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Book 1, What if? 1.0. Sometimes it is hard to understand things. And this is mostly my own mind's fault. Perhaps the first thing to influence my judgement is my cultural background. But then again, I could have no judgement and no understanding outside of it. A man born who does not learn a language can not even think. ome might argue that such a man does in fact think but what he does not is develop consciuosness. !his would only be true if by language you meant tongue, indeed I find it hard to believe that any man could consciously think without using a learned tongue. 1.1. But there is a language necessary for any type of thinking to occur, it is language in a meaning close to that of programming language in machines. "ith this in mind I will begin with the observations I made on animals and ask you to have patience with my assumptions until later when they will become meaningful. #ust take it as a stoy until the end and try to dismiss my observations only after having read the whole te$t. 1.2. !he founding %uestion behind all this was, &"hat is the difference between me and an animal'&. And the things I discovered my mind had in common with that of the animal were %uite interesting. 1.3. "I think. Does the animal think?" !hinking is a process in the brain. An animal may act out of instinct, as may a man, but if a plant is easily predictable, all plants acting very much the same in similar instances, the action of the animal is much harder to predict. Also, say a chicken discovers food, it will not absorb it from where it is, it will eat it( the chicken sees the food, moves toward the food, tastes it( this re%uires more than instinct, an inner chemical e$citation, it re%uires understanding the world, it re%uires watching for dangers, overcoming obstacles. Instinct may drive the animal towards specific stimuli but, unlike the plant, the animal has to think. 1.4. "How do I think?" "hen I think of a ord I think of all the meanings that word has in my mind. )or instance, mother, the dictionary definition, where and when I learned the word, my own mother, mother in literature, metaphors, etc. but when I say that word to someone, I know they will not understand it fully as I do neither can I know what the word fully means to them. But I will get to that later. )or now, let us take another e$ample, when I see or feel or hear an object, say a pen, I have the same kind of understanding of it as I had of the word mother, e!er"thing it means to me, and I know that if I show it to someone they will not understand it as I have. I am also a are that all m" senses sho me the same thing when I see and feel the pen and so is the animal, a dog sees and smells the owner and knows there is onl" one #erson*or object+. o my mind uses such objects to think, I shall call them ob$ects of language, similar to the way we say a programming code is written in language, but only as an e$ample. !here is more to say about machines but not at this point. !he same applies to situations, when I encounter a situation it means everything it means to me, the same as the word mother or the pen, with the addition of the outcome wich I also include in the meaning of the situation. I am similar to the animal, when a cat sees a mouse, what does it mean for the cat' !he mouse is food and it is somewhere the first time the cat sees the mouse. !he cat will chase it and eat it. !he ne$t time, the cat knows more about the mouse, the mouse also means the last encounter with a mouse. But then I use the mouse as bait and I will try to catch the cat when it comes close to the mouse. 1.%. ,ow the meaning of the mouse changes, it is no longer safe to eat, when the cat sees the mouse it must choose whether to chase the mouse or to stay away. !he cat will first hesitate and then develop a pattern of action. !he object mouse is the same for the cat but the meaning changed. !he fact that the object is the same allows the cat to have memor", all the objects of language
together form the memory of the individual. "hen the meaning of an object changes, that is a thought. Any new information *even remembering a memory creates something in memory, another memory+ that adds meaning to an object of language *through thought+ changes the meaning of the object of language for the human the same way it does for the cat. !he mind tries to remove any conflict from the inside of the object of language, tries to make it unchanging, tries to make it a memor" and memories are permanent *they do not change by themselves+. Although the mere fact of thinking at the memory changes the object of language that the mind tried to convert into a larger memory. !his attempt to remove conflict drives the mind to add to an object of language with the form of an action its predicted or forseeable outcome. !his nature of the mind creates the premises for every particular &conflict from the real human world&. 1.&. !he &conflict in the real world& will allways occur at a time when the object of language in the mind of the individual ac%uires meaning from the outside, specifically from another individual or from a colective *society+. )or instance- &I have a pen. It is mine.& !he fact that it is mine is one of the meanings the pen has for me. If someone asks it or takes it from me I will be in conflict *with myself or with the others+ because my mind will be in conflict. .n the other hand, if I had earlier thought what I will do if someone asked me for the pen or if I believed there was a rule I had to follow, there would be no more conflict *at least in the form of conflict with the others( and presuming in an ideal way that I just apply the rule without thinking wether I should+. /orals are the way society attempted to solve the problem of such conflicts of language. .r any rule for that matter, law, religion, even the spoken tongue. 0.0. 'he language from the #re!ious section must corectly be called (nternal )anguage. !he objects of internal language e$ist, as said, only for myself in the full a" and for no one else. But, like the animals, humans are biologically conditioned to interact with other humans *they are also conditioned to survive and it is important but not right now+. I will recall the chicken, this time a young rooster. It wants to mate( this makes it assign to all the females in the group the meaning of his to mate with. But then the alfa rooster jumps him and beats him bloody until he learns to stay away from the females. !he object of internal language &female& will have for all the birds in the group as one of the meanings &alfa rooster's to mate with& and, as long as all the birds keep to that, there will be no conflict and they will live as a peaceful group. .f course, the young rooster is programmed to mate so he will still have this conflict of language inside when the chemicals kick back in. till, as long as his fear is great enough he will not make this a conflict of language in the group. *And that conflict of internal language is in the form of a thought to wich the answers, to comply or to take action, are the end. After the thought the answer toghether with the premises of the conflict will be one memory.+ 2.1. !he animals are conditioned to live toghether *as earlier said+ so they develop the feeling that their internal language is*and should be+ also the internal language of any other member of the group. "hen a newborn animal attempts to eat or to avoid what the elder ones do, this is the reason. .r when chicken offsprings are raised by a turkey hen they believe they are turkeys themselves. 1uman learning *for young children+ is e$actly like this, learning through imitation with the presumption the one I am learning from has the same language a I. !he belief that an individual has my language makes me become close to he2she, become friends. *It could also be seen as an effect of the natural condition to live with your kind.+ 2.2. !he assumption that there is one language within the individual and in the group is permanent in the case of animals and conflicts within the kind tend to be rare enough in order to preserve largely the same way of life in the same outside conditions throghout the world and ages. *!he lack of permanent conflict of language is the main difference between animals and humans. !his I shall call *oubt, with the meaning of doubt such as the one that triggers the +ogito of 3escartes' /editations. I shall say that 4ogito, or even 5eason, are to much and incorrect to describe precisely what makes me human and I shall e$plain. But for now it is enough to say that the 4ogito of 3escartes, as he describes it, correctly means +onsciousness while 5eason has many incoherent meanings and will be e$plained later as well.+
2.3.