I think humans may choose to live more like animals. My dogs don't reason with words. They move with sense and intuition. Humans get the gift of language. With great power, comes great responsibility. It seems it often confuses us. People often use words to trick others. Like the media does.
My dogs don't reason with words
All living beings with a brain do process information through finite abstractions. Your dog perfectly identifies "hunger", "human", "owner", "own name", "sadness", "food", "walking", "stick", "water", "happiness", etc. Those are all abstractions which the dog connects either to a feeling, a specific bark pattern, or a sound (like when you call him by his name). We only got more sophisticated at barking, but the logic remains the same for the brain can not operate otherwise but through connecting a thing to a label.
reply
Yes. And experiencing things for what they are, is more important to me than the word we give it. The essence. Dogs identify and catalog thousands of smells. No names needed. Do words make that process better?
reply
is more important to me than the word we give it
Everything haves its place. Eating is more important than worrying about the word "eating" in itself. Yet to survive within a society you better know the word "eating".
Dogs identify and catalog thousands of smells. No names needed. Do words make that process better?
The label exists, though, for it's needed, as you said, to identify and catalog. The specific wording of the label becomes important when the information as to be transmitted. Like when a dog identifies you by your smell, and emits a barking that's specific to you, either to call you, or to announce your presence to others.
reply
So again. It's how we connect. I guess babies would probably Just think in pictures? My thoughts feel like words often.
reply
Your thoughts are patterns that have many labels and grades associated. When you see a person you not only think "Steve", you connect all of the metadata you have associated to that recognized pattern, like "brother", "47", "relevant person", etc
reply
I can also feel things in my body that can't be described. Like our "gut" feelings. Without any words, we communicate a lot. With out any previous interactions, or stored meta data, I will decide how I feel about them. Much more than their name And age, etc.
reply
It all becomes clear metadata the moment you turn the gut feeling into a concrete action/decision. If the feeling do not leads to a decision, you just feel "weird", which simply means you are not being able to detect any pattern, which can make you feel uneasy, yet undefined. Now, if your gut feeling makes you take a decision like dropping out from a situation, the word is full clear "something is wrong, I have to bail out -> concrete action -> abort and leave".
reply
I enjoy flow state which doesn't work that way.
As someone who lost a lot of their memory in a moment, I think there is more to it than that. Our whole body stores information. Not just the brain.
Exactly, it's all about the connections. It's all we can do, we can't escape that for it's the structure of the brain itself: "input A causes relay B to turn on". That's it.
reply
It's all energy moving around.
reply
Exactly. And it's pretty much actual wats, no need for spiritualism for that mechanism to operate.
reply
Almost nothing do we understand with science. We just think we do. It's just another art. Which is great. But it's still temporary illusion. For me, science is not the highest truth. Just my take.