Comment by HeatrayEnjoyer
1 year ago
I don't think it's that strange. My thoughts and my physical sensations are separate, imaging a different body different senses isn't that much of a stretch. I speak English but I don't think in it, thoughts don't have a language.
I think that this is false, as in intersubjectively not true for the human experience. First, because our physical state has a huge influence on our thoughts, not just their content, but direction, "color."
Secondly, and more importantly, while some thoughts may not have a language (image memories, mental maps), others certainly do, they're narrative. I only speak two languages but well enough (English is my second language) that I can think in both, and often come to a point where I have to decide which it will be for this train of thought.
Shape rotators vs wordcels distinction strikes again, I guess.
Quite a lot of people have no inner voice, others no inner imagery, others no inner unsymbolized conceptual thinking (cf all of Hurlburts research).
We all use very varied modalities of thought! It's as rich as how different we look or how different we cook.
Having no inner voice, imagery, or whatever seems to be poorer rather than richer experience to me. I don't think the existence of deaf people invalidates the importance of music to human experience.
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Nearly every post that uses exclamation marks like this is off-putting. Fake enthusiasm is creepy. There is no way you are enthusiastic about people having no inner voice.
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Do you have an inner monologue, out of curiosity? Because I absolutely think in English.
Based on the fact that people speaking different languages can lack basic abstract concepts or reason about them very differently, I think thoughts do have a language or at least often follow a language.
Here's a link to a transcript of a lecture with some very interesting examples: https://irl.umsl.edu/oer/13/
A quote as a sample: So let me tell you about some of my favorite examples. I'll start with an example from an Aboriginal community in Australia that I had the chance to work with. These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people. They live in Pormpuraaw at the very west edge of Cape York. What's cool about Kuuk Thaayorre is, in Kuuk Thaayorre, they don't use words like "left" and "right," and instead, everything is in cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. And when I say everything, I really mean everything. You would say something like, "Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg." Or, "Move your cup to the north-northeast a little bit." In fact, the way that you say "hello" in Kuuk Thaayorre is you say, "Which way are you going?" And the answer should be, "North-northeast in the far distance. How about you?"
That is a fairly contested topic, and most linguists today don’t believe that “speakers of some languages lack basic abstract concepts”.