Comments on: An untranslatable mind

By: 20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world | Matador Network | CLASH

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:50:42 +0000

[...] An untranslatable mind (mindhacks.com) [...]

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:50:47 +0000

Interesting synergy with George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Philosophy in Flesh looking at the case for our concepts being largely compounded of what they call metaphors built on our embodied experience. The hypothesis is that humans start building concepts based on embodied experience (space, movement, grasping,…). These then meet the symbol systems of the culture in which the child is born leading to interesting and subtle differences like “mind/dusa/…”.

Buddhism also has no word (in Pali) for what we call mind. There are words for major aspects of mental experience but no catch-all which (supposedly) stands for the whole.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:03:19 +0000

I just wrote a post on my blog about the flaws in learning a language that us language learners often make. Same idea as this post, that certain word cant be translated – but I also touched on the need to understand foreign words through a modelled manner as to assimilating it to the way we think in our language.

Thought people might like a language learner’s perspective on this.

Here’s the URL: http://teochewandkorean.blogspot.com/2011/12/language-learning-tendency.html

By: If Psychology Had an Indian Heritage »

If Psychology Had an Indian Heritage » — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:10:59 +0000

[...] Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks bloglinked to a blog post from Sabrina, of the Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists blog, and they [...]

By: Sandeep Gautam

Sandeep Gautam — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:03:21 +0000

As promised here is the link to my bigger writeup regarding the same: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fundamental-four/201112/if-psychology-had-indian-heritage

By: Knots in my Thinking

Knots in my Thinking — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:03:53 +0000

I’ve sometimes thought that neuroscience should be thought of as translation and not explanation. There’s something about “translation” that has space for something more human. I know it’s only marginally related…

By: Sandeep Gautam

Sandeep Gautam — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:42:25 +0000

In Hindi, or rather in Hinduism, there are 3 notions associated with the ‘invisible’ /subjective aspects of a person as compared to the 5 ‘visible’/ objective aspects of a person (body made of panch tatva) ; these 3 aspects are respectively called mann, buddhi and ahankar.
The first one is closely aligned with Maum of Koreans as in it is where emotions, feelings, motivations, will reside. Mann is frequently translated as mind in english.
The second is more cognitive in nature. Buddhi is translated as Intellect and it is considered better to be governed by Buddhi than being governed by Mann.
The third , called Ahankar can be translated to a notion of Self- I, the doer. Here, as contravened by Hinduism, one falsely starts having the notions that one is in control and one is actually doing things – a sense of arrogance/ pride.

Of course the scriptures exhort one to rise above the 5 matter parts (body) and the 3 subjective parts (mind, intellect and I, the doer sense of self) and identify with atman -which is pure indestructible, unending and unlimited ‘consciousness’.

I intend to do a fuller blog post on this and will link it here, if possible.

By: Mason Kelsey

Mason Kelsey — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:25:03 +0000

Mind is a metaphor that reflects the values of each culture and the different values within a culture. This issue extends to most any nebulous concept. For example for Socrates and Plato, the soul was immortal and was reincarnated. However, for the more scientific Aristotle the soul was simply the whole entity. For Aristotle a tree or an axe would have a soul as much as a human, as when he used the term he simply meant that the entity was whole or complete.

Even today it is usually unclear what people mean when they talk about souls, since clearly it is not a special substance or essense. Dualism is very dead. It seems that most people mean a spirit in the sense of an attitude when they talk about souls.

Andy Clark in his book, “Supersizing the Mind” takes the western concept of mind, which tends to be very individualistic or even isolationist, and extends it by considering what aids we use to extend our mental capabilities. This is an adventure, he points out, that started even before the invention of writing. He hesitates to extend it to any sort of “group mind”, a wise decision, but he does recognize how much society influences the development of minds so much so that the mind can be thought of as a social project or institution.

By: michael9murray

michael9murray — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:32:28 +0000

This article aims at precision but doesn’t arrive: brain, mind, soul, even spirit all have distinct areas of meaning when used in discussion. The problem is they are rarely used consistently even in the same articles. Language-meanings bleed so easily, they are so relative, to context, intent etc etc.

There is no answer to this, because people are imprecise, language can be vague, meaning is relative. Language itself, see Marvin Minsky, cannot say what it means because our brains are not functionally capable of focussing so intently.

Sort of.

By: dave

dave — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:02:12 +0000

Interesting and thanks for the link. I like the suggestion of considering the way concepts are considered by looking at other cultures but also the idea that we process ‘thoughts’ as some kind of non verbal, non image based entity that we (obviously) can’t actually describe but maybe comes close to being a manifestation of the word metaphor.

This is not my own idea of course but i would be interested to any pointers to more reading on this.