Read on Twitter
Thread: Good few years ago, I was thinking about "what language is, how it works, how it is created, how it evolves and how it disappears"...The result: realization that "language is at the core of reality and life"...Sounds crazy?
Here's the summary: https://twitter.com/DirkPuehl/status/1339130535424225282
Here's the summary: https://twitter.com/DirkPuehl/status/1339130535424225282
Language is an algorithm created by a system perceiving the world around itself. The system creates this algorithm in order to be able to extract the meaning from perceived sensory input data and create a reality.
Within this system (any system, biological or nonbiological) these are the subsystems involved in creation and use of language:
1. Sensory system which provides data in a shape of multidimensional change patterns. This is data creation system.
2. Cognitive system which interprets data patterns and stores "sensory pattern - meaning" key value pairs in memory. This is data translation and storing system.
2. Cognitive system which interprets data patterns and stores "sensory pattern - meaning" key value pairs in memory. This is data translation and storing system.
3. Control feedback loop which compares multiple consecutive "sensory pattern - meaning" key value pairs and adjusts the translation algorithm until the comparison results start falling within a pre-set tolerance boundary, by enforcing the adjustment of the translation algorithm.
The resulting stable unchanging translation algorithm which produces consistent results is a language. This is language creation and stabilization system.
Language quality and complexity depends on the quality and complexity of all three systems involved in the language creation.
The most important part of all this is the control feedback loop.
This is a naturally occurring phenomenon in living systems and is responsible for creation and preservation of stable, biological systems thus making them "living" systems.
This is a naturally occurring phenomenon in living systems and is responsible for creation and preservation of stable, biological systems thus making them "living" systems.
Multiple control feedback loops exist in all living systems from viruses and bacteria, to complex multi organism colonies. They regulate systems and keep them stable. But control feedback loop can only operate on the "sensory pattern - meaning" key value pairs, the language.
This means that control feedback loop cannot exist without a language. This makes a language also a naturally occurring phenomenon, and probably the most important naturally occurring phenomenon in living systems.
Without natural ability of living systems to create and use languages there would be no life. For biological systems to survive, they need to be able to make sense of the world around them, and of themselves, and for that purpose they create and use languages.
That sense of the world around us is called "the reality". So we can say that without languages there would be no reality and no self...
How much of this stuff gets encoded in our genes, in order not to have to develop all this over an over again? Is this where our sense of "common reality" comes from? And what is the common reality anyway as opposed to our personal reality?
Common reality is reality built by multiple living organisms of the same species, which are engaged in information exchange, exchange which confirms and thus reinforces each of their own individual realities. For that these organisms need to be able to:
1. Create some kind of output which can be perceived by the other organism as a sensory input. Ability to create output which can be perceived as sensory input enables us to communicate with each other.
2. Translate the perceived sensory input coming from the other organism into meaning. Ability to translate the perceived sensory input coming from the other organism into meaning enables us to understand each other.
3. Imitate the sensory input to create the output which the other organism understands. Ability to imitate the sensory input coming from another organism enables us to converse.
This ability is directly dependent on the quality of the input receiving (sensory) systems, output producing systems, and the coordination between these two systems.
It is the different quality of these systems in different members of the same species, which causes the emergence of language "changes" and creation of language "dialects"...
4. Synchronize language algorithms in order to ensure that both organisms produce identical "sensory pattern - meaning" key value pairs, meaning that they understand each other.
This is achieved through the entanglement of the control feedback loops of both organisms. This is "language synchronization" and results in the creation of a common group language from many individual languages...
Language synchronization starts by synchronizing the understanding of the simplest well known "sensory pattern - meaning" key value pairs.
These simplest well known "sensory pattern - meaning" key value pairs, can then be used to synchronize our understanding of more complex "sensory pattern - meaning" matrices. Ability to synchronize individual languages enables us to form groups.
Because language is based on the perceived world, including other systems with which we are communicating, change in the perceived world can trigger the change in the language...This can then trigger change in reality...
But not always...Change in the environment, location, circumstances, population can all trigger individual language changes which will trigger group language synchronization changes.
These changes are again controlled by the control feedback loop of each organism and the entangled control feedback loop of the group. All these control feedback loops work together to preserve a stable reality...
If changes are small, control feedback loops will migrate the languages from a state which is not stable any more to another stable state. This process will result in language and reality evolution...
This all made sense to me all these years ago...It still kind of does...The (longish) elaboration can be found in
https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/un.html
I apologise for the style and spelling...I wrote the whole thing in one night, and not sure if I have actually ever re read it again...
https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/un.html
I apologise for the style and spelling...I wrote the whole thing in one night, and not sure if I have actually ever re read it again...
