virus: Re: Open Thinking

Corey A. Cook (COOKCORE@ESUVM.EMPORIA.EDU)
Tue, 01 Apr 97 18:23:50 CT


David R. wrote:
>The language that the mind uses to conceive ideas does not consist of
>spoken words, but pictures.

Are you sure? I'm not saying you're wrong, but it seems to me that the
language of the mind (or as I call it, mindspeak) isn't a picture, but
rather a concept.

>These pictures are translated into words when put
>into a format that other people can understand, although the words can only
>approximate, not describe exactly, the meaning of the pictures. Often, to

Some words fit into the concept easily, other's don't.
The more complex the concept, the less likely that there is a word that
neatly fits it.

>Often, to
>describe such a picture, words are used metaphorically--their meanings are
>different than their dictionary definition, which is fine, since meanings of
>words can change according to their context.

But it can be _so_ confusing!

>The definitions of the words
>don't really matter, as all that is important is describing the idea so
>so others can grasp it.

This is really cool! Just the other day I was thinking about this very
subject. I came to the conclusion that words and speech patterns can shape
the way the mind thinks, but the mind doesn't really think in a verbal
sence. Mindspeak is a language, just like other languages. When you try
to speak, you have to translate from mindspeak to whatever the other language
is. This doesn't mean that mindspeak is seperate from speech, as can be seen
when a learning a new language. English and Arabic are two distinct
languages, and if I were to learn Arabic, the process of doing so would
change my form of mindspeak. I would begin to learn new words, so that
I could explain my concepts better. It really is amazing that we both had
the relatively same idea at relatively the same time. It must have been some
thing that someone on the list said last week. I'm making this assumption
based on the assumption that this list is probably the only thing we have in
common. What were you thinking about when you wrote this post? Let's see
if we can track this little meme down. It should be interesting.

Corey A. Cook
cookcore@esuvm.emporia.edu

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* The One Universal Truth: *
* Sometimes, you're wrong. *
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