I'd actually focus Gav's point a bit more to put it like this:
Our thoughts are limited by that which we can symbolically represent. The most widely used symbolic representation is spoken/written language. Others can used gestures, pictures, symbols, etc. to represent thoughts.
Take for instance the words "disinterested" and "apathetic." Similar meanings, but subtly different in how we use and perceive them. There's a fair amount of literature to suggest that, for a particular example like this, we will have a hard time feeling "apathetic" as opposed to "disinterested" (the emotions associated with those words) until we understand its meaning. The ability to internally represent the emotion via a spoken word gives us access to that emotion. The ability to feel apathetic is learned through symbolic representation, rather than vice-versa, where we assign labels to emotions that bubble up instinctively. The biological responses may be there before a label, but we don't experience something until we have a way to internally represent it.
The common cry against this is something like small babies, who undoubtedly feel "happy" and "sad" despite not knowings such words. True, but we can't limit internal representation to established languages. Babies have internal symbols that help them mimic happiness (their mental images of food, parents, etc.), though the emotions are clearly not as nuanced as those that language allows for. But whereas we may eventually generalize "happy" into a single emotion due to language, they may even have similar but not identical feelings associated with "food-happy" or "dad-happy" etc. etc. due to differing representations of such events.
Moral of the story: want a bigger imagination? Get a bigger vocabulary, and read as much as possible. It falls on deaf ears in the classroom, but I believe it to be very true.
As for WD's question, our imaginations are already gods. Give our imaginations control over reality and there'd be no limit to its ends. It's just our bodies that have yet to catch up, as well as the physical world around us limiting those imaginations.
the category "animal" supposes some physical things about the organism, such that requiring new shapes would probably make whatever was created incompatible with the definition.
Gender: Male Location: Welfare Kingdom of California
Once again Digi shares a very illuminating opinion here...very much appreciated and good work my good man.
(Bardock42 pay attention)
I can easily shift this to a Kantian argument and use a Priori
The question would then be...how can I illustrated to you such animal existence inside my mind and putting in on paper. It would mean I have produce his existence...If I can prove his existence...then it's no longer an animal unique or something I never seen. Becaue I giving it shape or substance. To give it shape would contradict your request of something base on anything I never seen or have prior knowledge of it.
You're not putting restrictions or limits to the mind. What you're doing here is some kind of way transform an idea into something concrete. The mechanics of how to transform a part of imagination into something solid isn't imposible...complex maybe...but possible...who knows there maybe ways to do it. But maybe we don't have the skills to do it.
It's like when you see this number:
2
How does your mind picture such object? Do you see the number? or two objects that represent the quantity of the number?
The only way to do such a thing, possibly, would be to draw a 5-dimensional creature or some such. Something that is literally beyond our current ability to perceive. Because everything else comes from pre-rendered symbols that we internalize, as my earlier post alludes to.
But that isn't to say the mind has theoretical limits on its imagination. We have practical limits, since we can't and haven't perceived everything. But since the universe, math, etc. includes infinites, our minds would technically never run out of new things to think or perceive. I.E. no limits.
In theory only, however. In reality, I'd imagine we have a storage capacity for our minds as well as an inability to perceive all kinds of different things.
KMC Community Forums
Can anyone put limits on imagination?
Oct 28th, 2008 04:41 PM
