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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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do you think in english?
    #2910951 -

or any other established verbal language? If so, can you concieve of what your thoughts would be like without the rigid structure of language? does language confine perceptions of reality to things expressable through language? Do we build our thought structure around the needs and abilities of language, and thus constrict our possible perceptions? Are the thoughts we choose to think about limited in scope by what we explain with words?

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2910992 -

Only when I'm having a conversation with myself... :smirk:

Most of the time I think in abstract terms which I can't seem to put into verbal language...something that causes me great troubles in trying to explain myself to others! I don't see how you could think about some of the more abstracted concepts without doing away with verbal language.

I mean...how do you explain to yourself, in english, the structure of a 4-manifold?


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2911007 -

I think in pictures, or events. Objects. Concepts. Hard to explain.


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The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.  -Teilard

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2911014 -

When i've thinking about something in a literal way my thoughts are in the english language. I dont believe i could concieve of what my thoughts would be like if they werent confined to language. that would require being able to remember what my thoughts were like before i learned to speak. But so much of thought is emotion and instinct and just raw feeling that has little if any relationship to language.

I would be inclined to think that language does indeed have a profound effect on the possibilities and quality of our perception. but as well as possibly limiting it there are many things that might not be possible without it.

Interesting thought turd.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Frog]
    #2911026 -

I'm with trendal I mostly think in abstact concepts, and only use english when in conversaiton with my psyche. It can be a real bitch like he said because it's impossible to communicate that kind of thing. Which is why if I were a christian and of the pentacostal sect, I would speek in tounges all the fucking time. :grin:

I don't think very visually at all, however. For instance I couldn't imagine what my mothers face looks like right now, even though it was possible the first face not wearing a surgical mask that I ever saw..I could describe it for you, with things like she has blonde hair, she has green eyes, etc...but I couldn't paint a picture of her face in my mind if I had to. On the other side of this I have great visual recognition, which is odd to me.

I do however think in terms of sound quite often too, I can replay sounds in my head just as they were, and I have a great audio memory and recognition.


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Without love in the dream
It will never come true

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Hooty]
    #2911038 -

For instance I couldn't imagine what my mothers face looks like right now

I'm exactly the same way: I can't picture "scenes" (things I have actually seen before) or faces very well at all in my mind. At best I get a brief flash of an image that I'm quite sure is entirely distorted from what it actually looked like. On the other hand I can picture objects that I have never actually seen with a great ammount of detail in my mind.

Here's a question for you: when you think (not in english) do the thoughts just "come" to you? Very hard to explain, I'm sure you understand, but I don't actually have a sensation of "thinking" the thoughts...they come more as a series of "understandings" about the subject in question. I don't have to "construct" a thought or mental image in my head...they just seem to "be there" when I need them :smirk:


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: trendal]
    #2911051 -

yes exactly....it's rather hard to conjur up an abstract notion because of it's abstract nature. This is why I use english when conversing with myself in my mind. Because it fill the role and function of being able to connect thoughts....that wasn't worded right I'm sure but there it is again with being hard to explain my psyche. And yes a lot of the "revelations" people recieve as thoughts they've had at somepoint in life seem to have always been in my psyche as simple understandings.


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Without love in the dream
It will never come true

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Hooty]
    #2911071 -

im am much the same way as you it seems. I can recognize someone if I've only seen there face for a few seconds before but I have hard time recalling images in my head. And as far as sound I am very much the same way. i can recall and recreate sounds in my head with ease.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: trendal]
    #2911532 -

i was "thinking" about this the other day.  and then the weird thing was is that I had deja vu.  I like to use deja vu as an example because it is a thought that also has a connection, and a very vivd picture to go with it.  when the deja vu happens, with me at least, the situation appears in my mind, at near the same instance it is happening in front of me.  like you said, it's just there...

sometimes I wonder if thoughts are just our way of "tapping" into some "source" that "exists"  :grin:


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Annnnnnd I had a light saber and my friend was there and I said "you look like an indian" and he said "you look like satan" and he found a stick and a rock and he named the rock ooga booga and he named the stick Stick and we both thought that was pretty funny. We got eaten alive by mosquitos but didn't notice til the next day. I stepped on some glass while wading in the swamp and cut my foot open, didn't bother me til the next day either....yeah it was a good time, ended the night by buying some liquor for minors and drinking nips and going to he diner and eating chicken fingers, and then I went home and went to bed.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2911962 -

i used to NEVER use actual words in my head until one day a couple years back i realized it.

so then i started arguing with myself and all that comes with it

but i still use the old "feeling or thought not yet turned into words" most of the time

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2912023 -

more or less yes
but also body pressures, images, sounds, memory equally much.
each is capable of redirecting the flow.

I try to wrap my experience in words - to summarize (for others?), or weave words through the experience (in case I get an audience?), also hours later I may be trying to express something like what is written here, like I am being a smart guy or something.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2912268 -

I've found that thinking with words tends to filter your thoughts through a narrow band formed by your personality. That is, your frame of thought is narrow because you judge or categorize a thought based on your past experiences. However, without putting thoughts into words your mind will tend to be more open to simply observing and less apt to judge and categorize the thought. Thinking without words will silence your mind, therefore rasing your awareness of what's going on around you.

One side effect of silencing the "voice in your head" would be a gradual degradation of your personality, because our personality, when not in external use, is kept alive in our head with that little voice. Thinking with words uses our personality; thinking without words, just concepts, uses our essence. Our personality is formed through our interaction with the external world, while our essence is our inherent natural state of mind, resulting from genetic predisposition and what-have-you. Infants, before they learn spoken language and form a personality, think with their essence in concepts.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2912286 -

Our language plays a huge part in how we experience reality. Language is the instrument we use to explore our world, so refining the instrument will also refine what we can see and experience around us.

Check out this page. It seems extremely relevant to this topic.


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Re: do you think in english? [Re: ]
    #2912295 -

Quote:
Max Headroom said: ...
Infants, before they learn spoken language and form a personality, think with their essence in concepts.


there are very few abstract concepts before linguistics goes rampant, but there are some sensory concepts, or desires and objectives:
infants can think very well (somato-sensory taste-sound-touch-images) and they can review their sensory memories very precisely, applying ingenuity and experimentation to everything.

strangely - quite a bit of personality is there already right from the start!

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2912330 -

When I have verbal thoughts, they're in English, but I also have visual and conceptual thoughts that can't be expressed in language.


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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2912741 -

I find that when I hear English words in my head it is not thinking at all. It is just like a recording being played back..the thought has little power or creativity. Only when my thoughts are non-verbal would I classify them truly as thoughts.


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I am what Willis was talkin' bout.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: Turd]
    #2913346 -

I actually had my various "thought layers" pretty much figured out at one point, but I've forgotten most of them by now. Something about the most "literal" layer being language-oriented, e.g., thinking about how I'd express a thought. Then there were more abstract layers, such as images... and then, there was pure emotion. It's probably silly to think of thoughts as belonging to hierarchical layers, but I was young and rather eager to feel like I'd figured something out. Anyone else ever feel like there are different "levels" of thought going on in their brain?

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: metamind]
    #2913618 -

Absolutely. The first time I became aware of them was when I first started smoking herb. I was really fascinated for some time observing the different layers and how their was an almost constant recording being played beneath my everyday conscious awareness.


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I am what Willis was talkin' bout.

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Re: do you think in english? [Re: ]
    #2914924 -

Quote:
i used to NEVER use actual words in my head




I sometimes think that thought and language always go hand in hand.
You can prove this to yourself by doing a simple experiment in your head.
Try to visualize numbers, without associating words to them. Count from one to ten this way, and you will realize that you cannot visualize a 4, without thinking "four".


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Re: do you think in english? [Re: exclusive58]
    #2916327 -

exclusive58 said:
Quote:
i used to NEVER use actual words in my head




I sometimes think that thought and language always go hand in hand.
You can prove this to yourself by doing a simple experiment in your head.
Try to visualize numbers, without associating words to them. Count from one to ten this way, and you will realize that you cannot visualize a 4, without thinking "four".


I just try to picture a dot, then add another dot, then add another dot, etc.
I think in words and other sounds like music and other sounds.


--------------------
www.drugpolicyalliance.org
"Hey daddy, president Bush tried marijuana, I think I will."

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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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