Gödel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

dictionaries, novels, or classes-words which at some time may have been

prevalent or preferable, but which are now far down in frequency-for

example, "fetch" instead of "get", "quite" instead of "very", etc. Though the

meaning usually comes through, there is an alien quality transmitted by the

unusual choice of words.

But suppose that a foreigner learns to use all words at roughly the

normal frequencies. Will that make his speech truly fluent? Probably not.

Higher than the word level, there is an association level, which is attached

to the culture as a whole-its history, geography, religion, children's

stories, literature, technological level, and so on. For instance, to be able to

speak modern Hebrew absolutely fluently, you need to know the Bible

quite well in Hebrew, because the language draws on a stock of biblical

phrases and their connotations. Such an association level permeates each

language very deeply. Yet there is room for all sorts of variety inside

fluency-otherwise the only truly fluent speakers would be people whose

thoughts were the most stereotyped possible!

Although we should recognize the depth to which culture affects

thought, we should not overstress the role of language in molding thoughts.

For instance, what we might call two "chairs" might be perceived by a

speaker of French as objects belonging to two distinct types: "chaise" and

"fauteuil" ("chair" and "armchair"). People whose native language is

French are more aware of that difference than we are-but then people

who grow up in a rural area are more aware of, say, the difference between

a pickup and a truck, than a city dweller is. A city dweller may call them

both "trucks". It is not the difference in native language, but the difference

in culture (or subculture), that gives rise to this perceptual difference.

The relationships between the symbols of people with different native

languages have every reason to be quite similar, as far as the core is

concerned, because everyone lives in the same world. When you come

down to more detailed aspects of the triggering patterns, you will find that

there is less in common. It would be like comparing rural areas in Wiscon-

sin in ASU's which had been made up by people who had never lived in

Wisconsin. This will be quite irrelevant, however, as long as there is

sufficient agreement on the major cities and major routes, so that there are

common points of reference all over the map.

Trips and Itineraries in ASU's

Without making it explicit, I have been using an image of what a "thought"

is in the ASU-analogy-namely, I have been implying that a thought corre-

sponds to a trip. The towns which are passed through represent the symbols

which are excited. This is not a perfect analogy, but it is quite strong. One

problem with it is that when a thought recurs in someone's mind

sufficiently often, it can get chunked into a single concept. This would

correspond to quite a strange event in an ASU: a commonly taken trip

would become, in some strange fashion, a new town or city! If one is to

continue to use the ASU-metaphor, then, it is important to remember that

Minds and Thoughts^377