Babylon' Idiot

[nerdimus_prime]

While reading World War Z, I was doing some Wiki-hopping after looking up some things from the book, and landed on the entry for something that's interested me off and on for years: language isolates. I really wish I had more of a facility for languages, because I find linguistics fascinating: how languages form, migrate, evolve, group into

Comments

[thatouguy]

At least once those terms are defined, they are semi-tangible or you can at least maybe understand how they are operationalized in speech/language etc.

In my theory class, we've been going over theories of language and communication and some of the stuff is so out there. Like in "subjective referential" the mind and consciousness creates the meaning for and object/experience. That's not a chair b/c you have experienced it being a chair; instead, it's a chair because the conscious recognizes it as a chair and gives meaning to that name and physicality. I still don't really even understand it and I probably left some of it out. Jung would sort of be a subjective referentialist, the belief in the collective thought and how we all know everything we will ever know, and that we are not learning or being taught but rather we are just being reminded we already know it.

[nerdimus_prime]

*head explodes again*

[thatouguy]

*repeat head explosion every monday night 6 p.m. - 9 p.m., plus readings*

[bobzilla773]

That sounds like one of the theories of cognitive/knowledge structures. One being network based and the other based in prototypes which are then used as checks against perceptual information for goodness of fit.

[thatouguy]

That would be the ones. I"m much more of an objective referentialist. I see the chair, I experience the chair, I make a reference point and associations for other chair like objects. Makes SO much more sense!

[bobzilla773]

I see it more that I build a prototype/concept in my head of the form and/or function of what a chair is. I then match what I see against that internal concept for goodness of fit. So much easier than the phenomenological experiencing crap :)

[thatouguy]

Yes, but how did you first learn what a chair was?

[bobzilla773]

When I was told that I had correctly named one. Likely through a combination of social reinforcements at a critical period in neuronal speech & language development. It is then refined through further feedback and testing of the prototype for goodness of fit.

I know the concept "chair" as more a combination of verbal rules with some visual information. At least visually, the perception of the image is a series of shapes built around contrast, but it is my internal interpretive construction that allows it to be perceived as a chair by me.

[roadster_guy]

Ooooooh, lookit the big brain on Kev!

All that knowledge + $3.50 will get you a latte at Starbucks.

A grande, not even a venti.

Trust me on that one.

/has $120,000 worth of lernin' up in his head.

[thatouguy]

Maybe I can afford the venti if I go for the PhD! lol

[gearjock]

A) I need a doob
B) I have needed a doob for a long time
C) My lover would have a seizure ever hearing me talk about a doob
d) If I could have a doob, I wouldn't waste it, I would smoke it and talk with you about things deeper than I understand...

Just sayin....