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Old 05-14-2003, 05:19 PM   #1
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Default I was thinking...

Ya know how when you think, you're pretty much talking in your head, what I was wondering was how did man without a spoken or written language of any kind really think?


I dunno if this has been asked before because I don't really go to this section . Just link me to it if there's a thread.
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Old 05-14-2003, 06:36 PM   #2
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Probably thought in pictures. Animated pictures.
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Old 05-14-2003, 11:50 PM   #3
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Quote:
I was thinking...
You really shouldn't do too much of that. It's unhealthy.
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Old 05-15-2003, 10:56 AM   #4
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... or what does my cat think? is it all "meow meow meow purrrrrrrrrr meow"?

I think theres a lot more to our thoughts than the ones that are like speaking in your head, it's just that those are the ones we recognize as "concious".

My guess would be that pre-language humans probably starting making up their own representations for things in their heads, which later became his concious thought and eventually a language. ? Like maybe it started that the human would only think of a rock through a mental picture, but then attached something shorter and easier to mean "rock".
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Old 05-15-2003, 11:28 AM   #5
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I agree with monkey mind. We are able to learn and use language because our brains are already "wired" to produce symbolic representations of things. But this ability is not exclusively a human one. Rats, for example, are able to find, through trial and error, the correct path through a maze. And it is difficult to imagine how they can do that without the ability to form representations of things in their brains.
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Old 05-15-2003, 02:51 PM   #6
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Yeah, monkey mind makes sense, I dunno why I didn't think of that.
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Old 05-15-2003, 02:55 PM   #7
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Well, if he was like man today, I know what he thought about most of the time.
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Old 05-15-2003, 03:28 PM   #8
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This is what I thought of when I read your first post:

"...man, like every living creature thinks continually but does not know it; thinking that has become concious is only the smallest part of it, let us say the most superficial part, the worst part - for only this concious thinking takes place in words, that is to say communication-signs, by which the origin of conciousness reveals itself." - Nietzsche

and (I don't have a quote) a saying of Buddha that the mind is the ocean, and thoughts are only ripples on the surface.
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