Our brains (and minds) are particularly well suited to manipulating
words in discourse, and well suited to imposing a referential meaning
on pictures, but less adept at doing so for raw sounds (not spoken or
sung words), tactile sensations, tastes, and smells.
Right now, as you are reading this, imagine (think of) the taste of a
banana. Can't quite do it, can you? You just barely drag up the range
of gustatory and olfactory memories--a faintly recreated pseudo-smell,
just beyond the threshold of being convincing--but you have a very
firm, sure image in your head of a banana, and you can *talk about*
the banana internally, to yourself ... in words, even if the words
don't form proper sentences:
... banana ... [image of: yellow curved tapered tubular flattened-
sided thing]
Come to think of it, most of my banana memory is visual. In fact,
almost all of it is visual, except my internal dialogue about
remembering a banana as part of this exercise. I can't recall the
taste of it or smell, although I can recall the experience of tasting
and smelling a banana, and I most definitely remember the taste and
smell when I actually eat a banana.
For whatever reason, we humans are unable to use smell, taste, and
touch as the components of discourse; we can't even do that with
sight, although we can invest pictures with referential "meaning";
language is the process by which we present relationships to ourselves
(internally and socially) for examination and understanding.
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
