hi, Mr. Lee. as you are, perhaps, aware, folks whose 'language' is communicated via
symbolic 'pictures' (as 'opposed' to an 'alphabet') show different post-stroke deficits
than do folks who use 'alphabets', and vice versa.
which demonstrates that 'thought' must be 'elsewhere'... not in 'language', but, at
least, a superset within the neural architecture.
my view is that 'thought' uses everything, and that 'momentary' configurations of the
whole direct relatively-small subsets of the dynamics occuring in this whole into
'consciousness'.
the observable 'pictorial'-symbols/'alphabet' differentials constitute a very-powerful
'test platform' for exploring all of this.
cheers, ken collins
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} wrote:
> >>>>> "Alan" == Alan Roth <alan42 at mindspring.com> writes:
>> Alan> I used to be a totally verbal thinker. One day (in 1983?) on
> Alan> a whim, I went around the office to 7 or 8 of my
> Alan> high-tech. co-workers and asked them "how" they think. In
> Alan> those days, that would not get you fired immediately--I
> Alan> wouldn't recommend it today. Once they understood the
> Alan> question, the answers seemed to fall about equally into two
> Alan> groups, (and, yes, I know this is a very small
> Alan> sample)--either they were verbal like me, or they thought in
> Alan> "pictures."
>> I don't think there are anyone who thinks completely verbally. If
> there is any such person, I'd be interested in investigating how he
> would play the game of tetris, and how he tells apart squares from
> circles.
>> Anyway, your observation is a pretty typical one: some people think
> more dominantly in words and some people tend to visualize concepts
> more often. I myself fall into the latter group. I find it much
> easier to memorize and make derivations by visualization: a diagram
> beats a thousand words! However, there are times that I think neither
> verbally or visually: When I'm humming a piece of music. When I
> recite the first 200 decimal places of pi, I do it musically: I rely
> on the sounds and (predominantly) tones of the Cantonese pronunciation
> of the 10 digits. So, I can't recite them if I try to do it in
> Mandarin or English.
>> Alan> This was novel to me, but I taught myself to visualize
> Alan> concepts, even abstract ones--guess what--my comprehension
> Alan> of the world increased with practice and I suspect my
> Alan> measureable IQ has risen too--(it hasn't been tested
> Alan> recently, but one knows what things are amenable to solution
> Alan> and not).
>> Knowing more methods of thinking (as well as more languages) do
> increase your ability to think. At least, you have more alternatives
> to try, so that you can hit some more effective ones by trial and
> error.
>> Alan> I learned to switch modes, depending on the type of
> Alan> problem. There is no doubt that "a picture is worth a
> Alan> thousand words." It is explication for others that is
> Alan> sometimes difficult--words are so limiting and so slow.
>> True. Same for languages: I can think in Cantonese, English,
> Mandarin, or even none of these. Being able to switch is surely an
> advantage.
>> --
> Lee Sau Dan $(0,X)wAV(B(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
> .----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
> | http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee e-mail: sdlee at csis.hku.hk |
> `----------------------------------------------------------------------------'
