What language do the deaf think in

[CH357]

I have been using DMT for the better part of a year, and have probably taken one trip a month or more in that time. Tonight I had a very different experience and I think it warrants discussion. A few months back my buddy(stoned) asks me what language do the deaf think in and I didn't think much of it until tonight. At this point I will add I have many memories of early childhood back to about 2 years old. Verified by my mother and grandmother. After three deep pulls I was hurled into a place that wasn't unfamiliar it wasn't quite hyperspace but it was deep within my own mind. The best I can tell they were prelingual memories similar to hieroglyphs and I remember thinking in these up until about 5 or 6 when I really started to pick up vocabulary. And I have a theory could it be that deaf people think In these same hieroglyphs? Could the pineal gland be an ancient center of prelingual thinking? It was just a very interesting trip for me would love to hear if any of you have had similar experiences.

 

[Northerner]

Null

 

[jbark]

Not sure I can really address your question, but I have always thought (and am working up a more coherent and viable theory), that one of the things DMT does is allow us to tap into the vestigial, pre-lingual parts of our brain where memories are still, though perhaps vaguely, stored: when the letters of the alphabet looked bewilderingly alien, when language and the general aural landscape seemed cacophonous and chaotic, when clowns and jesters, lego and stuffed animals were the things of our concern and when these, and blocky primary colours were most pervasive in our visual field and everything was filled with unlearned mystery, the world swirling around us as our brains learned to sift and sort pattern from an infinite array of discord, of stochastic noise and business, to distinguish books from toys from hands and faces, food from plastic, glass, wood and metal.

Maybe we are tapping into memories of how the world looked and sounded to us (anyone ever had nursery rhyme -like songs play in their heads during trips?), before we had the knowledge - and the brain soft/firmware - to make any real sense of it?

With regards to your question, I guess this would, in a way, answer it: if my hunch is right, how we understand the things we see (or at least the letters and some of the shapes) and hear, are the result of the brain forging memories based on sensory input. Since language is learned, both the shapes and the sounds, the 'hieroglyphs' that you saw would merely be pre-lingual visual memories of letters - that a deaf person would relearn anyway as they learned to read.

The more interesting question would be how would someone in Hellen Keller's situation (deaf, dumb and blind), learn a way of communicating and how that would manifest in the mind. Would touch become a language? How would that language manifest in the person's mind, if not as visual or aural? Would we even call that a language?

Cheers,

JBArk

 

[RhythmSpring]

What makes you think that they think in a language at all? It is not necessary for one to think in a language, or even symbols. Symbols are representations of thought, not thought itself.

I'm sure of this because I've more or less shed linguistic thinking after years of psychedelic use (I think Salvia and Iboga played the biggest roles in this.)

During my first flood on Iboga, I witnessed a complete deconstruction of my vocabulary and gradual re-building of it, beginning with the most basic words.

More to the point, my current day-to-day experience of thinking generally lacks words, or at least the center of this thinking. As ideas move through layers of complexity and toward expression, they gain representation through words. Subjectively, this is experienced as "channeling" or something like it. It's like having words come out of you that you weren't anticipating. For example, as I type this, the words are certainly out here, on the page (screen), but inside my own brain it's textures and vibrations and energetic field manipulation, interaction, and alchemy of archetypes, personalities, etc. Thinking in English would be too damn slow.

That's just me. I don't know how rare or common this is, but I find non-verbal thinking to be much more efficient than verbal thinking.

So I imagine that deaf people naturally gravitate toward this kind of animalistic (yes, that's the word) thinking.

 

[dragonrider]

I have had exactly the same experience with iboga. The only thinking that was left was in images, relationships, or more complex mental structures, like connections of connections, and so on.

Language is just a formalised shortcut to those "mental constructs", but without formal system we would eventually use all kinds of mental shortcuts as well.

Because even without language, we would still be able to understand complex concepts like "brother". I mean, even some animals can understand such concepts. The concept "brother" is a relationship over relationships, so it literally is complex. But that's just a simple concept to us. Many other concepts are much more complex. So even if we would simply notice that someone has the same shoes as his brother, we would be using a shortcut already, or else we would first have to mentally construct the whole concept "brotherhood" again. Or "shoes" or "the same".

 

[Aum_Shanti]

Actually a really interesting question.

I wasn't even aware I was thinking in language until I was at a certain point in learning my first foreign language, when I suddenly realized, I'm now thinking in that foreign language!!! That was odd...and amazing at the same time.

E.g. I could well believe the language you think in has a huge influence on the thinking process itself, as different languages have different properties, and so maybe influenced part of the culture of that linguistic region.

But I also realized, that conscious lingual thinking was way slower than an unlinguistic more "intuitive" way (hard to describe)...

 

[dragonrider]

I think dogs have evolved in a way, to be able to understand some very rudimentary principles of human language. They are the only animals for instance, that understand the meaning of pointing your finger at something. Not even chimps know what it means when a human points his finger at something, but dogs do. That's a very primitive sort of language. It is literally a sign.

Dogs aren't humans ofcourse. They definately do not think in the same way as we do. But they do understand concepts, and they do see relations, analogies, etc. Not to the same degree as we do, but still.

When dogs are hungry they tend to kick their feeding bowl for instance, while barking at their owners. That's definately using concepts to communicate an idea.

 

[ajlala]

My earliest memory is from when I was 2 years old. I can remember thinking verbally (in a way) at that age.

My earliest memory is on holiday, in a large garden. I remember thinking simply like "usually we are somewhere else", "now we are in the garden here".

The strange thing about this memory, is that I didn't have a good sense of time. It was like I was thinking "maybe we will always be in this place" (garden in a foreign country). Whereas as you get older, you realize that you are just on holiday, and only for a temporary period.

The concept of time was not properly understood, but other thoughts were very coherent at that age.

 

[ajlala]

Maybe we are tapping into memories of how the world looked and sounded to us (anyone ever had nursery rhyme -like songs play in their heads during trips?), before we had the knowledge - and the brain soft/firmware - to make any real sense of it?

I have a bizarrely good memory of my earliest years (age 2), and everyone else in my family is shocked by how much detail I remember.

My earliest memories (from when I was two years old), were not like this though.

I was thinking coherent, detailed thoughts at 2. My first memory was in a garden (it was on holiday in a foreign country) when I had just turned 2, and in the memory I was saying to myself something like ("we are now in this place, which is not where we normally are" ).

By the time I was 3 years old, my memories are much more "cognitive". I can remember having very complicated thinking patterns in nursery. I was thinking things like "this place is really boring and I don't understand how the other children are enjoying it". And also I can remember shopping with my mother and buying specific things, before going on holiday, and thinking "next week we will be somewhere else".

What life was like before I turned 2 years old though, I can't quite remember though (there's just a sense of hazy brightness).

----------

What's interesting about early memories (age 2-3) for me, is that at that age I didn't feel like I was "new". The sense was more like I had just arrived from somewhere else. It was a feeling like "I've arrived in this new place, with these nice people (actually my family - but I didn't have that concept) being with me".

By the time I was 4, of course, I was already having memories with very complicated thinking patterns (which don't feel any different to our consciousness now, except that everything was very happy and there was generally more enchantment and a sense like we were special).

----------

Also when I was 3, I was having very complicated, intelligent thoughts, where I wasn't sure how I was related to my family. For example, I remember eating with them, and I wasn't sure if I had to eat the food or not (I didn't want to), and was worried these people would not like me if I told them that I didn't want to eat their food.

The overall sense at 3 years old, was really that I wasn't sure how I related to these people (although I loved them), and was worried about offending them. I didn't understand they were my family, but saw them more like some strange, nice people who I had landed with.

when language and the general aural landscape seemed cacophonous and chaotic, when clowns and jesters

I was instinctually terrified of clowns at age 3 though, the first time I saw one. I was crying after I saw one at a circus. I was with my mother and her friend - and when we were walking home, I remember they were talking about how they didn't understand why I was crying so much.

I wonder if clowns remind us of something we saw before we are born? (Otherwise why would I be so unhappy seeing one for the first time in my life when I was 3 years old?).

 

[DmnStr8]

Check out the link below..

Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another.

How Deaf People Think

Today I found out how deaf people think in terms of their “inner voice”. It turns out, this varies somewhat from deaf person to deaf person, depending on their level of deafness and vocal training. Those who were born completely deaf and only learned sign language will, not surprisingly, think...

www.todayifoundout.com

 

[Aum_Shanti]

When dogs are hungry they tend to kick their feeding bowl for instance, while barking at their owners. That's definately using concepts to communicate an idea.

:lol: When our dog wants something he takes you by the hand (literally takes your wrist in between his teeth, but doesn't close so that it doesn't hurt, but due to the long front teeth you cannot get out of it, it's like a handcuff, then he takes you to the place, he wants to "tell" you something: E.g. in front of his favorite garden place, to show, he wants to have his quilt there...now. Or he takes you to a place, where a toy from him fell under a sofa, and would like you to get it out again...etc.)

Or another funny one, IMHO. If something falls to the floor (toy, when he's on the sofa, or food on the floor) he wouldn't pick it up himself. He looks at you, and then looks at what he wants, and then again at you. And if you don't react, his pointing with his eyes and nose gets even more exaggerated, you know with his gestures and his other body expression exactly what he wants to tell you: "This won't come up to me again by itself...so...would you please start moving your ass...".

Dogs have been bred by men for a long time and they anyways are pack animals, and often the dogs share the living place with their owners. So I could well imagine that over generations they developed a fairly good understanding of the human gestures and body language and partially also spoken language.

Ahh, I remember once having seen a documentary exactly about this, that this is really a specialty that only dogs have the capability, and probably has evolved due to the very strong closeness of dog and owner over many generations. No other animals are kept that close.

Sorry was a bit Offtopic...

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Bit of a necrobump for this thread, sorry!

My very earliest memories are pre-linguistic. I still remember the emotional charge of wanting the iced bun that my sister had, while pointing and saying "Eh! Eh!". The mental silence of having no linguistic thoughts also comes back to me now.

 

[Jagube]

I remember my nursery times from 2 years old. I was tall and there was this other boy that was tall too and we would compete about who was taller, stand on our toes etc. I remember the entrance to the nursery building, and this girl that lived near me who also went to the same high school later on.

When I'm on ayahuasca sometimes I skip language. I wonder if language slows down or limits our thoughts, because it takes time to translate ideas into words, and sometimes it's not even possible? Thinking without language seems so efficient by comparison, although it may be less 'tangible' in that when you think a word, it creates something you can remember or write down and refer to later, whereas when you just think a thought and don't formulate it, it's an object in your short-term memory that may be hard to come back to.

 

[CH357]

I remember my nursery times from 2 years old. I was tall and there was this other boy that was tall too and we would compete about who was taller, stand on our toes etc. I remember the entrance to the nursery building, and this girl that lived near me who also went to the same high school later on.

When I'm on ayahuasca sometimes I skip language. I wonder if language slows down or limits our thoughts, because it takes time to translate ideas into words, and sometimes it's not even possible? Thinking without language seems so efficient by comparison, although it may be less 'tangible' in that when you think a word, it creates something you can remember or write down and refer to later, whereas when you just think a thought and don't formulate it, it's an object in your short-term memory that may be hard to come back to.

Exactly I wish I could be unencumbered in my thoughts sometimes, but I can't remember how I ever thought without words. it is still one of the most puzzling trips of my life. Additionally I have rarely met anyone who can recall pre-lingual thought processes I'm incredibly satisfied to know I'm not the only one. I've also been seeing your name pop up a lot in parts of the forum i'm not allowed to post in yet and would like you to know I admire your open mindedness especially regarding politics.

Sending Positive Vibes Your Way

 

[bismillah]

As a child I would ponder this all the time. I noticed that I could have a thought—produce an idea—and understand it well before putting words to it. The "voice in my head" seemed even superfluous; basically an afterthought to the actual idea, only there to make the idea feel "official". I don't think it's necessary to "think" in any language.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

We've strayed though, I think. The great majority of us will have been born after already having been exposed to audible verbalisations in the womb. So far we've only had the attestation of Helen Keller as quoted and that would seem to paint a rather different picture.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

There's also this fascinating phenomenon of people who have no internal monologue. They literally cannot think in words, but the interesting thing is that most of them don't even realize that there is anything "wrong" with them until late adulthood, and they don't have any noticeable intellectual problems either. Just googling "no inner monologue" gives a heap of articles on the subject.

The really cool thing is that it pretty conclusively proves that one doesn't even need to "think in" any language at all.

Similar to that, but even cooler, is that there are people with no "mind's eye", they literally cannot picture things inside their head. The condition is known as aphantasia. What I really think about, is if a person with this condition takes DMT, do they see anything with their eyes closed?

 

[ColorfulElfBoy]

I'm pretty confident it's whatever tool/language they are used to. So most likely sign language, just as we translate our conceptual thoughts into words, they will with sign.

But i'm not deaf yet.