i would imagine it also varies depending on when the person went deaf (or if it was from birth) and the degree of hearing loss. from my ASL courses, i know that varies pretty widely.
Absolutely...and I originally wanted to expand my post to include exceptions, but I decided that the point was better served by suggesting deaf from birth (or before acquiring speech). That was more for myself because I don't have as hard of a time imagining someone who became deaf after knowing sounds as I do (as a hearing person) as wondering how I could "think" not ever knowing sound.
That was my point. Supposedly some people can meditate to a point where they don't even "hear" their own thoughts. Some supposedly think nothing at all, but there has got to be something in between. Images? Sensations? Is nothing a sensation?
So does someone who has been deaf from birth (or before) think in concepts or signs? What about those who have never learned (or created for themselves) an "official" sign language?
That is why I think the concepts came first.
well, let's look at more coherent example: written chinese. there many different dialects spoken in china (2 main ones, but a lot of regional ones too), but a single written language, based around symbols: essentially pictographs. so it's entirely possible to have a written language that does not rely on sounds.
it's also worthwhile to point out that the original written languages were ALL pictographic, and the construction of phonetic written languages were a later adaptation of the symbols.
Again, absolutely. Speech is a symbol, pure and simple.
Written speech is a secondary symbol. And all writing is pictographic, even if it is phonetic. Letters are pictures. We just sound them out to create pictures in our head.
Except the deaf...they don't sound them out, they associate signs (symbols) with concepts or, possibly, concepts with concpets.
Or the blind? They can hear and speak, but some of the concepts are totally unknown to them.
And what about the deaf-blind?
The three latter categories may not be able to process certain symbols the same way that hearing and/or seeing persons can, but we would not deny them their speaking/communicating abilities.
Speech, in whatever form it comes in is symbolic of what the speaker knows.
But it remains a symbol of
something tangible, no matter what it's form.
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -
The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea
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