A question on human mind, words and thinking

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Hermes

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I am a hearing person. I am asking myself a question but I can not answer it myself. I am realizing a deaf person can know it as a fact while I can only speculate about it . I would like to ask it to you. But please allow me to make an introduction to my question. It will help me to communicate my question better. Please note that I am not asking it for the sake of intellectual discussion. It has a real meaning for me.

Through out the history many teachings talked about silencing the mind but mind never stoped talking . Hearing people think using words. We hear the words in our heads while thinking on something. Even if we dont think on anyting particular, our mind still throws different thoughts our way. Using words, we create concepts and we also build all our relationship with world around it. We dont know any other way, we start hearing those words when we were born, we learn and think with them, we depend on them and we dont know how to live without them.

I do know, today many deaf babies and kids start getting education and threapy at an early ages. But if you were born profoundly deaf and gained your self consciousness before getting any threapy, using any hearing aids, and getting any education, you may know.

Do you remember how you were thinking without words? You were a kid and you wanted to go somewhere, you couldnt hear a voice in your mind in form of thought saying "I want to go" because those words didnt exist in your mind. So how did you think you wanted to go somewhere? How was it before knowing any words, learning any sign language and reading any literature?


My question to myself, my real intention is, to understand what is the state of the mind when there are no words. Is the mind silent when it doesnt know the words and how they sound? Or does mind find another way to chatter by itself? Does mind (not brain) soley depends on words for functioning or if it doesnt, then how can it function otherwise?

You can point me the right way, help me to understand something I can only speculate on and I thank you for that.

Hermes
 
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Hermes said:
My question to myself, my real intention is, to understand what is the state of the mind when there are no words. Is the mind silent when it doesnt know the words and how they sound? Or does mind find another way to chatter by itself? Does mind (not brain) soley depends on words for functioning or if it doesnt, then how can it function otherwise?

Hermes
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I was too young when I learned sign language (1.5 years old) to remember what ran through my mind before that. So I can't help with that ..

But, I have often wondered the exact same thing when it comes to animals, at least household pets anyway. Dogs learn basic commands such as "sit, stay, roll over, shake, come," etc. Cats are usually a little too aloof to bother ;) (And IMO, they don't actually understand that "sit" is a word, but they learn the sound that "sit" makes and learns/identifies it when it is spoken.) And, most pets only know a few words. Yet they, and all other animals, seem to understand human nature and instincts. Just like people.

That makes me wonder what runs through these animals' minds when they don't have a real vocabulary. It's not like they think "Oh, that dog's bigger than me. I better bristle and bark to scare him off so he doesn't hurt me." So I kind of think it is the same for people - that there isn't human chatter but human instincts kick in (a smile, frown, scared eyes, hiding, etc.) So the mind's working, but not in words. It's still enough to keep a human busy. Just my thoughts.
 
I was raised orally so as far as I can remember, I always thought in words.

I think once language develops, memory is created which is why most people's earliest memories are around the age of 2 to 3, sometimes younger, sometimes older. It is around that age is when children's language development starts developing to the point where concrete thoughts become more sophisticated.

That's probably why most of us, if not all, dont have any recollections of our infant days.
 
No speech until age five for me. I thought in pictures and still do. So do autistic people.

Temple Grandin wrote a book with the title "Thinking in Pictures", she is an expert on this type of thought.
 
Same here with Botts. I was born Deaf until I got my first hearing aid at 8 1/2 years old. I am totally deaf in my right ear (no hearing aid) but I can use hearing aid on my left ear with some sounds. I can only see pictures which I want to see. When I was dreaming in bed, I could not communicate with my parents or siblings. I was isolated from them and was surrounded with wild animals in the forest. I was so lonely that I tried to communicate with signs with the wild animals. I am a woodland Cree and native. That was a scary nightmare of not being able to communicate with them. I was never put in a Deaf Institution to start with, so my parents took me to the hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota for head test and hearing test. I assumed that the doctor told my parents that I should go into the mainstream school with oral only environment in Minneapolis, Minnesota with no sign language (English sign language at the time before ASL), no sign language interpreter and any other accomadations to help us Deafies to understand what is going on in classrooms. We do have special education as home room with teacher talking to us using microphone and us using our ear phones. We had to learn to speak and lipread with the speech therapist. Going through the mainstream elementary and high school is hell and I graduated with the lowest grade like D or D+. The problem is that hearing authorities or like AGB (Alexander Graham Bell) expect us to speak and understand hearing people with lipreading which are not accurate and we get lost on what the hearing people say so we have a lack of communication. This is why we all Deafies and HOH need ASL very much because it is easy to understand for communication better than lipreading. Some may be good at lipreading but still get lost and left out not understanding the hearing people at all. :)
 
Seems like you're wondering what it's like to think in pictures....just thought I'd try and add something that you might find of value, although it doesn't have anything to do with deafness. Hearing people are pretty capable of thinking in pictures, too (and by thinking I mean more like daydreaming) but the words we "hear" in our heads tend to dominate. It also seems like you're kind of wondering about what it's like to be in a zen state. If your mind feels cluttered because you don't stop thinking, you need to realize that you can answer that question yourself. Humans consistently make a huge mistake in over thinking everything, or thinking in words and not paying attention to their surroundings. If you tried to focus immensely on your senses for a few minutes, mainly your vision and hearing, you'd find that you're incredibly alert and reactive to the slightest changes. Kind of like being a cat. Make a tiny noise and a cat perks up in half a second (like when their ears move) because cats are zen masters and always alert. They don't think in words, they just focus on their senses. Another way to achieve that state is to ask yourself, "I wonder what my next thought will be?" and attentively wait for that next thought to come. So when you're thinking "I want to go [to the bathroom/get food/outside/somewhere warm, etc]", you don't necessarily think it with those words. You feel it, based on what your senses/instincts pick up, that you want to leave, move, go somewhere that moment. But if you're asking something like, "I want to go [to Thailand next summer/to graduate school, etc]", obviously anyone in an alert state wouldn't be thinking about something like that because those kinds of "questions" people ask themselves are initiated by daydreaming - they arise by thinking in words, in the first place. Wow I kind of went off topic and might not have answered your question but I hope it helps to some extent.
 
Born hearing but became deaf here.

Honestly, I have very little memory of what it was like before I became deaf (age 5). From Age 5 to now, I have decent memories, more so in the later years.

Regardless, when I lost my hearing, I thought mostly in pictures mixed up with a bit of words. I still do that nowadays.

To answer your question, I don't think I had a problem with expressing my wants. However, imagine that you were born with perfect hearing and that with the effect of an illness, it degrades. Like I said, I cannot remember much if anything before the age of 5.

I'm sure that with meditation and other techniques, I may be able to reconnect with that lost part of my memory someday.
 
i only remember learning to sign at 3 years old and learn to use speech but my speech is not really good but i can read lip sometimes not all the time.
 
The short answer would be that the mind finds another way to chatter. The auditory representation of a word is nothing more than a symbol for a thing. Without sound, other symbols to represent things are used.
 
Right now I do not think in words or think in picture. I only see things right now alike reading here then I put words in here without thought. Mostly I write down what I feel.
 
Hermes wrote: "Using words, we create concepts and we also build all our relationship with world around it. We don't know any other way, we start hearing those words when we were born, we learn and think with them, we depend on them and we don't know how to live without them."

I don't believe a person needs to hear words to think and feel in words. Obviously all of us on this forum use words. When we are thinking, hearing people don't actually hear the thoughts, they sense them. I believe HOH and D/deaf can have an equal ability to process words into thought, even if they've never heard the words. It just makes sense. Any sentient being is processing thoughts all the time, regardless of whether they hear or not.

Another case in point... there are words I've learned through reading, that I have no idea if I am pronouncing correctly or not. I still use these words in thought and writing (and sometimes speech - I just take a stab at what seems like the correct pronunciation), even though I have never heard them.
 
pearlgirl said:
Hermes wrote: "Using words, we create concepts and we also build all our relationship with world around it. We don't know any other way, we start hearing those words when we were born, we learn and think with them, we depend on them and we don't know how to live without them."

I don't believe a person needs to hear words to think and feel in words. Obviously all of us on this forum use words. When we are thinking, hearing people don't actually hear the thoughts, they sense them. I believe HOH and D/deaf can have an equal ability to process words into thought, even if they've never heard the words. It just makes sense. Any sentient being is processing thoughts all the time, regardless of whether they hear or not.

Another case in point... there are words I've learned through reading, that I have no idea if I am pronouncing correctly or not. I still use these words in thought and writing (and sometimes speech - I just take a stab at what seems like the correct pronunciation), even though I have never heard them.
Click to expand...

Exactly. It is a matter of understanding the concept represented by the symbol, and that can be totally unrelated to sound.
 
Thank you everybody for replying here and sharing experiences.

kimpossible said:
Seems like you're wondering what it's like to think in pictures....just thought I'd try and add something that you might find of value, although it doesn't have anything to do with deafness. Hearing people are pretty capable of thinking in pictures, too (and by thinking I mean more like daydreaming) but the words we "hear" in our heads tend to dominate. It also seems like you're kind of wondering about what it's like to be in a zen state.
Click to expand...

Actually asking, investigating, if that chatter is a natural quality of the mind or if the mind is conditioned to it.

jillio said:
The short answer would be that the mind finds another way to chatter. The auditory representation of a word is nothing more than a symbol for a thing. Without sound, other symbols to represent things are used.
Click to expand...

Yes but thats why I asked the question intentionaly in a way when profoundly deaf kid doesnt know any signs and literature yet. It has got nothing to do with the sound itself. Sound is just a way kid gets it all automaticly. So when mind finds another way, this way is not literature words, its not sign language symbols, it will be something that is not taught from outside. You are saying the chatter is still there. But are you saying it because you experienced it or because you think this is how it is supposed to be?

jazzy said:
Right now I do not think in words or think in picture. I only see things right now alike reading here then I put words in here without thought. Mostly I write down what I feel.
Click to expand...

Sir, is it something that happens all the time, or when you say right now, is it momentary?

pearlgirl said:
Hermes wrote: "Using words, we create concepts and we also build all our relationship with world around it. We don't know any other way, we start hearing those words when we were born, we learn and think with them, we depend on them and we don't know how to live without them."

I don't believe a person needs to hear words to think and feel in words. Obviously all of us on this forum use words. When we are thinking, hearing people don't actually hear the thoughts, they sense them. I believe HOH and D/deaf can have an equal ability to process words into thought, even if they've never heard the words. It just makes sense. Any sentient being is processing thoughts all the time, regardless of whether they hear or not.

Another case in point... there are words I've learned through reading, that I have no idea if I am pronouncing correctly or not. I still use these words in thought and writing (and sometimes speech - I just take a stab at what seems like the correct pronunciation), even though I have never heard them.
Click to expand...


Yes peargirl, if you read my original post again, you will see the main point is not hearing the words. I mentioned it because a hearing baby learns all those words and concepts before starting to go to school. Even if nobody teaches him anything he still will end up having all those concepts in his mind. But if the kid is deaf, he wont learn all those things just by listening other people. If nobody teaches him sign language or literature yet, what method is mind going to use for creating those thoughts that are not given him from outside? We of course here use words now because we are old enough to know them and it is taught us. Our current stage is not a good example for answering this question. But if anybody can remember the period in their childhood where they didnt get any kind of education yet, neither sign language nor reading , then they can give us an idea.

Some people mentioned here thinking in pictures. I guess (just speculating here) if the mind gets so used to it, it would keep projecting those images the way it throws words into our minds. If I had a bad day and somebody was mean to me , when I come home while watching Tv for example, it was going to bring the visual impresions from the incident, instead of bringing words like "this person has no right to treat me like that" . If that happens of course same cyle will start.

If any new person wants to answer original post you are more than welcome to do so, but for the people who already joined to our talk , please let me ask you this: With words or pictures or symbols, do you think this never ending thinking in our minds is a natural quality of the mind , or is it just a by product of our conditioning and how we learn things from childhood?

Thank You
Hermes
 
Hermes said:
If any new person wants to answer original post you are more than welcome to do so, but for the people who already joined to our talk , please let me ask you this: With words or pictures or symbols, do you think this never ending thinking in our minds is a natural quality of the mind , or is it just a by product of our conditioning and how we learn things from childhood?

Thank You
Hermes[/B]
Click to expand...

It is a quality that mostly all humans who have languages share. I don't really know how to put it in other words. Are you trying to overcome it or are you just wondering?
 
It is inherent in the functioning of the human brain. Cognitive psychology and neurology have subtantiated such for centuries.
 
Hermes said:
I am a hearing person. I am asking myself a question but I can not answer it myself. I am realizing a deaf person can know it as a fact while I can only speculate about it . I would like to ask it to you. But please allow me to make an introduction to my question. It will help me to communicate my question better. Please note that I am not asking it for the sake of intellectual discussion. It has a real meaning for me.

Through out the history many teachings talked about silencing the mind but mind never stoped talking . Hearing people think using words. We hear the words in our heads while thinking on something. Even if we dont think on anyting particular, our mind still throws different thoughts our way. Using words, we create concepts and we also build all our relationship with world around it. We dont know any other way, we start hearing those words when we were born, we learn and think with them, we depend on them and we dont know how to live without them.

I do know, today many deaf babies and kids start getting education and threapy at an early ages. But if you were born profoundly deaf and gained your self consciousness before getting any threapy, using any hearing aids, and getting any education, you may know.

Do you remember how you were thinking without words? You were a kid and you wanted to go somewhere, you couldnt hear a voice in your mind in form of thought saying "I want to go" because those words didnt exist in your mind. So how did you think you wanted to go somewhere? How was it before knowing any words, learning any sign language and reading any literature?


My question to myself, my real intention is, to understand what is the state of the mind when there are no words. Is the mind silent when it doesnt know the words and how they sound? Or does mind find another way to chatter by itself? Does mind (not brain) soley depends on words for functioning or if it doesnt, then how can it function otherwise?

You can point me the right way, help me to understand something I can only speculate on and I thank you for that.

Hermes
Click to expand...
I can't imagine anyone can answer that. Perhaps I am wrong but I have no recollection of how my mind worked as an infant.
 
rockdrummer said:
I can't imagine anyone can answer that. Perhaps I am wrong but I have no recollection of how my mind worked as an infant.
Click to expand...

Ahh, but numeorus historical studies in cognitive psychology and neurology have determined the workings of the infant mind.
 
in a boxing match, one could remember things when he was an infant, but only way to remember is to take some beatings.
 
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