Latające świnie. Jak umysł tworzy znaczenie

by Benjamin K. Bergen, Zuzanna Lamża (Translator)

Jak wyobraźnia pomaga nam w rzeczywistym działaniu? Na ile sposobów można czytać ten sam tekst? Czym są ucieleśnione symulacje i jaką rolę odgrywają w rozumieniu języka?

Zasadniczym zadaniem języka jest przekazywanie znaczenia. Wprawiamy w wibracje struny głosowe po to, żeby nasze najskrytsze myśli pojawiły się w umyśle drugiej osoby. Możemy mówić o wszystkim – od rowerowej wycieczki do parku, po rzeczy, które tak naprawdę nie istnieją, jak latające świnie – a kiedy to robimy, nasi słuchacze wypełniają obraz detalami, o których nigdy nie wspominaliśmy. Jak to możliwe? Jaki mechanizm za tym stoi?

Kognitywista Benjamin K. Bergen przedstawia nową teorię znaczenia i wprowadza nas w świat ucieleśnionych symulacji. Przekonuje, że te same struktury neuronalne, które kierują wzrokiem, działaniem i emocjami służą również myśli. To ciało określa pojęcia używane przez to, co zwykliśmy nazywać umysłem. Nie jesteśmy bezdusznymi myślącymi maszynami: nasza fizjologia dostarcza pojęć naszej filozofii.

„Imponujące! Bergen przedstawia swój punkt widzenia z entuzjazmem, energią i szczyptą doskonałego humoru. Jeśli szukasz wciągającego, bogatego w informacje przewodnika po kognitywnym podejściu do problemu znaczenia, ta książka może cię nauczyć bardzo wiele”.
– Nature

„Bergen pisze lekko i dowcipnie... fascynująco… Po przeczytaniu tej książki słowa nigdy już nie będą miały dla ciebie tego samego znaczenia…”
– New Scientist

„Ewidentny entuzjazm i poczucie humoru autora sprawiają, że lektura jest zarazem pouczająca
i niesłychanie przyjemna. Zdecydowanie warto”.
– Choice

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Science, Linguistics, Audiobook, Neuroscience, Language

380 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

BENJAMIN BERGEN is an associate professor in the Cognitive Science Department at UC San Diego where he directs the Language and Cognition Lab. He is trained in linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley, receiving his Ph.D. in 2001. Bergen is an active researcher in cognitive linguistics and cognitive science, with over 40 publications and 60 presentations in the two related fields. His writing has appeared in Wired, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Salon, Time, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and the Huffington Post. He lives in San Diego.

Bergen has presented dozens of invited lectures at linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science departments in the U.S. and abroad, and at national and international cognitive linguistics conferences. A large part of his research uses experimental methods to study the use of mental simulation in language understanding, including motor simulation, perceptual simulation, and how grammar affects mental simulation. In other work, he has constructed computationally precise models of language development and use.

Reviews

[Yasser Mohammad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book gives an up to date account of the simulation theory of meaning as a part of embodied cognition movement.

The main problem though is that for most of the book, it seemed that everyone is confusing correlation with causation. Activation of the motor system associated with thinking about verbs is understood as meaning that these systems are employed to understand these verbs, etc. Only in the chapter before the last does the book provide any substantial discussion of why should we attribute functional or causal power to simulation in understanding.
Even accepting all of the reported studies we know that simulation is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding. Still it would be important if it is functional but I think here the argument is weak. it goes something like: when simulation is blocked, understanding is affected --> then simulation is functional in understanding. For me this is not really convincing because common causes are still possible even when TMS us used as the association theory which atributes no functional role for simulation can still explain the findings by disruption of the mentalese processing caused by inverse association with the simulation.

Nevertheless, I think studying simulation and its probable role in understanding will generate more theories and that is enough to continue doing it.

The best parts for me were the discussion of the role of grammer in shaping simulations and the probable role of simulation in understanding metaphorical and abstract language. A good read

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars, rounded up. The author's premise, that we understand language in part through "embodied simulation," is convincingly (to me) presented here and supported by descriptions of many (many!) experiments. Occasionally the explanations of studies and variations on studies and the nuances of what each study demonstrated and did not demonstrate get to be a little much, but for the most part Bergen keeps things lively with engaging anecdotes and silly humor. A fun book on current research into the ways we process language.

[Angie Boyter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give this a 4+ for ideas but have to dock it for execution. The concept of embodied simulation as a key to meaning is intriguing and plausible, and Bergen's writing style is enjoyable and NOT pedantic.

That being said, the book suffers from the same thing as a lot of other social science works---the discussion of the experiments is too protracted, and the conclusions he draws sometimes raise questions in my mind. Sometimes I just do not see why he draws a specific conclusion (either it is not valid or he needed to explain it better)or I can think of alternative explanations that seem just as likely.

I am glad I read it, despite its weaknesses, and recommend it if the subject appeals to you.

[Davit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Կոգնիտիվ լեզվաբանության, լեզվի ու իմաստի ընկալման մասին կարդացածս ամենահրաշալի գիրքը։

[julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

mogę być lekko stronnicza (wcale nie piszę aktualnie pracy magisterskiej o różnicach w konceptualizowaniu wydarzeń ruchu i relacji przestrzennych przez języki svo i sov), ale PRZEPYSZNA lektura. i nie prowadźcie samochodu, rozmawiając przez telefon (nawet na głośniku); autor świetnie tłumaczy, dlaczego nie warto.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun book about how wording adjusts the meanings of statements that we hear or read. Just like priming, but on a more subtle level. him and his colleagues have done extensive tests, and this book mentions a lot of them. I definitely will hear this one again, as it is very intense.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book, highly recommended by a Goodreads friend. It's amazing to see how far the science of meaning has progressed since I was last studying it some 35 years ago. The book is mostly about "embodied simulation"--the process by which we "make meaning" (more on that in a second) by imagining ourselves doing actions which words describe. I'm astonished at the ingenuity with which experimenters have been able to design studies to tease out various nuances in this view. But I'm an old guy, and I can't rid myself of the old-fashioned view that a speaker has an idea, he chooses the words which convey it, the hearer "understands" the words and receives the meaning. The hearer doesn't "make" the meaning, he "understands" it. (Bergen uses these words more-or-less interchangeably.) Luckily for me, in a closing chapter Bergen finally admits that my view can't be wholly wrong; but it certainly has nothing to do with the main argument of his book. I also have a little trouble with his apparent assumption that computers might be designed to do the same thing we do when we understand each other. I'm very dubious about that, if for no other reason than John Searle's thought experiment involving bits of paper with Chinese characters on them passed through a slot in a wall to a person who understands no Chinese, but who has a book of instructions on how to respond to any combination of characters. The person follows instructions, writes what the book tells him to, and when his written response is received, communication appears to have taken place. I would say that the conveyance of meaning has been simulated. That, for me, is computer communication in a nutshell. Bergen mentions this thought experiment in a different context, but he doesn't draw from it what I do. Still, a fascinating book, clearly written, with excellent examples, and close reasoning. I'm gratified that so many people this smart are working on these questions.

[Nancie Lafferty · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. This might be more useful as a printed text because there is a lot packed into each area of discussion. The addendum seems ideal for having drivers who pay attention to other things than driving, such as texting, listen to for some insight into why such practices are so dangerous.

[Kyrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most pop CogSci books, this is an interesting insight into some of the kit we use for inferring meaning. It does not however add up to an explanation of what meaning is and is thus philosophically naive and Cartesian.

[Willian Molinari · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm migrating all my reviews to my blog. If you want to read the full review with my raw notes, check it here: https://pothix.com/louderthanwords

A good book, but maybe it's not for me.

I really like books that have a lot of research behind it, this is one of them. For almost every assumption made, the author reveals research done to support his point.
This book made me realize that our words do not give meaning to something. For example, the word "pen" is not the meaning of something that writes with ink, it is just a pointer to that meaning. The meaning is the source that we generate. When you learn a different language, you're pointing to this same meaning.
Sometimes this meaning can be made of sounds, smells, movements, and so on. Meaning is a different thing for different people.
The thing with simulation is really interesting. We use the same part of the brain to do an action and to simulate it. The same area of the brain activates for executing an action, thinking about an action, and understanding a word about an action.
Expertise affects how people understand words. It may look obvious but sometimes we forget that some concepts that are obvious to us are not obvious to someone else.
This book also comments about a TMS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcr...) and how it may interfere with how we speak. But the interesting thing about this experiment is that it also interferes with how we talk to ourselves when stimulating the "talking area" of the brain. That happens because we use the same area to speak and to talk to ourselves.
The book talks a lot about English grammar and it's not so good for non-native English speakers (like me).
The book is good and there were some interesting insights, but some parts were just tedious for me.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding. From the first to last word, a magnificent trip on how we make meaning. Impressively Kergen presents throughout the 300 pages, more than 200 cognitive experiments done, mostly from the last 10 years, to support his claims. Kergen defends a position grounded in neuroscientific new knowledge, but also in older work, mostly inspired in the works of George Lakoff.

The main proposal of this book is to substitute the "mentalese hypothesis" with the "embodied simulation hypothesis". This means, that instead of believing, like Fodor and Pinker believe, that language is made of a sort of innate brain code, we should start to accept that we make meaning, give sense to words, concepts and ideas, through the simple act of mentally and bodily simulate the experience inside us, to grasp its understanding.

This hypothesis is related to a bunch of other approaches like Phenomenology, but also more recent science on Empathy, or the discussions around Knowledge through Practice.

A great book for anyone interested in understanding how do we understand, the importance of language, and how it affects our understanding.

[Andrea]

Super interesting, especially if you think about etymology and brains and words as much as I do. The cross-language (or mental language - Mentalese, the author calls it) stuff is especially fascinating to me, since I grew up with a native language I no longer speak but still have meaningful connections with those words.

[Otter57 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully readable. Meaning is at the heart of what it means to be human, or perhaps it should be described as the embodiment of being human ;)

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Benjamin Bergen has created a detailed book on the latest insights into how we form meaning in our minds out of words and images. He collects a wide range of detail from linguistics and neuroscience to show how we interpret information as well as how we collect and store it.

It's an interesting book for anyone interested in language (guilty) and has some applications for those who write or use media. But there's such a massive collection of scientific minutiae that it tends to cross the typical boundaries of what's normally considered "popular science" books.
As general topics it can be interesting to consider whether there's a difference in the mind of a reader in left-to-write script as opposed to right-to-left (Hebrew, for example) when describing a jogger. Does the direction of script influence how those different readers picture the jogger? (The answer: Maybe, maybe not.) It can also be intriguing to guess along with science about why it may be harder for a test subject to identify something after picturing it in the mind, how we process sentences in different ways when reading or hearing, or how some concepts take longer to perceive because they take a longer route in the brain from one thought center to another.

Interesting, yes, but at times I found myself wishing for the Cliff Notes version as Bergen describes one eye-direction or computer experiment after another. I'd have also been as happy with a general layman's description in the text with some details in the notes to skip or absorb as wanted. As it stands, the author's enthusiasm gets a bit lost in the scores of experimental examples he uses for illustration, each going into finer detail into, generally, how grad students do in various studies.

If you have a strong interest in the topic this is the book for you. If you have more of a peripheral interest there are books easier to digest.

[Brandon Wilde · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it's centered in topics that I love to explore, I don't feel like I learned anything new from this work. I'm not sure if it's that the book is already dated, but it felt rather narrow in its push to champion embodied simulation as a grand answer to how the mind makes meaning. It may also be that Hofstadter already won me over in Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking with the idea that our collective vocabulary largely comprises a mountain of analogies. I suppose embodied simulation may be one facet of that mountain - the process of subconsciously decomposing some bit of language back to its motor and sensory analogs.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting topic if you like descriptions of hundreds of experiments to understand the mental mechanics of language and most especially the role of "embodied simulation" (understanding language by simulating in our minds what it would be like to experience the things that the language describes). The author throws in spicy little plays on words to try to keep the narrative as interesting as possible. It isn't an easy book to read but there are nougats of information about how our brains work, how (and where in the brain) language (down to parts of speech) are processed by our brains. Also discussed is how culture, word order, damage, learning, environment and metaphors, etc. affect our understanding of and reaction to language.

[Buck Wilde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous linguism cogsci. Words make meaning, but we assign arbitrary meaning to the words; the only objective meaning we can count on is the meaning in Mentalese, our wordless mentasl proto-language, and that's useless because there's no corroborating your preverbal internal monologue. Also, the thoughts happen before we think about them, so where the hell are those coming from?

I'm going to level with you, there are no answers whatsoever in this book. Not even a one. It's an encyclopedia of dope existentalist questions thinly shrouded in cognitive psychology and let me make one thing perfectly clear, or as clear as I can in this flawed, symbolic, heavily intuitive written language:

That's the shit I'm here for.

[LRKK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bergen writes quite well, and with humour, and clarity. The thesis that embodied simulation has something to do with derived meaning is well presented . Unfortunately, he goes far beyond that claim. Further, for a conception with the word ‘embodied’ embedded, and a book with the word ‘louder’ in the title, he pays essentially no attention to the prosody of speech- the rate, rhythm, timing, volume, sound of speech, let alone the facial and bodily accompaniments that convey up to 70% of the meaning. Lastly, even if we accept the importance of embodied simulation (and I do), it does little or nothing to explain our ability to understand most sentences, including the great majority of those in this book.

[Zac Stojcevski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title was carefully selected to indicate just what you get in this book. What a wonderful journey through the science of how the brain encodes words and how human behavior is moved by human cognition impacted by words. I would love to spend a day with the author comparing notes and devising further neurocognitive and neurolinguistic research to help us further understand ourselves, for..."there's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure, 'coz you know sometimes words have two meanings..." Not only do word combinations have multiple meanings but they alter our existence. Stimulating stuff that has actually moved me.

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ale się wynudziłam. Ze trzy razy robiłam na niej dnf.

„Kiedy wizualizujemy sobie działanie wykorzystujemy te same części mózgu, które zarządzają naszą motoryką.”

„Wyobrażanie sobie działania bardzo przypomina samo działanie.”

„Nasz mózg nie pozwala nam równocześnie podejmować się dwóch różnych czynności, do których potrzebowalibyśmy tej samej części ciała.”

„Znać język to znaczy mieć coś na myśli w tym języku.”

„Twoje symulacje opierają się na charakterystycznym dla ciebie stylu poznawczym i twoich osobistych doświadczeniach, przefiltrowanych przez język i kulturę.”

„Język jest po to, żeby nieść znaczenie.”

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love keeping up to date with the latest Psychology and Cognitive Science research. This book was a great exposure to me in how humans derive meaning from language, and gives helpful insights since understanding language is a current problem / area of opportunity in Human Robot Interaction. This book is meant for more of a scientific reader and not as geared to the general public, although it would be understandable to the public, it's written more like a journal paper than a popular science book.

[Kathleen Mahnke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the analogies he uses to make ideas clear. I love his storytelling with humor. I liked the discussion about metaphorical language, as it was on my mind from the beginning - i.e., how do we get to the more abstract with this theory? I wish the research were a bit more convincing in terms of cause-effect. But I know how hard it is to conduct research on language and mind - and meaning. A nice, readerly exposition of current progress in the field.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took over a year to finish this 8 hour audiobook. What does that tell you? The information was good. It looked at how language is processed in the brain. But the descriptions of each experiement were tedious. I don't know how you could write this book meaningfully without those descriptions, but it really drug the book down as far as enjoyability.

I neither recommend nor unrecommend this book.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers readers an introduction to cognitive theories of how meaning is created. While informative, it suffers from a problem I occasionally see in science books- scholarly books improperly packages as commercial ones. Louder than Words has an appealing cover and opens with some accessible anecdotes. Much of the book, however, uses technical language and jargon that will alienate casual readers. It's worth a more focused reread, but I finished not feeling as if I absorbed much.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it, but I thought of it as a grammar-geek book, even though it's much more than that. I had to slow down the audio play-back, as the narration was going by too quickly for anything to sink in. As it was, I only remember high-level constructs and the term "embodied simulation." I recommend reading it if you want to get more out of it.

[Kate O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and useful information but much of the book indulges in explanations that, even to a super-fan of meaning and language, begin to seem too similar, too tedious, too drawn out. Still, for the most part it is playfully and cleverly written and delivers a few key insights with compelling evidence.

[Caroline Geist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty dense and full of scientific studies, but the writing style and concept kept it interesting. I really enjoyed hearing the thought process of scientists and how they design studies to tease apart nuances, I think that was my favorite part! Worth a read for anyone interested in psychology and linguistics. 3.5 stars :)

[Mary Szumlewicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nie dokończyłam tej książki. Zawiera ona opisy kilku ciekawych badań, jednak nie podoba mi się podejścia autora, w którym to przedstawia on tylko swój punkt widzenia i to jako jedyny słuszny. Wolę, gdy badacze są autokrytyczni i próbują dowieść swoich racji. Jak dla mnie książka jest tylko długim opisem pomysłu/idei. Spodziewałam się czegoś innego.

[Mahmoud Ghoz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book mainly talks about the language and how your mind precieve the word you listen to and how inside you visualize it. It was interesting book and can help the NLP computer scientist a lot. This book also proofs how the language has an effect on the human behavior and culture.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The brain is incredible. Picked this up b/c it was mentioned in Amanda Montell's fantastic book Wordslut.