A writer describes gradually losing language
post by NancyLebovitz · 2010-11-08T15:57:31.094Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 1 commentsA writer's memoir of a brain tumor slowly destroying his ability to use language
When I came to read this passage "…floating and flailing weightlessly.…" I said the word "weightlessly" as "walterkly". It took quite a bit of effort to be fully sure that this was a mistake; and more effort and repeating to grasp what exactly this nonsense word was, to establish its sound – I had to construct it phoneme by phoneme – clearly enough to write it down. And it seems that the reading eye, darting backwards and forwards, was plucking letters from the whole vicinity, and mixing them up, having lost its usual ability to sort them.What the whole thing emphasises, of course, is how what we call self-command is really a matter of having reliable automatic mechanisms, unthinking habits or instincts.
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comment by jferguson · 2010-11-10T05:55:30.002Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My experience of the world is not made less by lack of language but is essentially unchanged.
This is curious.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the dominant view nowadays that human's special kind of consciousness is largely a result of language, because we're able to formalize (and build on) notions and have an internal dialogue and all those other useful things? Does anyone else think this guy's experiences could at least point away from language as the root of sapience? Or am I just looking too much into that sentence?