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    #804999 -



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PK

All information and images posted by myself are fictional and for entertainment purposes only. I accept no responsibility for inapropriate or Illegal use of this information.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: PsilosKube]
    #805075 -

I have "thought" about this a couple times in the recent past. I was sitting in my back yard and was looking at bats flying around catching bugs (dusk time) and I thought to my self "these creatures are so amazing" and I had this happy feeling that I got a chance to watch them. When I thought how amazing the bats are, the thinking voice in my head sort of took away the experience of just being there watching and enjoying. My thoughts put a label on 'the bats' and my feeling of 'amazement' and I wondered to myself if I could just have an experience, and not try to describe it to myself. Just sort of be there not judging and measuring my senses. After all, why do I need my thoughts to tell me if a flower is beautiful or if the air smells fresh, I already know this.

Like you mentioned, we need thoughts to put together structured ideas and sentences in order to communicate with other people, but we have become so accustomed to this, that we don't turn these mental processes off and end up talking to ourselves in our mind instead of just accepting the experience without analyzation.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: PsilosKube]
    #805088 -

I've often thought the same thing, and I agree 100%. I've been doing a lot of basic meditation exercises over the past few years and I've noticed that voice in my head getting more and more silent lately. I'm beginning to act more and more off of instinct and relying less and less on thinking shit through. Everyone around me thinks I have some sort of instant gratification problem or something, but I don't see it like that at all. To me it's more about letting go of something inside of me that's been holding me back all these years and just going with the natural flow of the world around me. Which, for the most part, has lead to a much less stressful existance. On the downside though I can't help but feel like I'm somehow becomming detatched from whatever it is that makes me me. Sorta like a part of me is slowly fading away or something. I'm still not too sure if that's good or bad though. I guess I'll just have to wait things out to figure that one out.

But hey, I also think spoken language is highly inefficient...so I wouldn't put much weight into anything I say if I were you.


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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go..." T.S. Eliot

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: PsilosKube]
    #805216 -

Without syntactical language there are no concepts.

Without concepts there is no reason.

Without reason there is no conceptual thought.

Without conceptual thought we cannot communicate the way we do.

Wihout communication there is silence.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: ]
    #805278 -

Are you suggesting silence is a bad thing?


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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go..." T.S. Eliot

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: Mystical_Craven]
    #805285 -


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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: PsilosKube]
    #805350 -

This is a pretty interesting theory, but if language really is a barrier for our thought processes and mental development; then why do most anthropologists believe that the human brain really began to evolve once language finally was developed?



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Namaste.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: ] * 1
    #805351 -

Mr_Mushrooms writes:

Without syntactical language there are no concepts.

Without concepts there is no reason.

Without reason there is no conceptual thought.

Without conceptual thought we cannot communicate the way we do.

Wihout communication there is silence.

All true. To take it further though, one not only cannot communicate with others in the absence of language, one cannot even communicate with one's self; one cannot THINK.

Without syntactical language, thought (at least human thought) is impossible. It is not that we "talk to ourselves" when we think because we are capable of speech, but the other way around. We can think BECAUSE we can talk to ourselves.

Newborns and very young infants don't think in the way that you or I do. To a newborn there is no thought as such, merely a flood of perceptions. Over time the infant becomes able to isolate the chaos of perceptions into discrete entities, forming percepts. At a later stage, certain percepts are grouped into concepts. At a still later stage, groups of concepts are grouped into more complex concepts, etc.

What language does is to allow for an "economy of units", subsuming vast quantities of percepts and their interrelationships into a single concept, which is represented by a single word. A string of words can be manipulated much more rapidly and precisely than the thousand or millions of individual units the word represents can ever be.

Language is not part of the human inventory primarily to allow for communication with other humans. It is there to allow a human to THINK.

pinky


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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: chodamunky]
    #805382 -

This is such an interesting anecdote! I've often had that same feeling of awe and wonderment when experiencing something that is truly amazing in the natural world. It's one of the few times when I come close to actually thinking without words. I am just experiencing.

It's almost like a sense of ego-loss to me. I've felt it very strongly a couple times when I was isolated by myself way out in the middle of the wilderness, away from everything. I had had so much time to just think to myself because there wasn't anyone around for me to communicate with.

After a while of not speaking to anyone and being left to my own thoughts, I entered a different consciousness of sorts. I remember being so filled with awe by everything I saw that my eyes were wide with wonder, as I imagine a newborn babe's eyes must look like when gazing upon this wonderful world for the first time.

Those times that I spent without language were like living in a whole new, wonderful way.


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Namaste.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: ]
    #805387 -

A very interesting way to make a point, Mr_Mushrooms


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Namaste.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: Phred]
    #805403 -

Yes, tabula rasa.

But do you think that Quantum Mechanics is a tool of Satan?

I created a thread about it just for you.

Cheers,

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: ]
    #805439 -

Well, I gave it my best shot!

You are one crazy bastard, though, Mr_Mushrooms

Night.


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Namaste.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: PsilosKube]
    #806387 -

Good post. I have started an assault on all words in my head. Since I started meditating, I have realized just how much my mind blathers on and on. The first time I reached a meditative state I realized that my mind actually hadn't shut up AT ALL since I was a baby. I never realized how silent and interesting the world around me is. Babies don't think in words because they haven't yet become dependent on them. Humans have this insidious tendency to try and distill every concept into words. Impossible.

Your right babies do learn much faster because the sensory input they experience is not categorized or judged because they have little life experience to reference it with. IME the best way to shut your mind up is to simply observe your surroundings without judging or commenting internally. Just perceive and accept what you perceive, and halt any judgemental or analytical thoughts. Just concentrate on what you are feeling and seeing.


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Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.

~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

:heartpump:

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Post deleted by Administrator [Re: ]
    #807163 -



--------------------
PK

All information and images posted by myself are fictional and for entertainment purposes only. I accept no responsibility for inapropriate or Illegal use of this information.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: PsilosKube]
    #807520 -

I wouldn't say your thinking is flawed. You came up with a very reasonable exception to my rule(s).

However, what your dog is doing and what other animals do is perceptual abstraction as opposed to conceptual abstraction which is why I chose the term that I did.

That would take us way off topic in this thread though.

If you are really interested in the difference between the two ways of thinking start a thread about it.

Animals cannot use reason because true reason involves concept-making. Which evidences itself in propositional speech.

Cheers,

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: ]
    #807962 -

Terrence McKenna gets much mention on these boards. He was a bit of a new-agey crank but obviously a smart guy too. I would like to know what you think of his idea that human language aspires to a wordless visual language.
Or if you've had DMT yourself, or high doses of mushrooms, and experienced "thinking in objects....?"

It's not a new idea, the clich? that a picture is worth a thousand words is an old one.

Can we come up with concepts that can't be put into words? I think we can- words are our species' most useful invention but they are dangerous- they're over-simplified symbols of things most people mistake for the thing itself. The idea of NewSpeak was that, by limiting people's vocabulary, and restricting the definitions and connotations of words, some things would become impossible to say, and then think. Any language is going to do that to you, if you let it.

The problem is communicating to others those concepts we have that are bigger than the words we attach to them- and maybe we can, with art, or music, or dance... If all we had was reason and syntax we'd be lost- we need that dadaist poetry too.

I've actually tried to write in words some things that are pretty clear in my mind but refuse to be verbally explained. Things like the recurring patterns I see in nature, or the exact feelings I've had for some member of the opposite sex. I could say "it's like a fractal" or "I love her" but those would be lies. Worse, you'd read them, accept them as true, and felt I had just communicated with you.

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: Xibalba]
    #808134 -

all i will say is ah to be a kid again, to not think at all but to be and have fun.


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" liken this life illusory, for your sand castle will one day be adrift amongst the wind "



Edited by ViBrAnT (08/10/02 12:34 AM)

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: Xibalba]
    #808291 -

I've missed your posts here.

Interesting ideas. My thoughts? I don't that that thought can ever outstrip language. If you have an experience it can always be translated into words provided you and your communicant have a similar reference. The eskimos have about a dozen words for snow and the arabs have none. I understand your point but language has a distinct advantage in that it is flexible and can be added to.

I do not think McKenna is a crank by any means. I will start a thread about him to get consensus on that opinion and not derail this good thread.

Cheers,

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: ]
    #808349 -

In reply to:
I've actually tried to write in words some things that are pretty clear in my mind but refuse to be verbally explained. Things like the recurring patterns I see in nature, or the exact feelings I've had for some member of the opposite sex. I could say "it's like a fractal" or "I love her" but those would be lies. Worse, you'd read them, accept them as true, and felt I had just communicated with you.

I know exactly what you mean...some things just seem to be beyond words. It's like the geronimo thing from Conspiracy Theory (I think that was the movie) where Mel Gibson's character had to give a new meaning to the word to be able to describe his idea of absolute love. Without knowing his meaning behind it no one would ever have any clue what he was talking about...and all because he was trying to express a feeling he had that didn't have a clear cut definition. So yeah, I think there are a lot of ways that language in general simply can't describe certain things in life (unless of course you draw it out to be some 5,000 word essay to be able to get the meaning just right...but then I suppose the lenght would just take away from the message)








In reply to:
I understand your point but language has a distinct advantage in that it is flexible and can be added to.

The problem with this is that there isn't much freedom involved in a single person trying to expand on any language. Sure there are people out there that work for Dictionary companies and what not that spend their working hours trying to find new words and/or new uses for existing words, but there has to be X number of uses of such word over such and such period of time (or however the hell they figure these things out) for it to be officially recognised as a new word/definition/etc (ex: to my knowledge grok isn't recognized as a 'real' word, but it's still used from time to time) So if someone wanted to try to expand their language they'd have to put a hell of a lot of work into it, or else they'd just end up like good ol Mel with their nonscence words that mean nothing to people that don't know the definitions.




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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go..." T.S. Eliot

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Re: Is thinking inefficient? [Re: Mystical_Craven]
    #808498 -

Good points.

However;

grok Pronunciation Key (grk)
tr.v. Slang grok?ked, grok?king, groks
To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.

American Heritage Dictionary.

Grok is used enough that it is found in the dictionary.

I cannot have thoughts that I cannot describe. But I can have feelings and intuitions that are difficult to describe. Therein lies the difference.

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