dream_weaver Posted June 8, 2011 Report Share Posted June 8, 2011 Be It Numbers or Words – The Structure of Our Language Remains the Same “The structure of a math equation correctly solved is preserved in memory and determines the structuring of a subsequent sentence that a person has to complete.” Neuroscientists have found evidence suggesting a link between math and language,, “but this is the first time we’ve shown it in a behavioral setup.” Who would have guessed. And from the Psychological Scientists to boot. Miss Rand pointed out in 1966, forty five years ago: "With the grasp of the (implicit) concept "unit" man reaches the conceptual level of cognition, which consists of two interrelated fields: Conceptual and the Mathematical. The process of concept-formation is, in large part, a mathematical process." Did she forget to appeal to evidence? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eiuol Posted June 9, 2011 Report Share Posted June 9, 2011 I wonder if it may perhaps suggest language is something that comes first, and mathematics is really just a sub-field of language? In any case, I recall seeing various articles like this in the past providing empirical evidence for Rand's theory of concept formation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dream_weaver Posted June 9, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 9, 2011 (edited) The last paragraph: Our cognitive processes operate “at a very high level of abstraction,” the authors write. And those abstractions may apply in similar fashion to all kinds of thinking—in numbers, words, or perhaps even music. The cognitive processes start with the role of the senses, according to Peikoff. Determining how the cognitive processes operate requires many abstractions from abstractions. A very high level of abstraction certainly suggests the distance this understanding would be from the perceptual level. It might be clearer if it stated, we identify the principles discovered of how the cognitive processes operate, and those principles may then apply in similar fashion to all kinds of thinking. The use of abstractions comes across awkwardly in the last sentence. Mathematics being largely implicit in language has me wondering if some day it will be discovered that language is actually the sub-field. Edited Edited June 9, 2011 by dream_weaver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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