[Krimel] How could anyone possibly give you an example of a thought not dictated by grammar or words? How would the thought be conveyed?
[Arlo] Did you ever have a thought that was not "in words"? Now, of course you've had "gut feelings" and "aesthetic experiences" that are pre-verbal, pre-intellectual, pre-semiotic, I grant that. But that's my point... "intellectualization" comes about as that experience is coded in words, "thought" is entirely semiotic (I'll stray from using "linguistic" for now), and in the process of moving from "pre-semiotic" to "semiotic" we force the pre-semiotic experience into the structure provided by our semiotic repertoire. This is an unavoidable and ubiquitous process of "selection" (to use Pirsig's notion). We simply cannot think outside our semiotic system (language, mostly). How could we? [Krimel] Well I will skip trying to give you words for thoughts that can't be expressed as words. I will also pass on numbers and hand signals and representational art, I will even move along past music. Sheesh! Wait, there really isn't a word for what brought that on... Why couldn't you just as easily say that semiotic structure emerges from the pre-semiotic experience? In fact I would argue that pre-semiotic experience is a vast ocean from which the semiotic is just foam on the waves. Granted there are some big waves. Much complex thought is highly dependant on language. Mathematics probably won't get very far without it and certainly didn't until a system of notation was devised. But it seems as if you are saying that only semiotic thought counts as thought therefore all thought is semiotic. Ron: That it becomes a subconscious assumption of experience itself Because we have built a substantial repertoire that ties these Assumptions to it. When you stop to think of the layer upon layer of preconceptions, That intellectualization is built on... [Krimel] Well sure we have lots of preconceptions and language shapes lots of them. But the shape is also determined by our emotional responses to the language structures and much of the meaning we get is imparted by tone of voice. Layer upon layer indeed but not all the layers are linguistic. Ron: The fact that anyone understands the MoQ at all is a miracle. [Krimel] My incarnations have only been hanging out here for a mere three years but we haven't seen anything to indicate that anyone but us understands the MoQ ;-> Ron: Sure there are non-verbal concepts, art, music, what I am stressing and I believe Arlo too, is that intellectual concepts align with semiotic rules Of comprehension. So that when we intellectualize about the origins of Objects we are really questioning how we term and understand experience Linguistically. [Krimel] As I said I would even grant that art and music are semiotic and still claim it is just as often the reverse; that concepts shape the rules and forms of language. In other words we verbalize what we intellectualize or that language is the objectification of the subjective. [Arlo] Yes, it is a two-way interaction. Language is not dead. It grows. The act of semiosis (translating the pre-intellectual into the intellectual) mutates both the pre-intellectual AND the intellectual. They way we conceive of our pre-intellectual experiences is mutated the moment we encapsulate it in words, and our intellectual system is mutated as novel pre-intellectual experiences are so encoded. But these mutations occur within a structurated trajectory. [Krimel] Among the pre-intellectual thoughts that you are excluding are some fairly complicated cognitions though. Sensation, just plain raw sensory experience, is very complex as are emotions and memories, especially special memory, cognitive maps if you will. In fact all memory is a fairly complex integration of sensory feelings that have very little to do with language. [Arlo] On top of this, language is social. As part of the social world we live in, we are constantly negotiating and affirming the semiotic structure we deploy. [Krimel] Of course, language is subjective experience objectified or more accurately rendered intersubjective. And indeed this is where the social level helps to shape our inner life. But I don't think this process is ever complete. Each of us retains within us the private sociopath. [Arlo] Did you ever have a thought that was not verbal? Describe this as best you can. How did you know what you were thinking? Now, as I said, I certainly grant there are pre-intellectual, pre-verbal experiences, call them aesthetic experiences if you wish, but these are not "thoughts". They lead to all kinds of thoughts, to be sure. [Krimel] While we may be able to put words to our emotions that does not make them primarily or essentially semiotic. Their initial expression is in fact physiological and autonomic. They are also communicated without verbal or representational mediation, universally and cross culturally. Likewise, any information about direct sensation is meaningful because of assumptions we make about shared experience but I can not verbalize my experience of the color red or the pitch of a 440 A note. That bit of new knowledge that Mary acquires when she first sees red in Frank Jackson's Mary Problem is not verbal. I can quote you verbatim passages from ZMM but I can not express to you the sensations they originally evoked in me swinging in a Mayan hammock on a screened in porch in 1975 with a pack of Marlboro Reds and a six pack of Bud at the ready. What ever images all that may evoke for you it is not what I felt. Whatever words I select to share my experience aren't pulled from sheets of paper in a mental file drawer. They arise from a lame attempt to reconstruct a long ago experience as it was experienced. The experience shapes the verbal structure I construct not the other way around. [Arlo] Also keep in mind that "verbal" is great is you are thinking in the post-modern "everything is a text", Derridan sense. But if we are using the more traditional meaning, it's best to use "semiotic", which of course points to any symbol used to convey meaning. That way people like Platt who think "2+2=4" is not "verbal" won't get confused. [Krimel] Nice try! Better luck on the umpteenth go around. BTW, the 100011000... was really binary. Translated into ASCII it read, "I am clueless." [Ham] In my ontology... [Arlo] Yeah. I don't care about your ontology. [Krimel] Note to Ham: we were at least on the same team for a while until you started that ontology gibberish. This is hard enough, save it for another time. Sure individuals have ideas individually but they are combinations and recombinations of existing ideas formed into shared linguistic structures. It is only when they are verbalized, objectified and shared that they become meaningful to others. Your original statement was much more on target, "Thoughts are intellectualized as concepts, not dictated by grammar. Putting thoughts into words to communicate the concept comes later, if at all. If we're only analyzing verbal propositions, we're not conceptualizing." Here is an example I have heard for a couple of difference sources recently. A firefighter heading a crew of fireman was fighting a blaze on an urban rooftop. Suddenly, he had a feeling he could not explain. He couldn't say why but he ordered his crew to evacuate the area. The crew couldn't figure out why he did it either. Minutes after they got away the roof caved in. It was only after hours of debriefing that the guy figured out that he felt heat in his shoes which meant there was fire beneath them. Sure, he could verbally structure his thoughts on reflection and after the fact but that is not what saved his crew. It was non-verbal non-conscious but highly complex and structured ideation that led to his actions. Or this example that is closer to the one Ham gave. It has been told and retold but this comes from Wiki: The German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé reported "...that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail (this is a common symbol in many ancient cultures known as the Ouroboros). This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds." After years of study the ideas he had in his head took the shape of a semiotic snake. This sure sounds to me like there were complex nonlinguistic ideas banging around up there looking for a way out. First they had no structure, then the structure of the Ouroboros then a scientific chemical formulation. So yes, this was the emergence of semiotic structure but it seems to follow the "structurated trajectory" suggested by Ham rather than Arlo. [Krimel] Just a final note to this long winded exchange: I am assuredly not a Freudian and Freud has only been hinted at so far but I suspect that the Joker can't stay hidden in the deck much longer. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
