Philosophy Wire: Language. Old language.

The human language pathway in the brain has been identified by scientists as being at least 25 million years old -- 20 million years older than previously thought. [1] Look. The baby talked. And yet. It always knew how to. How could it be otherwise anyway? Could you have legs without knowing how to walk? Think. Could you ever not-think if you didn’t always think? Watch out for that baby. It is silent now. Just staring. Are you afraid why?

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The pronunciation paradox.

Photo by Spiros Kakos @ Pexels

Learners of foreign languages can hear the errors in pronunciation that fellow learners tend to make, but continue to fall foul of them themselves despite years of practice. A new study of shows that everyone believes their own pronunciation to be best. (1)

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen…

Do you see?

Think of it too hard and you will not be able to. For listening entails speaking. Speaking the same things that others say inside your own head. You only do that only when others speak. But when you do speak at the end, there is no sound to listen to. It is just you and the cosmos.

Shaped in silence.

Out of your every word…

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Philosophy Wire: Listening. Shhhhh…

Photo by Spiros Kakos @ Pexels

Using a brain-computer interface, a team of researchers has reconstructed English words from the brain activity of rhesus macaques that listened as the words were spoken. [1] Even when there is silence, we listen things. Even when someone speaks not, we imagine of words. Words comprehended. Words unsaid. Silence full of Logos. In the midst of the desert, can you listen to yourself? In the void of everything, can you see anything? The macaque may listen to the words. But he will never understand them. Because their comprehension has nothing to do with anything he hears…

The tree listen as well.
And the rock.
The sound waves transcend the universe.
And yet, no one understand them.

Except those who have something to say…

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Philosophy Wire: New languages. Logos. Children. Silence.

Photo by Spiros Kakos

How did the almost 6,000 languages of the world come into being? Researchers have tried to simulate the process of developing a new communication system in an experiment -- with surprising results: even preschool children can spontaneously develop communication systems that exhibit core properties of natural language. [1] There you are. Logos out of children. Language out of nothing. We admire the creation of new languages. But it is something so common that even kindergarten children can perform. No, we do not grow wiser as we get older. We just deteriorate into existence. What Is cannot speak. What Is should not be. Don’t listen to me. Listen to your children crying in despair. While their parents are teaching them how to speak…

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Philosophy Wire: Thinking in another language…

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Thinking in a foreign language can reduce emotional biases. A new study shows that thinking in a foreign language may help people be more objective when deciding on a price to sell an item. [1] Thinking in another language makes us more objective. Because thinking makes us subjective. In an objective cosmos, trying to find subjective meaning. In a subjective existence, trying to discover an objective universe. Objective. Subjective. Subjective. Objective. Viewing the cosmos. Always looking through the looking glass. Without ever being able to understand that it is this glass which makes us blind. Stop trying to speak. Stop trying to think. And for once in your life, while the red circle is drawn on the sand, right before the Roman soldier who cannot understand you, you will be truly objective…

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Philosophy Wire: Speaking. Listening. Understanding? Will you eat that apple?

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Scientists have come a step closer to understanding how we're able to understand spoken language so rapidly, and it involves a huge and complex set of computations in the brain. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Cambridge developed novel computational models of the meanings of words, and tested these directly against real-time brain activity in volunteers. [1]

Speak.
Not to me. To yourself.
Listen.
Do you understand?
How could you not?
How could you?

Weird cosmos.
Full of nothing and yet…
Full of everything.

Void of any meaning, and yet full of creatures seeking it.
Staying silent and yet full of humans listening…
No, we do not love speaking.
We never did actually.
We just love listening. This is all we had been doing in the first place.

Speak. You will know what I mean. As soon as you listen to yourself speaking…

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Philosophy Wire: Source of language… Silence… Wisdom…

Origin of Sino-Tibetan language family revealed by new research. [1] We try to find the source of languages in other languages. But what we blatantly ignore, is that the source of the first language was silence… Logos has its foundations in the void of the irrational… Standing in the midst of existence… This is the great secret that Logos whispers us… Do you dare to listen? Between the trees, a voiceless wind whispers the secret… “There is no secret”…

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Philosophy Wire: Understanding metaphors… Bending reality…

Studies have suggested that our understanding of metaphors may be rooted in our bodily experience. Some functional MRI, fMRI or EEG brain studies have indicated, for example, that when you hear a metaphor such as "she had a rough day," regions of the brain associated with tactile experience are activated. If you hear, "he's so sweet," areas associated with taste are activated. If you see the word "bent" used in both the literal and metaphorical context, the sensory-motor region being activated almost immediately. [1] Everything we understand is related to our experiences, one way or the other. It can never be any other way. We live in a cosmos, we are engulfed by it, we are defined by it. And yet, even the fact that we attempt to question that cosmos says it all: there is not such a cosmos. 

We see everything through the looking glass. And the moment we started moving our finger towards it in order to touch it and see if it’s real, it started cracking… 

Reality… Reality… Reality…
Yes, it can be bent too…
Only because it was never there…

Don’t worry. It is just a metaphor…

[Written on 2019-04-04] 

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Philosophy Wire: No noise… No words… Just listen…

Researchers have demonstrated it's possible to silence noise using an open, ring-like structure, created to mathematically perfect specifications, for cutting out sounds while maintaining airflow. [1] Air flowing through your lungs. Going out to form words. Words forming meaning. But there is sound in the words you utter. For they are words of the mind. Meant to be heard by the heart. Inside a cosmos engulfed in silence. Silence broken only by the sound of a lonely man. Sitting alone under a tree. Trying to listen…

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Philosophy Wire: Telling lies…

It is not easy to tell when someone is lying. This is even more difficult when potential liars speak in a language other than their native tongue. Psychologists investigated why that is so. [1] Words conveying messages. Messages conveying love. In the dead of the night, a gentle touch. The lighthouse shining into the void. I cannot understand a thing you say. And yet I know you are lying…

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Philosophy Wire: Nouns. Verbs. Logos. Silence. Dasein.

Speakers hesitate or make brief pauses filled with sounds like 'uh' or 'uhm' mostly before nouns. Such slow-down effects are far less frequent before verbs, as researchers working together with an international team have discovered by looking at examples from different languages. [1] We believe Logos rules everything. And we like to see a cosmos made out of verbs. We uhhhh admire action and kinesis. But the turtle will always be ahead of Achilleas. Achilleas who exists even though he will never uhmmmm overpass that turtle. Logos is just noise. Silence rules our world. And when all the trees have fallen, what is left will be left to tell our tale. We were once here. We did not run. We just let the turtle be. Don’t hesitate to hesitate. You are what you do not do…

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Philosophy Wire: Understanding. Returning home…

The presence or absence of a unique brain signal after a listener has heard some speech indicates whether or not that listener has understood what has been said. The discovery has a number of practical applications, including tracking language development, assessing brain function post-injury, and confirming whether important instructions have been understood in high-pressure jobs. [1] We like understanding. We love understanding. And of course, we love understanding when someone is understanding! And yet again, we are not an inch closer to grasping the meaning of the cosmos. With every thing we understand, something new and unknown is revealed. And with every step we take towards our goal, the more we are distancing our self from where we started our journey. We love travelling. And only when we realize that there is no destination, will we start longing for home again…

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Philosophy Wire: Learning language. Not in your brain. Listen to the breeze…

It has often been claimed that humans learn language using brain components that are specifically dedicated to this purpose. Now, new evidence strongly suggests that language is in fact learned in brain systems that are also used for many other purposes and even pre-existed humans, say researchers in PNAS. [1] Luminous beings. Knowing how to speak, long before they knew how to speak. At a time where there were no sounds and planets roamed the empty space and silently spoke of the meaning of life. We used to watch those planets. Staring them in awe. The greatest poets lived back then. Mute poets. Their expression of anticipation and excitement filling the air with words unspoken. “We are here!”, they cried out silently. And ever since, we try to express that same feeling but fail every single time. The feeling is long gone now. Seek it in the air on top of mountains. Find it in the breeze on a lonely shore. Listen to its cry between the tree leaves on an autumn day. You can still utter it. As long as you don’t…

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Philosophy Wire: Speaking. Understanding. Accepting. Silence.

A group of researchers has developed a new method for dialogue systems. This new method, lexical acquisition through implicit confirmation, is a method for a computer to acquire the category of an unknown word over multiple dialogues by confirming whether or not its predictions are correct in the flow of conversation. [1] We all understand the meaning of words from what we are taught. And from what we hear. We then accept that meaning and get on with our lives. But this is not what makes us special. A computer can do that. What makes us special is our ability to question what we learn. To question the meaning of the words we understand. And to speak with no words at the end. Because in essence, we do not understand anything. And only accepting it makes us wise. In the beginning there was Logos. Which meant nothing at all. And everything at the same time…

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Philosophy Wire: Random changes in language.

Luck plays a role in how language evolves, according to researchers: Read a few lines of Chaucer or Shakespeare and you'll get a sense of how the English language has changed during the past millennium. Examining collections of annotated texts dating from the 12th to the 21st centuries, researchers found that certain linguistic changes were guided by pressures analogous to natural selection - social, cognitive and other factors - while others seem to have occurred purely by happenstance. (i.e. random chance) [1] Randomly changing language. On which civilization is built upon. The foundations are shifting, but nothing collapses. Look carefully. Our culture is based on nothing. Our civilization is just dust in the wind. And yet this dust is harder than concrete… Shifting with the cosmos in an eternal dance of everlasting change… Staying essentially the same as it was in the beginning…

Είμαι. είσαι. είμαστε…

Εἰμί. εἶ. ἐστίν…

Α… Ω…

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Philosophy Wire: Communicating in a foreign language. Emotion. Decision making. Hating… you.

Communicating in a foreign language takes emotion out of decision-making. [1] Speaking in a language you are not so familiar with, makes you think more on how to formulate the sentences you want to say. And that extra-thinking seems to take away the truly human edge of the decision-making process: emotion. The more we think, the more we become machines. It is something evident to children. You do not need too much thinking to love or hate. And yet, we still believe that thinking more is the solution to everything. We hate ourselves. And we have not even sat down to think why…

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Philosophy Wire: Detecting sarcasm… Not needed.

Researchers have developed a machine translation system for interpreting sarcastic statements in social media. It could one day help people on the autism spectrum, who often have difficulty interpreting sarcasm, irony and humor. [1] We have developed sarcasm. And then developed machines who can also detect it. We believe those who cannot detect sarcasm need our help. But it is us who need theirs. Because sarcasm should not be there in the first place. What Is simply… is. A simple as that. Saying something and meaning something else is a trait unique to humans. And it is the result of regression and not a result of progress. You can never mean “something else” than what you say – you can just give a different meaning to what you say. And meaning is something you decide. The only and greatest exhibition of sarcasm from life is that sarcasm does not exist and yet we believe we exercise it. We have built language only to obscure communication. Remove it and you will discover every meaning in the blissful silence left…

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Philosophy Wire: Names.

If your name is Fred, do you look like a Fred? You might - and others might think so, too. A research has found that people appear to be better than chance at correctly matching people's names to their faces, and it may have something to do with cultural stereotypes we attach to names. [1] Good morning Fred! And remember! We understand, based on names. We name based on what we understand. Our very existence is determined by the words we utter. Reality is formed with a simple good morning. In the beginning was the Word... I hope (as only a conscious being can) you are good (happy inside a universe with meaning, as only a spiritual being can) Fred (you, as only others understand you)! See (I, as opposed to you) you tomorrow (I am a god, I make time as I speak)! Είμαι ο Κανένας! Με λένε Οδυσσέα!

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Philosophy Wire: Peppered moths. Evolution. Big words…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2016-10-21]: Peppered moths change colour due to the pollution of the environment. [1] A small change we want to see as big. A small adaptation which we want to name “evolution”. Humble thoughts. The cause of our progress. Big words. The cause of our demise.

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Philosophy Wire: Fe.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-09-06]: Curiosity detected an iron meteorite. [1] A meteorite which carries (Gr. φέρω) iron. Φέρω. Ferrum. Fe. Ancient knowledge. Embedded into our words. How much we knew... How mush will we learn if we just pay attention...

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