Presumably, they are stil able to speak, so, form concepts, understand meanings and grammar - all of which require thought.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that something that seems completely obvious to one person is not even imaginable for another. — T Clark

The common usage of "mind" though is that it is a noun that adjectives apply to.

I'm really not sure what you're asking. — Patterner

You think the mind if a process, right, an action not a thing. Well, are ideas processes to?

I was going to bring up A Man Without Words. Someone here brought him to my attention several months ago. Ildefonso was born totally deaf. Nobody ever tried to communicate with him until he was 27. He literally had no language. It was like Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker when he realized these things the woman was doing represented objects. But harder than Helen Keller, because she at least had the beginnings of language when she got sick at 19 months. Anyway, Susan Schaller says Ildefonso was obviously very intelligent. Though he was ignorant about most everything, it was clear that he was trying to figure things out.

After he could communicate with sign language, people asked him what it was like before he had language. He says he doesn't know. Language changed him so much that he can't remember.

That would figure - he doesn't know, because without any language, there would be no way for ideas to 'register in memory' so to speak (at a guess).

Presumably, they are stil able to speak, so, form concepts, understand meanings and grammar - all of which require thought. — Wayfarer

Clearly they can speak, and clearly they can think. But it also seems clear that they think without using words.

If words are just one style of thinking, it seems difficult to claim that language arose mainly as a tool for thinking.

fringe cases. I'd go with Chomsky.

Not, these are large portions of the population. But even if it were fringe, it would already make the theory difficult.

You think the mind if a process, right, an action not a thing. Well, are ideas processes to? — RogueAI

All mental events are private. No one is aware of what other mental beings are having in their minds.
If AI can think, then we are not supposed to know about it. We can only guess if someone or being is thinking by their actions and words they are taking and speaking in proper manner for the situation or not.

Therefore AI cannot think, is not a well thought out claim.

I was going to bring up A Man Without Words. Someone here brought him to my attention several months ago. Ildefonso was born totally deaf. Nobody ever tried to communicate with him until he was 27. He literally had no language. — Patterner

This is what Stephen Pinker had to say in “The Language Instinct.”

In her recent book A Man Without Words, Susan Schaller tells the story of Ildefonso, a twenty-seven-year-old illegal immigrant from a small Mexican village whom she met while working as a sign language interpreter in Los Angeles. Ildefonso’s animated eyes conveyed an unmistakable intelligence and curiosity, and Schaller became his volunteer teacher and companion. He soon showed her that he had a full grasp of number: he learned to do addition on paper in three minutes and had little trouble understanding the base-ten logic behind two-digit numbers. In an epiphany reminiscent of the story of Helen Keller, Ildefonso grasped the principle of naming when Schaller tried to teach him the sign for “cat.” A dam burst, and he demanded to be shown the sign for all the objects he was familiar with. Soon he was able to convey to Schaller parts of his life story: how as a child he had begged his desperately poor parents to send him to school, the kinds of crops he had picked in different states, his evasions of immigration authorities.

They stress that language is not primarily a system of communication, but a system of thought. Communication is a secondary use of an internal capacity for structuring and manipulating concepts. Animal communication systems (e.g., vervet alarm calls) are qualitatively different, not primitive stages of language. — Wayfarer

This is what Stephen Pinker had to say in “The Language Instinct.” I’m not sure if this contradicts what you’ve written or not.

Any particular thought in our head embraces a vast amount of information. But when it comes to communicating a thought to someone else, attention spans are short and mouths are slow. To get information into a listener’s head in a reasonable amount of time, a speaker can encode only a fraction of the message into words and must count on the listener to fill in the rest. But inside a single head, the demands are different. Air time is not a limited resource: different parts of the brain are connected to one another directly with thick cables that can transfer huge amounts of information quickly. Nothing can be left to the imagination, though, because the internal representations are the imagination. We end up with the following picture. People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought.

The common usage of "mind" though is that it is a noun that adjectives apply to. — RogueAI

Which adjectives apply to the mind?

I'm really not sure what you're asking.
— Patterner

You think the mind if a process, right, an action not a thing. Well, are ideas processes to? — RogueAI

How does this sound?

• The brain is a physical object.
  
• There is activity in the brain.
  
• Our consciousness of - that is, our subjective experience of - the brain's activity is the mind. At least some of its activity. Not, for example, the activity that keeps the heart beating. I'm talking about the activity that perceives, retrieves stored information, weighs multiple options and chooses one over the others, and other things that we think of as mental activity. All of these things are physical activity, involving ions, neurotransmitters, bioelectric impulses, etc. The mind is our subjective experience of that mechanical activity. Brain activity is photons hitting the retina, sending signals to the brain, etc. Our subjective awareness of that is red.
  
• I'm not sure there's a difference between mind and ideas. What mind exists when there are no ideas? Information about past events and thoughts are held in a storage system. At any moment they are being accessed, they are memories, which are part of the mind. What about when they are not being accessed? They are physical structures (I don't know the specifics of the storage mechanisms) just sitting there, not doing more than they would be doing if time was frozen.
  
  Or is there a difference between thoughts and ideas? Are there thoughts that aren't ideas?

People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought.

Pinker's (and Fodor's) theory of mentalese, which is that there is a primordial language pre-existing the creation of utterances or symbols is controversial and not well accepted. It's generally accepted though that an experience can exist without language and that experience might precede reduction to language, but that doesn't suggest the pre-existing experience was some sort of primordial language, but only suggests there are experiences that pre-exist language.

My point is that your quote is of a position that is generally challenged and not widely held.

They stress that language is not primarily a system of communication, but a system of thought. Communication is a secondary use of an internal capacity for structuring and manipulating concepts. Animal communication systems (e.g., vervet alarm calls) are qualitatively different, not primitive stages of language. — Wayfarer

So if I seperate out propositions from sentences, where a proposition is knowledge of an event (e.g. the cat is on the mat) and a sentence is the linguistic representation of that knowledege "The cat is on the mat," it seems reasonable a dog would know the cat is on the mat (i.e. possess the propositional knowlege), but not be able to linguistically form it into a sentence (or utterance). My question then is if the dog had propositional knowledge, then he is engaging in thought, and the dog might also know that if he tries to sit on the mat next to the cat he will be swatted. Is this then the distinction you're drawing between humans and animals just that humans are unusual in that they use sentences to express their thoughts where animals do not?

Or, does my problem rest in the assumption made by cognitive scientists that a proposition can exist without a sentence? If that is my error, how is it best argued do you think? It does seem propositional knowledge can exist without a sentence.

My point is that your quote is of a position that is generally challenged and not widely held. — Hanover

I’m aware that it’s controversial, but that wasn’t my main point. I was just trying to show that it is unreasonable to assume that language is necessarily required for thought.

Can we go inside the brain, see the neurons, and find the image of a glass like a movie and a proyector? The answer is no. — JuanZu

The actual answer is yes. Observe:

I’m aware that it’s controversial, but that wasn’t my main point. I was just trying to show that it is unreasonable to assume that language is necessarily required for thought. — T Clark

I agree.

The answer is no. What I "observe" is a recreation of images on a device other than the brain, but your are not looking the brain and finding those images.

You're right. But 's video is damn cool!

The answer is no. What I "observe" is a recreation of images on a device other than the brain, but your are not looking the brain and finding those images. — JuanZu

Then where does the information used to recreate the images on the device come from?

The brain does not store information, such as an image, in the same modality in which it was received. You are not going to find an actual image in the brain. What you will find, however, is information about the image encoded within the neural activity of the brain. This machine is able to identify that encoding and decode the image based on the brain activity.

Consider image compression. Take a random image file on your computer, run it through a compression algorithm, and then examine the compressed file. You will not see a recognizable image until you decompress it. This is essentially what the machine is doing: reconstructing images from brain activity.

My question then is if the dog had propositional knowledge, then he is engaging in thought, and the dog might also know that if he tries to sit on the mat next to the cat he will be swatted. Is this then the distinction you're drawing between humans and animals just that humans are unusual in that they use sentences to express their thoughts where animals do not? — Hanover

Well, bear in mind, that was a paraphrase of Noam Chomsky and Robert Berwick's book. But it is also addressed in a polemical argument by Aristotelian philosopher Jacques Maritain:

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge. — The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

The actual answer is yes. — punos

That technology is astounding, no question. But it should be born in mind that those systems are trained on many hours of stimulus and response for particular subjects prior to the experiment being run. During this training the system establishes links between the neural patterns of the subject, and patterns of input data. So human expertise is constantly being interpolated into the experiment in order to achieve these results.

But it should be born in mind that those systems are trained on many hours of stimulus and response for particular subjects prior to the experiment being run. During this training the system establishes links between the neural patterns of the subject, and patterns of input data. — Wayfarer

That's right, the input stimulus and response sessions are meant to identify the encoding that a specific brain uses for the images or parts of images it perceives. Once these encodings have been established for that brain, the perceived images can be decoded. Each person's encoding is different, like a fingerprint. There is about one-third overlap for most people, and an "untuned" decoder may be able to retrieve some images, but it would likely result in very low-resolution reconstructions, if anything useful at all.

So human expertise is constantly being interpolated into the experiment in order to achieve these results. — Wayfarer

Could you clarify this statement please?

The brain does not store information, such as an image, in the same modality in which it was received. You are not going to find an actual image in the brain. What you will find, however, is information — punos

Ok. So we have to differentiate between information and experience (Mary's room then). Because you're not seeing the experience, but rather a reconstruction in a monitor, in a flat screen. A few pixels, but the experience isn't made up of pixels. It is a translation from something to something totally different.

Ok. So we have to differentiate between information and experience. — JuanZu

That's fine, but my original response was about finding an image in the brain, not about the experience of the image. Experience involves the processing of information, since it is possible to have information encoded in your brain without being aware of it at a conscious or experiential level. An experience occurs when you acquire new information through your senses from the outside, and also when you retrieve and reconstruct previously stored memories in your conscious mind.

The experience isn't made up of pixels. It is a translation from something to something totally different. — JuanZu

If you wanted to directly experience an image encoded in someone else's brain, here’s what i think would need to be done: One could use a machine like the one in the video i shared to find the encoding in your brain and, for example, my brain. After acquiring both of our unique encodings, one could then use an LLM to translate between my encoding and yours. We would then need a machine capable of writing (not just reading) to your brain using your specific encoding. Now, when i look at an image, you would see and experience everything i see. Do you see?

That's fine, but my original response was about finding an image in the brain, not about the experience of the image. — punos

To avoid misunderstandings, what do you think about the idea of finding the "living experience" in the brain? The fact that you can transfer neural information to a screen and construct an image says it all. When you see those images on the monitor that "reconstructs" them, you are not experiencing what is supposedly being reconstructed. In fact, the word reconstruction is misleading. I prefer to say objectifying what is subjective, but then something is lost, something that is no longer on the monitor. Basically, everything is lost; the experience itself is lost.

Now, when i look at an image, you would see and experience everything i see. Do you see? — punos

Not at all. Because each person will experience it differently, due to their uniqueness.

All mental events are private. No one is aware of what other mental beings are having in their minds.
If AI can think, then we are not supposed to know about it. We can only guess if someone or being is thinking by their actions and words they are taking and speaking in proper manner for the situation or not. — Corvus

Exactly. But behaviours and words can be repeated by a robot without consciousness. In that sense, all we can know is that a robot acts AS IF it were conscious. But that knowledge is not enough to know that it has consciousness.

To avoid misunderstandings, what do you think about the idea of finding the "living experience" in the brain? — JuanZu

The "living experience" in the brain is simply the active and recursive processing of the conscious mind, or the "global workspace". Experience is a stream of information continuously running through specific functional regions of the brain that architecturally encode the qualia of that experience. Without this recursive loop of self-information, there is no sense of living or experience. The "living experience" emerges from the information processing activity itself. Also note that the brain is a physical information system, or in other words "information that processes information". The key feature is the continuously active recurring information processing.

When you see those images on the monitor that "reconstructs" them, you are not experiencing what is supposedly being reconstructed. In fact, the word reconstruction is misleading. I prefer to say objectifying what is subjective, but then something is lost, something that is no longer on the monitor. Basically, everything is lost; the experience itself is lost. — JuanZu

I responded to that with this:

If you wanted to directly experience an image encoded in someone else's brain, here’s what i think would need to be done: One could use a machine like the one in the video i shared to find the encoding in your brain and, for example, my brain. After acquiring both of our unique encodings, one could then use an LLM to translate between my encoding and yours. We would then need a machine capable of writing (not just reading) to your brain using your specific encoding. Now, when i look at an image, you would see and experience everything i see. Do you see? — punos

Not at all. Because each person will experience it differently, due to their uniqueness. — JuanZu

I addressed that issue here:

One could use a machine like the one in the video i shared to find the encoding in your brain and, for example, my brain. After acquiring both of our unique encodings, one could then use an LLM to translate between my encoding and yours. — punos

The reconstructions are extraordinary, no question. But it’s important to see what’s really happening: the system has to be trained for hours on each subject, with researchers mapping brain activity against known images and then building statistical models to translate those signals back into visuals. So what we’re seeing isn’t the brain “projecting” a movie by itself, but a reconstruction produced through a pipeline of human design, training, and interpretation. Without that interpretive layer, the raw neural data wouldn’t 'look like' anything. They don’t show that the brain literally contains images — they’re model-based translations of neural activity, not direct readouts of images 'stored' in the neural data.

That's an interesting Pinker quote, although I myself frequently think in English sentences - not that I regard that as typical or as something everyone would do. Others have said here there are people who can read and speak perfectly well without ever being aware of a stream of thought in their minds. I think my 'bottom line' with respect to AI (with which I now interact every day) is that LLMs are not subjects of experience or thought. And if ask any of them - Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT - they will affirm this. They are uncannily like real humans, right down to humour and double entrendes, but they're reflecting back at us the distillation of billions of hours of human thought and speech.