This seems to me to be asking a version of the question whether one can ever think something for which one does not already have a word--i.e., whether one's language determines and limits one's possible thoughts.
I think that's wrong. A simple argument would be that if it were true then we would never have thought anything since we evolved from single cell organisms that had no language. I tend to agree with Nick that most if not all of our new thoughts are combinations and mutations of existing thoughts. But that seems to be good enough. Of course single celled organisms didn't have thoughts either. But how thought started is another question. I don't think it started with abstract concepts. How did we (animals) first manage to convert perceptions into concepts that could be stored and manipulated? To tell that story clearly would be a very nice bit of science. But it certainly happened. -- Russ A On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:49 PM, Nicholas Thompson < [email protected]> wrote: > All, > > Over the years I can remember many animated conversations among > psychologists about whether it is possible to see something new, since there > is no way for the cognitive machinery to recognize something for which it > does not already have a template. Often cited in those discussions was the > reported experience of people who had congenital cateracts removed and could > not, for a time, see anything. > > the answer to this cocktail party conundrum has always seemed to me an > emphatic YES and NO. No we cannot see anything entirely new, however > nothing that we encounter is ever entirely new. so, for instance, let it be > the case that you had never heard of unicorns, never seen an illustration of > a unicorn, etc, and a unicorn were to trot into the St. Johns Cafe > tomorrow. Would you see it? Well, if you knew about horses and narwhales, > I would say yes, because while you would not immediately see a unicorn you > would see a horse with a narwale tusk in the middle of its forehead. > > Now, it seems to me that Crutchfield's essay (in the Emergence book, for > those of you who have it) is asking the scientific version of that > question. > Do we actually ever discover anything new. His explicit answer, in the > last paragraph of the essay, would seem to be "yes", but the argument seems > in many places to lead in the oppsite direction. Discovery, he seems to > argue, consists of shifting from one form of computation to another where > forms of computation are defined by a short list of machine-types. > > Has anybody out there read the article and have an opinion on this matter? > > > Popper's falsificationism would seem to imply that scientists never > DISCOVER anything new; they IMAGINE new things, and then, having imagined > them, find them. Bold Conjectures, he called it. Seems to go along with > Kubie's idea of the preconscious as a place where pieces of experience get > scrambled into new combinations. > > Nick > > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, > Clark University ([email protected]) > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/> > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
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