Pat H, Rich, Steven, and Pat C, (01)
PH
> I could think without language in exactly the same way, and just as
> effectively, as I can with language. (02)
If your right hemisphere was unaffected, you would be fully conscious
and able to think normally with that half of your brain. (03)
> Their focus was my left temporal lobe, and their result was that I was
> totally aphasic - "word-blind", no language abilties at all, either
> speech or comprehension - for periods varying from a few seconds to about
> half an hour, while fully conscious and functional in every other way
> (as far as I and anyone else could tell.) (04)
The left temporal lobe contains Wernicke's area, which is crucial to
language comprehension -- including reading. I summarize some kinds
of aphasia in slides 20 to 24 of (05)
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/goal.pdf (06)
On slide 23, I quote some speech produced by some patients with
Wernicke's aphasia. They were able to produce gibberish, but
they didn't realize that it was gibberish. (07)
> Even without the seizures, most of my thinking is best described using
> diagrams or mathematics, rather than verbally. All my academic life I have
> had a sharp distinction between having the ideas, which is the thinking part,
> and writing them down in language, which is a tedious chore almost entirely
> unrelated to the thinking, and one that requires completely different kinds
> of effort. (08)
You're in good company. Following is a quotation by Albert Einstein: (09)
AE
> The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to
> play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which
> seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear
> clear images which can be voluntarily reproduced and combined... The above-
> mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type.
> Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in
> a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently
> established and can be reproduced at will. (010)
I quote this on Slide 9. (011)
RC
> Either I had lost consciousness but kept in action, or I just lost my
> memory of the actions. I will never know which. But my sister was at
> the same sailing class and told me I had done all those things, even
> talked and listened properly, during the lost time. (012)
Disclaimer: I do not have an MD or PhD in brain science, but my guess
is that you were fully conscious at the time. The hippocampus is
critical for forming long-term memory. Patients who have lesions
of the hippocampus can speak completely lucidly with their short
term memory, but cannot form long-term memories of what happened. (013)
I don't know whether your hippocampus or some connection was harmed
by the fall, but that is more likely than the possibility that you
behaved normally while unconscious. (014)
SEZ
> My point being that the habit continues even if language use is
> disabled temporarily or "hidden." You may think it irrelevant
> but it is not. (015)
I agree. Pat learned a lot through the use of language. Both
hemispheres are active when speaking, reading, and writing. The
loss of the ability to speak because of damage to one area does
not erase a lifetime of interconnections that were formed in
other areas by means of language. (016)
PC
> In any case, as to whether one's language use *influences* the way one
> thinks, I would imagine it would, as would just about everything else one
> does with the brain and the body. But count me among the skeptics as to
> whether one is actually *constrained* by language. (017)
I agree. Every activity of any kind influences what one knows and does.
The influence of language is the main difference between us and the
chimps and bonobos. But I also agree that there is a huge difference
between constraint and influence. (018)
It is possible to "break out of the box" and learn new patterns of
language and thought. However, the claim that the patterns of one's
native language have no influence whatever is *extremely* unlikely. (019)
John (020)
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