== Last updated Sept 25 ==
Status: Unfinished
This is basically a thought piece (So it won’t be all done in one sitting, work in progress) but I think it’s important to think out what’s in my head discuss what a word (which languages are composed of) actually are. I’m hoping if you have any idea’s of your own on this issue you can email me at - latn705@gmail.com - I hope (when I get around to it) to clearing up my thinking on writing more on this matter because it is really a big juicy topic at the foundation of many bad thinking habits we acquire growing up and being “languaged” and hence gobs of miscommunication and bad arguments occur because of our fuzzy language.
I detest imprecisely defined words that have not reached some level of actual clarity (i.e. I can visualize/model it in the real world in some sense).
Now we’re going to begin at the very beginning, in what I am going to call the pre-language state. This is a thought experiment, so to you’re going to have to imagine yourself as a child when you first ‘became aware’ or were ‘turned on’ and experienced consciousness. I remember the very first day I became self-aware or woke up, it was around 3 years old, and I remember my room in exacting detail.
First we need a little lesson though.
Vision and visual geometry
We primarily experience the world through our eyes, the world would be a very different place if it was not for our eyes and visual system in the brain.
We might even say that all true language has it’s origins in trying to describe one of two things:
- Our body/mind and body state (minds eye, sensation, etc)
- The outside world (what we see/perceive
Now I we’re going to ignore 1, since for this thought piece it is irrelevant.
Geometry
Geometry is very important, it is in fact critical. We can only tell objects from one another if they are distinct from one another. There are two types of objects - a bound object and unbound one. Or simply put objects with boundaries and ones without.
An unbounded object to our senses would be the air or atmosphere, or space, something we can’t quite ‘see’ or detect the edge of so it seems endless and ‘unbound’, no obvious borders.
Now a bound object would be something like a stone or a pebble, something that clearly is distinct from an unbound plane (i.e. simply the ground stretching out in all directions). And is separate or can be separated from other objects (we’ll ignore subcomponents).
Now that we have the basics down, now we can actually start defining things.
All of our thoughts are raw data, what is data?
Data is simply objects that are used as storage to represent something else. We could use beads on an abacus to represent numbers for counting money, etc.
Boolean logic and binary
Boolean logic is simply, this: You exist, or you don’t. You’re on, or you’re off. There are no in-between states. All that exists in binary are the states zero (non existent) or 1 (existent), yes or no.
Now both zero and 1 are numbers, but they are more then that they are objects. Zero represents the absence of value, or a placeholder. One represents the existence of value.
Now we know that data is a set or series of objects, when we think of counting a bunch of tennis balls, we begin to count by defining the object we are counting first and then we can begin counting.
So we begin by defining an object from a geometric space. Basically, by imagining a bunch of items and then arbitrarily drawing a (metaphor to describe brain function) circle around it. So this Is the start of how we create new concepts (words).
Now say want to count arms on a human body, so we draw a circle around a persons ‘arm’ and calling it an ‘arm’). Now you see that a persons piece of body, in language we call arm is arbitrarily chosen and hence arbitrarily defined. Our arms could have been called the big pink monkey extensions, or anything we like. But notice that the object we are defining has a well defined structure (we can imagine what it looks like, and model it in our minds without any difficulty in understanding).
The act of definition is the the drawing and closing of boundaries (functionally) around a data set. Go look at a picture from the web of a person who you can see fully straight on and then simply imagine yourself cutting off that persons arm in say photoshop or paint, etc. The act of you separating a piece of that person and calling it an arm is the CREATION of an new OBJECT.
So in basic word creation (conceptualization) - we assigning a label (name) to a well defined object.
=== I’ll write more when I have the time Sept 25 ===