Life Sentence: Using Words to Share Reality- The Real Thing
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Good evening. The first five programs in this series trace the various ways your brain looks for evidence that it's getting the real thing. Well, it scans the outside world around it and found that the only reality you can be sure of is your own internal personal model of the world-- in here, in your head. But if we're all that self-contained if, so to speak, we make it all up as we go along, then what's this for, what I'm using now-- language? What's the point of that?
The first thing that should be said about language is that it's the most incredible, amazing act of genius that everybody is capable of carrying out-- well, most people over five-- and you're doing it now. Why are you such a genius? Because you're understanding what I'm saying, that's why. When by all rights, you shouldn't. What I'm doing, using language, should be so colossally complicated you'd never begin to get it.
Think about this apparently simple fact. Every time anybody says anything they're saying it for the first time. They're saying what's in their head, about the world as they see it, at that split second, with all the reasons they have for saying it, the way they do in their voice, to you and not to anybody else, and so on. For a million other examples of why it's unique, what they say.
And yet, you understand it. And you go on understanding it every second of your life, every time anybody says anything. And everybody says what they say differently, even the same words.
Try this.
Disqualifications.
Disqualifications.
Disqualifications.
Disqualifications.
Disqualifications.
You see? Different accents, different tones of voice, different frequencies, different intonations, different voices. And yet you understood all the different sounds to be one word that meant something. And if you're thinking well, one word's a piece of cake, try the full 100% meaning of this word.
Mother.
You see how a word means something totally different to everybody watching this program because of the thoughts it triggers. And you don't need an emotive word. Morning. What would that do?
Morning.
Evening.
Star.
Light.
Dark.
Black.
White.
Sheets.
Bed.
Sleep.
Well.
Water.
Bucket.
Fire. Or, morning.
Sickness.
Pregnant?
Child.
Toy.
Rattle.
Snake.
Skin.
Handbag.
Money.
Pay.
And the words don't just trigger thoughts by themselves, it depends on who's saying them and how.
Morning.
I wonder how the wife is. Morning.
Am I late?
Multiply all the target images by all the speakers and by what all the listeners think they mean. And you begin to see what I meant about how you hear something new every time somebody opens their mouth. OK, I hear you say don't be stupid. Once somebody's said something, never mind the target images, you know what they said because it's over and you heard it.
Well, if that's true, how could you shadow? Shadowing is something anybody can do, though in general women do it better than men. Watch.
(BOTH) Once upon a time there was a television program about how you understood what people said when they opened their mouth. And this program is going on and on about how every time you heard anything it triggered off different thoughts in your head. And so it was a miracle you understood anything, because the same thing was never meant exactly the same by two different people when they spoke the same word in a sentence.
--spoke the same word in a sentence.
See that? No more than a quarter of a second behind all the way. And if that doesn't impress the hell out of you, it should do. Because first and foremost, nobody says separate words. Try this.
[SPEAKING ITALIAN]
Where were the separate words in that, except for an Italian? OK, try English.
Where were we when we wore wool? Look at that in terms of what actually came out of my mouth. There, can you see any gaps between the words? No gaps.
Nothing to separate the words. So how did you know what the words were? And the speed you talk at-- remember this word?
Disqualifications.
That word has 15 sounds in it, and she said it in a second. Here's 15 separate sounds per second of other sounds than speech. See what you make of it.
[MULTIPLE SOUNDS]
To get what those sounds where as clearly as you understood the stream of words, you'd have to slow them down to this.
[ALARM]
[CLAPPING]
[BLENDER]
[HORN]
[BARK]
[BABY'S CRY]
[GALLOPING]
[BELL]
[FAN]
Now, that's 10 times slower than you understand speech, and it's still pretty fast. At that speed, speech would sounds like this. Du eh ss ke wha ah le ih fuh ih ka a sha un ss. So you understand at a fantastic lick.
Now all that would be pretty good if all you were doing was identifying sound. But here we're talking about meaning. Language isn't sound. I mean, here's sound and a word. And you'll know immediately when the word comes along.
[BARK]
[BELL]
Girl.
[ALARM]
[BABY'S CRY]
But in terms of what your ear does, words are sounds. The membrane inside your ear that vibrates when sound hits it has little hairs attached that bend with the vibration and generate a coded signal, like this, to the brain.
And they code speech just like they code sound. It's your brain that hears words, not your ear. And so it takes other things in besides coded noise because there are other things in language that make it even more complicated.
Take for instance a simple word.
No.
Means no. That's what its pitch line looks like. How the voice went up and down. Here it is again.
No.
Surprise?
No!
Anger.
No?
Maybe yes.
No.
Doubtful.
No.
Yes. And so on. And you can do that with every word in the language. Change the meaning just by altering the pitch. And you'd still understand it when it hit your ear at 15 bits a second.
So as the sound arrives, you're doing a deciphering job. Add to that other influences that alter everything, like this. Is this man, for instance, saying something he believes?
I'm a firm believer in respect for other people's property.
Or is this person's view of the world the same as yours?
I am a poached egg.
Or, does this mean what it says?
Stop it at once.
Again, the sounds are the same as they always were. But the extra bits, the faces, the gestures, alter the meaning. And here is alteration without a single gesture.
I'm a lover of violent activity at all times.
So you see why with all the complications, every time anybody speaks you're hearing it for the first time. Everybody's original, unique, when they open their mouth. And still you're capable of doing this. And the girl's never heard what he's going to say before.
(BOTH) Once upon a time there was a television program about how you understood what people said when they opened their mouth. And this program's going on and on about how every time you heard anything it triggered off different thoughts in your head. And so it was a miracle you understood anything, because the same thing was never meant exactly the same by two different people when they spoke the same word in a sentence.
--the same word in a sentence.
But did you notice something even more extraordinary? Listen to the last bit again.
(BOTH) And so it was miracle you understood anything, because the same thing was never meant exactly the same by two bifferent people when the smoke the same word in a sense.
--when they spoke the same word in a sentence.
He said this.
Because the same thing was never meant exactly the same by two bifferent people.
Bifferent.
And she said.
Thing, because the same thing was never meant exactly the same by two different people.
Different. And then he said.
When they smoke the same word.
Smoke. And she said.
When they spoke the same word.
Spoke. She corrected the mistake, and there shouldn't have been time to do that. To hear the word bifferent and then go into the brain and process it, reject it, and go for what makes sense and reproduce that in the time available? Never.
So what is happening? Well, something that may help solve the mystery of this series-- what reality is. And something that helps you, even now as I speak, not to listen to everything I say. Because the way language is structured, it's very difficult to mess it up. It's got colossal backup. You can even understand it when you hear it at 40%. Listen.
Now, that girl over there is really beautiful, isn't she?
Now here's the same thing again with 60% cut out.
[MULTIPLE SOUNDS]
And you still understand. Context helps a lot, too. Set up in your head where this might be happening. OK, go.
[JACKHAMMER IN BACKGROUND]
Recommend work artist here's popularity in the art and his painting real value.
Well, how much would painting cost me?
Cost is irrelevant. You must look at a painting as an investment that you won't regret.
Oh, all right. Convinced I'll take it.
See? Piece of cake, and you were only getting about half of it. But there's a basic clue in the word itself.
Anytime you speak, your vocal cords make a basic sound. And as that sound comes up through the mouth and the nose, its harmonics get changed. Some of the harmonics get strengthened, and some of them get cut out. And you usually end up with a basic sound and about three harmonics. Here's what that looks like on an energy level.
I dig it. See that? I dig it. The basic sound and the major harmonics, called formants. But look in particular at that one, the second formant in dig. See how that energy wave rises like that? That happens when the "di" sound comes before an "ih" as in "dig." Now look what happens when the "du" comes before an "uh" sound.
I dug it. See that? The second formant energy goes in a completely different way. Here's the "du" in "dig up." Here's the "du" in "dug" going down and then up. Dig, dug, dig, dug, dig, dug, dig, dug.
So in the "du" is the coded information for the next sound. You know it before you hear it. So you can process two signals, "du ih" or "du uh" as one signal. Uses less time and less brain, and leaves you free to get on with the next problem, which is to find out what the words are.
Fortunately, a word comes with lots of codes attached to it that tell you about what it is and all the words that it's likely to lead to. And to start with you'd think, wouldn't you, that a word was a label, said what a thing was-- common sense. It isn't. If you used words like that to describe what a thing was, you'd use them like this.
A flattened piece of metal, curved and sharpened at one end, attached to a cylinder of wood. At the other end, a T or D shaped section, rotated through 90 degrees relative to the cylinder.
Know what that is? Of course not, even though words have just described it. Now, if he'd said--
Spade.
--you'd know. But spade doesn't describe the thing, it describes it and it says what it does,
Spade.
So maybe what I'm saying is that words don't describe reality, they describe functions. And by implication, they tell you about the relationship between the thing and all other things. Like if I used spade, you wouldn't expect me to use it and--
Boudoir.
--in the same sentence, would you? Would you?
That business of relationships is called in the trade semantics. Every word comes with a semantic marker, or several, attached. And probably the most important thing a semantic marker tells you about a word is what it says about the things the word isn't connected with. Take one, take--
Girl.
Of all the things on earth, a girl is associated with a class of human being. It's female, it's not old, it's not an infant, it's not over six foot and under one. Usually it doesn't do the things that the world at the time doesn't think a girl should do.
It's not blue or green or any other color not commonly associated with flesh. It can't fly, doesn't live underwater, and so on. And all those thousands of bits of data are there in the word.
Girl.
So as soon as the word comes, there are thousands of things you needn't listen for anymore in a sentence that has--
Girl.
--in it. So again, something that helps you listen faster by ignoring some of the stuff you're hearing. Which you need, because what you're hearing you've never had before exactly that way.
The thing that makes it possible for you to construct and speak an unlimited number of different statements or questions or orders, and everything you say is one or other of those three, is the stuff we all love to hate at school-- grammar. I can hear you switching off right now. But it is an amazing thing.
A few simple rules that let you play with thousands of words anyway you like within the rules, and anybody will get what you mean. Because that's something else the word has inside it-- what kind of word is it? Is it an action, a description, a name, and so on. So if you hear--
Fred's kicked.
--you know you probably don't have to listen out for anymore verbs, at least not from Fred, because you've already heard it-- the verb. And last but not least, there's a limited number of ways in which you can put the words in order, called syntax [? several. ?] You know, not this.
The sat cat mat on the.
But this.
The cat sat on the mat.
So as soon as you get--
The cat.
--you're limited to listening for words that tell you what cats do and nothing else. What that adds up to is that all words are connected to all other words by association. Like being a bit of grammar, or being semantically marked. Or just being something that reminds you of something else, that reminds you of something else, and something else, and something else, and something else, and so on, in a vast interconnecting network of associations.
And that might be how your memory works. Because like that, you'd have zillions of ways of accessing your memory banks by coming in anywhere on that network. And the whole thing would not be gigantically uncontrollable because of that business of knowing what the word isn't, and so knowing what circuits to switch off.
Cat, cat, cat, cat, cat, cat, cat.
Let me remind you about those circuits in your head. At the last estimate, it looks as if you have one hundred thousand million brain cells in here. Most of them available for memory work like storing a muscle movement command, which is remembering it, or remembering your name, and so on.
The theory is that once you have an experience, that experience kind of sets up a closed loop in a number of brain cells. And all the time that experience loop, like a little circuit, is active at a very low level. Around and around each loop goes a continuous signal generated by the loop itself. And the only way a passing signal gets into the loop is if it's coded exactly the same way the signal in the loop is.
A bit like if you do this in exactly the right way, the glass will ring. You kick it into releasing a sound it holds. Recognition, remembering, is the kicking of that loop from standby into high-level activity by a trigger from elsewhere. Maybe a word the loops holds, or a smell you recall or something.
And here's where the mind boggles. Because those loops are made up of different cells contacting each other like a big circuit. And the number of ways the cells in your brain could contact each other, the number of possible connections in there, is one thousand million, million, million. More than the number of atoms in the known universe-- between your ears.
You begin to see why there are so many shortcuts for you to take when you have to understand what somebody says to you. If you had one brain cell loop for every word, every way that word could be said, by all the people around, under all circumstances, and so on, not even that colossal thing between your ears would be enough.
That's why all the words integrate. No one word can be triggered alone. Try it, I'll give you a word. Try to think of nothing but it.
Bank.
You see? There's either money or flowers and grass, or rely on, or lean over, or who knows what in there with the thought. Let me give you a for instance about why you need to be able to do that. Watch this scene closely. Regard it as a thought in somebody's head, and they're just going to transmit that thought to you.
Before any transmission starts, some rules obtained. Context, you presume that the language will be one you understand, that it will be words you know, mostly, that the subject will be familiar, that the speaker believes the same general things about life that you do. So you don't expect Chinese molecular physics in Cantonese dialect.
So already you're eliminating some things. What's left is represented by this scene. OK, here we go.
The girl.
OK, the subject is her. That eliminates all else as the subject. Now what?
The girl opened.
What? Her mouth? Her eyes? Her knees? Her purse? The paper? The conversation? The bottle? His mouth?
The girl opened the bottle.
OK, either that's it, or there's more.
The girl opened the bottle and--
There's more, but what? The girl opened the bottle and drank it? Poured it out? Into a glass? On the table? Over him?
The girl opened the bottle and poured a glass.
And that does sound like the end. So you get ready for the next sentence. You see that business of running ahead of the speaker in all directions, setting up what might be coming next? It's called parallel processing. And the theory of how it may be the only reason you can understand language that fast is this.
If you go back to the cell loop, it may be that the cell loops aren't for words at all, but for concepts. And the difference between a word and a concept is gigantic. You got a smell for it just now when you couldn't think of bank without other thoughts kind of creeping in.
So one thing a concept is then is a word with associations attached to it. And the idea is that when you go to your memory to try and find a copy of a word you've just heard, you go to a core concept. A kind of master control unit in charge of all the associations with a word. And when you activate that core concept, you also automatically activate all the associations.
The basics first. Say it's "cat." For a start, all other things deactivate, get suppressed.
Now for the stuff you need, all the types of cats there are. The colors that cats can be. Then all the ways you might describe cats. Then the environments you might find cats in, the way they behave, the things cats tend not to do.
Then the grammar rules. All the ways the word cat might get used in a sentence you constructed. And then around the core concept, the circuits of association turn on-- anything a cat triggers off in your mind. And when they turn on, they trigger other association circuits that in turn trigger other core concepts and their associations. And all that for cat.
And on top of that, there are thousands of other sets running, ready to be activated in terms of what the rest of the sentence might be. And then the event happens, and all those thousands of multiple circuits gradually go to a low level as the sentence reaches its end. I mean, by the time the girl at the table gets to hear, there aren't too many alternative endings possible to this sentence. What may happen in the next paragraph's already warming up in your head, of course.
You see the strategic way you handle the problem. Keeping all your options open and only reducing them as developments make them unnecessary. Now if that's true, that means we are sharing something enormously more than any of the sense experiences we looked at in the other programs. And the more you look at language as a piece of biology, the more you see similarities between people-- and not just people who speak the same language.
Any kid can learn any language, and it doesn't matter how complicated that language is. And when that's over, around about the age of seven or eight, then and only then do you start being able to learn other things and you stop being good at learning language. Now, that doesn't just prove that you have to have a language to learn something. It shows how universal language is.
Like this, all kids go blah, blah, blah, and then doggy sit, and then whatever. And no adult speaks like that. So that means that kids have got to have an internal built-in ability to pull language out of the world around them-- the adult world-- in the same way everywhere.
So what I'm saying is this, language is by far more shared by people than anything else. So the structure of language, the grammar and syntax that puts everything in order, is that what it's for? To put everything in order?
The concept that acts like a center for all the bits and pieces around a word, does it do that to what's out there in the outside world? In other words, does language encode reality so that you can access it in your head? Is that what language is for? A common tool that everybody uses to handle the avalanche of data hitting their senses by organizing it in a way they never could if they didn't have language?
I mean, if I say cat, you know what I mean. You don't need to think about all the cats you've ever seen or imagined. The concept "cat" is enough.
And yet whoever saw "a cat?" There's no such thing. A tabby, yes, or a Siamese, marmalade, Manx, Persian, and so on. Your cat, the cat down the road, all these particular cats here, yes. But "cat," never.
And the same goes for lamp, post, tree, book, anything. The word lets you lump all the individuals together in a concept. And that concept can be as big as you like.
Parts of a man. Man. Men. Crowd. Population of the earth. Universe. You can hold it all in here because of language. And without language, if you couldn't name it all, what would it look like? This?
So finally, is that what reality is? The words for it, language? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest philosophical problems of the 20th century.
Because if language is reality, then what about the fact that no matter how well you talk, how tight words bind you to other people, how much we share it all, what about the thoughts that you can't name, put into words? The secret, personal universe inside you that you can never share or escape from? What's that?
