Science of the Spirit

Is language a module in the brain?

Juliana Barembuem
YouTube
Sun, 16 Jul 2023 00:01 UTC

One of the mysteries of language is whether, as Noam Chomsky and many others claim, language is a "module" residing in our brain, or not. This video summarizes the theory behind it, the conditions that would need to be fulfilled for the theory to be valid, and the problems we encounter with the latter. Is Language a module? Maybe! But probably not in the way that is presented.

References:
- (book) Vyvyan Evans, "The Language Myth", Cambridge University Press (2014)
- (paper) Mark D. Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert C. Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, "The Mystery of language evolution", Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 5, Article 401, (7 May 2014).

Reader Comments

Dwoods44 · 2023-07-18T12:06:51Z

This is a reminder for me to watch the video.

General comments on language that would question a module:

The romance languages, French, Italian, Spanish, are emotional languages.

The Chinese and Asian languages are symbolic and image related.

The ancient Egyptian was a combination of symbols and phonetics.

Aramaic and Hebrew have no vowels written.

I know nothing about Hindi or Sanskrit or Arabic or Farsi.

In my view, this indicates that thinking and conversing involves different parts of the brain for different languages.

Dwoods44 · 2023-07-18T12:50:12Z

Dwoods44 Doing a little research in language relationship to thinking.

Quote: "Language is a symbolic tool that we use to communicate our thoughts and represent our cognitive processes. Wittgenstein suggests that we may see the world within the boundaries of our language, and we think that way."

One recent demonstration of this phenomenon involved differences in the way that English and Mandarin Chinese speakers talk and think about time. English speakers tend to talk about time using terms that describe changes along a horizontal dimension, for example, saying something like “I’m running behind schedule” or “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” While Mandarin Chinese speakers also describe time in horizontal terms, it is not uncommon to also use terms associated with a vertical arrangement. For example, the past might be described as being “up” and the future as being “down.” It turns out that these differences in language translate into differences in performance on cognitive tests designed to measure how quickly an individual can recognize temporal relationships. Specifically, when given a series of tasks with vertical priming, Mandarin Chinese speakers were faster at recognizing temporal relationships between months. Indeed, Boroditsky (2001) sees these results as suggesting that “habits in language encourage habits in thought”.

Dwoods44 · 2023-07-18T13:27:25Z

Dwoods44 The video is not too deep. I am more interested in how language and thinking are connected. Here is a downloadable PDF from the author of a book on that subject. [Link]

Chu · 2023-07-19T10:51:08Z

Dwoods44 Thank you for your comments. Boroditsky's studies are always very interesting. (Apparently her study on Chinese could be questionable, because in terms of perception, Mandarin speakers are perfectly able to talk about time in both ways, up and down, left and right. Probably due to the fact that many expressions -and writing- in Mandarin still depict the left-right time perception. A culture can have several ways to depict time.) But some of the others are brilliant, I think.

You may enjoy reading Deutscher Guy's "Through the Language Mirror" as well. I think that linguistic relativism is into something, but not as much as it is claimed. My experience of thinking in different languages, and interacting with people who do that as well, is that languages slightly change what you FOCUS on. In that sense, yes, it is a change in thought, in so far as it could be likened to the zoom in a camera. As to Bloom, he always quotes very interesting studies. But in my humble opinion, he is focusing on only ONE aspect of language, the relationship between thought and language (and heavy on language acquisition), but not on what language really is or how it actually functions. One case in point is the paper you shared. (Thanks for that, by the way!)

The relationship between thought&language is a topic for different videos (which I plan to make as well). It concerns the theory of a language module, but only indirectly. And the issue is always confused. For the defenders of "Mentalese", thought comes first, and is programmed in an abstract way, with no link to reality, perceptions, etc. For the opposite camp, it's all in nurture (I'm schematizing). They both fail at explaining thought and language separately, and it's even worse if you ask them to explain HOW it all works, and HOW the relationship could be a product of Darwinian evolution.

My point is that there is still lots to discover, and that all these topics tend to be put in the same bag, which doesn't allow for a thorough analysis.

Dwoods44 · 2023-07-19T12:41:07Z

Chu Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I wasn't criticizing your main point that language is not a module in the brain which if it was true would make the AI enthusiasts happy. They want people reduced to transhumanism. I appreciate that you have set a direction to understand.

My interest on the SOTT site has been to study how people are manipulated, and science is one of those methods because of the Grant funding process and the fact that most scientists are focused on something very small. When I was in a research program, I studied cyclic adenosine-monophosphate as a mechanism through which epinephrine stimulated the contraction of heart muscle. This kind of research does not bring understanding to the whole physiology, and in this case the research you are examining does not bring understanding to thinking.

In my history, I have studied the work of George Gurdjieff, a mystic, who postulated that man/woman are 3 brained beings: intellectual, emotional, and moving/instinctive. Each of these brains has a domain of activity.

The moving part is spatial and movement related to spatial perception, like driving a car, writing on paper, catching a ball. Think about what is involved in the process of catching a ball. Seeing the ball flying through space, calculating the trajectory, sending impulses to the skeletal muscles to move in a direction to meet the ball, etc. This is a brain activity, but it is not thinking. One of the highest achievements of this brain is architecture, like the Notre Dame Cathedral, though it does involve the other brains.

The emotional part domain is emotion, from the lowest like crowd emotion in a football game to the highest like the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This part is concerned with morality, purpose, meaning, direction of development. It is what interprets the facial muscles of a person to identify mood and emotional state. Music and artistic endeavors are its language.

The intellectual part is language and mathematics primarily. When I think of this part, I see many of the philosophers, that have tried to create a world view based on ideas. This world view is the architecture that the intellectual brain creates.

When the brains work together, you attain the height of human achievement: the music of Bach, the painting of da Vinci, the poetry of Rumi, the sculpture of the early Greeks, architecture like Angkor Wat.

I will look for the Deutcher Guy book. Thank you.

Dwoods44 · 2023-07-19T12:56:42Z

Chu. This quote from the book I don't view favorably because it is not looking at the breadth of German literature, like Goethe and Rilke.

Quote: “And if Germans do have systematic minds, this is just as likely to be because their exceedingly erratic mother tongue has exhausted their brains' capacity to cope with any further irregularity”

Chu · 2023-07-20T09:32:06Z

Dwoods44 Ah, you'll definitely get something out of Deutscher's book, then.

Thank you for expanding. I think that Gurdjieff's idea of "centers" was very good. But it was about the dominance of one center over the others, and peoples "profiles", for lack of a better word. Now we know that, say, language, requires intellectual, emotional and motor areas together, and not just to create something amazing, but simply to speak. They can work very efficiently too. :-)

So, yours is yet another question, I think, and it's about personal development, growth, esoteric paths, etc. In that area, I don't think Language changes much, if at all. And like you confirmed, it's not "modules". At that point, you get into more esoteric concepts.

Stay tuned! ;-)

Dwoods44 · 2023-07-20T11:50:58Z

Chu One further perspective on thinking, it makes connections across history, culture, arts, science. Follow your path.

Z, you make me smile on an early Sunday morn' [Link] Geniesse Deinen Sonntag <3

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Science of the Spirit

Is language a module in the brain?

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