Jump to content

Language, art, and the origins of creativity


Recommended Posts

<p><br />In our species something happened 60, 70, 80 thousand years ago or so that allowed us to represent ourselves and our self as an object. Decorative and representational art wasn't in the fossil record left by our pre-homo sapiens ancestors. Instead in that prior record were millions of years of tools dropped or discarded to yet be only replaced by a tool like it, never replaced in those millions of years by a tool that was decorated by our pre Homo sapiens ancestors. Then along came Homo sapiens and a well noted change in the artifacts coming from archeological digs. What we see emerge then is what we can still observe today. Paul Sellers writes of Spoons of Purpose and Character Done, in part <a href="https://paulsellers.com/2013/12/spoons-purpose-character-done/">https://paulsellers.com/2013/12/spoons-purpose-character-done/</a> :</p>

<blockquote>

<p><br />Where I live is a country regionally known for a long history of making love spoons. My tour of St Fagan’s museum last year revealed the oldest known love spoon, one made in the late 1600’s. A love spoon was and perhaps in some cases still made and given to a beloved as a token of a man’s love for his betrothed and was hand carved with knives and chisels into the most ornate of shapes and sizes. Of course it need not be gender specific any more. It wasn’t only Wales that held to the tradition, Germany and Scandinavian countries shared the same tradition. The spoons originated as practical and useable spoons, but they became more ornate and more decorative through the centuries. Today, they are produced mostly by commercial CNC routers and look just like that. No feeling in the racks of gift shops I mean. They are tourist items and mostly all stained the same and seem somehow now to be so characterless.</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br />Practical, usable tool is a spoon, ornate and decoratively produced by a species that can portray itself as a self that loves. We portray ourselves within the broader context of being aware of being a self that loves, that broader context being a story or play in which the individual self is aware of being an actor in a play, the lovers decorating themselves as actors in a play of betrothal and marriage. Even the useful domestic object, the spoon, commerates with decoration the feelings attendant in the play. It probably goes without saying that mountain gorillas don't dress up when they decide to marry. Dress up is a story and a story is an artifact of a self that is aware that it is self-aware, aware that it dresses up. If we find an instance of another animal that dresses up for marriage then we may have found another instance in the natural world of a being that is aware that it is self-aware, is aware of its sentience, not merely sentient as is a dog sentient.<br>

<br />Awareness of self as a ‘self-reflecting self’ came into being just a blink ago and can be seen as a marker in our species of a quantum leap in language. Today even cognitive science doesn't know what language is just as we can't define art because art too is a language of a self-reflecting self. As a self-reflecting self we are almost hopelessly unaware of the mental processes within us that are involved in the self-expressions of a self-reflecting self. What is known is that we are aware of being self-aware.</p>

<p>My dog is self-aware, but he isn't aware that he is self-aware and so I can claim to be one-up on him because at least I know I am just a man whilst he does not know that he is just a dog and no attempt to push into his language that concept will take hold in him or his species. Likewise, no abundance of time and resources encouraged our non-homo sapiens ancestors to do more with spare time than to sleep and play. They just didn't have a self-aware self within them to make more of play, someting any visit to a zoo holding our more distant cousins should confirm. What we don't know is why the change, we only know that there was a change where representational art and tool decoration appeared. Other animals may be intelligent, but they don't know they are an object called 'intelligent animal', not that their language couldn't accommodate as an object a self-referencing object called self-aware object. A dog can play with an object as if it was something else, play with a ball as if it was a prey animal. A crow can play. What we don't see accommodated in crow play are objects that represent the crow as a crow player. Crow play doesn't include a representation of crow watching a crow play. Instead the crow is always in the play playing. Not represented in its play is 'crow the observer' observing himself as 'crow the player'. If a crow knew it was just another self-aware object I don't see why crow language with its ready-made placeholders couldn't accommodate yet another object. Another way to say it is that crows will educate their young by showing them what to do to succeed as a crow. In that sense, a crow is acting in a sort of play, and animals will play with their children to teach lessons. So far we haven't observed a crow make crow puppets and perform a play with the crow puppets before an assembly of juvenile crows, that is, we haven't observed evidence that a crow is aware that it is self-aware and able to objectify itself in a complete representation of itself as Crow. As far as we can tell, crow play doesn't open with the equivalent of Melville's Moby Dick "Call me Ishmael." As far as we know. <br>

<br />[skip this on Theory of Mind:]<br>

One test for self-awareness could infer self-awareness from the existence in a species of Theory of Mind (ToM). You can't parsimoniously explain how one self can attribute mental states [beliefs, intents, etc.] to another and not be aware that one also has a mental state one's self. However self-awareness is one property, being aware of being self-aware is another property altogether. You can be aware of having a mental state, of having or being in the process of forming intent; but it is another thing to then self-represent as a collection of self-representations. You can be aware of acting from a picture of things that include you. It is another thing to be aware that you are a collection of pictures of things that represent you and contribute to forming intent. In one case you are aware of the picture only insofar as your intent is part of the picture. It is another thing altogether to form a picture of one's self as a self that watches itself form intent and watches as that intent creates change in a picture.<br>

<br />For example, a dog can form intent but isn't aware of itself as just another intent forming object. If you observed instances in which a dog was playing with toy dogs as representations of itself then you would have arguably found an instance of self-aware self-awareness in a dog, a dog that can contemplate itself in its whole and its parts in a representation of its relation to externalities. I haven't seen a dog playing with little dog toys as puppets, arranging those dog toys in a self-referencing drama to act out the pieces of its mind with dog toy actors as surrogates for objects within its own mental space. I haven't seen that, but I have seen it in a documentary. That documentary could have demonstrated a capacity for and use of self-reflection by a dog; but it would be hard to know if the dog in that documentary actually knew it was acting 'itself' out as opposed to just acting out without being aware that it was acting out. Even if it was so aware of being aware it doesn't mean such is habitual or well rooted. What we can be sure of is that dog's possess self-awareness because they do use ToM.<br>

<br />For example, my dog can trick me. He can attribute to me the mental state of "He's going to say No." He can then create in me a "Yes" mental state by misleading me about his intentions. For example, he misleads me into unleashing him by signaling to me that he wants off the leash to get water. I comply and at once his true intent is realized when he runs to find the known prey animal I leashed him up to drag him 200 yards to get away from. So he gets me to think one thing so that he can do 'not what I thought he was going to do', but instead do what I specifically didn't want him to do. If by his behavior he can cast toward me one impression of his intentions while concealing another, then he is aware that I have a mental state to fool. He can feign one thing in order to conceal his true intent. He can know his intent and he can then feign a different intent in order to create a misimpression in me. By so doing, he can get what he really wants. Note that my dog thought of the trick himself, probably by intuition instead of reason. Intuition presents consciousness with a completed picture without much, if any, conscious work. Once that picture is delivered, the work is in its testing and my dog can assess the merit of a picture by using his feet, by painting by number to see if the idea works. By the use of his feet my dog shows that he is aware of my mental state as an operant. Necessarily my dog is then aware of his own mental state as an operant, his feet the effect of known mental states as causes, feet being one of the body languages of my dog that point to his intent. What my dog isn't able to do is to create in himself a mental representation of himself as aware of himself as an aware operant. There is no evidence that a dog asks himself why he would go to such lengths to obtain a prey animal. He is self-aware, but he isn't aware that he is self-aware as far as I can demonstrate. What I can demonstrate is that what he can do is to play a trick on me, can author and act out a play quite literally, in order to create for himself the future he intends, create a ‘play’ in which there demonstrably is a 'he' there.<br>

<br />[End Skip This]<br>

<br />What other animals seem to lack is the ability to see themselves as seeing themselves. Consequently they can note their mental state, act on it, but they cannot reflect about their mental state as anything other than a given that kicks them in the flank of awareness, prompting them to take over and play out with intention what ultimately is an action prompted by the strings of a puppeteer, the puppeteer resolving to either food or reproduction in some degree or in some combination of both in whatever degree. For a coyote, food is territory, territory is food, food and territory are family and it is difficult to resolve one thing into another, to separate love from food, all mixed in coyote life. Their language is body language and that is the language that signals their intentions, signals the operation of their minds. I don't see anything special about human language other than that human language includes as an object a word that functions like noun and means: a thing aware that is aware. A noun is just a structural placeholder for an object and once a new object is recognized, the object becomes like any other thing that acts. Rodent nouns and verbs, if actually demonstrated to exist in studies that claim to have demonstrated them, can readily accommodate and be modified for a new object, particularly if one subscribes to Chomsky's view that language relies on pre-existing structure.<br>

<br />Art then would arise from an accommodation made in language for a self-referential self. We don't know what language is. We don't know what art is. It is fair to say that in language and in art, what was our generation's freshness becomes the next generation's stodgy and old. But because of language we, unlike animals, can re-generate ourselves if we care to. Art as language changes as does slang in the hands of a 13 year old. We don't know what language is, we also don't know what art is because it is a derivative of language. We use language to communicate; but communication with others is not the only use of, maybe not even the principal reason for, language. It is with language that we talk to our self, and most of what we say never gets repeated.</p>

<p>Francesca Woodman took pictures of herself about things that mostly she probably just talked to herself about. She chose to communicate some of those things in pictures. It would be kind of nice if she was still around to talk about those things more fully.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 74
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

<p>Let's say a dog is self-aware. What's the difference then between 'self-awareness' and 'self-aware self-awareness'?</p>

<p>I think that difference is best illustrated using photography.<br>

<br />The difference is that a self-aware dog isn't so self-aware that it can assign a name to its 'self-aware self'. Once named, a name for that self-awareness that is a 'me' becomes an object of thought just like any other object is the object of thought. It's not that a sense of a 'me' doesn't exist in a dog; a 'me' exists for a dog. What I'm suggesting is a me can exists in a dog. The difference from our sense of a me and a dog sense of a me is that we can name 'me' and use thought, use awareness to reflect on that 'me'. A name would allow a sense of 'me' to be an object of thought and as a named object a 'me' then becomes available to thought, available to the 'me' for consideration as an object of directed thought as a 'me'. We can think about 'our self'. Name it and think away about it. However just because a dog doesn't have a sense of 'self as a named object' in its language doesn't mean it doesn't have a sense of self. A dog just doesn't have a name for its own sense of self and can't then think about something that doesn't have a mirror existence of itself in the form of a name as an object of thought.</p>

<p>Substitute pre-homo sapiens for dog in the above and the question becomes, did our pre-homo sapiens ancestors give themselves names? The question isn't did our pre-human homo sapiens ancestors have language. Why wouldn't they have those structures of language, a thing, an action, some descriptors and some directionality for motion. Take away the presumption that they had language and you have to concoct a very complicated tale of how they could get to point A to point B without some kind of language that both communicated to others in a social species and oriented an individual member species to its own base order needs in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm considering the idea that our pre-homo sapiens ancestors had language and that what they didn't have, what we do have in our language, is a word for a 'me', a word that allowed self-reflection. Because the capacity for self-reflection seems unique in our species, whereas a sense of a me seems present in other species, but not present so much as to have become an object of thought as any other object that has a name is as an object of thought. A behavioral marker for the existence of a named sense of self would be cave paintings, decorated practical objects and puppet shows of some kind.<br>

<br />What does all this have to do with photography?<br>

<br />It's such a visually self-reflecting medium. It's our antecedents visually presented. It's visualization that's gone through the grist mill that is our mind to then be re-visualized. To some extent, language is an operator on imagery. Imagery is the subject of photography, a visual expression of language. What's language? We scarcely know anything about what language is except that it has an accommodator for a me and for an us. I think that all has to do with photography because I conceptualize the pre-human or some non-human minds thusly: they have a mental picture of themselves in the world, but they can't then take a mental picture of 'that picture of themselves in the world'. They can't take a mental picture of that mental picture and name it as 'a picture of themselves pictured in the world'. Since they can't take a mental picture of a mental picture there's no picture of a picture to name in language, no object for language to operate on. It is that particular operation of language we term self-reflection, not to be confused with self-awareness. Self-awareness is the first picture, a picture of that picture is self-reflection as I see it.</p>

<p>What is also interesting is that reiteration adds nothing new. A picture of a 'picture that pictures' 'themselves' in the world and then that picture of a picture of a picture repeated forever is an infinite regression adds no new information. However a picture of a picture of myself in the world is new information about 'a picture of myself in the world.' Animals don't have that picture of a picture to think about. It isn't in their language, it's uniquely in ours, uniquely unless we can find some crows giving a puppet show, or gain an understanding of crow language such that we know that they do self-reflect, have a picture of themselves that pictures themselves.<br>

<br />Another way to express the difference between self-awareness and self-aware self awareness is to consider the statue The Thinker by Rodin. The Thinker is a statue and we view it. We see it frozen in time thinking. It just thinks. When we contemplate the statue itself as a work of art, we then contemplate thinking as something we do and can contemplate about. Rodin gives us The Thinker to contemplate ourself the thinker. Something happened to us, in us, as a species and I would try to argue that what happened was that language was made to accommodate a brand new, never before existent object as an object. And that language has been operating on that newly beheld object for only about 60, 70, 80 or so thousand years.</p>

<p> </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Which comes back to how we might behold an image of a Francesca Woodman. As an object to be further manipulated by endless naming? Isn't it a world of objectifications in language, of naming essences as things, that she had trouble with and killed her self in part because of? And can we defend her against those who would name her as we defend ourselves against those who would name us? Or would we deny her until the cock crowed thrice.</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>So one could consider the idea that language is an invention of the human mind, language just another tool consciously constructed for a purpose. I instead consider the idea that there is a pre-existing structure that is language and that structure is nature's invention. The all too human confusion about the origin of language comes from the fact that it takes an exercise of will to populate those structures. We taught the kid the words, hey, that's language, look what I made! Sorry. That structure is the structure of a processing engine that processes OBJECTS and ACTIONS, placeholders for OBJECTS and ACTIONS both elements of a system ready and waiting to process once objects and actions are put in their places. A parrot can process objects and actions with words, can do more than just 'parrot' the words. A parrot can process those words meaningfully, volitionally. The interesting question is how that processing occurs in a parrot without a parrot having words? What populates those placeholders before a word is given to a parrot?</p>

<p>A parrot using our words is a translator. It's translating from it's language elements to ours. We give the parrot words, but the language structure was already there and in use. It's actually when a parrot plays around with words that you get a good glimpse of nature's language engine at work. My guess is that a parrot is translating from imagery into our words where images work as well as words, maybe better. On the other hand a parrot just sees itself, it doesn't see itself as a parrot. The idea of parrot, the picture of parrot, I would suggest, hasn't entered the parrot world as an object that then get's assigned to an OBJECT placeholder. If it had, you would then see art from a parrot. That's because I hold that art is a behavioral marker for the existence in a species of the capacity to conceive of self as an object. That object then gets picked up and played with by language. A parrot's play is limited by its imagination and it is in a parrot's imagination that a parrot hasn't yet come to exits. The same can be said of our pre-homo sapiens ancestors because they didn't do art and wouldn't be able to appreciate art either. A dog has a self, a dog is its self, is aware of itself. What it isn't aware of is that it is a SELF as an object that can as an object be placed among all the other objects in language's structure. Therefore a dog can't think about 'itself', it just is itself and knows that and only that.</p>

<p>So I don't think we can speak to the origins of art, the origins of creativity without first coming to an understanding of language as inherited structures and what is addressable by a species' language and what is not addressable in a species' language. The structure of language exists in an animal, it's just language can't address an empty placeholder that's just there waiting for self as an object to be conceived of and then dropped into that place. We didn't invent language, but we are confined to language's structures. That's the matrix, and it is biological.</p>

<p> </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<ol>

<li>Awareness</li>

<li>Self-awareness</li>

<li>Self aware self-awareness.</li>

</ol>

<p>There's nothing after that, no information is given by the infinite regression: self aware self aware self awareness. It's meaningless to stack awareness mirrors to infinity, nothing useful comes of it.</p>

<p>That says something useful about the nature of consciousness. There is an ordering and there are limits. We as intact humans have each attained number 3. If you can read this you're intact.</p>

<p>A person I know had a dream. In the dream he arrived at his house. It had been destroyed, there was nothing but a ruin left. That was the dream. In a few weeks that person had a break with reality, was out of his mind, without reason as we would say. His inner mental state, his abode, was hardly recognizable, so damaged. Really sad when someone goes off their meds. Anyway, the dream turned out to be correct. The house, his mental state, did collapse as the dream suggested that it might. Knowing someone was going off their meds: we could predict the result. Yet so too did the dream make a prediction.</p>

<p>What in the dreamer knew of that impending psychological collapse? Is nature intelligent enough to know? My main point though is that a dream is imagery. And it isn't imaginary. As imagery a dream contains a whole lot of information. In a nutshell, dream language is imagery and imagery is the language of objective psyche. Objective psyche is a phenomenon. So is language as an engine, an objective, a phenomenon. About language and objective psyche we know barely anything.</p>

<p> </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Another way to approach 1. awareness; 2. self-awareness; and 3. self aware self-awareness is to re-term 1. as awareness that isn't aware it is aware. Truly, these terms are in search of better terms.</p>

<p>So as to 1., to flush out how it is that awareness can be unaware of itself, I suggest an example from our shared experience of driving. I assume the following experience is generally shared.</p>

<p>I'm driving along and paying attention to the road, my destination, my progress and the twists and turns that are markers of my progress. I find that it's boring, my mind wanders, I become absorbed in thought and notice that I'm at my destination. I note that I have no recollection of all the directional decisions that I indeed made to arrive at my destination, yet at the same time I'm aware that it was an awareness that guided that process without my being aware of it much, and at times, not at all aware of it. That's a sort of subject-less awareness, though without a subject, still operating as an awareness unaware of itself.</p>

<p>2. self-awareness would be a rudimentary self-awareness, a sense of self merely. I consider such to be the type of 'self' that can't examine, question, or contemplate itself. Now the term self-aware to us implies as fundamental a kind of self-awareness that is substantive enough to conduct a self-examination. But bears, cats, dogs, etc. don't seem to self-examine. Yet they do seem self-aware. I explain that comparative deficit by asserting that a cat hasn't become to itself just another object in its vocabulary of 'nouns'. But just because they can't examine themselves doesn't mean they aren't what we would call rudimentarily aware that they exist. They are aware enough to form intent, they just don't know by self-examination that forming intent is what they do. They just form intent, but they form intent just like they 'just eat', 'just sleep', etc. <br>

<br />Note that I don't regard words as necessary for a language engine to operate, instead think words became the stand-ins for what had been a collection of metal images of some kind, those images serving to fill a language structure's placeholders for nouns, verbs, and simple descriptors. It may be that words over time substituted for more primordial images, the original occupants of the language engine's placeholders for nouns, verbs, descriptors. You can picture a thing in your private mental space and act with that image as if it were a noun; but for our ancestor species some kind of vocalization seems necessary in order to more efficiently communicate the content of that visual mental space, the object of its attention, to other species members. Hence, much of the etymology of words ends in a visual and in a world of visuals that operate as nouns and verbs, body language can also efficiently convey information between species members, much of it intuitively, again in pictures fundamentally. It looks like that process would have started about 100,000 years ago since that's about the time frame during which our throat and mouth physiology changed from more ape like to more human like.</p>

<p><br />To continue, I consider that its useful to posit a distinction between self-awareness and self aware self awareness and to note as significant that without an object for an inherited language engine to process, that object doesn't exist as an object of inquiry the way other 'named' objects do. An unnnamed or un-pictured object can't be processed by the language engine. I think that to be a fairly simple explanation for why dogs, for example, don't feel guilt. It's that there's no noun in dog language that would allow them to self-examine, no concept of self to name and then pass on to the language engine for further processing. A dog doesn't feel guilt because there isn't a picture for it of a 'there' there to feel guilty about. You can make a dog look like it feels guilty. But the feeling of guilt is known to not be present in a dog. I propose that a dog can't feel guilt because a dog doesn't have the elements within its dog language that would allow it to reproach itself. It doesn't have a concept of itself to assign a 'noun' to for the purpose of beating itself up. That literally can't compute for a dog and that's a description also of the mental state I propose that we would also find more or less in our pre-homo sapiens acestry at some point in time, that point, not known.<br>

<br />I also think that the distinction I make and its interconnection with an inherited language struture also present in other species ties us back to, roots us firmly in the natural world, not just in body, but also in so called 'mind'. In effect, that distinction made in the context of the natural operation of an inherited language engine puts sense of self and self awareness of self firmly in biology as opposed to the metaphysical. Cave paintings, in the transition from 'visuals' as nouns and verbs accompanied by grunts, groans and pointing to assigning sounds to objects may help explain cave painting as also a form of word kindergarten for a species newly aware of itself as such and equipped with a better vocalization structure than had it's predecessor species. With self-representation available to language, the language engine took off in the kind of creative play we see when a parrot sets about the task of translating its visual language operators into our words.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Sure, and I'm not familiar with Advaita teaching. I do get what you mean when you say that there can be no I that exists separate from itself in order for it to be. I think it is difficult to define awareness, self-awareness, consciousness. Each will always be more than their definitions, and definitions can only point to shared experiences of what we think those terms mean.</p>

<p>I do think that a science of language and a science of the mind relate to the practice of creativity, art, photography, etc.. On this forum years ago I wondered why it was that participants couldn't just look in a dictionary for a definition of the term 'art' and then discuss the subject using that definition. Naturally I was incorrect at that time to think that art had been or could even ever be defined. There were many interesting discussions here on that and other topics over the years. It occurred to me recently that our words and art may both come from something we call language and that we don't know what language is. Some suspect language is inherited structure in the mind or brain. Some think otherwise. I favor the former view.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>I did a search for the word "self" in this thread and it appears 108 times. Here's where we may have to look for the difficulty. Though it is dense, I will recommend a fascinating book that really helped deepen my understanding of the problem of identity and self, called <em>Reasons and Persons</em>, by Derek Parfit. Though it's long, it's very well written and easy to understand if you go at a pretty slow pace. It incorporates a lot of Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Ethics to suggest that the "self" and personal identity don't matter nearly as much as we think they do, that what matters is continuity of experience. With thought experiment after thought experiment, he questions the whole notion of self and whether one's identity is really what matters. My own feeling is that photography has as much to do with dialogue as with monologue, and not just self-dialogue or self-awareness. The very nature of printing one's photos (or displaying them on the screen) is an act of bringing something into the world, not turning inward.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"</em><em>My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness... [However] When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others."</em> —Parfit</p>

</blockquote>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>From Buddhist teachings:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Just as when we say 'this same fire has been seen consuming that thing has reached this object,' the fire is not the same, but overlooking this difference we indirectly call fire the continuity of its moments."</p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>A sentient being does exist, you think, O Mara?<br>

You are misled by a false conception.<br>

This bundle of elements is void of Self,<br>

In it there is no sentient being.<br>

Just a set of wooden parts,<br>

Receives the name of carriage,<br>

So de we give to elements,<br>

The name of fancied being.</p>

</blockquote>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Fred I'm behind you one post.</p>

<p>Fred - "My own feeling is that photography has as much to do with dialogue as with monologue, and not just self-dialogue or self-awareness."</p>

<p>True. And I notice that characterization also characterizes language. Language also has as much to do with dialogue as with self-dialogue; by substitution, art has as much to do with dialogue as with self-dialog; and photography has as much to do with dialogue as with self-dialogue. Those two aspects of art are also two aspects of language.</p>

<p><br />My mentioning of that similarity between art/language doesn't intend to analogize art to language, nor is it intended to reduce art to language. I just wonder how much can come of equating art to language. We already know of expressions like 'the language of art', etc. We know of and express that equivalence informally, or commonly. I don't know if that equivalence goes anywhere. But I can't know if it goes anywhere without playing around with the idea.</p>

<p><br />Literature is comprised of words, a product of language. Photography is comprised of images, a product of language. I'm regarding language as an engine that processes words, may also processes images. The result, the poem or photograph, is in part self-dialog and in part dialog. Verbal expression and visual expression are expressions. Language creates expresses by a process, is an engine if you will, with expressions. Two of those expressions are self-dialog and dialog. So far I think I've only arrived at tautology; except in so doing I'm trying to establish that language is a process in the mind that isn't very well understood. We can say that the processor is the brain, but what part of the brain? So far I don't think I've arrived anywhere other than to have made an observation.</p>

<p><br />We don't particularly notice language, we just use it. Is it fair to say that language has a form and a content? The content is available to us, we readily use that content. How much is it that we form thoughts and how much is it that thoughts come to us, are formed in us? When we form thoughts it takes effort. When thoughts come to us there doesn't seem to be any of our own effort involved. What's thinking then? It just seems puzzling to me that we don't really know. So in a lecture Chomsky notes that in his view language is an inherent structure. Its operations we can observe as products of language without much awareness of the mental processes involved in making those products. As an inherent structure, language is inherited. That structure is populated as we, the organism, matures. Chomsky gives a child's abilility to learn a new noun in one trial as suggesting that there's a language engine there, a structre, in the mind or brain that is ready and waiting for that word. There are other things that suggest language as inherited structure. If I remember correctly he mentions that here: <a href="

and here is a transcript: <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwkIlurJlCI-aHNqb2Zjb3FwcVE/edit?pli=1">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwkIlurJlCI-aHNqb2Zjb3FwcVE/edit?pli=1</a><br /> <br />So I accept for discussions sake that language is an engine with expressions. Those expressions can be verbal, visual, odors perhaps. Speculatively I say that as an engine, language is probably pretty flexible as to the sensory type that language's object and action placeholders accept and process. As inherited structure, language is a function within an organism and I think that a structural view of language says as much. Also, some humans report to 'think' in images, etc. Consider that we inherit the faculty for language. What's inhereited then is an engine with placeholders for objects and actions at a minimum. When in our lineage of ancestor organisms did the language faculty evolve?<br /> <br />Informally speaking, we humans express ideas with language, and other things. So I ask, are ideas the principal product of a language structure in an organism? Assuming so, what does an organism do with an 'idea'? Fundamentally, with an idea, an organism acts. Thoughts predict action. So far it starts to look like an idea is a product of the faculty for language. Language is an idea producer, and an idea in fundamental form is a recipie for an action to be taken by an organism. That isn't to say that all an organism's actions, or any of an organism's actions, require an idea in order to occur. Neither do we require an idea as involved in the formation of a chemical bond, we don't see a molecule as having subjectivity.<br /> <br />In a simple organism, object and action are food and eat, respectively. We may discard the notion of 'willing' action by a simple organism and make useful predictions. A simple organism's actions can be predicted without having to allow for 'noise' introduced by a mindful subject present in the organism. We don't need to allow for a mindful subject when predicting a physical reflex action. An act predicated upon the existence of an idea isn't an immediate act in the way a physical reflex action is. With a physical reflex there is no procrastination, no unexplained interval of time between a stimulus and a response. An idea isn't invovled in a physical reflex action. Acting on an idea takes more time than a reflex action. That additional time would involve the operation of the theorized language faculty, an idea engine, a generator of ideas. We think of ideas as comprised of words. Fundamentally, ideas may not need to be words first. Words may get translated by the language engine into images, get processed, processed images returned which get associated to words semi-consciously. At that point we receive an idea in words. I rarely get an idea in words. Most ideas that I get are in the form of an impression that isn't really a visual, but dimly is a foggy visual that then can be translated into words by 'me'.<br /> <br />Hence the parrot that translates it's images into our words, the parrot able to think on its own without having a word language to use in its thinking. Clearly a parrot gets ideas and acts on ideas. But for a parrot's lack of words, and for lack of the concept of parrot in its own parrot language, a parrot can not come up with a declaration like, paraphrased: Have I not from your eyes that gentleness, does my lack of words that gentleness from you conceal?</p>

<p>So I think it is pretty simple to go on to say that language delivers ideas to a subject who then acts. The subject is then a director, has willfulness, awareness of the idea and of the potential for action. A time interval is introduced by the additional processing time it takes to create, deliver, consider and then act or not act on the idea. The question then is, what is the director in my dog? He is an aware actor. He just doesn't have a 'word' for himself for the language processor to operate on. My dog doesn't have the 'word' because he doesn't have the concept, or picture of himself as an objective. I think we need a term for that state of consciousness, acting awareness that lacks only an awareness of itself as "an actor'. As an 'actor' a dog can't of itself conceive. If it could, the language engine is there to accommodate it as a noun. But without that noun, my dog as his own "subject to contemplation" doesn't exist as an object in language and the language engine can't then operate on it.</p>

<p>I think that is all useful because with that concept of 'dog mind as unable to contemplate itself', is there nevertheless present in a dog a faculty that can contemplate the dog and communicate to him?</p>

<p>My answer is yes there is a faculty within a dog's mind that can contemplate the dog and communicate to the dog mind. The proof is that dogs dream. When we dream images are presented to in a scene that includes us visually, and in that dream the dreamer brings along it's awareness intact. Since my dog dreams and has awareness, my dog's biology creates in his dreams a mental image of 'him the dog' and then sets 'him the dog' into a dreamscape in which the dog with his awareness can then play it all out as an actor. Since dreams contain meaning in their imagery, so to would the imagery a dog confronts in its dream contain meaning. In his dreams my dog is either in pursuit, or pursing. My dog's vocalizations while dreaming clue me into his progress in pursuit of in running away from something. Running after or away from something. But note, the dream can objectify the dog and set him on a dream stage. In that sense, the dream may be conscious of the dog as 'dog', a character, while in his waking state a dog isn't able to operate on itself as an object the way a dream can present to a dog's dream view a dog as an object, an actor, on a dream stage. Maybe the dreamscape lacks a visual representation of the dog. I rather think that is the case. For humans, we are visible in the dream. For a dog there is no visual of himself in the dream and he takes the dream as if it were real and reacts. I believe that in the dream there are lessons there for the dog. Our dreams then would in that view go once step further and include in the dreamscape a visual of the actor, the actor aware that it is aware and that awareness then represented in the dream.</p>

<p>Paraphrasing again, Have I not from your eyes that gentleness, does my lack of visual representation in my own dreams that gentleness from you conceal?</p>

<p> </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>So instead of removing self from the problem of consciousness, I'm leaving it right there. We can't remove our self from our dreamscapes, why try then when awake? Self for us is an intractable.</p>

<p>So from a natural history perspective, here's an idea I'm now considering. Let's say that I am right to propose that a dog dream doesn't include in its dreamscape a visual representation of 'the dog', of the dog that's having the dream. Let's say that a dog reacts to a dream scape as the dream plays in its head, but that dreamscape doesn't include a visual representation of himself the dog. <em>Our</em> dreams include us as an actor right there in the dreamscape. We can see ourselves visually represented in the dream, as an actor right there in the dream; and we can respond as an observer of a dream that includes us visually in the situations into which we, that actor in the dream, are placed by the dream engine. For a dog, a dream could well be a a dream of a visual situation to which the dog responds while dreaming while at the same time that dreamscape doesn't have a view of 'the dog' visually represented in a dream. Consequently the dog just reacts to the elements in the dreamscape, doesn't respond to how it is to be a dog in a dream; let's say. We can respond to how it is to be a human in a dream because we are pictured in our dreams. Since a dog isn't aware of itself as aware of itself, there's nothing for the dream engine to picture. Just like in a dog's internal language there isn't anything there called dog.</p>

<p>Cognitive science may progress to the point where our dream images can be captured and played on a video screen. What may be waiting for us as a surprise in the future is that when we then image a dog's dream, we may well find that the dog isn't pictured in the dream. At that point the subject of consciousness, awareness, self-awareness, self aware self-awareness may become an object that "serious" science can address. And at that point we may have also other investigational tools that a "serious" science prefers to use in it's investigations.</p>

<p>In effect, if nature from all the operations of an objective psyche 'imagined' itself into existence, then our creativity is borrowing from Imagination's food bank, from creative imagination that is nature imagining itself into existence because that is just the nature of life. In our dreamscapes 70,80, 100 thousand years ago there appeared in human dreams the dreamer herself. Not there in a dog dream the dog, not in our species' ancestors either at least up until some point.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<blockquote>

<p>Those Buddhist teachings sound nominalist, no essences, just things and collections of things, no essence of things. No self.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm already a skeptic about essences. For me the no self idea is more like no packaging.<br>

______________________________________________</p>

<p>Photography can be a fracturing of the "flow" of time, in a similar way that our experiences are the elements we attribute to our selves.</p>

<p>I often think of photographing as the framing of a littler picture within a bigger one. The framed image, perhaps the more elemental, can imply the bigger picture or context. Or, the framed image (what the camera frames to become the photo) can suggest something very different from the bigger picture. Or it can do both, imply and deny the original context.</p>

<p>This could be like the "self/elemental experience" relationship in that the bigger picture from which the smaller picture is framed may, like the self, also not have limits and be a "fanciful being." We frame part of the street and leave out a lot of the periphery. How far does that periphery extend? To the end of the street? To the end of our entire visual field? Doesn't the bigger picture include knowledge that we have that may not be evident inside the frame and may not even be visual?</p>

<p>I think it's much fun switching back and forth between little and big picture, noticing how the little picture, the one I see through the lens, in some cases, can become a big picture and create a context all its own.</p>

<p>In a sense, a photo is an acknowledgment of this experience right here and now as a link in a never-ending chain.<br>

<br>

</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Fred "In a sense, a photo is an acknowledgment of this experience right here and now as a link in a never-ending chain."</p>

<p>Certainly, and to me that sounds like playfulness.</p>

<p>Phil "Perception without conceptualization is a way of 'pure seeing' without the barrier of thought and language."</p>

<p>Got it. The thing is, there is still a seeing subject, a self then that is seeing without interference from thought and perhaps without interference from language. (Perhaps because what we see is delivered by a processor, and we don't know if the language engine is part of that mechanism, how much language visuals are part of our seeing. Our seeing is interpreted seeing, and we don't know the extent to which a creative language element contributes to our seeing.) In any case, such would still be an experience of a subject. What happens when the subject then wants to examine that experience? Here comes language again, and words. I think language is part of our biology, can be suppressed, but you're going to have to order lunch from somewhere and you're right back in it at that point. Which may be me missing your point entirely.</p>

<p>So one way I try and get a sense of self without thought or language is this sort of exercise, and I don't exercise often. But it would go like this. Hello. Who are you? I'm a woodworker. No, not what you do, who are you? Well I'm Chuck. That's your name. Who is Chuck? Well I'm a guy. Right, you're a guy, but who are you? Who is it that perceives you as a guy? At some point in that questioning we're kind of stuck in a limbo that contains just the puzzled person with thought failing to come up with an answer and not sure what the question was. No language, no thought, just a blank sense of a self being asked a question. What is that blank sense of self that knows a question has been asked and has been blanked of everything except a sense of a self?</p>

<p>That's sort of how it goes. If it is the case that a more developed meditative practice can produce that sort of mental state and prolong it then that's an accomplishment I haven't achieved. But what I'm saying is that the self, the subject, is still there, the light is on, and someone is home. It may be that the someone is more essentially there in that home. But they are still there. And I'm also recognizing that that way of seeing, which I imagine would take some effort to develop, is possible to share with photographs and that's a good thing. So if I understand you correctly I appreciate your having share it.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>A thought without self? That may be the case with a single celled organism. It may be the case with a spider, where a thought, it's web, is expressed through the organism without an organism having a sense of self or needing a sense of self to produce evidence of a thought that is the web. In fact, a computer is thought without a self. It's thought is a program, a theory, which a computer runs without being aware of itself running a program. We load a computer and some day we may discover in epigenetics that thoughts as a mental program are to some extent just a replication of inherited instructions. The matrix is our biology, our language engine is arguably a biological structure, our self-awareness riding on all those mechanisms without itself necessarily being a mechanism.</p>

<p>So I'm not sure what you're saying?</p>

<p> </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>"But there's no self that is seeing."</p>

<p>That's where it get's difficult for me. There's no self to recognize the seeing? That is true of a camera lens, even of the camera's image capture technology. But for humans, No self there, just seeing, nothing to sense that it's seeing. The tree can fall in the forest and make no sound when no one is there. If someone is there to see it, someone, a self, is there sensing what is seen. If the self could see without being there, how could it remember it was there to see pure seeing? That's where it gets difficult for me. </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<blockquote>

<p>The tree can fall in the forest and make no sound when no one is there. If someone is there to see it, someone, a self, is there sensing what is seen.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Interestingly enough, we often don't trust the selves who claim to have heard the tree fall. But if we have a picture of it, that seems often to provide the proof we need!<br>

________________________________________________________<br>

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j4acs0HYBE">IS THERE A SELF?</a></p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Hume using the theory of impressions and finding that theory can't account for personal identity. Impressionistic theory the idea that we don't have direct access to the external world, we only have access to our mental representations of it.</p>

<p>Hume asks from what impression could the idea be derived that we feel the existence of the self and its continuance of existence. From what set of impressions does the idea derive that we feel the existence of the self and its continuance of existence, Hume asks. So if the idea of continuing self derives from a set of impressions, then the set of impressions must be continuing in order for an idea of a continuing self to be supported. The idea of self can't be supported by a set of continuing impressions because, Hume observes, there aren't any continuing sets of impressions to support the idea of a continuing self.</p>

<p>And Hume rightly observes there aren't continuing sets of impressions. Yet our sense of self is a sense of a continuing identity. How to account for that? We don't have direct access to the external world, have only indirect access through our mental representations of it. However we do have direct access to our sense of self, that collector of mental representations called 'me'. I can poll myself periodically to see if I am still me regardless of my collection of mental impressions of the external world. I am still me among that collection. I go to sleep where I can't ask myself that question. I wake up and my collection of mental impressions tells me I'm still in the world of mental impressions of the external world thank goodness. I ask myself if it is still me and I answer that it is still me. My sense of personal identity stays intact.</p>

<p>So what I'm getting at is that in order to account for our sense of continuance, it may be necessary to accept consciousness as a fundamental.</p>

<p>As to essence. I'm not sure that essence is a meaningful concept. Let's say I ask my self the question "Who am I?" Personally I answer that question with another "Who's asking?" And so it goes. Maybe we can someday take an image of that internal/infernal dialog. </p>

<p> </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...