# Do we think in words or in images?

*Thinking in words or images? Semiotics, shapes and alien abductions*

- URL: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/s/6/
- Date: 2021-04-26 · Kind: discussion · Transcript tier: machine · Recording: Lupe Fiasco | Stardom, Semiotics & Soul-searching | MindTrap#56 | Mufti Abu Layth al-Maliki MALM (25:25–33:13)
- Status: general teaching
- Watch from the start of the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYiiPEhuiHA&t=1525s
- Recording page: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/

**Topics:** Language and semiotics; Islamic psychology

**Summary (not a quotation; machine-made, unchecked):** The guest argues that shapes are more fundamental than words or pictures; Mufti Abu Layth says words are also reductive, forcing profound things into limited form.

## Longer summary

Mufti Abu Layth says psychologists debate whether thought is in words or images, since infants think iconically. The guest says that, having become a master rapper, he turned to linguistics, semiotics and rhetoric to understand what he was doing, and argues that words are refined shapes and that the world itself is a text, so that buildings could serve as an alphabet. He tells of once believing he had been abducted by aliens and recounts the theory that the big-headed alien figure is a fuzzy early memory of one's mother leaning over the crib, and Mufti links this to the stage of ego development described by psychoanalysts. Mufti says words, though expansive, are equally reductive, since expressing something profound means limiting it to words, and that most communication is non-verbal.

## Sources and names cited

- Lupe Fiasco (guest)

## Transcript (machine tier, 25:25–33:13)

[24:46] into this sentence or builds into this this metaphor and now i got a list of metaphors right and then it's okay i'm gonna use this this metaphor for this so i'm gonna use this simile for that or this simile for that so it was a process that actually had to kind of like work and work and work and work and then it became like just natural you know where i could just sit and then you know things would happen in my mind like okay that's clever i'm gonna keep that okay that's clever i'm gonna keep that oh that's and then it and then it kind of graduated from uh just metaphors and and stuff like that like punch lines into like images you know or like concepts of wow wouldn't it be interesting to take this

[25:25] and then pair it with this and then it creates this new homunculus or something like that and it's like ah a chimera ah great put that into a rat see how that works so it kind of go from words to images in that way that's that's interesting that is because you see that because it's interesting that there's been a discussion amongst psychologists that is thought is it in images or is it in words how do how do how how what i know we think of words and we think of things but what is the root of thoughts because ultimately they will say from infancy

[26:03] a child doesn't have words but they would say he has iconic thought it's in kind of images and these serve as the kind of building blocks so that's hmm and and pictures obviously and pictures can be a lot more symbolic as well and that's that's something you've had quite an interest in as well as a symbolism a metaphor and so what what's i mean open up to us on on that what what what yeah what's up what's this i study uh so bringing things back to like science yeah i go through i go through the arts you know i get to to where i am today and then it became

[26:43] you know well what uh what am i doing yeah what am i actually doing i know on the surface i'm rapping what else is happening so i started to kind of get into linguistics and semiotics you know and i looked at okay what is this instead of chasing the science you know chasing chemistry like what is the science that i'm doing right now right and so it gets into kind of cognition and uh psychology but most more so the the uh the semiotics and the uh the linguistics of words right that that that science right um and so i've been deep diving into that for like the past few

[27:20] few like years um and so you know you become like a a master rapper right and then it's like okay well what else is there for you to do and say oh there's there's a ton of like uh literature and education that just deals with rhetoric and speaking and language and language studies and language sciences so i've just been diving into that and you get to to your point about like you know what is the root of you know human human thought and you think of words well what are words you know words and themselves are shapes you know and it's really the shape of things right um and and we all possess shapes in one way or another words are just

[28:00] more defined refined shapes right but could you could you live without text semiotically speaking like the world is a text right okay a building is a letter you know um how refined in it how defined is it what is the use case for it could you could you make a sentence out of buildings say yeah you know like if you really applied yourself to it and created a lexicon to do it yeah you could make skyscrapers stand for this and maybe make you know how uh uh two flat stand for this and condominium stand for that and mansion stand for this and palaces stand for that and such represents that and could you create an alphabet out of that

[28:38] sure you know what is the goal could you tell a story with that right uh sure do they tell stories in and of themselves these shapes sure is that anything different from just having words and from that point of view i don't i don't think i don't think so so i think it comes back to more uh less what is more fundamental than words um what is more fundamental than pictures would just be shapes you know primal shapes primal primal primal shapes the shape of things in this world um one one one quick kind of anecdote about that is like uh thinking about babies again um and like aliens right and like

[29:17] the shape of aliens right and they say like you know why i thought i got abducted by aliens just fyi i don't think so anymore i thought i did at one point okay and i kind of had to go through life debunking like meeting up with things to debunk my alien abduction story um and uh and uh uh one of the things if you if you ever ask like why do aliens all look the same like why did we get this image of big heads with big eyes and and everybody sees that why is it always you know

[29:56] they're looking down on us right you think yourself laying on a table and that's what people remember and uh one theory that i saw which actually i think is the theory is that aliens are our mothers right yeah our parents okay well what what what we're doing is or people who have that type of experience or recall that type of experience they were calling back to a time when their eyesight was really fuzzy right okay just just after after birth for a few months yeah and they're generalizing these shapes right but it's their mother right and they can't understand anything right and that those are those are some

[30:36] of our most primal memories so those are the things that get fastened you know to our cognition firmly uh it may get lost in subconscious you know as things pile on but the idea is that you know what you're witnessing when people describe an alien abduction they're describing them being in the crib and their mother looking over them and then manipulating them you know taking off their diapers that's that's fascinating fascinating because that's also the stages those are the stages at which they say the ego development takes place because the child you see he can't distinguish between his own state and the state of the other and assumes

[31:14] i mean especially psychoanalysts and others they they argue that the child assumes that they are one but as as the person kind of goes away they're kind of thinking what's going on and it's it's creating this it leads on to the ego split and and other issues but um i've never thought of the alien thing like that but that's uh the point is the point is not the aliens the point is this like uh shapes yeah i see what you're saying it produces a shape and it it gets kind of defined to what we look at today as the shape of aliens today

[31:53] you know big heads big eyes when it's really just an abstraction or a failure to have a certain level of visual refinement of an experience that you had when you were a child right you know the words thing that you were saying words being reduced to shapes fundamentally these kind of primordial shapes and you see what's fascinating is that this is a world in which words in many ways they are so expansive that we can elaborate on ideas we can like i can i can express something which by you hearing it or reading it it may evoke a similar kind of either a concept or an

[32:32] emotion in you and and this uh i mean the miracle of it like you know even in the quran that allah the kind of paradox is words are equally reductive because as you're trying to express something so profound you're having to limit it to words and and we in most of our communication still is non-verbal and the verbal part is actually usually the miscommunication i mean

[33:12] there's there's a there's a i don't know if it's called mirroring or uh it's definitely like a sinking that occurs that if you if you uh um a story is is really just you fundamentally again and and these are kind of the theory there's some there's some aspects to uh to uh to objectivity to them but it's you know when you tell a story fundamentally what's happening is you're transferring your mind into somebody else yeah and it's happening um like not just on like a a image level but it's reshaping to a degree like the mind

## Cite

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment oYiiPEhuiHA/s/6. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/s/6/

Not a fatwa: these answers were given to specific people at specific times. Ask a qualified scholar about your own situation.