(Sitting in the restaurant "Chave d'ouro" or "Golden Key" early on a Sunday afternoon, visiting friends in another city.)
I'm sitting inside on an 80-degree day at a table by myself, listening to a couple different flavors of Portuguese being spoken by people of every color, waiting for a cheese sandwich. Amazingly, there is no smell in the air - either that or I've completely accustomed myself to a constant odor of stale urine and picked-through garbage. I can see the road, the main road in Mozambique, occupied by typically light Sunday traffic. A boy outside is being chased by bees that don't sting. But it's keeping him occupied. The combination of a cold cheese/tomato/onion sandwich and equally chilled Coke seems to be perfect, and I don't know why.
Last night was fun, drinking with some of the guys and getting a South African (a white one) pissed off at us simply for being inquisitive Americans. At one point, I found myself staring at the wrong end of a very large and angry elbow as this man was leaning over me to discuss economics with Phillip.
My chapa ride here was largely uneventful. I met one of the workers at the bread store, which I visit nearly every day - he's one of the bakers. Blake and I have had a pipedream of working in the bakery one night, joining in the songs and comaraderie tht come with one of the oldest professions. Maybe now we'll get our chance.
Saturday morning I found out that three professors from every school in my province will be HIV/AIDS advocates and give some sort of lesson every week. Luckily (in a way), this is just a "trial run" and so it's not being sold to all the students. I'm still going to work with the rest of the students in giving my lessons, so there's no problem there.
I guess that gets me back to where I left off, with the link between language and primitive thought. I need to get going, however, and enjoy my walk to catch the next chapa.
OK, language and thought. The way I see it, language is to thought what television is to real life. A television has pixels, or discrete bits of information (colors) that are much bigger than the discrete bits of real life. Sometimes, when dealing with big objects, those pixels are exactly right. But when describing something minute, even the best television can't do it justice.
And so it is with language. Language blurs thoughts a bit when the thought is jumping between speakers. Someone on TV holds up a box of Juicy Fruit. But it's a small box and you can't read the writing on the big TV pixels. But if the color scheme is recognizable - if the context of the conversation implies deeper meaning to the words - we'll know it's Juicy Fruit and not Jujubes. But if we've never seen this package before, it's only a package and we don't see any name at all. In terms of language, words are meaningless if the thought behind it isn't understood. Languages are approximations of thought like TVs (which also vary considerably) are approximations of reality. Good languages are like good TVs...expensive. A good language is inherently complex, with subtle shifts in meaning and physical gestures a part of communication.
And because there are so many interpretations of reality (thoughts), there must be only one reality (language of thought), or learning other languages would most likely be impossible. I think I've got Stephen Pinker on my side for this one.
So my question is, can you derive the language of thought by examining all of the languages in the world? If you find that the idea of "wait" is never interpreted by two different words in any language, then it must be in the language of thought. I'm sure this is being explored right now, but it's fascinating to me. What's more, is if you isolated this language of thought, you could figure out how to make a computer think - or at least have a better idea. Because "think" is not some abstract term, but a very readily defined set of rules that have yet to be discovered. Computers are sets of rules, so why not?
Peace
John
