to a degree therewith to perturb, disturb, or just plain ease [to contrast] people into loads and loads of information about all ways that I am right about just about everything, and make artifice out of thin air, for sake of curing boredom, all at the same time; I do not need strategy or tact at all times—like Americans [most of them] do."
[to nte. every other semiotic also has it's own flaws, and flows.]
[on Romanesque languages: they all have 'ticks' and stutters in their flows {breaks that structurate form and content thru micromovements in syntactic-semantic tokens} and where there is phonetic influences from elsewhere, there are differences there, too, like from Hebraic influences, there is more of an open-ended affair—whereas in Latinesque languages it isn't that it's "open-ended" but more that it's "double-sided" or double-ended
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redgreenvines
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like the Bat'leth?
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


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sorta, yeah [figuratively speaking].
call it 'territorialization'.
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pineninja
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I know how to speak sign language and have found perspective on spoken word due to it.
I have found the sign conversations are far more unique than spoken language.
We use a whole heap of meaningless fluff whilst getting to a point, they dont.
With each word and the construction of a sentence being concise yet artistic. The use of the body and face to express a meaning is imo more accurate of the true nuance of our relations.
We use words to agree upon that which is a sheep in (let's agree to agree) wolf clothing.
I think grunts would leave us feeling just as fulfilled conversationally if that were all we had.
When thinking about the finite your dealing with an infinite...And the opposite is true. Prove either beyond a doubt I'll be impressed if you do.
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CountHTML
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What’s fascinating about language is that it evolves on its own. The author Guy Deutscher calls it’s a reef of dead metaphors. If you have pets or siblings you may notice that you create inside jokes and jargon, or talk to the animal with a mellifluous tone, high pitches and potentially even make up words. This seems tied to nurturing instincts which run deeper than simply being human: they’re mammalian.
Language limits how we see the world and others but builds a bridge at the same time. I don’t think it will ever capture life’s grandest and most beautiful experiences. Poets will always try and come close.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


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poets are the redemption of language
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DividedQuantum
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Registered: 12/06/13
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Quote:
pineninja said: I know how to speak sign language and have found perspective on spoken word due to it.
I have found the sign conversations are far more unique than spoken language.
We use a whole heap of meaningless fluff whilst getting to a point, they dont.
With each word and the construction of a sentence being concise yet artistic. The use of the body and face to express a meaning is imo more accurate of the true nuance of our relations.
We use words to agree upon that which is a sheep in (let's agree to agree) wolf clothing.
I think grunts would leave us feeling just as fulfilled conversationally if that were all we had.
When thinking about the finite your dealing with an infinite...And the opposite is true. Prove either beyond a doubt I'll be impressed if you do.
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Very interesting pineninja. How many words would you say are in the sign vocabulary?
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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DividedQuantum
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Quote:
CountHTML said: What’s fascinating about language is that it evolves on its own. The author Guy Deutscher calls it’s a reef of dead metaphors. If you have pets or siblings you may notice that you create inside jokes and jargon, or talk to the animal with a mellifluous tone, high pitches and potentially even make up words. This seems tied to nurturing instincts which run deeper than simply being human: they’re mammalian.
Language limits how we see the world and others but builds a bridge at the same time. I don’t think it will ever capture life’s grandest and most beautiful experiences. Poets will always try and come close.
Very good points. They remind me of Burroughs' famous dictum that "Language is a virus."
I certainly believe much of human language is underlain by mammalian instincts. Indeed, much of the time we are speaking, it is out of some form of emotion. Clearly, dogs are every bit as emotional as humans, and can perceive emotional signals in their humans that the people just miss. Even though they do not understand the words, emotional language can be very meaningful for dogs and other mammals. Linguistic meanings can seemingly be variously significant.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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