Is language a dimension?

[brilliantlydim]

I may be way off here but could language be a dimension? Please pardon my terminology in this post for I'm talking about things I don't have a large linguistic inventory for.

We can all conceive of spacial dimensions easily as we exist and navigate through them all the time. Now I've heard the idea that time is another dimension. Quite like the spacial ones we all know but not as navigable (if at all) by us and therefor a little harder to compare to the the dimensions we navigate daily. Then there are theories that there are many more dimension that are completely outside most of our comprehensions except for maybe advanced mathematicians and shaman.

Now I'm not sure what a dimension is, but from the dimensions I can understand they seem to be some sort of a spectrum in which something can be position with in. I.E. We can say something is up and left and 30 meters in front and we have described where it is using the threes spacial dimensions. Now we can understand time like this too because we can say it was on this minute of this day of this year and position it in the time dimension.

Another thing we see when talking spacial dimensions is shadows. We know a 3 dimensional object cast a 2 dimensional shadow, and 4 dimensional object casts a 3 dimensional shadow ( since we comprehend in the 3rd dimension we only see the shadows of the 4 dimensions).

So it occurred to me that langue could also have these properties. Language is a spectrum of a sort and things can have a position with in that spectrum. There are many different words and we essentially define things with in that word spectrum.

Also language could be a shadow or shadow of a shadow of a higher dimension. This is hard to pinpoint because obviously the "shadow" of dimensions higher than 4 is going to be very hard for us to understand and follow back up to the projector of that shadow. Although this seems to have nothing really supporting it, we do see that everything in this reality is tied to language, at least to us, just like everything in this reality is tied to the spacial and time dimensions.

Perhaps language exists independent of us and we are just learning it. The better we understand it the more accurately we can position things with in the spectrum of language.

What do you think? Is there something here or is this just lalaland letting my brain wander to far?

 

[fathomlessness]

Now I'm not sure what a dimension is, but from the dimensions I can understand they seem to be some sort of a spectrum in which something can be position with in. I.E. We can say something is up and left and 30 meters in front and we have described where it is using the threes spacial dimensions. Now we can understand time like this too because we can say it was on this minute of this day of this year and position it in the time dimension.

I'd like to clarify that you are referring to spatial dimensions here. The word dimensions refers to a lot of other things for, for instance "my different dimensions of thought" or "dimensions of knowledge and equality". It can be used to describe various aspects or similar things in co-existance with the same thing only it being quite abstract at the same time.

Imagine though that as string theorists posit 11-dimensions, perhaps there could be multiple time dimensions and we have just to this day conceived of time in an incorrect manner.

Look at this, this is exactly the sort of visuals that I see on DMT and it is a mathematical rendering of a special type of manifold that is described in certain branches of theoretical physics, super-string theory and mathematics such as algebraic geometry:

[youtube]

The problem with your hypothesis is that language does not exist in a concrete sense in the way that say a chair exists in the living room. Language is a tool that uses symbols to tie identification from words to objects or locations or feelings or concepts.

What you can say though is that objects in the physical world are a language in themselves and when we talk about them with language we create a new language or dimension about an already existing language. But then you would have to prove that objects in the world exist as an objective language which would be tough because you need a subjective individual to create meaning supposedly or allegedly according to us.

However, if you could imagine the mind to be something else than just a subjective experience existing in the brain then perhaps you could say language is a dimension although it would be hard to talk about that without reading a lot of information about alternative theories on the philosophy of mind.

In fact, language enables us to process information at enormous speeds compared to other primates who take quite some time just process the fact that they have a red ball in front of them. It is in a way a dimension of understanding or a dimension of existing even but to say it is a physical dimension in itself is getting quite absurd and it is at that time when you should know to put the joint away

 

[kolorit]

In fact, language enables us to process information at enormous speeds compared to other primates who take quite some time just process the fact that they have a red ball in front of them.

This is far from fact and pretty condescending to primates.
Actually, language is slowing down the awareness of the world by fixing its approval on an authoritarian voice.
Conscious recognition of the world does not require language or linguistic symbols, nor does it get sped up by them.

Now, if one were to imagine Language as a dimension, I would suggest that the fabric of this would be soundwaves. But since soundwaves are an integral part of our own (multi-) dimension and a byproduct of the movement of matter, it seems the "living language" inside this own seperated soundwave-dimension would be akin to what we experience inside our heads, when we try to decode language.
But what would happen if this pure sound dimension would begin to create sound by itself?
Maybe something McKenna'ish about language having the ability to create everything?

 

[fathomlessness]

In fact, language enables us to process information at enormous speeds compared to other primates who take quite some time just process the fact that they have a red ball in front of them.

This is far from fact and pretty condescending to primates.
Actually, language is slowing down the awareness of the world by fixing its approval on an authoritarian voice.
Conscious recognition of the world does not require language or linguistic symbols, nor does it get sped up by them.

Now, if one were to imagine Language as a dimension, I would suggest that the fabric of this would be soundwaves. But since soundwaves are an integral part of our own (multi-) dimension and a byproduct of the movement of matter, it seems the "living language" inside this own seperated soundwave-dimension would be akin to what we experience inside our heads, when we try to decode language.
But what would happen if this pure sound dimension would begin to create sound by itself?
Maybe something McKenna'ish about language having the ability to create everything?

Good point! I am very aware that language causes our minds to reject a state of pure perception of the world that is seen through zen meditation etc. The chronic labeling of sensory phenomena creates a state of disassociation, although this is widely accepted in the spiritual and psychedelic community I am not sure how grounded it is with scientific documentation.

What was meant in the post was that we think with more complexity than other primates, and therefor faster than they do (not measured purely by speed of neurons firing), that much is not false. However you are right in that there are some things they are better at, where they do score better than us (at least our closest ancestor the chimp) is in things like this:

[youtube]

 

[brilliantlydim]

Fathomlessness, I guess I was thinking that if the 4th dimension was time then why would the dimensions beyond that have to be spacial. I always had a problem with believing that there where a bunch of other spatial dimensions in front of us, but they were "too small" to see.

What made more sense to me is that higher dimensions are more complex, and that as you move up the dimensional ladder our ability to understand them diminishes exponentially. For instances time is the next higher level dimension, and it is barely comprehendible to us. We kind of get it and can somewhat use it, but we have no real ability to navigate through it.

And just like a 3D object produces a 2D shadow in our 3D world, I thought maybe shadows of higher dimensional objects or activities are what we witness here in our dimensional plane. But of course the higher the dimensional plane, the more complex the shadow that is thrown. So perhaps things like gravity and quantum activities can be explained as the complex shadows of higher dimensional "stuff".

Then for some reason I thought perhaps language could some how be something kind of physical (or our equivalent to physical) on a higher dimensional plane, and it plays out as it does here. I know pretty thin line of reasoning from an almost non existent understanding of the scientific theories around these things :lol:

 

[brilliantlydim]

kolorit defineitly Mckenna ish. I some times wonder if the reason he saw the "dmt flash" the way that he did is because of his own mastery of language.

Here is a video you I had watched long ago that you just reminded me of.




[YOUTUBE]

 

[fathomlessness]

Fathomlessness, I guess I was thinking that if the 4th dimension was time then why would the dimensions beyond that have to be spacial. I always had a problem with believing that there where a bunch of other spatial dimensions in front of us, but they were "too small" to see.

How would the 5th spatial dimension exist without time? All spatial dimensions need time otherwise it is just a standstill.

Officially time is not the 4th spatial dimension. Time is an entirely separate temporal dimension. Yet space and time are mutually dependent. So much so that it exist as a foam called spacetime and wherever you go in the universe, the speed at which you travel will effect the time you experience. That is mind-blowing to me tbh!

But our understanding of the mathematical constants and laws in nature could be misinterpreted and you could be right in that "it is barely comprehendible to us. We kind of get it and can somewhat use it, but we have no real ability to navigate through it. "

 

[fathomlessness]

Then for some reason I thought perhaps language could some how be something kind of physical (or our equivalent to physical) on a higher dimensional plane, and it plays out as it does here. I know pretty thin line of reasoning from an almost non existent understanding of the scientific theories around these things :lol:

What if there is no physical and there is only thought? consciousness precedes matter. Then your thoughts can exist as a lanuage in the world beyond you, but the language wouldn't be english lol, it would be thought. DMT communicates to me pre-verbalized in pure thought, it could be the language of the cosmos.

In the physical only sense it would have to be like I said, it could be true but langauge would have to be a cosmic language about physical objects. It isn't like the english language just exists in the physical world in higher dimensions waiting for you to put your hand in a wormhole and pluck out the physical manifestation of the word "enchanted" or "importance" or "demonstrative". That is just ridiculous :lol:

 

[dragonrider]

I don't think you should see language as a dimension in the 'normal' sense of the word (dimension). However, i think you could see language as something that could be placed IN a dimensional scale of another sort: the mind can be seen as a complex of layers, using codes to proces all kind of things related to survival. Counsciousness uses codes, to refer to these codes. Then thoughts exist of codes that refer to the codes that refer to these codes. And then language again, uses codes that refer to the codes of thought, that refer to codes that refer to codes. And then there's meta-language that uses codes to refer to language ( codes wich are language itself, usually distinguished by quotation marks).

You could say that language has a place within the dimensional scale of another universe, the universe of the mind.

 

[hixidom]

Does language still make sense backward? If not, then there is an "Arrow of language" analogous to the "Arrow of time".

 

[brilliantlydim]

Then for some reason I thought perhaps language could some how be something kind of physical (or our equivalent to physical) on a higher dimensional plane, and it plays out as it does here. I know pretty thin line of reasoning from an almost non existent understanding of the scientific theories around these things :lol:

... Then your thoughts can exist as a lanuage in the world beyond you, but the language wouldn't be english lol, it would be thought. DMT communicates to me pre-verbalized in pure thought, it could be the language of the cosmos.

This makes more sense, with our verbal languages here on earth being our representation of it.

 

[brilliantlydim]

Yet space and time are mutually dependent. So much so that it exist as a foam called spacetime and wherever you go in the universe, the speed at which you travel will effect the time you experience. That is mind-blowing to me tbh!

Does language still make sense backward? If not, then there is an "Arrow of language" analogous to the "Arrow of time".

It seems language only works in the right direction, otherwise it is just gibberish. Perhaps its not spacetime but a spacetimelanguage matrix.

 

[hixidom]

Is it gibberish backward? I ask because I always suspected that reversed time/language would result in some form of "reversed" consciousness that is very different from consciousness as we know it. Does the definition of consciousness preclude the possibility that consciousness could go against the Arrow of time? An intuitive way of making this argument might involve pointing out that we only have knowledge about the past, so reverse-conscious beings would only have knowledge about the future...but my counterargument to that would be to point out that we actually have both past and future memories, in some sense. Our ability to predict the future becomes fuzzier as we look further ahead, which is strangely coincident with the fact that our memories become fuzzier as we look further into the past.

 

[Koornut]

Binary is the simplest language, it requires one spacial and one temporal dimension to exist.

If you happened to find yourself existing along a line of binary code, trapped in the 1D environment, you would not be able to read it or conceive of its existence.

However, If you existed somewhere along a plane in 2D space-time and an arbitrary 1D line of binary crossed your path you would certainly be able to understand it. Even if that line of code what not level with the plane you existed on, and was "crossing through" from the Z axis. You would see the changes in space or time in the quality of the line and interpret it as language if you happened to have a "dictionary" for that language.

We exist as observers in 3D space-time, so our ability to behold an entire line of theoretical 1D binary code in any arbitrary orientation relative to our location holds true.

An interesting thought experiment is to imagine an 1D binary string - in the same manner as the 2D plane described above - crossing through the 3D hyperplane we exist in from the W axis of 4D space. Could we behold the language if we happened to have the right "dictionary" for it?

And does this hold for N dimensions?

 

[hixidom]

What does it mean to exist "along" binary code. If reality is a binary code, then "you" either don't exist or are an inseparable part of that code. Also, we can see that the universe has 3 spatial dimensions, so why do you say that beings in a 1D universe can't study the underlying spatial structure?

 

[Koornut]

What does it mean to exist "along" binary code. If reality is a binary code, then "you" either don't exist or are an inseparable part of that code. Also, we can see that the universe has 3 spatial dimensions, so why do you say that beings in a 1D universe can't study the underlying spatial structure?

I think you answered the question a little within your post hix.
Heres how I imagine it.

If a being existed in 1D space-time, the properties of which conform to what we (in 3D) call a binary string. Lets tag those properties (for this thought experiment) from the perspective of the 1D being as black and white - That is, the entire field of perception for the being is either all black or all white.
Given the dimensional constraints, the beings movement is limited to forward/back. Luckily for it though, time still functions.
It would perceive the passage of time via the state changes of the binary string. Black-White-Black-White-Black-White.

The functional constraints for this universe from the POV of the being are;
For all directions of movement.
IF black,
THEN white.
IF white,
THEN black.

This is not enough information to understand the underlying spacial structure of the 1D universe.

If the being were to somehow understand even the direction they were moving in - they would instantly be heralded the Einstein of 1D.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

A dimension is a space in which a given number of coordinates are required to specify the location of a point.

Eg, the transpose of a vector V = [1 2 3 4 5] specifies a point in a 5-dimensional space. It's worth remembering that vectors and dimensions DO NOT have to refer to points in space. The geometric picture is just one way of visualizing an abstract set of relationships that can be generalized to a number of different, fairly esoteric objects.

For example, the function f(x) = 3x+1 is actually a vector on which you can do transformations similar to matrix multiplication (fun fact: the function f(x) = e^x is an eigenvector under the derivative transformation!).

So in answer to your question, I don't think language is a dimension per say, but rather, a practically infinite dimensional vector space.

It's not hard to construct such a space. Let's call it L-space and an homage-a Terry Pratchett. The first thing we'd have to do is define a basis for L (for those of you who don't remember your linear algebra a basis is a unique set of vectors from which the entire space can be spanned).

Our basis (call it B) for L could be every individual word in the language, in no particular order. We could have:

B = [apple, dog, fruit, bunny, and, cucumber, lugubrious, quixotic, fluffy...]

So if you wanted to define the a sentence (S1) like "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," you would treat that as an operation on your basis vector. You'd end up with something like this:

S1 = [0_apple, 1_dog, 0_fruit, 0_bunny, 0_and ... 1_quick, 0_marzipan, 1_jumped, 0_mighty...1_brown...]

Basically you would construct S1 by putting a 0 before every word NOT in "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" and a 1 before any word that was in it. If we had a sentence (S2) like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" you would start with the same basis B but after applying transformation S2 you'd end up with

S2 = [0_apple, 0_dog, 0_fruit...8_buffalo...]

You get the idea.

Now, this is an incomplete space in which to define language, after all, it doesn't include any non-word symbols (although we could simply append them to the end our our basis vector). It also doesn't encode any information about the ORDER or words. For that you would need a new space.

You could create a new vector space, where the basis vector was every possible sentence, which would allow you to define individual sentences, but you run into the same problem as before when you try and define paragraphs.

So: is language a dimension? No. Is language a vector space? Yes - one in which ideas or collections of ideas serve as points. Can we easily construct the vector space? No.

NOW

There's been some talk about binary, which I think is going a little bit off the rails. Binary is not a language, nor is it a coordinate system. Binary is just a way of representing numbers in a base-2 system. It's really no different then our base-10 system, besides the fact that it uses fewer digits.

Blessings
~ND

 

[dragonrider]

A dimension is a space in which a given number of coordinates are required to specify the location of a point.

Eg, the transpose of a vector V = [1 2 3 4 5] specifies a point in a 5-dimensional space. It's worth remembering that vectors and dimensions DO NOT have to refer to points in space. The geometric picture is just one way of visualizing an abstract set of relationships that can be generalized to a number of different, fairly esoteric objects.

For example, the function f(x) = 3x+1 is actually a vector on which you can do transformations similar to matrix multiplication (fun fact: the function f(x) = e^x is an eigenvector under the derivative transformation!).

So in answer to your question, I don't think language is a dimension per say, but rather, a practically infinite dimensional vector space.

It's not hard to construct such a space. Let's call it L-space and an homage-a Terry Pratchett. The first thing we'd have to do is define a basis for L (for those of you who don't remember your linear algebra a basis is a unique set of vectors from which the entire space can be spanned).

Our basis (call it B) for L could be every individual word in the language, in no particular order. We could have:

B = [apple, dog, fruit, bunny, and, cucumber, lugubrious, quixotic, fluffy...]

So if you wanted to define the a sentence (S1) like "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," you would treat that as an operation on your basis vector. You'd end up with something like this:

S1 = [0_apple, 1_dog, 0_fruit, 0_bunny, 0_and ... 1_quick, 0_marzipan, 1_jumped, 0_mighty...1_brown...]

Basically you would construct S1 by putting a 0 before every word NOT in "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" and a 1 before any word that was in it. If we had a sentence (S2) like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" you would start with the same basis B but after applying transformation S2 you'd end up with

S2 = [0_apple, 0_dog, 0_fruit...8_buffalo...]

You get the idea.

Now, this is an incomplete space in which to define language, after all, it doesn't include any non-word symbols (although we could simply append them to the end our our basis vector). It also doesn't encode any information about the ORDER or words. For that you would need a new space.

You could create a new vector space, where the basis vector was every possible sentence, which would allow you to define individual sentences, but you run into the same problem as before when you try and define paragraphs.

So: is language a dimension? No. Is language a vector space? Yes - one in which ideas or collections of ideas serve as points. Can we easily construct the vector space? No.

NOW

There's been some talk about binary, which I think is going a little bit off the rails. Binary is not a language, nor is it a coordinate system. Binary is just a way of representing numbers in a base-2 system. It's really no different then our base-10 system, besides the fact that it uses fewer digits.

Blessings
~ND

Yeah, you could represent the linguistic structures itself that way. I think it's correct to say, as you're doing, that language can also be seen as a 'space'. But when it comes to the whole relation between meaning and representation, i think we need a more complex system than one that can simply represent linguistic structures themselves.

Some linguists believe that the mind has it's own private language. A sort of 'brain-linux'. They think that without such a system, it could not relate meaning to linguistic structures. I don't know if that's true though.

But i think that if we would want to represent the 'mindspace', it would maybe be usefull to do the following:

So first we could maybe list all ways in wich 'meaning' can come into existence to the mind as we know it. You could call them a dimension if you like, but i guess it isn't realy relevant how exactly you'd define them. To represent meaning as it forms in the human mind, this list would be a list of all the known sensations: Touch, taste, smell, vision, sound, temperature, balance (the vestibular organ), probably sensations from within the body as well.

Then you'd have to represent information within each of these realms. Some of these realms require 4-dimensional representation (or more), but maybe some of them (bodily sensations like pulse, degree of wakefullness, bowell-activity, etc.) can be represented within a single dimension.

So then you'd have a picture of dimensions existing within dimensions (a location or set of locations, within a location or set of locations).

Any such Multi-dimensional structure could then represent a memory, a dream, a feeling, or a thought. Any point in this universe could be connected to a point in another universe. The linguistic universe. But as language is way less adequate then the mind itself is, a point within the linguistic universe could correspond with multiple points in the universe of the mind. Therefore a sentence could correspond with several meanings.

Or maybe i'm just rambling. Just had a few beers. In that case it's the booze talking. Not me. The booze just hacked my acount and typed this bullshit, then.