The Messiah

I agree that language is a hinderance but this is actually the crux of the argument against inteligent design by a creator.

The attachment to the idea that man was created in God's image is held by billions of people and it stifles the development of the human race which is propably why many of us visit this site.

If we could eliminate the idea of an external morality, dictated by an ephemeral being, we would remove many of the obstacles to research that may deliver telepathy though technology. I'm not 100% sure about this but isn't stem cell research using cells from embryos banned in the States?

ishalon

i dont know but ppl are wasting time outlawing gentic engineering and cloning on humans

Mageth

isn't stem cell research using cells from embryos banned in the States?

Not totally banned, but limited to existing cell lines, IIRC.

Mageth

If we could eliminate the idea of an external morality, dictated by an ephemeral being, we would remove many of the obstacles to research that may deliver telepathy though technology.

I have a thought I wish to communicate to you. My brain turns those thoughts into complex lung, throat, vocal chord, mouth and tongue actions. Those thoughts go through the space separating you and I encoded in the form of waves. The waves strike your ears, and then your inner ears, which convert the encoded waves back into thoughts. Voila! I've transmitted a thought from my brain to your brain!

And guess what, technology has developed telephones and radios, through which thoughts can be transmitted around the world at the speed of light, or even into outer space!

Not to mention recording devices where my thoughts can be stored for posterity.

As has been mentioned, telepathy, like speech, would require some form of symbolic language for us to be able to communicate. That language would have to be relatively compact (to same memory space). To do so, the language would require a set of reusable, relatively simple symbols that can be combined to form complex ideas. That language would have to be capable of labeling abstractions (love, duty, honor, etc.). What do we have that does that, and that we've put thousands of years of development into? The spoken and written languages!

I think this whole "telepathic" idea raises some very strong ethical concerns. If one could send a thought to another person, how could the other person distinguish your thought from his? This smacks of mind control.

Even worse would be if the technology allowed one to read another's thoughts. I don't want the people I'm having dinner with to be able to know what I'm thinking. Further, I don't want big brother outside my house listening to my conversations with snooping devices, nor do I want him wiretapping my phone. Much less do I want big brother able to snoop on my thoughts.

Whatever medium is used (e.g. radio frequencies) would require transmitters and receivers. The signal would have to be transmitted and received in one or more protocols; at least one protocol would need to be more or less universally used. We'd need strong encryption for security and privacy. (Of course, we already have these technologies - implemented on the wired and wireless Internet, for example).

If you know much about technologies like the Internet, you know they are inherently not secure or private, in spite of our desires or efforts. Those with the skills and the desire can "hear" the thoughts you're communicating.

So I prefer to keep the relatively private and secure thought communication mechanisms we've already "invented" (I don't have to say what I think), and leave telepathy to science fiction.

thefugitivesaint

ishalon, i have a question for you...have you read any John Zerzan recently 'cause i've a distinct impression of some 'primitivist' thought being echoed here on this language thread.

Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the wide range of competing versions of "Anarchism" the name 'JOhn Zerzan' will be meaningless to you.

My friend John is considered by many who travel in these political circles as the most prominant voice of the "primitivism" strain of Anarchist thought.

Zerzan and other "primitivists" beleive that the invention of "symbolic thought" (i.e. language, written words, symbols, art, and most technology) to be a fundamentally alienating mistake developed by the human species.

They reiterate the Rousseauian notion that culture deforms human beings and that before humanity had culture they existed in a more "harmonious state" with nature (Basically, the myth of the noble savage).

Zerzan has claimed that, at one time, our species could communicate telepathically and had an overwhelmingly complex system of body language.

I am not going to go into detail here about "primitivism" 'cause it is generally beyond the point (although i have a great deal of disagreement with its premises i do not reject all of it out of hand as it does possess some very pointed and right-on attacks on the notion of "Civilization" which i feel very sympathetic to). The only reason i mention it is in relation to John Zerzan and i mention Zerzan in reference to his widely published arguments and critiques of modern civilization which remind of ishalon's post.

which brings me to:

This is an assertion that is nothing more than pure opinion. Here you would need to qualify exactly how you define "advantage" and by what measure you mark some as a "disadvantage" and as a "advantage."

Contrary to this opinion and to the opinion of people like John Zerzan i feel that lexical invention (i.e. the creation of words, spoken language and story telling, etc.) and the subsequent externalization of memory (symbolic art and technology of writing allowed humans to overcome the limitations of biological memory, distance between people and the distance of one generation from another) was a great asset in human evolutionary development.

There are obviously some advantages to being able to communicate complicated things. When the environment changes, a species that can speak, and pass on new ways of copying (the whole 'imitation factor', 'meme' thing), can adapt faster than one that can adapt only by genetic chance.

With culture and the invention of the written word we, as a species, have increased and improved memorability. Culture than becomes accumulative knowledge and information possessed by each individual can be effectively transferred to all within said individual cultures. (The better we are at seperating what we need to survive and how to fulfill these needs from what is detrimental to our existence and that which can end it, the better we are able to flourish as a species. This is made all the more easier by the existence of a social tradition which enables us to accumulate knowledge about the environment and to pass it down to the next generation so that adaptive behaviors can accumulate through time, weeding out unsuccessful strategies faster than mere biological adaptations ever could).

Information can also be transferred between cultures and new leaps in phenotypical evolution have been the world wide result.

If we had no way to accumulate learning , our intelligence would not significantly differentiate us from other animals. Our 'uniqueness' is less absolute than most people like to admit when it comes to simple biology but our useof culture, compared tp 'animal culture', amounts to a difference in kind.

Not to mention the glaring fact that our species is a very social one and the reality for any animal that lives in complex social groups is essentially a reality in which some form of communication utilizing sound would arise. It has in almost every animal on this planet that exists as complex social arrangments. The more important the adaptive problem an organism faces, the more intensly natural selection will improve and specialize the mechanism for solving it, in this way Darwinian algorithms become domain specific.

I am sure that our development of language was selected for quite readily as it has proceeded to show its worth in the process of our attempt to sustain ourselves as a species. Far from being a one of the great "Falls" utterred by "primitivists" it has been part of our "ascension."

But, this is still a matter of opinion on my part so let's not argue proclivities.

-theSaint

owleye

ishalon...

"If you could absorb thoughts instead of complicating them with language, you could learn much closer to your intellectual capacity than with language."

I took the above to strongly suggest that language is unable to express our thoughts. Indeed it is a barrier to such expression.

"Language is also a barrier between cultures: if the world didn't have hundreds of languages we would not create new and pointless fields of learning required only in order to communicate."

And i took this as strongly suggesting that language is a barrier to communication, not a means of communication (of thoughts).

However, that you have indicated how I am wrong to infer that language cannot express thoughts nor communicate them, I cannot imagine what you think a thought is that could be communicated or expressed yet impair its expression and communication. It is difficult to imagine how thoughts, behavior, and feelings have the meaning they have without the benefit of language.

Despite that I have no way of understanding what you are getting at, perhaps there is another faculty we can consider that capture thoughts without language. This is through a figurative synthesis (as opposed to a symbolic synthesis) of our thoughts in the form of creating or capturing an aesthetic experience. Notwithstanding this capability, however, I suspect this sort of communication is not what you had in mind. Indeed it is notoriously difficult to determine the meaning of an aesthetic experience, unless we attempt a critique of it using what language we have at our disposal.

owleye

The Messiah

Magadeath

I think you are right. If we swiched from our current communication straight to telepathy all your fears would be recognised. However, I don't think this is likely. Progress towards this goal would begin initially with using all the media formats available to us to express a thought. I often think a movie is an expression of a thought and with the advancements in special effects more and more facilities are available to bring to life a single thought. If this technology becomes easier to use so that our thoughts could become visualised we would increase our understanding of each other. In my experience many conflicts arise from our inability to express ourselves clearly enough. Imporoving the presentation will leave less room for doubt about a person's meaning. When I am arguing with someone I always try to find the actual substance of the disagreement and consequently most of my arguments are curtailed before any hostility arises.

The next stage would be to improve the uptake of this information. The technology would be a gradual development and at any stage I'm sure great resistance would be met if our liberties were threatened.

I often think that science fiction movies present technology in a very poor light such as Gattaca. If there were more people able to express more positive applications of genetic technology, for instance, we might have a more positive outlook and this would shape our goals. After all what each and every symbol or phase represents is shaped by public opinion.

There are of course many nightmare scenarios and unfortuately these ideas make the best box office successes. Would you pay to see a special effects orientated movie in which everyone really did live happily ever after? If we improve peoples ability to create a visual representation of a thought this would dimish the power of film makers to control what ideas are most publicly aired and we could create a very new product. People already send vast numbers of text messages which require preparation time and thought to convey the right message. It all depends on whether you think we are cursed and have fallen from the grace of God or whether you think we really are free to shape our own futures into whatever we want.

" a man reach should always exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?"

Liquidrage

I think it's an interesting concept.

Lnaguage restricts thought.
But surely we're better off with language then without.

I believe it would be a huge advantage to replace all current languages with a master language built from scratch.

Of course it is not going to happen.

braces_for_impact

Language is like any other tool that humans use. It can, when used correctly, be used to great effect, and be quite efficient. On the other hand, and far too often, it can be used unconsciously or on purpose to lead another to incorrect conclusions. Part of critical thinking is to teach how to use language effectively. This is yet another good reason I say teach this in public school, beginning at an early age. Language can certainly be ambiguous, indeed, sometimes it is intentionally used that way (a lot of advertising comes to mind). But it can also be used to create a clear model in your mind of what I'm talking about. The closer the model in your mind is, to the original model in my mind that I was trying to communicate, the more successful the communication was.

I can tell you I saw a red car yesterday, and the model in many people's minds will likely be different from the car I did indeed see yesterday. However, if I tell you I saw a cherry apple red 68 Camaro, a lot of you will have the same picture in your head as I do in mine. Even if you don't know what a cherry apple red 68 Camaro looks like, you now have the information needed to verify that the picture in your head matches mine. This is where things often go wrong. In my experience, people do not use the tools available to make sure their model matches the intent of the communicator. In the above example I mentioned, the reciever of my language decides that, despite not knowing what a cherry apple red 68 Camaro looks like, it probably looks like a Maroon 72 Mustang. This can of course "pass" in some situations, but in others these 'minor' details could become a huge barrier in our communication.

Certainly human bias and ignorance can muddle the message between the sender and receiver, but critical thinking teaches us to examine our own biases and preconceptions and to recognize them as influencing our communication. In essence, thinking about our own thinking. This is very important, and if everyone did this well, the world would be a much better place IMHO.

Perhaps to many of you I'm just rehashing the basics, but people so often take the basics for granted, and are totally unconscious of their own bias creeping in on their language use and thinking skills.

abe smith

There're enormous areas of {of course, HUMAN!) concerns which cannot exist nor be thought-about "meaningfully" w/o using language. If you'ld like to abandon thinking and ideation & return to the warm & fuzzy state of non-language, go ahead; but I think you're relinquishing nearly everything that makes us "human". Abe