Language works when we think the same, connecting the words to the same meanings and such. But that never actually happens 100%. It might be closer to 80%. (or if it’s a strange subject, 15%)

So this “conversation” that we’re having here is, to some degree, not actually happening.

But we pretend that it is.

So how much are we pretending? How much of the conversation is hallucinatory conversation?

  • gandalf_der_12te
    1·
    3 hours ago

    I understand your viewpoint, and that you see words as a database that maps sequences of sounds to meaning.

    However, as a funny side note, i’d like to point out that that’s not what i’m doing when i’m trying to decipher the meaning of a word. If i’m unsure, i will extract the root of the word (only look at the consonants in the core part of the word), and then try to reconstruct the meaning from there. In that way, i have more of a “root of sequence of sounds” <–> meaning mapping in my language processing part of the nervous system.