Posted: Oct 14, 2016 11:34 pm
ScholasticSpastic wrote:igorfrankensteen wrote:It's rare that I don't begin with non-verbal elements of conceptualization and THEN translate them into words in order to communicate them.
While I agree that quite possibly every single thought we have begins without a linguistic analog, most of the thoughts we remember don't end that way, and the transition from pre-linguistic to linguistic thought alters the thought itself. The words we choose to frame our thoughts constrain the meanings and relationships of the thought in ways which often had not happened prior to bridging into language. Whether this is to the benefit or the detriment of our thinking is, I think, a question of context.
What are my sources? You went with anecdote, so that's where I'm pulling my stuff out of, too.
We aren't in any disagreement. My point was in response to the initial article, the title of the thread, and a later post or two which seemed to be from people who are not aware that thought is not always (and possibly never) entirely in verbal form.
I suggest that many people lose their awareness of the non-verbal aspects of their own inner selves, because they get in the habit, either of ignoring their own thoughts until the verbal translation is complete, or they only "read" the word-labels in their heads, without bothering to look at the "pictures" they are labeling.
Emotions would be a good example to consider. Anger especially, occurs, and the angry person is aware of it, long before any linguistic reference is made available. Most emotions are like that.
I suggest further, that the ever increasing size of the Human vocabulary, is a sort of proof that there are more words needed, than are available to represent all that occurs in the human mind.
And by the way, I wouldn't say that the term "anecdote" is the best one to refer to what we are suggesting. "Crude literary translation of Direct Observations " is more accurate.