Language may not be essential for thought, (most of us have the experience of an idea occurring to us that we struggle to put into words), but language acts as a regularization mechanism on thoughts.
Serializing much higher dimensional freeform thoughts into language is a very lossy process, and this kinda ensures that mostly only the core bits get translated. Think of times when someone gets an idea you're trying to convey, but you realize they're missing some critical context you forgot to share. It takes some activation energy to add that bit of context, so if it seems like they mostly get what you're saying, you skip it. Over time, transferring ideas from one person to the next, they tend towards a very compressed form because language is expensive.
This process also works on your own thoughts. Thinking out loud performs a similar role, it compresses the hell out of the thought or else it remains inexpressible. Now imagine repeated stages of compressing through language, allowing ideas to form from that compressed form, and then compressing those ideas in turn. It's a bit of a recursive process and language is in the middle of it.
Communication of thought is a whole different question. Either way you're making a lot of strong claims without support?
> this kinda ensures that mostly only the core bits get translated
The kinda is doing a lot here. Many times the very act of trying to communicate a thought colors/corrupts the main point and gives only one perspective or a snapshot of the overall thought. There's a reason why they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Except the mind can conjure much more than a static picture. The mind can also hold the idea and the exceptions to the idea in one coherent model. For me this can be especially apparent when taking psychedelics and finding that trying to communicate some thoughts with words requires constant babbling to keep refining the last few sentences, ad libidum. There are exceptions of course, like for simple ideas.
Imo, that's the essense of reasoning. Limited memory and slow communication channels force us to create compact, but expressive models of reality. LLMs, on the other hand, have all the memory in the world and their model of reality is a piece-wise interpolation of the huge training dataset. Why invent grammar rules if you can keep the entire dictionary in mind?
The actual paper [1] says that functional MRI (which is measuring which parts of the brain are active by sensing blood flow) indicates that different brain hardware is used for non-language and language functions.
This has been suspected for years, but now there's an experimental result.
What this tells us for AI is that we need something else besides LLMs. It's not clear what that something else is. But, as the paper mentions, the low-end mammals and the corvids lack language but have some substantial problem-solving capability. That's seen down at squirrel and crow size, where the brains are tiny. So if someone figures out to do this, it will probably take less hardware than an LLM.
This is the next big piece we need for AI. No idea how to do this, but it's the right question to work on.
You could say language is just the "communication module" but there has got to be another whole underlying interface where non-verbal thoughts are modulated/demodulated to conform to the language expected to be used when communication may or may not be on the agenda.
Brain size isn't necessarily a very good correlate of intelligence. For example dolphins and elephants have bigger brains than humans, and sperm whales have much bigger brains (5x by volume). Neanderthals also had bigger brains than modern humans, but are not thought to have been more intelligent.
A crow has a small brain, but also has very small neurons, so ends up having 1.5B neurons, similar to a dog or some monkeys.
If the suspiciously round number is accurate, this puts the human gut somewhere between a golden hamster and ansell's mole-rat, and about level with a short-palated fruit bat.
Agreed. It's architecture that matters, although for a given brain architecture (e.g. species) there might be benefits to scale. mega-brain vs pea-brain.
I was just pointing out that a crow's brain is built on a more advanced process node than our own. Smaller transistors.
I remember back in school, a language teacher once was trying to convey the importance of language. One of his main arguments was that we needed words and languages in order to think. I still recall my disbelief.
I spent the next few days trying to understand how that process worked. I would force myself to think in words and sentences. It was incredibly limiting! So slow and lacking in images, in abstract relationships between ideas and sensations.
It took me another few years to realise that many people actually depend on those structures in order to produce any thought and idea.
I once realised that, for me, subvocalising thoughts was a way to keep something "in RAM", while some other thoughts went elsewhere, or developed something else. Perhaps slower speed helps in that respect?
Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc?
If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.
I don’t make a sound or word in my mind but I definitely keep track of the number. My thinking is definitely structured and there are things in my thoughts but there is no words or voice. I also can’t see images in my mind either. I’ve no idea what an inner monologue or the minds eye is like. I have however over the years found ways to produce these experiences in a way of my own. I found for instance some rough visualization was helpful in doing multi variate calculus but it’s very difficult and took a lot of practice. I’ve also been able to simulate language in my mind to help me practice difficult conversations but it’s really difficult and not distinct.
I would note though I have a really difficult time with arithmetic and mechanical tasks like counting. Mostly I just lose attention. Perhaps an inner voice would help if it became something that kept a continuity of thought.
I can remember the sequence of sounds and like a delay line repeat that sequence in my head. This becomes easier the more distinguishable the taps are or the more of a cadence variability there is. But if it is a longer sequence I compress it by remembering an analogue like so: doo doo da doo da doo da da doo (reminiscent of morse code, or a kind of auditory binary). Would we consider this language? I think in the colloquial sense no, but it is essentially a machine language equivalent.
For context I have both abstract "multimedia" thought processes and hypervisor-like internal narrative depending on the nature of the experience or task.
Do you also have some noise for mathematical operations, such as raising a number to a power, and for equals? So doo doo da ugh doo doo feh doo doo da doo da doo da da doo?
...maybe I do this sometimes myself. Remembering the proper names of things is effort.
I can. But I do this by visualizing the taps as a group. I don't have to label them with a number. I can see them in my mind, thus recalling the taps. If I tap with any sort of rhythm I can see the rhythm in the way they are laid out in my mind and this helps with recollection.
If I want to translate this knowledge into a number, I need to count the taps I am seeing in my head. At that point I do need to think of the word for the number.
I could even do computations on these items in my mind, imagine dividing them into two groups for instance, without ever having to link them to words until I am ready to do something with the result, such as write down the number of items in each group.
This is highly anecdotal, but when I lift weights, I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them.
An example of this would be when I’m lifting weights with a friend and am lost in the set/focusing on mind-muscle connection, and as a result I forget to count my reps. I am usually quite accurate when I verify with my lifting partner the number of reps done/remaining.
As OP mentioned, many people have no internal speech, otherwise known as anendophasia, yet can still do everything anyone with an internal dialogue can do.
Similarly for me, I can do “mental object rotation” tasks even though I have aphantasia.
Practice a few polyrhythms, get used to things like:
X . X X X . X . X X X .
A . . A . . A . . A . .
B . B . B . B . B . B .
and:
X . . X . X X X . X X . X . X X . . X . X X . . X X . X X . X . . X . X X . . X X . X . . X . . X X X X . . X X X X . . X . . X . X X . . X X . X . . X . X X . X X . . X X . X . . X X . X . X X . X X X . X . .
A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . .
B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . .
C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . .
Learn to do them with one limb (or finger) per line, and also with all the lines on the same limb (or finger). And then suddenly, they'll start to feel intuitive, and you'll be able to do them by feel. (It's a bit like scales.)
An important note. If you're hearing your voice in your head doing this, that's subvocalisation and it's basically just saying it out loud, the instruction is still sent to your vocal chords
It's the equivalent of <thinking> tags for LLM output.
I have the standard internal monologue many people report, but I've never put much stock in the "words are necessary for thought" because while I think a lot in words, I also do a lot of thinking in not-words.
We recently put the project I've been working on for the last year out into the field for the first time. As was fully expected, some bugs emerged. I needed to solve one of them. I designed a system in my head for spawning off child processes based on the parent process to do certain distinct types of work in a way that gives us access to OS process-level controls over the work, and then got about halfway through implementing it. Little to none of this design involved "words". I can't even say it involved much "visualization" either, except maybe in a very loose sense. It's hard to describe in words how I didn't use words but I've been programming for long enough that I pretty much just directly work in system-architecture space for such designs, especially relatively small ones like that that are just a couple day's work.
Things like pattern language advocates aren't wrong that it can still be useful to put such things into words, especially for communication purposes, but I know through direct personal experience that words are not a necessary component of even quite complicated thought.
"Subjective experience reports are always tricky, jerf. How do you know that you aren't fooling yourself about not using words?" A good and reasonable question, to which my answer is, I don't even have words for the sort of design I was doing. Some, from the aforementioned pattern languages, yes, but not in general. So I don't think I was just fooling myself on the grounds that even if I tried to serialize what I did directly into English, a transliteration rather than a translation, I don't think I could. I don't have one.
I'm also not claiming to be special. I don't know the percentages but I'm sure many people do this too.
As always, barely anyone reads the actual claims in the article and we're left with people opining on the title.
The claims here are exceptionally limited. You don't need spoken language to do well on cognitive tests, but that has never been a subject of debate. Obviously the deaf get on fine without spoken language. People suffering from aphasia, but still capable of communication via other mechanisms, still do well on cognitive tests. Brain scans show you can do sudoku without increasing bloodflow to language regions.
This kind of stuff has never really been in debate. You can teach plenty of animals to do fine on all sorts of cognitive tasks. There's never been a claim that language holds dominion over all forms of cognition in totality.
But if you want to discuss the themes present in Proust, you're going to be hard pressed to do so without something resembling language. This is self-evident. You cannot ask questions or give answers for subjects you lack the facilities to describe.
tl;dr: Language's purpose is thought, not all thoughts require language
Language's purpose - why it arose - is more likely communication, primarily external communication. The benefit of using language to communicate with yourself via "inner voice" - think in terms of words - seems a secondary benefit, especially considering that less than 50% of people report doing this.
But certainly language, especially when using a large vocabulary of abstract and specialist concepts, does boost cognitive abilities - maybe essentially through "chunking", using words as "thought macros", and boosting what we're able to do with our limited 7+/- item working memory.
> As always, barely anyone reads the actual claims in the article and we're left with people opining on the title
One must ask why this is such a common occurrence on this (and almost all other) social media, and conclude that it is because the structure of social media itself is rotten and imposes selective pressures that only allow certain kinds of content to thrive.
The actual paper itself is not readily accessible, and properly understanding its claims and conclusions would take substantial time and effort - by which point the article has already slid off the front page, and all the low-effort single-sentence karma grabbers who profit off of simplistic takes that appeal to majority groupthink have already occupied all the comment space "above the fold."
This. Also the question is what the possible complexity of the question is that you want to convey. As long as it is rather simple it might seem realistic to argue that there is no language involved (i would argue this is wrong). But as soon as the problems get more complex, the system you need to use to communicate this question becomes more and more undeniably a form of language (i think about complexity here as things like self-referentiality which need sufficiently complex formal systems to be expressed – think what gödel is about). So this part seems more complicated than it is understood. The same goes for the brain-imaging argument. As a philosopher I have unfortunately seen even accomplished scientists in this field follow a surprisingly naive empiricist approach a lot of times – which seems to me to be the case here also.
> Obviously the deaf get on fine without spoken language.
Why the introduction of "spoken?" Sign languages are just as expressive as spoken language, and could easily be written. Writing is a sign.
> But if you want to discuss the themes present in Proust, you're going to be hard pressed to do so without something resembling language. This is self-evident.
And it's also a bad example. Of course you can't discuss the use of language without the use of language. You can't discuss the backstroke without any awareness of water or swimming, either. You can certainly do it without language though, just by waving your arms and jumping around.
> Language's purpose is thought
Is it, though? Did you make that case in the preceding paragraphs? I'm not going to go out on a limb here and alternatively suggest that language's purpose is communication, just like the purpose of laughing, crying, hugging, or smiling. This is why we normally do it loudly, or write it down where other people can see it.
Great point. They even did a bad job of reading the title. The title wasn't "Language is not essential for thought", the title was "Language is not essential for the cognitive processes *underlying* thought."
We'd better hope that is true, because if we didn't have non-linguistic mastery of the cognitive processes underlying thought it's hard to see how we could even acquire language in the first place.
A much more interesting hypothesis is that abstract thought (thought about things not within the present sensorium) , or perhaps all thought, requires the use of symbols or tokens to represent the things that are to be considered.
I think this may have been partially substantiated through experiments in decoding thoughts with machine sensors.
If this turns out to-not- to be true it would have huge implications for AI research.
>And in fact, most of the things that you probably learned about the world, you learned through language and not through direct experience with the world.
Most things we know, we are probably not aware of. And for most of us, direct experience of everything that surrounds us in the world certainly exceeds by several order of magnitude the best bandwidth we can ever dream to achieve through any human language.
Ok, there are no actual data to back this, but authors of the article don't have anything solid either to back such a bold statement, from what is presented in the article.
If most of what we know of the world would mostly be things we were told, it would obviously be mostly a large amount of phatic noises, lies and clueless random assertions that we would have no mean to distinguish from the few stable credible elements inferable by comparing with a far more larger corpus of self experiments with realty.
Language is a very poor substitute for freely flowing electrical information - it is evolved to compensate for the bottlenecks to external communication - bottlenecks that are lacking an internal analogue.
It's also a highly advanced feature - something as heavily optiimised as evolved life would not allow something as vital as cognition to be hampered by a lack of means for high fidelity external expression.
It is not at all obvious that "freely flowing electrical information" isn't just language in a different medium, much the same as video on a cassette tape.
Language is designed to be expressible with low fidelity vibrating strings - it is very clear that the available bandwidth is in the order of bytes per second.
Verses a fucking neural network with ~100 billion neurons.
Come on man, seriously - the two communication modalities are completely incomparable.
Versus a fucking phone network with ~10 billion active numbers.
Come on man, seriously - the two communication modalities are completely incomparable.
Clearly the information traveling around on the phone network couldn't possibly be the same as the low bandwidth vibrating strings used in face to face communication. Obviously.
There's a major difference - the phone network takes in prerequisite constraints on the nature of the information that it's encoding; it is forced by its functionality to be a reflection of spoken language.
The internal communications of the mind have no need for such constraints (and evolved hundreds of millions of years beforehand).
Anyway, I don't know what you were actually trying to argue here: you just built a simulated brain out of people, and the massively multi-agent distributed nature of the language of that machine is (emergently) incomparable with vocalised language.
>You can ask whether people who have these severe language impairments can perform tasks that require thinking. You can ask them to solve some math problems or to perform a social reasoning test, and all of the instructions, of course, have to be nonverbal because they can’t understand linguistic information anymore. Scientists have a lot of experience working with populations that don’t have language—studying preverbal infants or studying nonhuman animal species. So it’s definitely possible to convey instructions in a way that’s nonverbal. And the key finding from this line of work is that there are people with severe language impairments who nonetheless seem totally fine on all cognitive tasks that we’ve tested them on so far.
They should start with what is their definition of language. To me it's any mean you can use to communicate some information to someone else and they generally get a correct inference of what kind of representations and responses are expected is the definition of a language. Whether it's uttered words, a series of gestures, subtle pheromones or a slap in your face, that's all languages.
For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a serious claim in introduction.
Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match with the conclusion.
They do, in the first section of the journal article itself:
> Do any forms of thought—our knowledge of the world and ability to reason over these knowledge representations—require language (that is, representations and computations that sup-port our ability to generate and interpret meaningfully structured word sequences)?
Emphasis on "word sequences," to the exclusion of, e.g. body language or sign language. They go on to discuss some of the brain structures involved in the production and interpretation of these word sequences:
> Language production and language understanding are sup-ported by an interconnected set of brain areas in the left hemisphere, often referred to as the ‘language network'.
It is these brain areas that form the basis of their testable claims regarding language.
> Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match with the conclusion.
This is why "coming to terms" on the definitions of words and what you mean by them should be the first step in any serious discussion if you aim to have any hope in hell of communicating precisely; it is also why you should be skeptical of political actors that insist on redefining the meanings of (especially well-known) terms in order to push an agenda. Confusing a term with its actual referent is exceedingly commonplace in modern day.
Just as a data point, my guess is that a very small minority of English-language speakers would define the term as broadly as you do, at least in a context relating the concept to analytical thought processes. At the very least, I think most people expect that language is used actively, such that pheromones wouldn’t fall within the definition. (And actually, that’s reflected when you say language is a means “you can use”.) Likewise, a slap in the face certainly can be interpreted, but slapping doesn’t seem like a means of communicating in general—because a slap only communicates one thing.
It's also doubtful that thinking about the concept of analytical thought processes is something most humans do either, at least not in these terms and this perspective.
Should we expect experts in cognitive science exposing their view in a scientific publication to stick to the narrowest median view of language though? All the more when in the same article you quote people like Russell who certainly didn't have a naïve definition of language when expressing a point of view on the matter.
And slapping in general can definitely communicate far more than a single thing depending on many parameters. See https://www.33rdsquare.com/is-a-slap-disrespectful-a-nuanced... for a text exploring some of nuances of the meaning it can encompasse. But even a kid can get that slap could perfectly have all the potential to create a fully doubly articulated language, as The Croods 2 creators funnily have put in scene. :D
> For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a serious claim in introduction.
I guess I've always just assumed it refers to some feature that's uniquely human—notably, recursive grammars.
Also, let's recall that in its broader meaning, the scientific consensus is that humans are animals and they evolved through the same basic mechanism as all other life forms that is evolution. So even assuming that evolution made some unique language hability emerge in humans, it's most likely that they share most language traits with other species and that there is more things to learn from them that what would be possible if it's assumed they can't have a language and thoughts.
While not essential for thought, language is a very important tool in shaping and sharing thoughts.
Another related tool is religion (for emotions instead of thoughts,) which funnily enough faces the same divergence language does.
Right now society that calls itself "secular" simply does not understand the role of religion, and its importance in society.
To be clear, I don't belong to any religion, I am saying one needs to be invented for people who are currently "secular."
In fact, you have the disorganized aspects of religion already. All one needs to spot these are to look at the aspects that attempt to systematize or control our feelings. Mass media, celebrities for example.
Instead of letting capitalistic forces create a pseudoreligion for society, it's better if people come together and organize something healthier, intentionally.
No. Just because words are not needed for cognitive processes, does not mean that people still can and do think in language. The properties of that language could then influence thought. This is known as the Weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (note "hypothesis", not "theory").
Yep, this pretty accurately describes the way of think. I have a pretty heavy inner monologue, but it's not the only way I think. I've found that words are the way I "organize" my thoughts from muddled general ideas mixed with feelings into concise ideas that I can understand and gain insights from. I often won't fully grasp the significance of an idea I have until I talk it out with someone and find a way to put it into words that distill whatever I'm thinking into a more minimal form.
Somewhat relatedly, I've started suspecting over the past few years that this is why I struggle to multitask or split my attention; while I can ruminate on several things at once, the "output" of my thinking is bottlenecked by a single stream that requires me to focus on exclusively to get a anything useful from it. Realizing this has actually helped me quite a bit in terms of being more productive because I can avoid setting myself up for failure by trying to get too much done at once and failing rather than tackling things one at a time.
My cat asks me to go outside. No english words involved of course. She sits and faces the door, meows at it, and paws at the knob. Maybe you can argue they are speaking cat when they ask.
Stix's claim appears to be unfalsifiable. In scientific and philosophical discourse, a proposition must be falsifiable—there must be a conceivable empirical test that could potentially refute it. This criterion is fundamental for meaningful inquiry.
Several factors contribute to the unfalsifiability of this claim:
Subjectivity of Thought: Thought processes are inherently internal and subjective. There is no direct method to observe or measure another being's thoughts without imposing interpretative frameworks influenced by social and material contexts.
Defining Language and Thought: Language is not merely a collection of spoken or written symbols; it is a system of signs embedded within social relations and power structures. If we broaden the definition of language to include any form of symbolic representation or communication—such as gestures, images, or neural patterns—then the notion of thought occurring without language becomes conceptually incoherent. Thought is mediated through these symbols, which are products of historical and material developments.
Animal Cognition and Symbolic Systems: Observations of animals like chimpanzees engaging in strategic gameplay or crows crafting tools demonstrate complex behaviors. Interpreting these actions as evidence of thought devoid of language overlooks the possibility that animals utilize their own symbolic systems. These behaviors reflect interactions with their environment mediated by innate or socially learned symbols—a rudimentary form of language shaped by their material conditions.
Limitations of Empirical Testing: To empirically verify that thought can occur without any form of language would require accessing cognitive processes entirely free from symbolic mediation. Given the current state of scientific methodologies—and considering that all cognitive processes are influenced by material and social factors—this is unattainable.
Because of these factors, Stix's claim cannot be empirically tested in a way that could potentially falsify it. It resides outside the parameters of verifiable inquiry, highlighting the importance of recognizing the interplay between language, thought, and material conditions.
Cognitive processes and language are deeply intertwined. Language arises from collective practice; it both shapes and is shaped by the material conditions of the environment. Thought is mediated through language, carrying the cognitive imprints of the material base. Even in non-human animals, the cognitive abilities we observe may be underpinned by forms of symbolic interaction with their environment—a reflection of their material engagement with the world.
Asserting that language is not essential for thought overlooks the fundamental role that social and material conditions play in shaping both language and cognition. It fails to account for how symbolic systems—integral to language—are embedded in and arise from material realities.
Certain forms of thought might appear to occur without human language, but this perspective neglects the intrinsic connection between cognition, language, and environmental conditiond. Reasoning itself can be viewed as a form of internalized language—a symbolic system rooted in social and material contexts. Recognizing this interdependence is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of thought and the pivotal role language plays within it.
Here's what Helen Keller had to say about this in _The World I Live In_:
"Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.
It was not night—it was not day.
. . . . .
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness, without a place;
There were no stars—no earth—no time—
No check—no change—no good—no crime.
My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death.
I remember, also through touch, that I had a power of association. I felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the opening of a window or its closing, the slam of a door. After repeatedly smelling rain and feeling the discomfort of wetness, I acted like those about me: I ran to shut the window. But that was not thought in any sense. It was the same kind of association that makes animals take shelter from the rain. From the same instinct of aping others, I folded the clothes that came from the laundry, and put mine away, fed the turkeys, sewed bead-eyes on my doll's face, and did many other things of which I have the tactual remembrance. When I wanted anything I liked,—ice-cream, for instance, of which I was very fond,—I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips. From reminiscences like these I conclude that it is the opening of the two faculties, freedom of will, or choice, and rationality, or the power of thinking from one thing to another, which makes it possible to come into being first as a child, afterwards as a man.
Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of "I" and "me" and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the sense of touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my soul that first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of objects, names, qualities, and properties. Thought made me conscious of love, joy, and all the emotions. I was eager to know, then to understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and understood, and the blind impetus, which had before driven me hither and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished forever.
I cannot represent more clearly than any one else the gradual and subtle changes from first impressions to abstract ideas. But I know that my physical ideas, that is, ideas derived from material objects, appear to me first an idea similar to those of touch. Instantly they pass into intellectual meanings. Afterward the meaning finds expression in what is called "inner speech." When I was a child, my inner speech was inner spelling. Although I am even now frequently caught spelling to myself on my fingers, yet I talk to myself, too, with my lips, and it is true that when I first learned to speak, my mind discarded the finger-symbols and began to articulate. However, when I try to recall what some one has said to me, I am conscious of a hand spelling into mine.
It has often been asked what were my earliest impressions of the world in which I found myself. But one who thinks at all of his first impressions knows what a riddle this is. Our impressions grow and change unnoticed, so that what we suppose we thought as children may be quite different from what we actually experienced in our childhood. I only know that after my education began the world which came within my reach was all alive. I spelled to my blocks and my dogs. I sympathized with plants when the flowers were picked, because I thought it hurt them, and that they grieved for their lost blossoms. It was two years before I could be made to believe that my dogs did not understand what I said, and I always apologized to them when I ran into or stepped on them.
As my experiences broadened and deepened, the indeterminate, poetic feelings of childhood began to fix themselves in definite thoughts. Nature—the world I could touch—was folded and filled with myself. I am inclined to believe those philosophers who declare that we know nothing but our own feelings and ideas. With a little ingenious reasoning one may see in the material world simply a mirror, an image of permanent mental sensations. In either sphere self-knowledge is the condition and the limit of our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves—and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves, either.
However that may be, I came later to look for an image of my emotions and sensations in others. I had to learn the outward signs of inward feelings. The start of fear, the suppressed, controlled tensity of pain, the beat of happy muscles in others, had to be perceived and compared with my own experiences before I could trace them back to the intangible soul of another. Groping, uncertain, I at last found my identity, and after seeing my thoughts and feelings repeated in others, I gradually constructed my world of men and of God. As I read and study, I find that this is what the rest of the race has done. Man looks within himself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe."
Considering that, in 2024, if not a majority, then, still, a vast portion of our consciousness is words. Perhaps not for the illiterate, but for many, much of our knowledge is through the written or spoken word. [Edit: Even a hypothetical person, alone and isolated, never having spoken, would still devise internal language structures, at least for the external realm. ]
Base consciousness is surely not dependent on language, but I suspect base consciousness may be extremely different from what one might expect, so much that compared to what we perceive as consciousness, might seem something close to death.
Well, I'm not sure cognition entirely without language is even possible for non larval humans. Language is a natural tendency and it arises regardless of documentation, scribblings or utterings. It exists whether audible or not. Language itself is manifestation of the thinking process that permits it.
And I'll hold to the notion that the complete absence of language (and its underlying structure) would resemble death if death can be resembled. Perhaps death is only the excoriation of thought, cognition and language, with something more fundamental persisting.
Language may not be essential for thought, (most of us have the experience of an idea occurring to us that we struggle to put into words), but language acts as a regularization mechanism on thoughts.
Serializing much higher dimensional freeform thoughts into language is a very lossy process, and this kinda ensures that mostly only the core bits get translated. Think of times when someone gets an idea you're trying to convey, but you realize they're missing some critical context you forgot to share. It takes some activation energy to add that bit of context, so if it seems like they mostly get what you're saying, you skip it. Over time, transferring ideas from one person to the next, they tend towards a very compressed form because language is expensive.
This process also works on your own thoughts. Thinking out loud performs a similar role, it compresses the hell out of the thought or else it remains inexpressible. Now imagine repeated stages of compressing through language, allowing ideas to form from that compressed form, and then compressing those ideas in turn. It's a bit of a recursive process and language is in the middle of it.
Communication of thought is a whole different question. Either way you're making a lot of strong claims without support?
> this kinda ensures that mostly only the core bits get translated
The kinda is doing a lot here. Many times the very act of trying to communicate a thought colors/corrupts the main point and gives only one perspective or a snapshot of the overall thought. There's a reason why they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Except the mind can conjure much more than a static picture. The mind can also hold the idea and the exceptions to the idea in one coherent model. For me this can be especially apparent when taking psychedelics and finding that trying to communicate some thoughts with words requires constant babbling to keep refining the last few sentences, ad libidum. There are exceptions of course, like for simple ideas.
Yes, dimension reduction.
Imo, that's the essense of reasoning. Limited memory and slow communication channels force us to create compact, but expressive models of reality. LLMs, on the other hand, have all the memory in the world and their model of reality is a piece-wise interpolation of the huge training dataset. Why invent grammar rules if you can keep the entire dictionary in mind?
This is an important result.
The actual paper [1] says that functional MRI (which is measuring which parts of the brain are active by sensing blood flow) indicates that different brain hardware is used for non-language and language functions. This has been suspected for years, but now there's an experimental result.
What this tells us for AI is that we need something else besides LLMs. It's not clear what that something else is. But, as the paper mentions, the low-end mammals and the corvids lack language but have some substantial problem-solving capability. That's seen down at squirrel and crow size, where the brains are tiny. So if someone figures out to do this, it will probably take less hardware than an LLM.
This is the next big piece we need for AI. No idea how to do this, but it's the right question to work on.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07522-w.epdf?shar...
> What this tells us for AI is that we need something else besides LLMs.
Basically we need Multimodal LLM's (terrible naming as it's not an LLM then but still).
I don't know what we need. Nor does anybody else, yet. But we know what it has to do. Basically what a small mammal or a corvid does.
There's been progress. Look at this 2020 work on neural net controlled drone acrobatics.[1] That's going in the right direction.
[1] https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/docs/RSS20_Kaufmann.pdf
You could say language is just the "communication module" but there has got to be another whole underlying interface where non-verbal thoughts are modulated/demodulated to conform to the language expected to be used when communication may or may not be on the agenda.
Brain size isn't necessarily a very good correlate of intelligence. For example dolphins and elephants have bigger brains than humans, and sperm whales have much bigger brains (5x by volume). Neanderthals also had bigger brains than modern humans, but are not thought to have been more intelligent.
A crow has a small brain, but also has very small neurons, so ends up having 1.5B neurons, similar to a dog or some monkeys.
Not sure neuron number correlates to smarts, either.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
There are 100 million in my gut, but it doesn't solve any problems that aren't about poop, as far as I know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
If the suspiciously round number is accurate, this puts the human gut somewhere between a golden hamster and ansell's mole-rat, and about level with a short-palated fruit bat.
Agreed. It's architecture that matters, although for a given brain architecture (e.g. species) there might be benefits to scale. mega-brain vs pea-brain.
I was just pointing out that a crow's brain is built on a more advanced process node than our own. Smaller transistors.
That makes sense. Birds are very weight-limited, so there's evolutionary pressure to keep the mass of the control system down.
For those who can’t and don’t think in words this is unsurprising.
I remember back in school, a language teacher once was trying to convey the importance of language. One of his main arguments was that we needed words and languages in order to think. I still recall my disbelief.
I spent the next few days trying to understand how that process worked. I would force myself to think in words and sentences. It was incredibly limiting! So slow and lacking in images, in abstract relationships between ideas and sensations.
It took me another few years to realise that many people actually depend on those structures in order to produce any thought and idea.
I once realised that, for me, subvocalising thoughts was a way to keep something "in RAM", while some other thoughts went elsewhere, or developed something else. Perhaps slower speed helps in that respect?
Right, I think it's less than 50% of people that have an "inner voice" - using language to think.
Other animals with at best very limited language, are still highly intelligent and capable of reasoning - apes, dogs, rats, crows, ...
Can you count without using a "language"?
Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc?
If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.
I don’t make a sound or word in my mind but I definitely keep track of the number. My thinking is definitely structured and there are things in my thoughts but there is no words or voice. I also can’t see images in my mind either. I’ve no idea what an inner monologue or the minds eye is like. I have however over the years found ways to produce these experiences in a way of my own. I found for instance some rough visualization was helpful in doing multi variate calculus but it’s very difficult and took a lot of practice. I’ve also been able to simulate language in my mind to help me practice difficult conversations but it’s really difficult and not distinct.
I would note though I have a really difficult time with arithmetic and mechanical tasks like counting. Mostly I just lose attention. Perhaps an inner voice would help if it became something that kept a continuity of thought.
I can remember the sequence of sounds and like a delay line repeat that sequence in my head. This becomes easier the more distinguishable the taps are or the more of a cadence variability there is. But if it is a longer sequence I compress it by remembering an analogue like so: doo doo da doo da doo da da doo (reminiscent of morse code, or a kind of auditory binary). Would we consider this language? I think in the colloquial sense no, but it is essentially a machine language equivalent.
For context I have both abstract "multimedia" thought processes and hypervisor-like internal narrative depending on the nature of the experience or task.
Do you also have some noise for mathematical operations, such as raising a number to a power, and for equals? So doo doo da ugh doo doo feh doo doo da doo da doo da da doo?
...maybe I do this sometimes myself. Remembering the proper names of things is effort.
I can. But I do this by visualizing the taps as a group. I don't have to label them with a number. I can see them in my mind, thus recalling the taps. If I tap with any sort of rhythm I can see the rhythm in the way they are laid out in my mind and this helps with recollection.
If I want to translate this knowledge into a number, I need to count the taps I am seeing in my head. At that point I do need to think of the word for the number.
I could even do computations on these items in my mind, imagine dividing them into two groups for instance, without ever having to link them to words until I am ready to do something with the result, such as write down the number of items in each group.
This is highly anecdotal, but when I lift weights, I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them.
An example of this would be when I’m lifting weights with a friend and am lost in the set/focusing on mind-muscle connection, and as a result I forget to count my reps. I am usually quite accurate when I verify with my lifting partner the number of reps done/remaining.
As OP mentioned, many people have no internal speech, otherwise known as anendophasia, yet can still do everything anyone with an internal dialogue can do.
Similarly for me, I can do “mental object rotation” tasks even though I have aphantasia.
Can you expand on your last sentence? The notion is fascinating to me.
> I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them.
This is known as subitising.
Many animals can do some form of counting of small numbers where there's no connection to language possible.
Interestingly, I feel like I can "feel" small numbers (up to 4 or 5) easier than than thinking about them as objects in a language.
By feel, I can without language or counting, play mostly
and every so often switch out for variations, eg: or but I'm no good for playing polyrhythms, which many other people can do, and I believe they must also do so more by feel than by counting.Practice a few polyrhythms, get used to things like:
and: Learn to do them with one limb (or finger) per line, and also with all the lines on the same limb (or finger). And then suddenly, they'll start to feel intuitive, and you'll be able to do them by feel. (It's a bit like scales.)It's a well known phenomenon! I will drop this link here in case you are not familiar with it:
https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-big-difference-in-how-...
An important note. If you're hearing your voice in your head doing this, that's subvocalisation and it's basically just saying it out loud, the instruction is still sent to your vocal chords
It's the equivalent of <thinking> tags for LLM output.
Could you imagine the impossibility of riding a bike if you had to consciously put words to every action before you did it?
How would someone think in words? You mean the words in the pictures or...?
I think in words. For me during thought there is a literal voice in my putting my thoughts into words.
I have the standard internal monologue many people report, but I've never put much stock in the "words are necessary for thought" because while I think a lot in words, I also do a lot of thinking in not-words.
We recently put the project I've been working on for the last year out into the field for the first time. As was fully expected, some bugs emerged. I needed to solve one of them. I designed a system in my head for spawning off child processes based on the parent process to do certain distinct types of work in a way that gives us access to OS process-level controls over the work, and then got about halfway through implementing it. Little to none of this design involved "words". I can't even say it involved much "visualization" either, except maybe in a very loose sense. It's hard to describe in words how I didn't use words but I've been programming for long enough that I pretty much just directly work in system-architecture space for such designs, especially relatively small ones like that that are just a couple day's work.
Things like pattern language advocates aren't wrong that it can still be useful to put such things into words, especially for communication purposes, but I know through direct personal experience that words are not a necessary component of even quite complicated thought.
"Subjective experience reports are always tricky, jerf. How do you know that you aren't fooling yourself about not using words?" A good and reasonable question, to which my answer is, I don't even have words for the sort of design I was doing. Some, from the aforementioned pattern languages, yes, but not in general. So I don't think I was just fooling myself on the grounds that even if I tried to serialize what I did directly into English, a transliteration rather than a translation, I don't think I could. I don't have one.
I'm also not claiming to be special. I don't know the percentages but I'm sure many people do this too.
Are there really people who don't know about inner monologues?
Like, at the speed of speech?
By "hearing" words, sentences, dialogues in their mind. Just like imagining a picture, but audio instead.
but words, sentences, and dialogues are all features of language.
absolutely !
As always, barely anyone reads the actual claims in the article and we're left with people opining on the title.
The claims here are exceptionally limited. You don't need spoken language to do well on cognitive tests, but that has never been a subject of debate. Obviously the deaf get on fine without spoken language. People suffering from aphasia, but still capable of communication via other mechanisms, still do well on cognitive tests. Brain scans show you can do sudoku without increasing bloodflow to language regions.
This kind of stuff has never really been in debate. You can teach plenty of animals to do fine on all sorts of cognitive tasks. There's never been a claim that language holds dominion over all forms of cognition in totality.
But if you want to discuss the themes present in Proust, you're going to be hard pressed to do so without something resembling language. This is self-evident. You cannot ask questions or give answers for subjects you lack the facilities to describe.
tl;dr: Language's purpose is thought, not all thoughts require language
> Language's purpose is thought
Language's purpose - why it arose - is more likely communication, primarily external communication. The benefit of using language to communicate with yourself via "inner voice" - think in terms of words - seems a secondary benefit, especially considering that less than 50% of people report doing this.
But certainly language, especially when using a large vocabulary of abstract and specialist concepts, does boost cognitive abilities - maybe essentially through "chunking", using words as "thought macros", and boosting what we're able to do with our limited 7+/- item working memory.
> As always, barely anyone reads the actual claims in the article and we're left with people opining on the title
One must ask why this is such a common occurrence on this (and almost all other) social media, and conclude that it is because the structure of social media itself is rotten and imposes selective pressures that only allow certain kinds of content to thrive.
The actual paper itself is not readily accessible, and properly understanding its claims and conclusions would take substantial time and effort - by which point the article has already slid off the front page, and all the low-effort single-sentence karma grabbers who profit off of simplistic takes that appeal to majority groupthink have already occupied all the comment space "above the fold."
This. Also the question is what the possible complexity of the question is that you want to convey. As long as it is rather simple it might seem realistic to argue that there is no language involved (i would argue this is wrong). But as soon as the problems get more complex, the system you need to use to communicate this question becomes more and more undeniably a form of language (i think about complexity here as things like self-referentiality which need sufficiently complex formal systems to be expressed – think what gödel is about). So this part seems more complicated than it is understood. The same goes for the brain-imaging argument. As a philosopher I have unfortunately seen even accomplished scientists in this field follow a surprisingly naive empiricist approach a lot of times – which seems to me to be the case here also.
> Obviously the deaf get on fine without spoken language.
Why the introduction of "spoken?" Sign languages are just as expressive as spoken language, and could easily be written. Writing is a sign.
> But if you want to discuss the themes present in Proust, you're going to be hard pressed to do so without something resembling language. This is self-evident.
And it's also a bad example. Of course you can't discuss the use of language without the use of language. You can't discuss the backstroke without any awareness of water or swimming, either. You can certainly do it without language though, just by waving your arms and jumping around.
> Language's purpose is thought
Is it, though? Did you make that case in the preceding paragraphs? I'm not going to go out on a limb here and alternatively suggest that language's purpose is communication, just like the purpose of laughing, crying, hugging, or smiling. This is why we normally do it loudly, or write it down where other people can see it.
Great point. They even did a bad job of reading the title. The title wasn't "Language is not essential for thought", the title was "Language is not essential for the cognitive processes *underlying* thought."
We'd better hope that is true, because if we didn't have non-linguistic mastery of the cognitive processes underlying thought it's hard to see how we could even acquire language in the first place.
A much more interesting hypothesis is that abstract thought (thought about things not within the present sensorium) , or perhaps all thought, requires the use of symbols or tokens to represent the things that are to be considered.
I think this may have been partially substantiated through experiments in decoding thoughts with machine sensors.
If this turns out to-not- to be true it would have huge implications for AI research.
>And in fact, most of the things that you probably learned about the world, you learned through language and not through direct experience with the world.
Most things we know, we are probably not aware of. And for most of us, direct experience of everything that surrounds us in the world certainly exceeds by several order of magnitude the best bandwidth we can ever dream to achieve through any human language.
Ok, there are no actual data to back this, but authors of the article don't have anything solid either to back such a bold statement, from what is presented in the article.
If most of what we know of the world would mostly be things we were told, it would obviously be mostly a large amount of phatic noises, lies and clueless random assertions that we would have no mean to distinguish from the few stable credible elements inferable by comparing with a far more larger corpus of self experiments with realty.
Is this not obvious?
Language is a very poor substitute for freely flowing electrical information - it is evolved to compensate for the bottlenecks to external communication - bottlenecks that are lacking an internal analogue.
It's also a highly advanced feature - something as heavily optiimised as evolved life would not allow something as vital as cognition to be hampered by a lack of means for high fidelity external expression.
It is not at all obvious that "freely flowing electrical information" isn't just language in a different medium, much the same as video on a cassette tape.
Yes it is.
Language is designed to be expressible with low fidelity vibrating strings - it is very clear that the available bandwidth is in the order of bytes per second.
Verses a fucking neural network with ~100 billion neurons.
Come on man, seriously - the two communication modalities are completely incomparable.
Versus a fucking phone network with ~10 billion active numbers.
Come on man, seriously - the two communication modalities are completely incomparable.
Clearly the information traveling around on the phone network couldn't possibly be the same as the low bandwidth vibrating strings used in face to face communication. Obviously.
There's a major difference - the phone network takes in prerequisite constraints on the nature of the information that it's encoding; it is forced by its functionality to be a reflection of spoken language.
The internal communications of the mind have no need for such constraints (and evolved hundreds of millions of years beforehand).
Anyway, I don't know what you were actually trying to argue here: you just built a simulated brain out of people, and the massively multi-agent distributed nature of the language of that machine is (emergently) incomparable with vocalised language.
I like Temple Grandin's "Thinking the Way Animals Do":
https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html
>You can ask whether people who have these severe language impairments can perform tasks that require thinking. You can ask them to solve some math problems or to perform a social reasoning test, and all of the instructions, of course, have to be nonverbal because they can’t understand linguistic information anymore. Scientists have a lot of experience working with populations that don’t have language—studying preverbal infants or studying nonhuman animal species. So it’s definitely possible to convey instructions in a way that’s nonverbal. And the key finding from this line of work is that there are people with severe language impairments who nonetheless seem totally fine on all cognitive tasks that we’ve tested them on so far.
They should start with what is their definition of language. To me it's any mean you can use to communicate some information to someone else and they generally get a correct inference of what kind of representations and responses are expected is the definition of a language. Whether it's uttered words, a series of gestures, subtle pheromones or a slap in your face, that's all languages.
For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a serious claim in introduction.
Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match with the conclusion.
They do, in the first section of the journal article itself:
> Do any forms of thought—our knowledge of the world and ability to reason over these knowledge representations—require language (that is, representations and computations that sup-port our ability to generate and interpret meaningfully structured word sequences)?
Emphasis on "word sequences," to the exclusion of, e.g. body language or sign language. They go on to discuss some of the brain structures involved in the production and interpretation of these word sequences:
> Language production and language understanding are sup-ported by an interconnected set of brain areas in the left hemisphere, often referred to as the ‘language network'.
It is these brain areas that form the basis of their testable claims regarding language.
> Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match with the conclusion.
This is why "coming to terms" on the definitions of words and what you mean by them should be the first step in any serious discussion if you aim to have any hope in hell of communicating precisely; it is also why you should be skeptical of political actors that insist on redefining the meanings of (especially well-known) terms in order to push an agenda. Confusing a term with its actual referent is exceedingly commonplace in modern day.
Just as a data point, my guess is that a very small minority of English-language speakers would define the term as broadly as you do, at least in a context relating the concept to analytical thought processes. At the very least, I think most people expect that language is used actively, such that pheromones wouldn’t fall within the definition. (And actually, that’s reflected when you say language is a means “you can use”.) Likewise, a slap in the face certainly can be interpreted, but slapping doesn’t seem like a means of communicating in general—because a slap only communicates one thing.
It's also doubtful that thinking about the concept of analytical thought processes is something most humans do either, at least not in these terms and this perspective.
Should we expect experts in cognitive science exposing their view in a scientific publication to stick to the narrowest median view of language though? All the more when in the same article you quote people like Russell who certainly didn't have a naïve definition of language when expressing a point of view on the matter.
And slapping in general can definitely communicate far more than a single thing depending on many parameters. See https://www.33rdsquare.com/is-a-slap-disrespectful-a-nuanced... for a text exploring some of nuances of the meaning it can encompasse. But even a kid can get that slap could perfectly have all the potential to create a fully doubly articulated language, as The Croods 2 creators funnily have put in scene. :D
> For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a serious claim in introduction.
I guess I've always just assumed it refers to some feature that's uniquely human—notably, recursive grammars.
Not all human languages exhibits recursion though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language
And recursion as the unique trait for human language differentiation is not necessarily completely consensual https://omseeth.github.io/blog/2024/recursive_language/
Also, let's recall that in its broader meaning, the scientific consensus is that humans are animals and they evolved through the same basic mechanism as all other life forms that is evolution. So even assuming that evolution made some unique language hability emerge in humans, it's most likely that they share most language traits with other species and that there is more things to learn from them that what would be possible if it's assumed they can't have a language and thoughts.
While not essential for thought, language is a very important tool in shaping and sharing thoughts.
Another related tool is religion (for emotions instead of thoughts,) which funnily enough faces the same divergence language does.
Right now society that calls itself "secular" simply does not understand the role of religion, and its importance in society.
To be clear, I don't belong to any religion, I am saying one needs to be invented for people who are currently "secular."
In fact, you have the disorganized aspects of religion already. All one needs to spot these are to look at the aspects that attempt to systematize or control our feelings. Mass media, celebrities for example.
Instead of letting capitalistic forces create a pseudoreligion for society, it's better if people come together and organize something healthier, intentionally.
Materialism is such a religion. It's sciency and emotion-free, so it appeals to the secular minds.
The conclusion implied by the title seems self evident for anyone who has seen any (at least) nonhuman mammalian predator.
https://archive.is/PsUeX
more proof that we need more than LLMs to build LRMs: https://www.lycee.ai/blog/drop-o1-preview-try-this-alternati...
Is this the death of the Sapir-Whorf theory?
No. Just because words are not needed for cognitive processes, does not mean that people still can and do think in language. The properties of that language could then influence thought. This is known as the Weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (note "hypothesis", not "theory").
Yep, this pretty accurately describes the way of think. I have a pretty heavy inner monologue, but it's not the only way I think. I've found that words are the way I "organize" my thoughts from muddled general ideas mixed with feelings into concise ideas that I can understand and gain insights from. I often won't fully grasp the significance of an idea I have until I talk it out with someone and find a way to put it into words that distill whatever I'm thinking into a more minimal form.
Somewhat relatedly, I've started suspecting over the past few years that this is why I struggle to multitask or split my attention; while I can ruminate on several things at once, the "output" of my thinking is bottlenecked by a single stream that requires me to focus on exclusively to get a anything useful from it. Realizing this has actually helped me quite a bit in terms of being more productive because I can avoid setting myself up for failure by trying to get too much done at once and failing rather than tackling things one at a time.
Sapir-Whorf is not alive.
Well it’s important to note that this does not mean that our language does not play a role in shaping our thoughts.
“You cannot ask a question you that you have no words for”
- Judea Pearl
<raises eyebrows>
My cat asks me to go outside. No english words involved of course. She sits and faces the door, meows at it, and paws at the knob. Maybe you can argue they are speaking cat when they ask.
I swear my cat says 好玩儿 hǎowá'er? when he lacks stimulation, which means "Fun?"
Stix's claim appears to be unfalsifiable. In scientific and philosophical discourse, a proposition must be falsifiable—there must be a conceivable empirical test that could potentially refute it. This criterion is fundamental for meaningful inquiry.
Several factors contribute to the unfalsifiability of this claim:
Subjectivity of Thought: Thought processes are inherently internal and subjective. There is no direct method to observe or measure another being's thoughts without imposing interpretative frameworks influenced by social and material contexts.
Defining Language and Thought: Language is not merely a collection of spoken or written symbols; it is a system of signs embedded within social relations and power structures. If we broaden the definition of language to include any form of symbolic representation or communication—such as gestures, images, or neural patterns—then the notion of thought occurring without language becomes conceptually incoherent. Thought is mediated through these symbols, which are products of historical and material developments.
Animal Cognition and Symbolic Systems: Observations of animals like chimpanzees engaging in strategic gameplay or crows crafting tools demonstrate complex behaviors. Interpreting these actions as evidence of thought devoid of language overlooks the possibility that animals utilize their own symbolic systems. These behaviors reflect interactions with their environment mediated by innate or socially learned symbols—a rudimentary form of language shaped by their material conditions.
Limitations of Empirical Testing: To empirically verify that thought can occur without any form of language would require accessing cognitive processes entirely free from symbolic mediation. Given the current state of scientific methodologies—and considering that all cognitive processes are influenced by material and social factors—this is unattainable.
Because of these factors, Stix's claim cannot be empirically tested in a way that could potentially falsify it. It resides outside the parameters of verifiable inquiry, highlighting the importance of recognizing the interplay between language, thought, and material conditions.
Cognitive processes and language are deeply intertwined. Language arises from collective practice; it both shapes and is shaped by the material conditions of the environment. Thought is mediated through language, carrying the cognitive imprints of the material base. Even in non-human animals, the cognitive abilities we observe may be underpinned by forms of symbolic interaction with their environment—a reflection of their material engagement with the world.
Asserting that language is not essential for thought overlooks the fundamental role that social and material conditions play in shaping both language and cognition. It fails to account for how symbolic systems—integral to language—are embedded in and arise from material realities.
Certain forms of thought might appear to occur without human language, but this perspective neglects the intrinsic connection between cognition, language, and environmental conditiond. Reasoning itself can be viewed as a form of internalized language—a symbolic system rooted in social and material contexts. Recognizing this interdependence is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of thought and the pivotal role language plays within it.
Here's what Helen Keller had to say about this in _The World I Live In_:
"Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.
It was not night—it was not day.
. . . . .
But vacancy absorbing space, And fixedness, without a place; There were no stars—no earth—no time— No check—no change—no good—no crime.
My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death.
I remember, also through touch, that I had a power of association. I felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the opening of a window or its closing, the slam of a door. After repeatedly smelling rain and feeling the discomfort of wetness, I acted like those about me: I ran to shut the window. But that was not thought in any sense. It was the same kind of association that makes animals take shelter from the rain. From the same instinct of aping others, I folded the clothes that came from the laundry, and put mine away, fed the turkeys, sewed bead-eyes on my doll's face, and did many other things of which I have the tactual remembrance. When I wanted anything I liked,—ice-cream, for instance, of which I was very fond,—I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips. From reminiscences like these I conclude that it is the opening of the two faculties, freedom of will, or choice, and rationality, or the power of thinking from one thing to another, which makes it possible to come into being first as a child, afterwards as a man.
Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of "I" and "me" and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the sense of touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my soul that first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of objects, names, qualities, and properties. Thought made me conscious of love, joy, and all the emotions. I was eager to know, then to understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and understood, and the blind impetus, which had before driven me hither and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished forever.
I cannot represent more clearly than any one else the gradual and subtle changes from first impressions to abstract ideas. But I know that my physical ideas, that is, ideas derived from material objects, appear to me first an idea similar to those of touch. Instantly they pass into intellectual meanings. Afterward the meaning finds expression in what is called "inner speech." When I was a child, my inner speech was inner spelling. Although I am even now frequently caught spelling to myself on my fingers, yet I talk to myself, too, with my lips, and it is true that when I first learned to speak, my mind discarded the finger-symbols and began to articulate. However, when I try to recall what some one has said to me, I am conscious of a hand spelling into mine.
It has often been asked what were my earliest impressions of the world in which I found myself. But one who thinks at all of his first impressions knows what a riddle this is. Our impressions grow and change unnoticed, so that what we suppose we thought as children may be quite different from what we actually experienced in our childhood. I only know that after my education began the world which came within my reach was all alive. I spelled to my blocks and my dogs. I sympathized with plants when the flowers were picked, because I thought it hurt them, and that they grieved for their lost blossoms. It was two years before I could be made to believe that my dogs did not understand what I said, and I always apologized to them when I ran into or stepped on them.
As my experiences broadened and deepened, the indeterminate, poetic feelings of childhood began to fix themselves in definite thoughts. Nature—the world I could touch—was folded and filled with myself. I am inclined to believe those philosophers who declare that we know nothing but our own feelings and ideas. With a little ingenious reasoning one may see in the material world simply a mirror, an image of permanent mental sensations. In either sphere self-knowledge is the condition and the limit of our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves—and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves, either.
However that may be, I came later to look for an image of my emotions and sensations in others. I had to learn the outward signs of inward feelings. The start of fear, the suppressed, controlled tensity of pain, the beat of happy muscles in others, had to be perceived and compared with my own experiences before I could trace them back to the intangible soul of another. Groping, uncertain, I at last found my identity, and after seeing my thoughts and feelings repeated in others, I gradually constructed my world of men and of God. As I read and study, I find that this is what the rest of the race has done. Man looks within himself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe."
Now I need to learn about how they convey these questions without language.
Considering that, in 2024, if not a majority, then, still, a vast portion of our consciousness is words. Perhaps not for the illiterate, but for many, much of our knowledge is through the written or spoken word. [Edit: Even a hypothetical person, alone and isolated, never having spoken, would still devise internal language structures, at least for the external realm. ]
Base consciousness is surely not dependent on language, but I suspect base consciousness may be extremely different from what one might expect, so much that compared to what we perceive as consciousness, might seem something close to death.
Well, I'm not sure cognition entirely without language is even possible for non larval humans. Language is a natural tendency and it arises regardless of documentation, scribblings or utterings. It exists whether audible or not. Language itself is manifestation of the thinking process that permits it.
And I'll hold to the notion that the complete absence of language (and its underlying structure) would resemble death if death can be resembled. Perhaps death is only the excoriation of thought, cognition and language, with something more fundamental persisting.
now I really want to understand the deep thoughts my cat is having
But maybe they exceed human cognition abilities?