The Kekulé Problem (2017)
nautil.us
nautil.us
Perhaps because the unconscious doesn't understand language? Perhaps it just accesses data structures compiled down from language?
Humans are animals. Humans minds that operate on the conscious and unconscious levels. Both are involved in reasoning and thinking in the human mind. Language is clearly used at the conscious level; it is not so clearly used by the unconscious component of the mind. Non-human animals (animals) have minds similar to humans. These minds have the ability to at least work unconsciously. We do not see human-like language (I’m well read on all cases of talking apes and birds) in the animal kingdom. We do see at least unconscious reasoning in the animals, more and more often surpassing our expectations on the complexity of animal behavior. I hypothesize that the conscious mind is the instantiation of language, and our experience of being conscious is somehow an emergent property of this instantiation of language, and our ability to project information into the future.
Something like our mind’s realization in the value of reasoning about information, rather than acting on filtered sense input alone. “I think, therefor I am.” Think=think consciously.
This assumes the possibility of a gradient of consciousness. And I don’t claim that this is an explanation for consciousness, but rather narrowing the story for where it might exist or emerge.
”Edmund Leach once suggested that what unites all human beings is not that they are in possession of an immortal soul, but they are capable of imagining that they are. Perhaps (aside from the part about ‘immortality’) these are not such altogether different things.“
Huh? This is either plainly false or using some unconventional jargon that's useless for an outside reader.
As far as the claims, humans keep redefining what "language" means to only include their own species. See also: intelligence. And "appearing only once" is similarly redefined as needed.
If they make their own tautologies because they're defining terms, they might be spinning beautiful poetry, but not meaningful truth.
I doubt the poetry, too, but that's a longer conversation.
"The simple understanding that one thing can be another thing is at the root of all things of our doing. From using colored pebbles for the trading of goats to art and language and on to using symbolic marks to represent pieces of the world too small to see."
I infer from this that a more sophisticated (or, in your words, specialized) definition of language that is of interest to McCarthy includes abstraction. I can talk about fire without arousing fear in a fellow human because they understand I'm not announcing the immediate presence of fire, I'm talking about it abstractly. As far as I know, no non-human animals are known to have the ability.