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From: omni@topazio.dcc.ufmg.br (Lucio de Souza Coelho)
Subject: Re: Computers--Next stage in evolution? Hmmmmmm.....
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Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 13:48:39 GMT
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In article <3ljf01$7b9@prime.mdata.fi>, jsand@mits.mdata.fi (Jan Sand) writes:
|> 
|> Repeatedly in this group there has been stated an equivalence between
|> thought and language and this seems might strange to me as the bulk of
|> my thought does not involve language, although it can frequently
|> (though not always) be translated into language for communication.
|> Language _can_ be thought, but also I think visually with shapes and
|> colors that can be manipulated in thought, and in flavors when I
|> cook which frequently cannot be translated into language at all. 
|> And there are emotional states which interact without the 
|> interference of linguistics. Sure, language can be thought, but 
|> there is a wide spectrum of other modes which are not language at 
|> all.
|> 

If you define language just as *spoken* language. If you define language as using
sensorial information to communicate, even images and flavours can be considered
language components. Deaf people use a visual language (and thought and dream
with it).

Although, you make me see that really there are some thoughts that don't use
language anyway. For example: checking graph isomorphism by applying ``morphing''
to one graph until it becomes another is thinking, but it doesn't need language.

-- 
Lucio de Souza Coelho
e-mail: omni@dcc.ufmg.br   http://dcc.ufmg.br/~omni
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
"Mais tanto faz um tanto faz no tanto faz que tanto faz tantos fazes tanto
                       fazendo"
