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Does Knowledge require Language?

i think its dangerous to rely on language to gain information rather than learning natural cause and effects in nature.

launguage can lie much easier.
 
Y'all should look up the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. I think it's mostly been discredited, but is something to think about.

It's pretty controversial, but although I didn't agree with it earlier in my study of linguistics, I started to agree with a couple points (basically that the categories within a language may have some influence on thought), although I'm by no means a diehard linguistic relativity supporter.

While Saussure is fascinating in making this observation; it's the thinkers that come after Saussure that offer more. While your description of semiotics is basically correct, you've left out the most important part - that of the referent: A sign is made up of a signifier and a signified, but the signified "refers" to a "thing" or a referent. This is important when it comes to homonyms such as bank (I'm going to the bank to withdraw some cash) and bank (let's go sit on that grassy bank over there), as it draws attention away from single words, and places the focus upon groups of words or sign system.

According to Saussure (and other structuralists) signs are "arbitrary", as in a signified and a signifier will always appear together, and in this way meaning is made - a structuralist would say that words (signs) always refer to a "thing", and so there is a body of meaning that is structured or organised into being through language.

The post-structuralists, like Derrida, play on this notion of sign systems in order to demonstrate that the sign is anything but arbitrary due to the manner in which it has to differ from other signs so that we can deduce a meaning (like my bank example above). So in this respect, words only "mean" what they mean depending on what they are not (the other words/signs they appear with in any system/linguistic structure).

I did leave out the referent part, and "bank" seems to be the most pointed-out example, and I'm actually not very familiar with post-structuralism as I am structuralism, but I think it's time to do some reading. (And I'm shocked I even did that good of a job when I reread it clearly a while later, the philosophy behind semantics is interesting but not so much my personal interest at all.)

i think its dangerous to rely on language to gain information rather than learning natural cause and effects in nature.

launguage can lie much easier.

I don't think you and the OP have the same definition of knowledge going on here :\
 
oops i definitely did not read the op's thread and instead jumped to the last posts

i do think that people learn through symbols.
i guess you could say that everyone has their own unique language
but i dont think that a standardized language is required to learn.
 
I've always been strongly convinced of the notion that language is simply a tool used where necessary to communicate knowledge/information, after the concept to be communicated has been logically constructed and then linguistically encrypted.

Most of my thought appears to occur without being associated with words or phrases or language in any sense (unless it's subconscious -- but subconscious linguistic phenomena doesn't make much sense to me).

Anyone ever had the experience of "groping for words"? "Tip of the tongue" syndrome? Simple demonstration of the independence of concept, and language, IMO.
 
Is the surface antigen of a virus a sort of knowledge - insofar as it becomes relevant (at all) only when it comes in contact with a white blood cell. Did the white blood cell "know" the virus? Or is this just the way things are?

The way I view it, there is definitely a semiotic process here, but it is so only by the fact that we linguistic creatures interpret it. There is a process of signification - it led to action (the white blood cell destroying the bacterium)... but was there any knowledge involved, besides ours?

I strongly believe that a white blood cell is every bit as "aware" of an antigen as a human being is aware of its surroundings. As nearly as I can tell, the mechanics of the two phenomena are identical. The antibody itself would be the analogy to the human "concept" or "idea" -- a living thing's reaction to a characteristic of, or object within, its immediate environment, for the purpose of self-preservation.

One could even imagine every white blood cell to possess its own unique albeit simple form of consciousness, if this dynamic is posed as a basis for consciousness itself.
 
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^ these things go hand in hand,
in almost everything around us...

not wrapping what we think we know around the presence of such thoughts, is what keeps me moving forward, inward, and upwards.
Ya know, I don't mean to sound 'obnoxious', but... why not try wrapping what you think you know around the presence of such thoughts?

After all, we all "think we know" what we "think we know", when we think we know it.

Thinking isn't knowing.

I think ;).
I think this is really a stretch, and not a point I can agree on. If one hands over the mind and its activities to (eg - an exclusively neuroscientific approach), whilst in addition reducing all knowledge to the mind - hardly controversial then one of either two conclusions emerge: That knowledge requires language; or language requires knowledge. I don't believe that neuroscientists offer a naturalistic, objective 'language of the brain' of any depth.
Ahhh... peeps "miss it" again and again, due to the persistent notion of volition/doership.

*Persistent*, man... one could shake one's head and smile... ;).

Do you really think anyone is able to 'hand over the mind' or 'surrender'?

That there is any choice involved whatsoever in the death of the chooser-illusion?

The 'self' (illusion of control/power, you might say) 'exists' because one is utterly powerless to do anything about it. It isn't there to do anything about itself.

Just ever-deepening clarity, widening and broadening into the wanton destruction and demolishment of futile, meaningless illusions.

Revealing the fact that the search for meaning created the whole meaningless mess in the first place.

Peace...
 
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Do you really think anyone is able to 'hand over the mind' or 'surrender'?

The term 'handing over' in this context, is not to literally 'hand over' but was a perhaps an overly-fancy way of simply saying: If we look solely at , for example, neuroscience's perspective (interchangeable in this context with philosophy of the mind, Buddhist concepts of the mind etc), ie - take any arbitrary theory on the mind and the further conditions mentioned, and none give
naturalistic, objective 'language of the brain' of any depth.

That was my point, perhaps poorly structured.

Hope that makes sense.

FIAT LUX
 
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