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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: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 19:48:47 GMT
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In article <3jmi3b$ljc@agate.berkeley.edu>, <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> writes:
|> 
|> Using language *is* thought.  When I speak, I think.  Certainly,
|> not all thought is speech, but one can think by speaking, be
|> it aloud or silently to oneself.  I can to some extent think
|> without making statements, but at some point I lose track of
|> my own thoughts if I don't express them.  Having expressed
|> them, I am able to develop them.  But to develop one's thoughts
|> is to *think*.  Therefore using language is a part of some
|> thinking.  Language use is not an *influence* on thinking, but
|> a *part* of it.
|> 

If a child borns and grows without contact with creatures able to use some
language (humans and a lot of other animals), then do this child become a
thoughtless adult?

(I don't know HOW could this terrible experiment be made. Using dumb nurse
robots?)

|> Now, we have the habit of imagining some "thought" which exists
|> before it is expressed, and which could be expressed in one
|> language or in another.  But that is an abstraction.  When we
|> learn our language, we gain, along with a capacity to speak,
|> a particular, very powerful, tool for thinking.  But we only
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|> learn a particular language.  We think using that language.
|>


It is a interesting point of view. Maybe language is the operating system of our
brains (or its instruction set :-)! IMHO, the child described above become a
thougtless adult.

--
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"
