While Jaynes prompted me to think of consciousness in terms of language and culture, Feynman did the same on a micro, person-to-person scale. He detailed a challenge with his fraternity mates where they did something like: read a book and count seconds (accurately) as you're doing it. He couldn't do it, but his fraternity mate could. He realized that while he counted using inner dialogue, his frat mate counted using visual images instead (seeing 1, 2, 3 in his mind's eye). If people embedded in the same culture and circumstances could count differently, I figured, how many unspoken differences in how we process and model the world around us could there be?
(story subject to deterioration by way of memory)
Perhaps a mundane insight, but I feel like personal growth is paved by mundane insights, and my job is to capture and remember them as I have them, instead of letting them come and float away.
Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?
I saw an interview with him, where he told that story. I believe the other person was counting with their "hearing", while Feynmann was counting visually.
Which shows another inner-mind distinction, because some people hear voices when they read. I don't, with the exception of some rich dialogue.
In general this is true of the fastest readers (this has been studied I believe), and what's interesting is how recent this is, the normal medieval fashion was to read out loud (at least moving lips and muttering) and those who were able to read without doing this were considered spooky.
The ability to read silently being uncommon until recent times makes the idea of the inner dialogue switching on at some point more thinkable, for me. I wonder if there was a point where people spoke to themselves out loud to reason verbally.
Reading aloud was taught as the proper way to learn the medieval Trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric, especially grammar and rhetoric. It was effective, perhaps as a mnemonic device. But it was how the Trivium was taught and learned and why reading aloud was the norm during the medieval period.
I only count using visual images when I am lifting weights, because I am too occupied breathing to be able to think about sounds in any way. At that moment, it is easier with images.
(story subject to deterioration by way of memory)
Perhaps a mundane insight, but I feel like personal growth is paved by mundane insights, and my job is to capture and remember them as I have them, instead of letting them come and float away.