Is rational thought possible without language? — bioazer

I think this is one of those hopeless philosophical questions that depend on what you mean by the terms. If you sharpen your terms this way or that, you probably get different answers or no answer.

Similarly, is thought structured after our language? Do people speaking different languages think in inherently different ways? — bioazer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I haven't looked into this closely. It came up in a few classes. It sounds plausible. But I'd want some prediction and control before I'd give it serious weight. Else it might just be feel-good-talk or as-you-please. Both of those are fine, but I think you're looking for something stronger. And that stronger seems to boil down to tech that works whether or not you expect it to.

Is rational thought possible without language?
Similarly, is thought structured after our language? Do people speaking different languages think in inherently different ways? — bioazer

There is no such thing as rationale thought. It's whatever.

Thought without language is most certainly possible. Artists, for example, think in terms in imagery, symbols. Language is a device for sharing thoughts.

It's not language that forms thoughts but rather it is experiences which are reflected in languages. First and foremost, it is always experiences (memories).

Is rational thought possible without language? — bioazer

Of course it is. How do you expect us to learn language if we weren't rational?

Similarly, is thought structured after our language? Do people speaking different languages think in inherently different ways? — bioazer

In order to learn a language, you need to have senses and a brain to interpret the sensory signals. Language is just visual scribbles and sounds (and tactile sensations with braille for the blind). To say that we think in our language is just saying that we think in visual scribbles and sounds. We can never escape our thoughts taking the forms that they do (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory and olfactory).

My wife is bilingual. I asked her if she has to think differently when switching between speaking/writing Spanish and English. She said "No." Her native language is Spanish, yet she's very fluent in English. As a matter of fact, she's an English grade school teacher. She said that even though in Spanish, the noun comes before the adjective and in English it is the opposite, when she hears either language saying the same thing, the same concept comes into her mind. It doesn't require her to think differently to get at what is being said. She interprets what is being said by understanding the rules of the language that is being used.

We have to assume (because there can't be any material proof) that language and thought arose together in our distant past. We can not now ask the question, "Is rational thought without language possible?"

There are a few people who have been born without hearing who were also rather neglected who grew up with very deficient language. They had some, but not the full set. Oliver Sacks, the always interesting neurologist now deceased, wrote about them in Seeing Voices. It's a nice short book. When they were adults, they finally were instructed in sign language, which is a complete language system. It was a major improvement in their lives, because they now had access to ideas that were previously missing.

There have been a few observed cases of deaf children inventing a language of sorts when nothing else was available. We are designed to acquire and use language, and if nothing else is available, children will start making one up. It's not going to be anything like a full fledged language, but it demonstrates the tight linkage of language and thought. We have to have both, together.

We are designed to acquire and use language — Bitter Crank

While I agree with most of what you have said, could you clarify who did the designing?

We evolved. So Charles Darwin?

Or for us theists, God (most likely)

Design and evolve are two different things, which is it?

How could a god, with all of his powers, only manage to come up with fucked up humans?

Bad subcontractors? Don't designs evolve?

Thought without language is most certainly possible. Artists, for example, think in terms in imagery, symbols. Language is a device for sharing thoughts.

It's not language that forms thoughts but rather it is experiences which are reflected in languages. First and foremost, it is always experiences (memories). — Rich

My preference is to define the concept of thinking so broadly that it refers to a kind of phenomenon that does not have to be accompanied by brain let alone the ability to use language. Most people, however, prefer to think in specifics, so they are inclined to define thinking narrowly as a conscious process that takes place in brain and is intertwined with language.

My preference is to define the concept of thinking so broadly that it refers to a kind of phenomenon that does not have to be accompanied by brain let alone the ability to use language. Most people, however, prefer to think in specifics, so they are inclined to define thinking narrowly as a conscious process that takes place in a brain and is intertwined with language. — Magnus Anderson

However one might define the "brain"(it is impossible), intelligence certainly permeates the whole body.

most people on this post talk about other languages, imagery, symbols or even memories. let's leave memories out for a moment.
imagery and symbols are basically the same as language! they are another way of using our physical senses to communicate. of course, like spoken languages, they are not perfect, they can be miss used, miss interpreted and cannot explain a who sphere of knowledge in itself, in other words they need themselves to complete each other!
but enough about the quantitative knowledge!
so you want to communicate with anything, anyone, anywhere. no restrictions? well the explanation is simple. and Animals all around the world know this as fact and are perfectly adapted to this communication, it is only we, humans, who have unlearned all of this!
I am talking here of communication through emotions, feelings and well memories. most animals like cats and dogs who have been along side us for so long, have developed ways to tap into our conscious mind, and ask us things like food, outside and love
other animals only communicate thought themselves and at very low levels of emotions, like insects: they are cold and only act like cog in a machine rather than individual beings.

still they all communicate without uttering a word or even using visual ques like facial gestures, we humans are used to this so much that's what we imagine by communication on the non-physical.

you must know that humans are muuuch more powerful consciously than any other creature we know of, we are in a waking up stage as of now, and a power that is is trying to keep us asleep, but that is not stopping us!
we will be able to communicate through thoughts, emotions and live memories when we tap into what is called the collective consciousness of the universe, only then will we have the energy to forward our skills to our potential.

One way of looking at it is that the marks and sounds of language trigger in us trained expectations about what to expect upon further interaction with the world. Those expectations may set up imagery and thoughts in our minds, but the imagery and thought-of-the-thing is irrelevant to the expectations, which are "carried" outside of us by social habit patterns that we partake in, that do change sometimes, but change much more slowly, so we can treat them as stable meanings relative to us.

Managing our expectations (or beliefs, which have more of a connotation of trusting the expectations set up in us by language) rationally, means that we stick to the same expectation over time and test it, before moving on to the next (we don't change horses in the middle of the stream, we test one sense of things at a time). The larger sense of rationality, which is probably something akin to Bayesian reasoning, means we match expectations (the stock of what we think we know) against what eventuates given certain further interactions of ours, or new evidence, or problems or anomalies cropping up. For that to proceed, the meanings we use (which are setting up the expectations/beliefs) need to remain stable within a given investigation.

In this way, it's possible for any language to be used rationally or irrationally; it's also possible for languages themselves to be more or less conducive to rationality, but that's contextual (how finely the language dices reality will make it more or less usable in reason, but it only needs to dice reality as finely as it needs to in a given context - 50 different words for different types of snow is great for the Eskimo, useless to someone living in Bamako).

I think it's possible to say that we have a pre-verbal layer of expectations and an ability to test them, which we share with the higher animals, so to that extent a measure of rational thought is possible without language, but the articulation of language gives that capacity hyper-drive. (Abstractly, it's conceivable that a child could build a sort of private language by themselves, but it would take hundreds of years for an individual to achieve the degree of articulation of reality we've inherited from our ancestors in language.) I think an investigation of "wild/feral children" (children raised by animals, like wolves or apes) would show the difference and distinction: taken out of the wild, they have some capacity for thought and puzzle-solving, just as apes, corvids, etc., have; however, a full armory of language is required for rational thought as we understand it to proceed, but once such children grasp language, if it's not too late, they can learn to think rationally as normal. (Sadly it's too late for some, because the brain needs to be presented with language within a certain window of opportunity in order to be able to learn to use it properly.)

I know that choice of a particular computer language makes some problem solving tasks easier to comprehend and implement, while making other tasks more difficult to perceive.

That probably holds true for spoken languages as well.

Thought without language is most certainly possible. Artists, for example, think in terms in imagery, symbols. Language is a device for sharing thoughts. — Rich

The precision of the sharing of thoughts is proportional to the degree in which language is rationally constrained.

Language stands to the mind just like a mirror to the eyes. The mind needs a language to conceive itself. Which might (or not) mean that there is a primitive natural language.

Thought without language is most certainly possible. Artists, for example, think in terms in imagery, symbols. — Rich

but don't those images and symbols have words without which they cannot exist; without which they cannot be thought?

But don't those images and symbols have words without which they cannot exist; without which they cannot be thought? — jancanc

Rich can't answer that question here, because he is a banned member. But I would answer in the negative and question why you would think that.

Similarly, I would question why anyone would question whether rational thought is possible without language. Given the very good point that Harry Hindu has made, it seems that the answer is clear. But, like Magnus Anderson said, this "problem" might arise if you're one of those people who think in narrow terms.

Thinking is the ability to process things. The reason language is highly correlated with it is because language is a form of abstraction which can be processed (Played around with). But language is not the only thing we can process, we can also process things like pictures, sounds, actions and other things. The process can be correlating things, transforming things and many others.

Thinking is the movement in the mind, transformation of perception, decision making, and the most effective medium in which we can achieve these is language. Though thinking with language alone can cause problems, one can sometimes confuse one's abstract ideas to be more then just representations of things.

Thinking is also how we generate new schemas, This is why imagination is a form of thinking. Seeing shapes in clouds, stories in music. A useful description of imagination can be "Free movement through associations". As I said before thinking is movement, and imagination is a less restrictive form of it.

I'd submit that thought precedes language. We get our language from those who raises us. For example if you speak language A from birth and learn B later in life you will always think in Language A. Not because you require the language to speak but because its the language the self chose to use. As with artists to see a vision of something that their self chose not to communicate with words. In many cases when you start with one language and learn another during the formative years your self may let go of the first language especially if it is more replaced with the new language, perhaps because of relocation or even something like marriage. If you are young enough you will replace it and think in your 2nd language, if for nothing else it becomes more practical and beneficial. I don't imagine a non hearing/speaking person thinks in words the way a speaking/hearing person does but thoughts are still there and mostly asking the same questions.

Linguistic structure does tend to account for the thinking that is linguistically structured.

Your problem then is defining thought in a more general fashion. That is where folk struggle.

Consider the self as a ball of energy that inhabits the physical like..well like a vehicle of sorts. Made to explore our existence. The thoughts would begin in that energy and be processed, sorted, etc via the computer on the vehicle..taking in the data and makes decisions as you go along. so long as the machinery is working properly. Remember the intentions of your self are limited by the functionality of. your equipment.

Dear MiloL:
I respectfully have to disagree with you. You stated that "if you learn language A from birth and learn B later you will always think in language A" I speak four languages and never do that. I think in the language I am using at the moment. That only happens when one doesn't master the language but once master the language that is no longer needed, it is possible to think in any other language.
I am persuaded that thought is always there and language is only the way we express it.