Philosophy Now Forum

Can linguistics be considered technology when discoveries of ways to use it leads to increases in possibilities and efficiency?

Discuss!

The Voice of Time wrote:Can linguistics be considered technology when discoveries of ways to use it leads to increases in possibilities and efficiency?

Discuss!

I don't understand why you are asking the question. Can maths be considered technology, can geography be considered technology? What does it matter?

The Voice of Time wrote:Can linguistics be considered technology when discoveries of ways to use it leads to increases in possibilities and efficiency?

Discuss!

Smile for the camera, Voice

Language is a technology, yes, representing sophisticated abstractions of thoughts and beliefs.

tbieter wrote:

The Voice of Time wrote:Can linguistics be considered technology when discoveries of ways to use it leads to increases in possibilities and efficiency?

Discuss!

Smile for the camera, Voice

Agreed, could you look a little less unplesant, you are supposed to be attracting users to the forum, not scaring them away. Also it's a bit early for Halloween.

Language is a reflection of cognitive processes.
It is always symbolic, as it refers to a mental abstraction which has been constructed by (inter)acting with the environment.
A medium interacts with a phenomenon, which is dynamic (changing) then it interacts with the sense organ. the sense organ takes the stimulation, translates it into bio-energy code, transfers it, using the nervous system, to the center of its processing: the brain.
The brain finds patterns in the stimulations, constructs models using them and constructs an abstraction...a mental model.
This mental model is constantly compared to new incoming data.
This comparison, juxtaposition, makes the perception of change/movement possible.

A symbol, a word, is assigned to each mental model and the categories resulting from juxtapositions which lead to the perception of similarities...or patterns of predictable consistency.
Math is the most abstract form of such symbols...as it is a language which can apply to anything.

Because language is based no cognitive processes, metabolic rates, neurological systolic and diastolic rates, it reflects the logic inherit in these processes.
As such language is binary.

The most primal cognition is simple black/white dualism: good/bad.
This is why the first principles are absolutes or opposites....and this is why even math is based on this innate logic of duality: 1/0.
The mind cannot think outside of these constructs...this is why a more artistic, flexible, metaphorical, mind is essential in trying to describe a fluid world using static, binary, absolutes.

Taking language literally or thinking that the word proves or defines the phenomenon, is simplistic thinking.

Satyr wrote:Taking language literally or thinking that the word proves or defines the phenomenon, is simplistic thinking.

I agree, but then again I've always thought about thought not as binary but as dish you are making and you're repeatedly adding new pieces to, and what language simply is, when recognized, is a soup you are making, as through the process of recognizing elements you are effectively just throwing random (or bound to associations to the recognition of words) new ingredients into the soup, and my thought about it being a technology here would simply mean that both the order (syntax and so forth) imposed on what ingredients you use when and how and what type of ingredients you have at your disposal (vocabulary) make up better and better soups, depending of course on what you're hungry for (what you as a human being has a need/want for).

If you want to see linguistics used as a 'technology' then look no further than Bandler and Grinders Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Toadny wrote:

The Voice of Time wrote:Can linguistics be considered technology when discoveries of ways to use it leads to increases in possibilities and efficiency?

Discuss!

I don't understand why you are asking the question. Can maths be considered technology, can geography be considered technology? What does it matter?

changing the way we think about matters changes the way we treat them. Treat language as technology and you can start thinking about "developing" language for applications

it's all double plus good... if you don't have the language for the concept, you don't have the concept

-Imp

i think so, if technology's definition is not limited only to a certain form of material construct. i consider the members of this forum to be masters of language. i am constantly in awe of your abilities. i haven't found the mastery of language that i find here anywhere else. i think you are all very inspiring.

Impenitent wrote:it's all double plus good... if you don't have the language for the concept, you don't have the concept

-Imp

Depends Imp, do you have "concept" as the language expression of an idea or thought? If so then I'd agreed, if not, not. As I think thoughts and thinks may differ.

impressions may differ, but without language to describe the impression, it cannot be comprehended nor communicated...

-Imp

Impenitent wrote:impressions may differ, but without language to describe the impression, it cannot be comprehended nor communicated...

-Imp

It can be pointed at?