What is it for?

  • @[email protected]
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    21 year ago

    Haven’t read the work, but if I can extrapolate based on assumption, this seems like something that makes sense in an innate way.

    Colour would be the best example. And I think it’s an interesting one. The utility in recognising district colours is fairly obvious. Our conscious and memory need a way to label the experience of encountering different wavelengths of light, Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to recognise them again surely? You at least need a form of language internally to have the ability to recognise a pattern you’ve experienced. To me that speaks to the utility of internal dialogue/monologue.

    Your own experience of a specific colour can differ wildly from another person’s. However, because the wavelength is the same, you can attach a common label to it.

    The question of which originated first is interesting to me, but because of the further point, a fundamental system of attaching common labels must exist. Kids can often sort objects in categories before language skills develop.

    Seems to me that we do have a universal internal language innate to all of us and we learn a common language later. It also stands to reason that the origins of external language must be based on ancestral internal language.

    Perhaps those without verbal internal monologue/dialogue have a more persistent innate language, that is not overwritten by common external language?

    /Ramble

    • Lvxferre
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      1 year ago

      [Note: this is my personal take, not Chomsky’s]

      We can recognise colours and things even without properly labelling them. (Colour example: I have no clue on how to call the colour of my cat’s fur, but I’m fairly certain to remember thus recognise it.) However, it’s hard to handle them logically this way.

      • if you are outside and it is raining, then you get wet
      • if you get wet, you might get sick
      • so if you are outside and it is raining, you might get sick

      And at least for me this is the main role of the internal monologue. It isn’t just about repeating the state of the things, it’s about connecting pieces of info together, as if I was explaining the link to another person.

      Perhaps those without verbal internal monologue/dialogue have a more persistent innate language, that is not overwritten by common external language?

      Possible; I don’t know, really. It’s also possible that the “innate language” doesn’t really exist, only the innate ability to learn a language; but that ability is already enough to structure simple reasoning.